The violence at the Unite the Right rally (also known as the Charlottesville rally) by white supremacists and nationalists remained under firm spotlight this week. President Donald Trump’s lukewarm denunciation of white nationalists further exacerbated the debate around the incident in most newspapers.

In a scathing editorial the Washington Post bemoaned Trump’s lack of empathy and moral turpitude. “When a white supremacist stands accused of running his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one and injuring 19, Americans of goodwill mourn and demand justice. When this is done in the context of a rally where swastikas are borne and racist and anti-Semitic epithets hurled, the only morally justifiable reaction is disgust. When the nation’s leader does not understand this, the nation can only weep. There may be a time to debate such questions — but not, as any national leader with a sense of decency would understand, now. Not in a time of mourning, with the wounds so fresh. Not when Mr. Trump has not even bothered to call the family of Heather Heyer, the young woman mowed down. Not when Americans are looking for a clear and unequivocal condemnation of the hatred that brought those 700 marchers to Charlottesville,” the paper wrote.

Calling the American president clueless, The Guardian noted that there was no equivalence between neo-Nazis and counter-protesters. “Mr Trump not only reasserted his view that the white supremacists and their opponents in the Charlottesville clashes were morally equivalent. He went further. He said that there were good people on both sides, thus implicitly lending at least partial presidential approval to a far-right rally in which swastikas were displayed, Nazi salutes made and antisemitic chants shouted. Mr Trump’s petulant and narcissistic demeanour made it clear that he is more outraged by criticism and with the American press than he is with his country’s racists and its neo-Nazis. He clearly cannot help himself. But that is no excuse. This is therefore a moment at which America and the world need to display the moral clarity of which the US president is so embarrassingly incapable. There are not “many sides” to the arguments that came to the boil in Charlottesville and since. There is a right side and a wrong side. Racism, anti-Semitism, white supremacism and Nazism, new or old, are wrong. A leader who cannot bring himself to say this clearly and unequivocally is not just clueless. He also forfeits his claim to moral authority and much of his right to be respected as leader. Yet that is where Mr Trump has put himself.”

The Wall Street Journal likened the violence in Charlottesville to the poison of identity politics. The paper editorialised, “The return of white nationalism is part of a deeper ailment. As ever in this age of Donald Trump, politicians and journalists are reducing the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to a debate over Mr. Trump’s words and intentions. That’s a mistake no matter what you think of the President, because the larger poison driving events like those in Virginia is identity politics and it won’t go away when Mr. Trump inevitably does.”

Highlighting the need to counter soul-sickening ideas and beliefs, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The president has been handed several opportunities in the last few days to take a decisive stand against bigotry and hatred, and he has repeatedly declined to do so. We need as a nation to find a better way through this, and a better way to counter the soul-sickening ideas and beliefs represented by the neo-Nazis and racists who have floated on Trump’s tailwind to the main stage of American political discourse. Unfortunately, we may not receive help from the White House.”