.
Some of the injured tended to after one of the racists rammed them with a car.
White Nationalists march Friday night carrying torches onto the Univ. of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. The torch light ceremony reminded many of the Nazi torch light marches in the 1930s.
Even as a panel on CNN yesterday morning ruminated on whether the media ought to limit coverage of melees like in Charlottesville,
Virginia some observers suspect the Second Civil War may have been born with that 2-day spectacle. It all started on Friday night, during an unplanned (i.e. not properly scheduled) torchlight parade, reminiscent of many conducted by the Nazis in the 1930s. E.g. the scene below capturing a Nazi torch light parade outside Nuremberg in 1938:
In the Friday night manifestation, the hundreds of far right marchers entered the University of Virginia campus, and set upon a much smaller group of counter protesters who were surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson. The Nazi-KKK terrorists beat the latter group with truncheons, poles and sticks leaving several bleeding as the vermin bellowed racist and white supremacist slogans. They also targeted the faces of counter protesting women with their mace cans. All of this to try to demonstrate against the removal of a statue of arch traitor Robert E. Lee.
Were the Right's Nazis, racists and fascists out to emulate their forbears? Without a doubt. If not, why were so many wearing Nazi swastikas and Nazi helmets, gear? As I have repeatedly pointed out on this blog the National Socialism of the Nazis is directly tied to the RIGHT end of the political spectrum and the displays on Friday, Saturday further prove it.
Just before 11am Saturday, a formation of about 200 white supremacists were briefly halted by protesters before moving towards the south-east gate. One of their number was seen to mace a young woman who approached the group. By the time they made it in, there were well over 500 far-right protesters in the park, with about 1,000 counter-protesters in the street.
This parade was watched over by Virginia state police, police officers, and armed “Three Percent” right extremist militia members, who were dressed in fatigues and openly carrying rifles. One of the strong objections of protestors was the appearance of the latter group, mocking military and genuine law enforcement.
Offering explicitly fascist chants like “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil”, they had been met by counter-protesters seeking to prevent their entrance to the park. Some counter-protesters, including many marching under red and black antifascist (Antifa) banners, sought to block the streets. This led to altercations with far-right groups, who were seen using chemical weapons, sticks and shields on their opponents.
Indeed, throughout Saturday morning - leading up to the clearing of Emancipation Park - massed contingents from neo-Confederate and neofascist groups such as the League of the South, as well as the National Socialist Movement, had made their way along Market Street towards the park’s entrances. They were determined to continue their ghastly protest all the while chanting "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!"
Then soon after, real citizens - unable to stomach any more of this hatred and being smacked with shields and sticks - let loose on the racists and fascists. The latter, however, as is their wont - chose to fight dirty and diabolically with one of their number driving a car straight into a group of people peacefully protesting against them , killing one person (32 year old Heather Heyer) and injuring 19. The driver (James Alex Fields Jr.) reversed out of the devastating scene and drove off, the front end of his car all smashed.
The death was announced in a tweet by the Charlottesville mayor, Mike Signer, who wrote: “
I am heartbroken that a life has been lost here. I urge all people of good will – go home.”
The governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, earlier declared a state of emergency, even as he deplored the outside terrorists and rabble that had descended on the progressive college town to wreak their racist havoc. Meanwhile, in classic mealy-mouthed, weasel fashion Trump speaking from Bedminster, New Jersey,
condemned the “violence on many sides”, saying:
“
We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” Trump added that this has been “going
on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. A long, long time.”
Neglecting to call out the hate mongers which thereby would have conceded the hate on display had been spiked with his own ascension, as he coddled and played to the memes of white supremacy, even putting one of this lot (Steve Bannon) into the White House.
A White House spokesperson later amplified slightly Trump's weasel words, saying: “
The president was condemning hatred, bigotry and violence from all sources and all sides. There was violence between protesters and counter-protesters today.”
Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, a Trump supporter who was in Charlottesville Saturday, quickly replied. “
I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” he wrote.
Thereby once and for all ripping off the veneer of deceit concerning the malevolent forces that ushered Trump and his cabal into office. Indeed, dozens of the white nationalists in Charlottesville were wearing red
Make America Great Again hats. Asked by a reporter in New Jersey whether he wanted the support of white nationalists, Trump did not respond. He didn't have to. Obviously he extols and embraces these knuckledraggers and their devotion as much as he does Putin. As WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin put it on AM JOY yesterday, "
Trump has been playing footsie with these White Nationalists all during his campaign." Ms. Rubin added that Trump "
considers them part of his base" so of course he doesn't want to offend them or upset them.
