Comedy Central animated series, which has never shied from biting political commentary, will use its season 21 premiere to lampoon last month’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville

South Park returns on Wednesday night for its 21st season, and the celebrated Comedy Central series, which has long skewered the politics of those on both the left and the right, will take on white supremacists in its season premiere.

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In the wake of the events in Charlottesville last month, where a counter-protester was murdered at a white nationalist demonstration, the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have decided to use the animated series to comment on a fraught political climate. A short promotional clip from the episode, called White People Renovating Houses, shows a rally consisting of white people holding Confederate flags and chanting “you will not replace us” – one of the slogans chanted by white supremacists in Virginia.

“Protesters armed with tiki torches and Confederate flags take to the streets of South Park,” the episode description reads, adding that the character Randy Marsh will “[come] to grips with what it means to be white in today’s society”.

A promotional clip from the season 21 premiere of the Comedy Central series South Park

Another scene in the 15-second clip released by Comedy Central ahead of the premiere shows Randy Marsh pleading with a judge to get the protesters to “stop waving the Confederate flag every chance they get”.

In an interview with ABC News last month, Parker and Stone said they had planned to have the new season steer clear of political satire, but the first episode of season 21 shows they can’t stay away for too long.

“They’re already going out and doing the comedy,” Parker said of contemporary politics. “It’s not something you can make fun of.”

Stone added: “It’s really tricky now as satire has become reality. We were really trying to make fun of what was going on [last season] but we couldn’t keep up. What was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with. So we decided to just back off and let them do their comedy and we’ll do ours.”

Season 21 of South Park premieres on Comedy Central at 10pm on Wednesday 13 September.