James Lillin
STAFF WRITER
The grotesque violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, has cast a shadow over the lives of many Americans, as a White Supremacist protester drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protestors, murdering 32-year-old Helen Heyer and injuring at least 19 others.
Many argue that the heavily-armed, ultra-nationalist rally populated by Nazis and White Supremacists did not represent American values, with the racist and anti-semitic rhetoric being inherently ‘Un-American’.
This argument is, unfortunately, untrue. Racism and race-based oppression are as American as apple pie.
Virginia was the birthplace of 8 Presidents, more than any other state in the Union. Of these 8 Presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson), only Wilson was not a slave owner, perhaps due to the fact that his term started in 1913. Slavery is embedded in the bedrock of America, and remains a national disgrace that our nation has still not made reparations for. These anti-racist protestors recognized this, and stood up bravely to fight against the rising tide of xenophobia and white resentment that seems to be set to crash across the country.
The entire tragedy has been made more horrifying by President Trump’s insistence that there were “very fine people” marching alongside the Nazis, a comment which represents an unimaginably cruel twisting-of-the-knife in the bellies of the families of the murdered and injured.
Just as galling has been Trump’s insistence that there was “violence on both sides,” pointing the finger at the non-existent ‘alt-left’ in an effort to equate anti-racist counter protesters with the white nationalists and members of the alt-right who spread terror throughout both Charlottesville and the nation as a whole.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe wrote that “Neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a fight. One of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This was not ‘both sides.’”
It seems that in today’s America, there is no act so unconscionable that it will not be excused by our President if the performer of the atrocity is aligned with him politically. Whether it’s his excusal of the tragedy in Charlottesville, his long-running lies about his awareness of the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke; or his recent Presidential pardoning of the twice-convicted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who once called the prison he ran a “concentration camp”, Trump is publically sending the message to racists and bigots that the President of The United States has their backs if the liberal snowflake cuck-patrol has the gall to ask them to stop murdering them in public.
This isn’t to excuse all of the rhetoric of left-leaning Americans in the days after Charlottesville. In the days after the attack my social media was flooded with images of a liberal counter-protester punching peacefully protesting members of the alt-right in the face, with bolted-on jokes about the ‘proper form and technique’ for “punching Nazis”.
These jokes, as satisfying as they may feel to make, are unconscionable and unhelpful, particularly because it only serves to give members of the right ammunition to claim that liberals really are the violent party when reality demonstrates the opposite. America has one of the most liberal free-speech guarantees in the world, and as long as protesters remain peaceful we need to respect it lest we allow white nationalists to develop a martyrdom and persecution complex.
Until we get the chance to vote the Hatemonger-in-Chief out of office, this is the reality that we are going to have to live with. We are going to have to remain loud, remain furious, and remain peaceful. If we narrow our focus to tearing down Trump’s backwards and destructive policies rather than sharing memes about him eating hamburgers and staring into the eclipse, maybe we’ll be able to build up enough furor to take the House away from his party in 2018. Then, maybe, we could get the ball rolling on impeachment.