As everyone reading surely knows, open violence between left and right finally broke out in Charlottesville, Va. last Saturday when an alt-right group tried to hold what they called a Unite the Right Rally. The assembled group, as most groups do, doubtless included people from multiple perspectives no doubt including a few potentially violent KKK and neo-Nazi types.
Central to alt-right beliefs is the idea that the “conservatism” of the GOP mainstream is dead. What has collapsed, of course, is not conservatism but neoconservatism. Alt-rightists have no desire to revive what neoconservatism replaced. If they could tell you what it was, they wouldn’t agree with it. Alt-rightists are not conservatives, therefore. What they also believe — and here my disagreement with them deepens — is that whites need to embrace the identity politics that has been forced on society by the hard left. (I provide a lengthy diagnosis of the philosophical-historical origins and problems with such claims here.)
I may disagree with the alt-right, but why it came about is not hard to fathom.
The organizers chose Charlottesville because of an effort to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who surrendered at Appomattox down the road. This effort is just the latest in the ongoing campaign to erase Southern history which has been occurring since the early 1990s. At Charlottesville, the effort to take down General Lee’s statue is part of a larger effort which includes purging Thomas Jefferson from the University of Virginia he founded. The reason: he owned slaves, and in today’s politically correct world, that’s “triggering.” Charlottesville’s leftist mayor (Mike Signer), moreover, declared the town a “capitol of resistance” following Donald Trump’s inauguration. He is a Berkeley graduate (surprise, surprise) who has been described as “a rising darling of the Left.” One of my sources accuses him of having given the stand-down order to police that allowed the violence to erupt, and continue until someone got killed.
According to boots-on-the-ground reports I will be relying on, there was an abundance of Confederate flags in evidence well before the rally was to begin, and the night before. If anything “triggers” leftists into apoplectic, spit-spraying rage, it is the Confederate flag.
South Carolina was the last state to remove its Confederate flag from its State House Dome. That was July 1, 2000. I was living in Columbia, S.C. then. The atmosphere was tense, but there was no violence. There would be today. The flag was moved to a Confederate monument in front of the State House. Groups such as the NAACP and other leftists weren’t satisfied. They wanted the flag totally out of sight, perhaps in a museum — which would then have been attacked for keeping visible the “triggering” reminder of slavery in the antebellum South.
Then, in 2015, a psychopathic millennial named Dylann Roof, 21, walked into a black church in Charleston, S.C., and murdered nine innocent people in cold blood. Photos of Roof with displays of Confederate flags quickly surfaced. Almost the next day, then-Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill to remove the flag from the monument. I call Roof a psychopath not because I am an expert in psychopathology but because he neither expressed remorse for what he did nor sensed how badly he damaged whatever is left of the pro-South cause. That’s good enough for me.
In any event, such causes persist among the alt-right, hated by mainstream Republicans as well as all Democrats (and most independents).
What has motivated the alt-right’s anger is not just the worsening economic conditions for the white working class in the U.S., nor being disadvantaged in their job searches by affirmative action programs, but being consistently ridiculed and demonized in academia, in corporate media, and in post-‘90s culture generally.
Coming back to what really happened in Charlottesville, I am not identifying my sources for obvious reasons: not only do they have families as well as jobs, we are at a tipping point where those who speak out have to fear for their safety. My main contact assures me that what follows is reliable. I have edited lightly for grammar and flow, but otherwise left it intact. As I’ve sometimes said, if you don’t want to believe any of this, then don’t! It’s no skin off my nose!
Friday night: there had been “people marching with tikki torches (no pitchforks). I didn’t know why, so I watched for a while. It looked like a basic Patriot march. It was peaceful with no trouble. Then they started talking about Robert E. Lee and that another statue was coming down. That pissed me off. This stuff has to stop. You need to know your own country’s history, so you don’t repeat the mistakes. They announced they were having a rally in the morning.”
The Unite the Right Rally was to begin at noon, but well before, leftist counterdemonstrators had assembled, and according to my source they outnumbered the rally attendees at least two-to-one. This is what that source says happened next:
“ … a cute blonde woman (can I still say that?) … was interviewing people who said that white people are going to be replaced unless they stand up and not let our history and heritage be wiped out. I thought, yeah, I kinda noticed that happening, too. There were quite a few folks there and they were dressed like folks have to dress now to go to a rally or protest because of George Soros’s paid agitators Antifa [shorted from Anti-Fascist]: you know, helmets and stuff…. These folks don’t want General Lee’s statue down. Still peaceful with folks speaking their mind.
“THEN: I hear Antifa is here. They just show up in a huge group and station themselves across the street. The rally goers were pinned in on all sides with only one exit. As soon as Antifa got settled in, it began.
“It started raining balloons filled with urine, feces, paint, burning chemicals and boards with nails driven into them. Someone who had infiltrated behind Antifa’s line was interviewed and said they had big coolers full of these balloons….
