The night before the Charlottesville demonstration, neo-Nazis paraded chanting “we will not be replaced by Jews.” One of its leaders told a reporter he was disgusted that Donald Trump’s beautiful daughter was married to a Jewish man.

Trump said that we all salute the same flag but neglected to say the neo-Nazis salute a flag with swastikas, and white supremacists and KKK members honor the Confederate battle flag — a flag that represents the tearing apart of this nation.

White supremacists want an all-white nation, which indicates they want to do away with almost half of the population. The KKK used to be active in Maine and wanted to get rid of Catholics and Jews.

Trump and now Gov. Paul LePage have refused to outright denounce those groups. Instead, they use the lame excuse of the defense of statues by people whose goal was to divide this country.

LePage ignorantly compares the 9-11 memorial to those statues. Trump likens them to Washington and Jefferson who, unlike the Confederates, had the qualities that allowed them to lay the foundation for this country. The claim to fame for the Confederates was to try to dissolve the nation.

When you march with such hate groups or refuse to denounce them, you give tacit approval to their message of hate and violence.

The public must stand up to those groups, those who support them, and those leaders who refuse to say in clear and uncertain terms that such groups have no place in this society.

Stan Tetenman, Poland