Trump rightly faced criticism for his failure to directly denounce the white supremacist demonstrators. It was THEIR side after all who carried rifles around posing as a "militia" and their side that drove the car into the crowd. It was their side also that maced innocent protestors who merely called out the racists for what they were: Nazi and KKK vermin. By any proportionate reckoning
these vermini were the violent ones wreaking havoc, yet Trump like his rabble followers sought to portray the day's events in terms of false equivalence.
To their credit, more than a few Republicans correctly perceived this and commented. Senator Marco Rubio , for example,
tweeted that it was important for Trump to describe the events as a “
terror attack by white supremacists”.
Sen. Corey Gardner of our state (CO) also didn't mince words, saying Trump "needed to call evil by its name" adding:
"
This is nothing short of domestic terrorism and should be named as such...These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism"
The police declared an unlawful assembly alert and a spokesman for the force said the Virginia national guard “
will closely monitor the situation and will be able to rapidly respond and provide additional assistance if needed”.
The car attack came about two hours after state police in riot gear had cleared Emancipation Park, the site of the Robert E Lee statue. (The city’s decision in February to remove the statue drew earlier protests by the “Alt-right” and the Ku Klux Klan.) The murdering degenerate who was responsible was identified yesterday as 20-year old
James Alex Fields Jr. Incredibly some deluded Reich bloggers have even insisted (with presumably straight face) Fields was trying to "get away" and save his life!!! Hey, if he was trying to make an escape he drove in the wrong direction! Also ignored: the car had been
weaponized, revved up into a 'muscle car' for the specific purpose of causing harm.
Samantha Bloom, the mother of this terrorist turd, interviewed with clip shown on CNN - first confessed to not knowing anything about her spawn's affiliations or interests. But later,
The Daily Beast reported that Bloom,
said she told her son to be “careful” if he chose to join the protests.
“[And] if they’re going to rally to make sure he’s doing it peacefully,” Looks like he didn't take mommy's advice.
Looks like she also never consulted with Fields' high school history teacher, Derek Weimer, who stated Sunday that Fields' was "
enamored of the Nazis and infatuated with Adolf Hitler".
One of the Alt-Right speakers, the pro-Nazi Richard Spencer, bawled that he had been maced on the way into the park and lashed out at police and city authorities. Recall this scumball headed the Alt Right group - the
National Policy Institute. He's also been caught in full throated homage to Nazi ideals and agendas with
'Hail Trump!" (Ger. "
Heil Trump!") salutes and "Sieg Heils" See e.g. this bunch at their recent gathering in D.C. after Trump's rise to power:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard-spencer-speech-npi/508379/
This maggot had the nerve to bellyache:
“
Never in my life have I felt like the government was cracking down on me until today. We came in peace and we were effectively thrown to the wolves.”
Aw,
BWAAHAHAHA!! Forget the drama of this drama queen, the police chief noted that they did not intervene until they saw cause to do so. Also, these idiots didn't follow the chief's directions for which park entrances to use - thereby coming into direct contact with counter protesters (mainly clergy and UVA students)
Besides, as one NAACP spokeswoman noted, the Alt-Right rally wasn't about exercising free speech but fomenting violence and discord in a peaceful, progressive college community.
Even the right-leaning WSJ saw it that way in its editorial (
'The Poison Of Identity Politics', p. A16) today. Noting:
"
The particular pathology on display in Virginia was the White Nationalist Movement...They alone are to blame for the violence that occurred when one of their own drove a car into peaceful protestors, killing a young woman and injuring 19.
The Spencer crowd courts publicity and protests and they chose the progressive university town of Charlottesville with malice aforethought. They used unsubtle Ku Klux Klan symbolism of torches in a Friday night march, and they sought to appear as political martyrs as a way to recruit more alienated young white men."
Who are these "alienated young white men"? According to author J.D. Vance ("
Hillbilly Elegy") interviewed on CBS this morning, they are "
mostly from well to do middle class families". However, they suffer from at least one major detriment or flaw in their lives: e.g. can't get along with or form relationships with women, can't fit in at their jobs, unable to complete an Army tour (like Fields), can't get along socially other than in online rat warrens (reddit, Breitbart, Daily Stormer) where they exchange hate with each other. In many ways their alienation is similar to those disaffected youngsters in Europe and elsewhere that seek meaning in their lives with Isis.
