Fab Fun for Fashy Larrikins: Charlottesville 2017

(Being some draft notes for a book review concerning the Antifa riots in Charlottesville, August 12, 2017. The final draft was quite different: less frivolous and self-revelatory. These sections are intelligible, sometimes enjoyable, but increasingly disjointed.)

What I remember most about the days leading up to the big Charlottesville party in August 2017 was that it was all a total joke. It was going to be a laff-a-minute over-the-top free-for-all. A lot of KEK flags waving and kids running around in helmets and tactical gear, while TV news crews sucked their thumbs and went, “What does it all mean?”

This sort of guerrilla theater had been going on for months, in New York and Boston and Washington, and even a little bit here in Cville. Fab fun for fashy larrikins!

A few of us ladies were talking about setting up a big trestle table full of snacks topped with a huge sign: SAMMICHES! After we knocked the idea around a little, I pointed out that the day was probably going to be hot, the sandwiches would go bad, and anyway who wants to stand out in the sun just to be a jokey tableau vivant? Right?

A friend was going to rent one of the ski-lodge condos at nearby Wintergreen Mountain and get some folks to share the expense. It was a big four-bedroom unit that theoretically could sleep 12, or 15 people; you could rent it for a whole week for something like $400. We would party for the whole long weekend: before, after, and maybe even during the “Unite the Right” event. You might be wasted, after all, come the morning of August 12. In that condition would you really want to stand around in a hot park in Charlottesville and listen to some podcaster rant the same bog-obvious truths that everyone in his right mind already agreed about?

In the end we blew the whole thing off. Didn’t go to Wintergreen, or Charlottesville, or even send along a crate of sandwiches. We watched the famous Tiki Torch March on Friday night, August 11. “Unite the Right Eve,” as it were. And found it mighty entertaining. Sometime after 9 p.m. we saw a handful of spindly antifa types encircle the Jefferson statue in Nameless Park, as though to protect it (which made no sense at all; it wasn’t under attack). They were weeping bitter tears and shouting obscenities into their smartphones, because they weren’t as cool and good-looking as these hundreds of guys (and maybe two dozen gals) in their white polo shirts and chinos. These young Adonises and Freyas, were parading with tiki torches they’d purchased that afternoon at the local big-box store. We watched as their double-filed ranks coiled their way around those antifa ragamuffins at the statue. Magnificent choreography—like the Roman legions snaking down the hillside, before the final battle in <em>Spartacus</em>!

Honestly, we didn’t see it coming. A friend in Identity Evropa had been sending angry taunts on social media to a weirdo down in Charlottesville, someone named Emily, who purported to be the main organizer of the “counter-protestors.” That  would be the handful of pathetic hippies linking hands around the Jefferson statue. A thousand more would arrive in the morning, along with Federal agents and news crews, all ready to riot and put out the story that they weren’t the culprits, they weren’t the violent mob. No, the guilty ones were those Right-wingers who were planning to convene peacefully in a park at noon. They’d come for an event called “Unite the Right,” which newsmedia and antifa continually referred to as a “rally,” though it was really nothing more than six or ten speeches. In the end it was canceled and didn’t happen at all.

Deborah Baker was born in Charlottesville and grew up a few miles away. So she was personally mystified  and intrigued when “Charlottesville” happened. So she did a lot of dogged research, not investigating every nook and cranny and leading personage, but generally sticking to stuff she already knew, and local folks she could easily interview. So unexpectedly she talks a lot about T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, but never gets around to talking to most the big names that came out of the August 12, 2017 ruckus. No Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Mayor Mike Signer, Governor Terry McAuliffe. Despite this imbalance I can report that her book gives us new findings, with a reasonably clear itinerary of what happened that day. But—alas! While some useful revelations are there, Baker has difficulty acknowledging them. This is because they don’t fit into the received narrative she feels constrained to follow. It’s the mainstream media narrative, the only one she knew, apparently. The one where some Right-wingers, “white supreemists” and “neo-Nazis” caused all the trouble. Because they were bad people for simply existing, and they wanted to give speeches in a park where they had a permit to gather and speak.

Yet here’s the irony: Baker describes in detail how the violence at Charlottesville came mainly from the mobs of rioting “counter-protesters” who arrived in town that morning. And still she persists in pretending it was all caused the other side, those Right-wingers scheduling a speakers’ platform in a park.

Her misdirection is absurd, but also entertaining.  She is like a hostess who spoon-feeds you dogfood out of a Ken-L-Ration can while chattily describing it as vegan energy food, made of low-sodium tofu with all-natural electrolytes and branch-chained amino acids. (“I read all about it in the Atlantic and on BuzzFeed and saw it on CNN.”) The mystery is why she’s bothering to do this. My easy guess is that she just wanted to get her book published, and chose to take the easy route, reciting the received narrative rather than acknowledge what her lyin’ eyes and ears were tellin’ her. Somehow she knew that if she wandered too far off the reservation, she’d never get the book published.

