Trump offers a defense of white supremacists which injured nineteen and killed Heather Hayes at Charlottesville: “What about the alt-left that came charging at us?”
The events in Charlottesville undeniably solidified what some knew and many denied – racism, moreover, nazi ideology is alive and well in America and President Trump was the awakening force. White supremacists groups rebranded as the virulent “alt-right” misnomer, now emboldened by campaign and White House rhetoric, marched openly without their hoods, sporting nazi paraphernalia and spouting nazi slogans. The economic anxiety was practically oozing out of their angry faces as they terrorized university students at a prayer service over the removal of a treasonous vestige of slavery. This very economic anxiety culminated in the deaths of three people and injuries of 19, as police defended their hate speech.
Coming right after the Trump administration removed white supremacists from the homeland terror watch list, and White House nazi-organization member Gorka, berated the media for criticizing white supremacists. Trump’s initial response to the events was an inadequate dog-whistle that played quite favorably to his base. The golden nail on a series of actions by Trump which emboldened white supremacists (that support him) to drop their figurative hoods and air their imagined grievances much like Dylan Roof did. Since the events, he’s gone past sending racial dog-whistles to white supremacists, practically retracting his condemnation of them by defending those “fine people”, siding with their beliefs, comparing George Washington to Robert E. Lee, and attacking the victims of Charlottesville. As the KKK dropped their hoods, the President of the United States dropped any pretense of a moral authority,, any pretense of not being a nefarious racist.
This self-proclaimed white-supremacist crowd usually operates under the pseudonym “alt-right” – a badge of honor that gives young, anime-loving fascists with self-esteem issues, a false sense of self-worth by sole virtue of complexion. But that night they took to UVA, wielding tiki torches with their ideology on full display. Surrounding a small groups of students near the statue of Thomas Jefferson, whilst chanting racist & nazi slogans”:”jews will not replace us”,”our streets, whose streets”, ”blood and soil” ,”heil trump, “One people, one nation, end immigration, and ”Hitler did nothing wrong,”
At one time, revealing the true meaning behind “white lives matter” after a white supremacist shouts back “black lives do not matter.” As if the slogans weren’t dead-on-the-nose nazi enough, they also did nazi salutes, wore nazi t-shirts and waved nazi flags.
Charlottesville’s mayor wasn’t wrong, there is a direct line between Trump’s campaign and the white supremacy rally. The flirtatious relationship between nazis and Trump has been well documented since he was literally badgered to disavow the KKK back during the election when the KKK paper, The Crusader, endorsed Trump for president, and the US Nazi Party endorsed Trump’s decision to hire Bannon.
These demonstrators in particular love him as well. Terrorist Alex Fields for one, is a Trump supporting white supremacist who registered as a republican for the 2016 election, and also happens to be “infatuated with nazis” according to his old high school teacher. Going on to say “It was quite clear he had some really extreme views and maybe a little bit of anger behind them...Feeling, what’s the word I’m looking for, oppressed or persecuted. He really bought into this white supremacist thing. He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness for Adolf Hitler.”
The general sea of disgruntled neckbeards sported MAGA hats, and many dressed as mammoth ass Trump at the golf-course. To top it all off, former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke talked to reporters about how the hate rally “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.” They are no longer a fringe group on the socially inept corner of the internet, they clearly feel represented in the White House.
Sadly, these beliefs spread it’s virulent wings past the White House seeped into our institutions. The dissonance between the way sign-wielding Black Lives Matter protestors are treated versus how belligerent assault-rifle carrying nazis are, is disconcerting to say the least.This demonstration was quickly declared an unlawful assembly and a state of emergency. Leading up to the 19 injured and 3 dead, were a series of heinous attacks against counter-protesters like Deandre Harris, who was beat by a white supremacist with a pipe. Moreover, 18 USC §2101(a)(3) makes it a federal crime to travel to another state to commit an act of violence in furtherance of a riot. Assault-rifle wielding militia showed up playing soldier yet strangely, no cops feared for their lives.