“THEN: Police lined up behind the rally and announced that they had now declared that this is an unlawful assembly and that if the people didn’t leave the park, they would be arrested. They protested that it wasn’t unlawful, they had a permit.
“They asked the police to take down the barriers in the back so they didn’t have to leave right into Antifa. The cops said No, you have to leave the way you entered and started moving in on them.
“They tried to leave peacefully and were immediately attacked and fought back. The ones that got past Antifa rounded the corner only to be greeted by Black Lives Matter with baseball bats. The ones that got through them and were trying to make it to their cars were chased by both groups and surrounded. They had to call the cops to come and protect them, which to my surprise, they came and got between the groups, but they were still surrounded and couldn’t leave…. I went off and did something else and when I came back the rally goers were gone and Antifa and Black Lives Matter had taken to the street and were marching. I was waiting for the looting to begin.
“THEN: A grey Charger comes flying down the road and BANG!”
“Later I turn on the TV and hear a totally different story.”
Yes. All you heard for the next 48 hours was how white supremacists had torn up Charlottesville and killed someone, and how Donald Trump was personally responsible.
I watched the Clinton News Network (CNN) for two hours last night (Monday night), Anderson Cooper followed by Don Lemon, both overseeing round tables of the usual brand of chatterers, and there was not one mention of Antifa or Black Lives Matter!
Make no mistake: leftists instigated the violence. They always do. They appear to have been enabled by police. Mainstream media played its part. Had they not given the rally 24/7 coverage beforehand, the group would have assembled, made their statements, not bothered anyone else, and then been gone — probably uploading speeches, etc., to YouTube and other social media outlets. There would have been no violence.
Regrettably, videos appeared immediately on social media of “white supremacists” and “Nazis” attacking blacks. If the above account is credible, what was filmed was retaliatory. Who should be blamed?
Consider: Person A is walking in a group carrying a large Confederate flag and otherwise minding his own business, exercising his rights under the First Amendment.
Person B, an Antifa leftist, runs up and sucker-punches him, or hurls a urine-filled balloon in his face while screaming, “Fascist!” or “Nazi!”
Who is the aggressor here?
Come on, folks, this is not rocket science!
A couple of hours after the order to disperse, tragedy struck when the guy later identified as James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, drove his Dodge Challenger (not a Charger, the only confirmed error in the above report) into the crowd. He struck and killed Heather D. Heyer, 32, who had been crossing the street, and injured 19 other people before backing up at high speed and leaving the scene. He’d struck at least one other car. Police cornered his damaged vehicle a short distance away and took him into custody. He faces charges of second-degree murder among others including possible domestic terrorism.
At first there was confusion over who he was. Someone posted that the car was registered to a guy in Michigan, and somehow the guy’s son got accused of being the driver. One of the dangers of armchair investigation in our era of omnipresent social media is that in the heat of emotion, people jump to unwarranted conclusions. The vehicle had been sold a couple of times. Obviously the kid in Michigan wasn’t involved: he was at a wedding at the time, and surely wouldn’t have been posting denials on Facebook if he was in police custody.
Be that as it may, (as usual) there are things that don’t add up. My first thought, upon watching and rewatching the graphic video of the car striking the crowd and then backing straight up, went something like, “That driver was a professional.” Others in my own social media circle agreed.
Today, I dunno.
An ordinary driver could do it, if he stayed focused. But as a friend of mine pointed out: Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. Sirhan Sirhan was a patsy. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols look to have been patsies. Just three cases that come to mind. So is Fields a patsy? I don’t know. All we can do is keep digging into this young man’s background to find out who his associates were prior to this incident, and whether any might be Deep Statists who saw a golden opportunity to stage a false flag. I wouldn’t ask his mother, who comes across as a complete ditz. I would ask those for whom “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” has special meaning.
On the other hand, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If the kid did act alone, on impulse, out of rage at his group having had its rally shut down illegally by police and then terrorized by leftists attacking with clubs, ballbats, bags of urine and feces, etc., I still don’t have a problem condemning his action as grade-A stupid in addition to being terroristic: it played right into the hands of those who say the right is volatile and violent.
Men and women who are right-of-center, whether they self-identify as conservative or as alt-right or pro-South or what-have-you, absolutely must be on their best behavior in public, and that means keeping their tempers if possible even when provoked. This does not mean never defending oneself when physically assaulted, within the bounds of what the law permits. But overall: allow violence to be the left’s way of doing things!
It might be a wise course not to have more public Unite the Right rallies until things cool down, as much as this might seem to be caving in to what the left wants. (More rallies are planned.)
Instead, have conferences. Make videos. Post online news materials and commentary. Watch your language! That is, again, leave the f-, m- and c-words to the lefties. Dress professionally when appearing in public (that means putting away the bandanas, having a neat and normal haircut, covering up tattoos, not hiding one’s eyes behind opaque shades). More bluntly put: don’t look like aging punk rockers or disaffected troublemakers, much less like someone who admires Adolf Hitler! Be more of a James Damore than a Richard Spencer!
