Dahlia Lithwick tells us the Charlottesville defendants are pretending it was all a joke.

The federal civil trial of the 20 alleged organizers of Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally features a grab bag of white supremacists, some of whom are representing themselves in court. This has meant that from the first day of opening arguments, we’ve heard white supremacist Chris Cantwell, the “Crying Nazi,” hold himself out as a purveyor of a podcast “product” (sign up now!), cite Mein Kampf, and use the N-word. He’s described himself as a “professional entertainer,” “talented,” and “good-looking.” As part of his opening statement Cantwell told the jury he’d dabbled in stand-up comedy, then read out the URL for his website, urging the jury that, “I hope you can all become diehard fans, and together we can save the country.”

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Cantwell, who is currently incarcerated for an unrelated extortion incident, would watch Tucker Carlson’s show with a group of fellow white supremacist prison inmates to prepare for trial, according to BuzzFeed News. Indeed, a central component of the white supremacist end game here lies not in prevailing at trial, but in using the trial to feel famous and to become more so.

Both can be true of course. I’m sure they’re enjoying their notoriety and chance to show off and so on, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real white supremacists. Lots of racists and women-haters and gay-bashers think they’re funny.

One of the tricks for getting famous is to be entertaining. Another is to be funny. Defendant Matthew Heimbach, founder of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party, certainly knows the drill—in one court exchange, he cheerfully described the alt-right leader Richard Spencer as “bougie,” saying, “I kind of always viewed you as a bit of a dandy,” to which Spencer retorted, “Did you ever see me wear boat shoes?” Good fun all around. Cantwell at one point asked Heimbach to tell his “favorite Holocaust joke.” He asked Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, one of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses on the symbols of antisemitism, if it was ever OK to tell Holocaust jokes.

That sounds familiar, oddly enough. It sounds like those strange people at the “slyme pit”; they fancied themselves comedians.

These joking little exchanges are all part of the “we were only kidding” defense, already deeply entrenched in the alt-right, as is the “we were just trying to trigger the liberal snowflakes” defense. 

Yes, that’s what I mean. It sounds very slime pit, very Twitter troll, very bros just wanna have fun.