Aug 22, 2017
The tragedy in Charlottesville could have been an occasion to
stop and consider how the tolerance for politically correct
violence and politically correct hatred is leading the nation
towards civil war. Instead the media and the political left have
turned this incident into the biggest fake news story of the
summer, transforming its real lessons into a morality play that
justifies war against the political right, and against white people
generally.
The organizers of the “Unite the Right” demonstration in
Charlottesville were repellent racists. But they came to defend a
historic monument honoring a complex man and cause, and not to
attack it or presumably anyone else. They applied for a permit and
were denied. They re-applied successfully in a petition supported
by the local ACLU. If they had come to precipitate violence, why
would they have gone to the tedious trouble of applying for a
permit? Who knows what – if anything – would have happened if that
had been the end of the story and no one had showed up to oppose
them.
What “Unite the Right” actually demonstrated was that the
assortment of neo-Nazis, pro-Confederates and assorted yahoos
gathered under the banner of the “Alt-Right” is actually a
negligible group. This was a national show of strength that in
reality attracted all of 500 people. Compare that to the tens of
the thousands who can readily be marshalled by two violent groups
of the left – Black Lives Matter and Antifa – and you get an idea
of how marginal “white supremacists” are to America’s political and
cultural life.