Yet, police were nowhere to be found at the sites of violent conflict, they were busy surrounding and protecting the white supremacists’ first amendment right. They sat there inactive as the college town descended into violent chaos, assisting no injured people. No militarized police in riot gear, no National Guard, no rubber bullets, no tear gas, no arrests, nothing. When in Ferguson, militarized police arrested and shot people with rubber bullets for simply shouting “Black Lives Matter.” You see, the torches and assault rifles weren’t cigarillos or a wallet.
Black Lives Matter grew from children getting shot in the streets, this uncivil, deadly rally was about the removal of a traitorous, vestige of slavery. Take that in, self-proclaimed white supremacists rioted, assaulted people, and killed a woman over a statue of slave-owning, traitorous Robert E. Lee. Tell me again how Confederacy symbols are about (revisionist) “Southern pride” when nazis will kill for them. Tell me again how Trump won over a woman with extensive, outlined economic plans because of “economic anxiety,” when these people salute him and a former KKK leader gushes over him.
Their perceived white man plight serves as a means of justification by which to hate minorities. Their ‘civil rights movement’ is not about gaining any rights back, except for the right to strip others of theirs of course. It’s the 1940s all over again except we’re not the ones fighting nazi ideology. It’s not the “swamp” ruining my economic prospects, it’s minorities. It’s not my subpar grades ruining my chances of getting into college, it’s minorities. I didn’t hear these people yelling about tax-breaks or a living wage – they yelled “blood and soil” and “heil Trump.” In this alternative-reality all brown people are threats to the in-group, the Muslim ban which bans zero of the countries that have caused terrorism in the US nor the one that caused 9/11 because Trump has business ties there, is good because screw refugees that have never caused a terrorist attack in the last 30 years in the US. A $35 billion safety-blanket of a wall that is rendered useless by the fact that illegal immigration is net negative, immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans, and half of illegals fly here and overstay Visas (meaning they’ve already been vetted) is good because it’s a monumental ‘screw you’ to more brown people. As Stephen Hawking once said, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
What is the real threat to them then? Equality. America not being all white. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality (of opportunity) feels like oppression.” Simply taking the boot off minorities backs was enough to send them on a violent frenzy. Imagine if they faced actual oppression.As a Twitter user succinctly put it:
“Nobody is trying to legislate away their right to marry. Nobody is trying to make them buy insurance to pay for ‘male health care.’The law never enslaved their great-grandparents, robbed their grandparents imprisoned their parents, shot them when unarmed, there is no massive effort at the state and local level to disenfranchise them of the vote. There is no history of centuries of bad science devoted to ‘proving’ their intellectual inferiority. There is no travel ban on them because of their religion. There is no danger for them when they carry dangerous weaponry publicly. Their mothers aren’t being torn away by ICE troopers and sent away forever. They won’t be forced to leave the only country they ever knew.
They are chanting ‘we will not be replaced.’ Replaced as … what? I’ll tell you.Replaced as the only voice in public discussions.Replaced as the only bodies in the public arena.
Replaced as the only life that matters.THIS is ‘oppression’ of white Christians in this country. Christmas used to be the only holiday acknowledged, now it’s not.”
Their imagined oppression and subsequent reactionary politics stem from demanding 1950s superiority for themselves, and second-class citizenry for others. Equality is oppression to them. This is their discrimination. The difference is WWII-era nazis were clear about their motives and didn’t operate under the guise of “oppression.”
Despite all of this, there remain a few sympathizers to these nefarious creatures justifying the violence by detracting to “violent antifa leftists.” Guess who also argued he was standing up to “violent leftists”? Hitler did. Nazis could be beating someone to death, running people over but they’ll feel compelled to say a person resisting nazis are just as bad. Black people demanding equal protection under the law are now likened to white supremacists – who are the actual fascists – self-identifying ones. The Charlottesville terrorist was a member of Vanguard, a literal fascist alt-right group. These are the same people who proclaimed the Black Panthers and resisting Civil Rights activists to be “violent thugs” in the segregation era. Times have changed but attitudes haven’t. It can be labeled an act of terrorism by the Justice Department but they’ll continue pivoting with false equivalencies as they always do. These un-American detractors should come as no surprise as they’ve been slandering the Charlottesville victim, threatened to attack during a vigil, and are planning to send nazis to Heather Heyer’s funeral. Thus a movement seeking for law-enforcement to stop murdering black people is compared to one advocating an ethnic cleansing.