Keep in mind that social media is a two-edged sword. It is how I came by the above material. With practically everyone now having a mobile device with video capabilities connected directly to the Internet, these events can be broadcast live. But being seen at such an event can be a career-killer. People who were in attendance Saturday have already been fired from their jobs because they were visible on social media.
This is part of the left’s strategy of intimidation, and it has the potential to be very effective at silencing opposition, however self-defined (the left, even as I write, is in the process of redefining all significant opposition as white supremacist).
The left, and its fellow travelers throughout government and corporate media played the media misrepresentations of what happened in Charlottesville immediately for all the mileage they could get from them.
Trump was basically ordered to condemn, unconditionally, the “white supremacy” on display in Virginia under the premise that the rally-goers had caused the violence.
What he said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides. No matter our color, creed, religion, or political party, we are all Americans first!”
Left-liberals exploded with fury at that on many sides.
We are supposed to forget, that is, about the violence by leftists that went on all last year during the run-up to the election. We are supposed to forget that Black Lives Matter surged onto roadways and highways to block traffic trying to get to Trump rallies. We are supposed to forget that Trump once canceled a scheduled appearance on his own, in Chicago, out of fear for his supporters’ safety, when (Soros-bankrolled) organizers led a protest of thousands that surrounded the venue.
We are supposed to forget, moreover, that leftists did millions worth of damage at Berkeley in the process of shutting down an alt-right speaker, and that conservative speakers have repeatedly had appearances canceled because of threats.
Some (e.g., this blowhard) blame Trump for the violence — possibly referring to the handful of cases when he spoke approvingly of the physical expulsion from his rallies of the handful of leftists who showed up for no reason other than to cause trouble. I’ve no idea here. Reich presents no reasoning to support his opinion. A former Bill Clinton cabinet member, he is now a tenured professor at Berkeley. Well, surprise, surprise.
As if Trump had lost, the left wing multicultural paradise would have ensued … any day now! Is Reich really that stupid, or does he think we are?
Leftists have always been more demanding, impulsive, and (when they do not get their way) violent than the majority of those on the right; I say majority because obviously there are exceptions. Somewhere, moreover, there are probably a few peaceful BLM members, and the handful of Bernie Sanders supporters I’ve encountered online struck me as nonviolent.
Be this as it may, a violent and militant left has arisen, and gets very little mainstream media attention (rare exceptions here and here).
To the left, there is only one legitimate side: theirs. They’ve said so openly, not once but many times. They do not want dialogue with those who do not share their premises about, e.g., “social justice.” That is to presume a “false moral equivalence,” a term we’ve heard many times since Saturday.
Leftists in both government and corporate media are furious it took Trump 48 hours to issue the unconditional condemnation they’ve demanded (here it is). What he finally said: “Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs: including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” Afterwards he (correctly) lamented that left-leaning corporate media “will never be satisfied.”
What might be next?
First, it is still open season on Confederate monuments. One statue was pulled down by leftists in Durham, N.C. on Monday, in what can only be described as an act of public vandalism that will probably not be prosecuted as such.
There are still many Confederate statues and monuments scattered around the South. Expect efforts to remove them to intensify; expect some to be vandalized openly now that the vandals know they can get away with it: police will stand down out of fear of being demonized as racists and white supremacists themselves.
Expect more boundary warping of all conservative opinion and expression into those of the alt-right despite the clear differences, and a general pulling of everything and everyone to the right of Che Guevara into “white supremacy,” where disagreement is equated to “hate.”
Expect well-connected groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to lead the way in helping demonizing everything outside left-approved limits. This will include those who criticize affirmative action programs and other policies of preference based on collective identity and ideologically-designated victimhood or marginalization or “voicelessness.” Expect increasing condescension towards those who speak critically of identity politics (example here).
Expect defenders of free speech to be pulled under this umbrella, along with those who explicitly criticize political correctness (expect to see that phrase in scare quotes, to delegitimize it). Expect increasingly overt attacks on the First Amendment as a relic … and expect the millennial generation to be open to these attacks because so many value feelings over freedom of speech and assembly, and they vote. (Last year, millions of millennials were willing to vote for a self-described socialist.)
I imagine the mainstream GOP will be partly exempt from this general demonizing, as it doesn’t appear to stand for much of anything.
What U.S. citizens ought to fear — and I mean genuinely fear — is that what happened in Charlottesville will be recalled as one of the opening shots in a looming civil war between right and left, a war able to be averted only by a lethal, police state response. Liberty (except for the usual tiny corporate, governmental and media elite) will be vanquished, as Americans of whatever ideology live under police state conditions for the foreseeable future. The globalist superelite will doubtless welcome this development as they quietly watch from their investment banking corporations and other private enclaves.
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