And so her story shows us clearly that the rioting, violence and deaths [1] of August 12, 2017 were mostly the doing of Left-wing activist mobs—a thousand or more individuals—who descended upon downtown Charlottesville that Saturday morning. They intended to cause disruption and violence, and that’s what they did. They threw their molotov cocktails of pee and poo, whacked passing pedestrians and motorists with giant flashlights and lengths of pipe, made instant flame-throwers out of aerosol paint cans and Bic lighters. And all this happened, Baker explains, because some Right-wingers (fascists, nazis, ku kluxers, white supreemists, aunty-seemites, whatever) were planning to assemble in a nearby park for something called “Unite the Right,” a series of speeches, where their major gripe was that the city of Charlottesville wanted to remove an equestrian statue of R. E. Lee from Lee Park. [2]

Baker does a good job of being oblivious to her own cognitive dissonance. She illustrates that paradox George Orwell described when writing about propaganda in wartime: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Anyway, she tells a tale in which a sleepy college town endured massive riots leading to countless injuries and at least one “murder,” and it was all because some Right-wingers wanted to protest against the removal of the R. E. Lee equestrian statue in Robert E. Lee Park. Never mind that their scheduled August 12 confab, called “Unite the Right,” never happened (because the governor of Virginia declared an emergency and the police when the riots started). Or that the event would have been little more than a handful of podcasters giving speeches in Lee Park, and the whole thing would be over in an hour or two.

Or that this gathering that never happened was perfectly legal and had a permit from the city. Those are all moot points to Baker. Because at the end of the day, the kind of people who’d dream up a “Unite the Right” speakers’ program (the media always called it a “rally” for some reason) had to be crazy-evil to begin with. They were, or associated with, White Supreemists. Even self-described <em>Nazis</em> and Fascists. Or the kind of people who like to wave the Confederate Battle Flag, which as we all know is a just a dog-whistle symbol for the <em>Klu Kux Kann. Once you’ve identified evil like this, it’s easy to go along with the rest of the program, because horrible happenings deserve harsh remedies.

Her cynical bias is tolerable, so long as Baker is giving us information that seems new or useful, and that happens often enough. For example: Charlottesville has a city-manager type of government, wherein the mayor is little more than a figurehead for cutting ribbons and giving speeches. Such lack of executive ability can be a fatal weakness. The mayor, Mike Signer, couldn’t simply cancel “Unite the Right” on his own say-so, citing public safety and noting the incoming threats from antifa mobs.  The event had a valid permit to assemble in Lee Park on August 12, and its organizers successfully fought off attempts to change the venue to a park outside of town. When the Unite the Right even was finally canceled, a half-hour before showtime on Saturday morning, it was through an emergency declaration from the governor, Terry McAuliffe. By that point the damage had been done.

There are some glaring omissions in her research. She talks to city officials and local clergy, as well as activists and rioters. She doesn’t talk to any of the people scheduled to speak at the Unite the Right gathering…

Alas, she lacks the courage or ability to recognize what is in front of her nose, and  She tells us in detail how wild-eyed and driven were the Left-wing activists who came together to riot and demonstrate on Saturday August 12, 2017, yet nevertheless persists in blaming the violence of the day on something that never happened: a series of speeches scheduled to take place at noon in Lee Park, north of downtown Charlottesville.  As you no doubt recall, the planned event was called “Unite the Right,” the ostensible purpose of which was to protest the removal of a General R. E. Lee equestrian statue from the Park.  This Unite the Right gathering, or “rally” as the newsmedia called it for some reason, never took place, for the simple reason it was canceled. The violence and rioting that went on August 12, 2017 were almost entirely due to the thousand or so Left-wing activists—Antifa, anarchists, BLM, however they labeled themselves—who descended on downtown Charlottesville that Saturday morning. Their presence was not random or happenstance. They had been planning this free-for-all outing for a month or two, mainly within their activist clubs and groupuscules in Philadelphia and New york and elsewhere, but they were also also with the urging coordination of a handful of energetic and unhinged

This was The August 12, 2017 Unite the Right “rally” in Charlottesville,  an event that never actually happened, as  those of us with discerning memories are well aware. It never happened for the simple reason that it was canceled.

The city granted a permit; was pressured into trying to rescind it; found that it couldn’t; tried to persuade the Unite the Right people to transfer their venue from Lee Park (by the University) to the city refused to provide police protection—even though a thousand or more antifa activists and other violent demonstrators descended upon the town on Saturday morning, the 12th. The governor of Virginia declared a state of emergency, with the state police telling any remaining Unite the Right attendees to disperse. The crowds of so-called “counter-protestors” kept rioting and demonstrating all day, however, even though they now had nothing to protest against.

Accordingly, the most indelible news images from that day show the rioters rioting: throwing rocks and bottles of urine or whatnot towards some (usually offscreen) foe. Then there’s the famous scene of the rioters on Fourth Street beating automobiles as their drivers struggle to get out of town.

NOTES

[1] Three deaths are usually ascribed to the Charlottesville riots. Two state policemen crashed their Bell helicopter while buzzing motorists on the outskirts of town. More famously, an obese 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer was struck by a black Dodge Challenger while she was in a mob on Fourth Street trying to block traffic. She died of cardiac arrest and/or blunt force trauma. Notable among the wounded was 20-year-old black rioter DeAndre Harris, was seriously beaten about the head after attacking a white man with a giant flashlight.

[2] Lee Park, north of downtown, had temporarily been renamed Emancipation Park. The statue of General Lee and Traveller was later removed and melted down. The park is now given the uncontroversial label of Market Street Park. (East Market Street and 1st Street, near the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville.)