None of this would be happening if they didn’t feel accepted by those in power, if they didn’t feel like “PC” barriers of common decency have been eradicated. The heinous proliferation of these groups of people can only be attributed to Trump. To this day, he continues to embolden them after botched condemnations established on racial dog-whistles from a man with a well-document racist history.
After much pressure from politicians to denounce, the first unscripted time he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” It’s enough to note that white supremacists felt vindicated saying, “We are now at war” & “Trump comments were good…no condemnation at all” and “He said he loves us all.” Then came the criticisms from many GOP politicians for his refusal to denounce it by name. This goes past the fact that he refused to denounce it by name when he’s very specific and quick when he wants to criticize someone – Mika for a “facelift”, Meryl Streep, Hamilton, Nordstrom for not selling his daughter’s China-made bags, gold-star dad Khizir Khan, “housekeeper” Alicia Machado, Mcconnell, The Apprentice ratings, a Mexican judge, the “nazi” CIA, etc. This hypocrite’s refusal to utter the words “domestic radical white terrorism”, much less denounce the perpetrators of the attacks was chilling to watch. Imagine if Obama said there was many sides to the whole ISIS thing. He was quick to attack London’s mayor for terrorist attacks and attack Islam when terrorists ran vehicles into crowds in Europe. How was this any different? They wore MAGA hats and sieged “heil Trump.” It’s odd that the only two groups he would not condemn are the Kremlin and white supremacists.
What’s more, his “both-siding,” propagated alt-right false-equivalencies that victim blame and equate those resisting hate and violence to those perpetrating it. A WH official and aide double down: “The President was condemning hatred, bigotry and violence from all sources and all sides.” And that groups “on both sides” showed up looking for trouble in Charlottesville.”
Did civil rights protestors show up looking for trouble for daring to stand up to white supremacy? Were the Little Rock Nine bigots for standing up against bigotry? Was there violence on “both sides” during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? Both sides did not kill people & injure nineteen, both sides don’t call for an ethnic cleansing, both sides don’t hate millions of Americans for their skin color. Only one side brought weapons and improvised with a vehicle as killing device that day. The ‘other side’ brought signs. It is an insult to tell sign-wielding non-hateful Americans to “unite” and “love” evil. He told us to hold hands with nazis and accept it.
After being called out by many GOP lawmakers for not making a clear condemnation and normalizing such vile hatred with vague statements cheered by nazis, he went on to make a second condemnation (with a teleprompter.) A belated condemnation that although “clear,” rang empty due the environmental pressure he made it under and of course the fact that he’s a white supremacist himself
A condemnation that was practically completely retracted after going on a KKK-esque tirade at a press conference where he literally defended white supremacists, calling them “very fine people” and attacked protesters. And for a third time he was praised by nazis, this time David Duke said” Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.” Leaving no question on whether he sided with nazis. There was no dog whistles this time. Trump verbally unleashed his fury on the made up “alt-left” that “came charging” with “clubs” defending the nazi-slogan-chanting nazis, which injured nineteen and killed a Heather Heyer, claiming they were “protesting very quietly, the taking down of the statue.” As if those videos of torch-wielding, assault-rifle carrying nazis chanting “blood and soil,” “heil Trump” and “Jews will not replace us were not plastered all over the internet. He went on to say the “alt-left” bared “some responsibility” for violence in Charlottesville.
So the first “many sides,” nazi-sentiment-carrying statement still stands. Nonchalantly adding, “you can call it terrorism..you can call it whatever.” Imagine if Obama had said there were “many sides to the whole ISIS thing, you can call it terrorism, you can call it whatever.” Then, lamented the taking down of the Confederacy Robert E. Lee statue saying, “This week it’s Robert E. Lee…is it George Washington next week?” This craven, racist lunatic is completely off his meds and has openly sided with Confederacy-loving nazis using their false-equivalency “b-bbut the violent left” defense. There are no words. Today the President of the United States blamed both sides,for violent nazis which left many injured and three dead and defended their ideology. He said it was Heather Heyer’s fault for standing in front of that terrorist’s car.
