Charlottesville
After having gone to protest the white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville today, I have a few thoughts on what has happened in my new home:
First and foremost, these people are exactly as advertised: racist, hateful, anti-semitic, and profoundly ugly. There is nothing couched or subtle about their rhetoric, no implied meaning to be parsed: they are perfectly willing to say to your face that they believe that whites are a superior race, and they will shout for the world to hear that they wish to see the United States devoid of other races, other creeds, and other ideologies. Moreover, their words drip with implied violence, something they are willing to incite and inflict. The white nationalists nominally came to Charlottesville to protest the proposed removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. In reality, they came to provoke and frighten a community that does not share their bigotry, and to perpetuate the racial attitudes that led to the civil war further into the 21st century. From their behavior today, it is clear that they did not come to Charlottesville with the intention of enacting a peaceful protest. They were itching for a fight, eager to attack those who opposed them, not only with words, but with sticks, pepper spray, and whatever else was at hand. And the significant presence of paramilitaries in their midst indicated little reticence to escalate. In a very real way, they are terrorists. They seek to use the threat of violence to frighten both their political opponents and members of the groups they seek to oppress. In the past, they might have assumed such a tactic because they believed victory at the ballot box impossible. Today, they seem emboldened by an administration willing to echo their claims that whites are the victims, and not the inflictors, of discrimination.
(On the subject of terror, the level of armament at this event was both absurd and alarming. As I came up the hill to the sight where the nationalists and the protestors were clashing, the first significant group that I saw were not garbed in the white robes of the klan or sheathed in confederate flags: they were dressed in fatigues and flak jackets, each holding an AR-15. Many carried multiple side arms as well. They were distinguishable from the United States Armed Forces primarily by the lower quality of their uniforms and the less coordinated nature of their movements; the confederate flag patches each bore were too small to spot from any great distance. They were far from alone in their decision to come to the rally highly armed. Additionally, just two blocks away, at one of the parks designated as a rallying point for those protesting the nationalists, a smaller, but noticeable, number of anti-fascists also openly carried firearms; several had AR-15s as well, while a greater number carried holstered pistols. Seeing such a concentrated amount of weaponry on the streets of a city would provoke fear in the best of circumstances; in such a volatile situation, where fist-fights and skirmishes broke out and resolved with little warning and demonstrators were lobbing objects at one another, it is real cause for concern. I doubt anyone on either side wanted to get into a firefight on the streets of Charlottesville, but it is very easy to imagine one of the smaller fights where the two groups met having spiraled out of control very quickly.)
The vitriol and invective of the repugnant forces that descended on Charlottesville today are not merely the words of an angry, lunatic fringe. They reflect a fundamental failing of our nation as a whole. The phrase ‘all men are created equal’ was embedded in the Declaration of Independence, and echoes through our history, but it has never come close to reflecting facts on the ground. Racial iniquity persists in myriad forms: economic deprivation, police brutality, employment discrimination, poor housing, and a host of other ills, all afflict non-whites at dramatically elevated rates. Ultimately, a nation that allows subtler forms of racism to persist is a nation that breeds the level of depravity on display today. Both must be stamped out for us to continue to strive towards upholding our founding promises.
Finally, I think that it’s important to remember that these people do not choose to preach hatred in cities like Charlottesville because they think it will be a winning battle. Charlottesville’s past contains myriad sins, and it is far from perfect today, but it is a progressive city through and through. The fascists and racists draw from a shallow well of support here, and have to bring themselves in from elsewhere. They choose to come to places like this, and not to make a scene in their own towns, because they seek to terrorize other communities, to make them question their own values. All in all, I think Charlottesville did a good job of standing together against this assault on the community. The people of this town did not shrink from the frightening presence of hate in their midst; they came together to stand against it. The revanchists and reactionaries were met with a fairly kaleidoscopic array of opposition; the future was not surrendered to the past.
This was not the first time these malign forces afflicted the Piedmont this summer, and I highly doubt it will be the last. The fight, as ever, continues.