Author Vance insists that we "
must not stereotype them as knuckle dragging yokels" but how else portray these losers when they conduct themselves like such? Military fatigues, helmets, shields and mace cans? Give me a break! If it walks like a duck, quacks like one and acts like one then
it is one.
Spencer, for his part, vowed his gaggle of outed online scum (as from
'Daily Stormer') would not back down from protesting against the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. This is the same arch -traitor whose statue was already removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans several months ago. . Then when Spencer mentioned Mayor Signer by name, the crowd chanted “
Jew! Jew! Jew!”
Elsewhere, a group of clergy including Dr Cornel West linked arms at the top of stairs leading to the park in its southeast corner. The Rev Seth Wispelwey, of Sojourners United Church of Christ in Charlottesville, said of the faith-based action: “
We’re here to counteract white supremacy, and to let people know that it is a system of evil and a system of sin.”
The biggest trope exploded in the Charlottesville clashes? That the Left is the side "hobbled by identity politics". This canard was given undeserved attention in a long essay (
WSJ Review, p. C1 Aug. 12-13) entitled
'The Liberal Crack-Up' by Mark Lilla - a "professor of humanities" and ostensible liberal - at Columbia University. In it he claimed:
"
Liberals have lost the public's confidence by embracing the divisive, zero sum world of identity politics."
Ironically, the piece came out almost as the Right's tribal nuts were demonstrating identity politics on steroids with their assorted Nazis, KKK racists, Confederates and Alt-Right screwballs wreaking havoc on the U VA campus. As UVA professor Larry Sabato put it on CNN yesterday "it sickened me to my core". (Sabato's residence is right near the Jefferson rotunda where the marchers passed by).
If ever there was a manifestation of white trash, pro-Trump identitarian politics it was in what we beheld in Charlottesville, spurred on by Trump. This glorified man-baby swine hybrid provided cover for his hateful spawn by not specifically calling them out, opting instead for the palsied narrative of moral equivalence. Even at that he was unable to straight deliver his message, he had to read it from a paper.
72 years ago the U.S. smashed Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist vermin, so the inquiring, genuine American citizen is correct to ask why we see their latter day supporters prancing around a Virginia university campus now carrying Nazi flags, e.g.
Even Sen. Orrin Hatch had to tweet that
"my brother didn't lose his life fighting Hitler to have to Nazi ideas go unchallenged at home". On the positive side, the most gratifying image of all arrived yesterday when a young woman tackled Jason Kessler the rally organizer, who made the mistake of returning to the scene of his crime:
Meanwhile, in Germany yesterday, a 41-year old American was punched out by a passerby German for giving the Nazi salute. (Germans, unlike too many 'Muricans, don't take kindly to saluting the Fuhrer). The Nazi salute — the right arm straight and angled slightly up, palm down — was used as a greeting and a way of expressing devotion to Adolf Hitler under the Third Reich. Germany outlawed the salute after World War II, along with Holocaust denial and other symbols and signals associated with the Nazis. A conviction can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
We need new laws like this now in the U.S. of A. to deter our homegrown Nazis from projecting their hate, like they did in Charlottesville.
Will a Second Civil War come out of it? Who knows? But as one panel member (Jennifer Rubin) put in on AM Joy yesterday a.m. it does not bode well if Trump himself is unable to call out white supremacy and domestic terror when it arises - especially as he'd do it in a NY minute if a black person or Muslim had rammed into a crowd with a car. (
Note: Trump finally did stop using weasel words today, but it is too little, way too late. As Mayor Signer put it, he blew a good opportunity to show leadership and instead kowtowed to the haters. Hell, his own daughter Ivanka and Jeff Sessions beat him in naming the culprits).
Whether Charlottesville marks the opening clash in a 2nd Civil War in the end depends on whether ALL Americans return to their senses after this incident. If it merely emboldens a hard core set of white supremacy Trump supporters (or a lot of others who are invested in Breitbart, and fake news) then the stage is set for future clashes. These are also likely to get ever more violent, possibly with guns used (guns were toted by the
'Three Percent') racists in Charlottesville). Indeed, the "Unite the Right" bunch that was finally forced to leave the campus has vowed to return with larger numbers. Let us hope they don't bring loaded weapons with them.
See also:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/74538/welcome-to-donald-trumps-america
And:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/74539/american-carnage-white-punks-on-parade
And:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/74540/a-national-calamity-in-the-making
