Stan Lee shares 1968 column against bigotry after Charlottesville violence

Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee reposted an old “Stan’s Soapbox” column on social media Tuesday, days after the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia left one person dead.

“Let’s lay it right on the line,” Lee wrote in the unearthed 1968 column. “Racism and bigotry are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed supervillains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them, is to expose them — to reveal from the insidious evil they really are.”

Lee posted his column hours before President Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference where he claimed “both sides” were at fault for the Charlottesville violence, comments that were almost instantaneously condemned.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say — the alt-right?” Trump said Tuesday. “Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

The president had earlier condemned white supremacists, neo Nazis, the KKK, but said Tuesday he felt there was “blame on both sides.”

“You look at both sides, I think there’s blame on both sides. I have no doubt about it and you have no doubt about it either,” Trump said, adding of Friday protesters who marched with torches and chanted anti-Semitic phrases were “people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.”