Actor Mark Ruffalo is looking to smash what he sees as white supremacy’s strangle hold of Washington, calling for the impeachment of President Trump while marching with a small group of protesters wending their way towards the nation’s capital through the Virginia countryside.
Mr. Ruffalo, who plays The Hulk in Marvel’s “The Avengers” franchise, joined Thursday’s leg of “The March to Confront White Supremacy,” which is working its way from Charlottesville to D.C.
“I’m marching today in memory of Heather Heyer, the young woman who lost her life to the hate of white supremacists in Charlottesville, as well as many others who were injured,” he said in a statement, reported Charlottesville’s CBS affiliate.
“Now, we have a president who called participants in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist march in Charlottesville ’some very fine people.’ Enough is enough,” Mr. Ruffalo said, the CBS affiliate reported. “White supremacy must be called out for what it is and defeated. Its very existence is based on violence and is antithetical to American values.”
In a brief interview with the activist group Popular Democracy, Mr. Ruffalo evoked the Third Reich, saying the apathy of one-third of Germans in Hitler’s time enabled the atrocities of the minority of their countrymen who belonged to the Nazi Party.
Asked by the off-camera interviewer to “tell people why they should come join us,” Mr. Ruffalo began, “You should come because in Germany, Nazi Germany, one-third of the population wanted to destroy or eject or put in a concentration camps one-third of the population, while the last third stood by and watched.”
“We’re two-thirds of the way here in the United States, and we have to, this last third, is all the difference,” he added. “By coming out, by making your voice heard, by stepping out of your comfort zone, by facing your fear, with courage, and mastering it, we can make the United States what we all want it to be.”
The march, which began Monday with nearly 200 people in Charlottesville, appears now to be no more than 50 marchers, as evidenced by a Thursday group photos on the march’s Twitter page.
The group expects to march into Washington on Wednesday, Sept. 6, where, according to its official website, it will launch an open-ended round of demonstrations.
“We will hold our ground and launch wave after wave of nonviolent civil disobedience demanding Trump be removed from office and that an agenda be advanced that heals the wounds of white supremacy,” reads a statement on the website. “This is will be a sustained civil disobedience campaign, so bring what you need to stay.”
.@MarkRuffalo shares why he joined @cville2dc to march in the spirit of all those who marched before us against white supremacy.#CVille2DC pic.twitter.com/NN6QrAko0V
— Popular Democracy (@popdemoc) August 31, 2017
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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