It looks like Richard “cleanse all the ethnics” Spencer was right to say that Trump “didn’t condemn[them],” and “only a dumb person would take his statement seriously.”
We’ve never seen such an unambiguous racist tirade from Trump, but it should come as no surprise given his history. He was pressured into issuing a second phony statement after a history of not responding to Portland train stabbings, Kansas engineer shootings, and murder of 2nd Lt Collins. As if the dog-whistles in his statement weren’t loud enough, he’s now “seriously” considering pardoning notorious racist criminal Joe Arpario, retweeted two alt-right accounts one a friend of richard spencer’s, another an alt-right activist who spread Pizzagate, and denounced the CEO of Merck, an African American man, before he forcefully denounced neo-nazis by name.
To America, we warned you, all 63 million of us. The white supremacists have dropped their hoods and so has Trump. This was not a new display of his character, he’s 71 years old. When you elect a notorious racist you get one. He’s a birther that’s obsessed with Obama and erasing his legacy. He had to be shamed into denouncing the KKK. He refused to condemn alt-right racism because according to Bannon they, “Polled the race stuff and it doesn’t matter.” He believes in gene superiority and has spouted eugenics bullcrap for decades as nazis do. His father was arrested at KKK rally in the 20s. He kept a Hitler book by his bedside. Called all Mexican immigrants “rapists” and drug traffickers. He was sued twice by the Justice Department for housing discrimination.He wants to pardon Joe Arpario, a former Arizona sheriff with criminal charges for his racist behavior. He called Alicia Machado a “housekeeper” for being Hispanic. His legal immigration bill is nativist legislation that echos “white genocide” narratives from The Daily Stormer circles and “One people, one nation, end immigration,” and “blood and soil.” Has retweeted neo-nazi false crime statistic reports saying that white victims are murdered by black people 81% of the time and accuses blacks on twitter 3 times more of racism than whites.
He removed white supremacists from the homeland terror watch list, defunded groups protecting against white supremacists, and shuttered the State Department’s anti-semitism monitoring office. He’s accused “millions” of voting illegally (and pointlessly?) in blue states and when cited for proof pointed to the fact that Latino Americans were voting. He’s rolling out a voter suppression commission with plans to purge voters. Has dog-whistled plenty against Jews when he deliberately took out the word “jew” from planned holocaust remarks on Holocaust Remembrance day and used the phrase “America First,” a WWII era antisemetic, xenophobic mantra which was used to enforce quote laws against Jews during their ongoing persecution in Germany. (Anne Frank and her family were denied entry in the US as refugees.)
And of course there’s his evil cabinet with the most deplorable, alt-right people carefully selected from every corner of the US. Gorka is a member of nazi organization in Hungary called Vitézi Rend. Miller is a white supremacist, friend of Richard Spencer, who wrote regularly for the Duke Chronicle, where he denied systemic racism, called multiculturalism “segregation,” and railed against paid family leave, which he believed resulted in men being laid off. At DCU meetings, Miller denounced multiculturalism and raved against immigrants from non-European countries “not assimilating.” In high school he complained about the school’s celebration of Cinco De Mayo, and criticized a visit by a Muslim leader, and tormented Spanish speakers, telling them to go back to their countries. Then there’s Leninist Bannon, the ex-CEO of Breitbart, a white supremacist website which largely founded the “alt-right” movement and also wants to “destroy the state.’ Together they’re the three horsemen of the apocalypse.
Trump showed us who he was clearly, and America accepted it. He isn’t racist by association, he isn’t just playing to his base, he genuinely holds these beliefs. Is America finally waking up? More GOP politicians are denouncing his comments, five CEOs have resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council, and three Confederate statues will be taken down. When election hacking, violent nazi rallies, mosques being bombed don’t worry Trump, but Americans voting do there must be a bipartisan resistance against such an ‘unpresidented’ display of evil and incompetence.
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