We're All Charlottesville Now

 The debacle at the United States Capitol building last January 6th is still being analyzed and debated, but we can already see the shape the fallout is taking. Nancy Pelosi recently claimed that the rioters "chose their Whiteness over democracy." Arnold Schwarzenneger likened the event to a Nazi attack. A chorus of left-wing politicians, and some supposedly right-wing ones, are decrying the protests as being rooted in White Supremacy. 

What is happening to the Stop the Steal rally attendees is exactly what happened to the Charlottesville Unite the Right attendees, writ large.

Attendees of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally self-identified as many things - historical preservationists, Southern heritage supporters, Southern Nationalists, American nationalists. Some were members of groups that embraced European and White identity in a positive manner which promoted no malice towards others. Some were National Socialists and White Nationalists. Others, probably a small minority, could accurately be described as "supremacists." In keeping with the "Unite the Right" theme which meant to draw a broad swath of people to stand up for the right wing in general, about a thousand people were in attendance, representing a wide variety of groups with differing goals and beliefs. 

All of them - ALL OF THEM - were relentlessly branded as "Nazis" and "White Supremacists" by the national news media.

ALL OF THEM were implicitly blamed for the events of the day, which has now been firmly cemented in the minds of the American public as a "deadly White Supremacist rally."

The most powerful voices in America, seeing an opportunity to further a narrative favorable to their goals, did not care to ask whether it was accurate to describe everyone there as a "Nazi" or "White Supremacist," and they did not care to ask about the degree of blame due to the authorities for the "deadly" part.

Most of the American public uncritically lapped up the preferred narrative of the elites, that Nazis and White Supremacists, emboldened by their leader Donald Trump, had laid siege to Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in carnage. The few people who knew the truth of the matter, branded with the most foul possible stigma and hobbled by censorship, were powerless to refute the myth.

The villainized attendees suffered varying types and degrees of political and criminal persecution. Some who engaged in physical altercations were punitively overcharged for their actions, while serious misbehaviour on the part of leftist counter-protesters was minimized, ignored, or even celebrated. Civil cases which may be described as "lawfare" were filed against parties involved with organizing the event. Some attendees were doxxed and hounded by self-righteous mobs of activists into ostracism and unemployment - one man was even driven to suicide as a result of being so targeted. Organized groups that had been represented at Unite the Right were purged from social media and deplatformed from all kinds of online services. Indirectly, everyone associated with the political movement that Unite the Right represented was affected by censorship as the Big Tech overlords clamped down on their "dangerous" speech and ideas.

This is what people must understand: Everything that happened at Unite the Right in Charlottesville is happening again with Stop the Steal in DC. The kneecapping of the extreme right elements that gathered in Virginia was a dress rehearsal for what is happening to Heritage Americans as a whole now. Just as the "punch a Nazi" meme turned overnight from "It's okay to punch Richard Spencer" to "It's okay to punch anyone with a Trump hat," the condemnation of Charlottesville participants has morphed into condemnation of all American nationalists. 

Other aspects of the Charlottesville reaction are being repeated. There are calls to charge people who are guilty of at most trespassing and vandalism with treason and sedition. There was a swift and severe deplatforming and censorship reaction that reached all the way up the highest office in the land. Donald Trump, while still holding the office of President of the United States, had his ability to address his tens of millions of supporters stripped away by the technology oligarchs at Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. A large rival company supported by dozens of popular, nationally-known conservatives attempted to provide an alternative platform, and was wiped completely off the internet by executives at Amazon. While half the country's communications is hampered, an alternative, false interpretation of the events is being hammered into the public by our elite class. Treason! Sedition! An attempted violent coup of our democracy inspired by conspiracy theories about election fraud, and egged on with incitement from the losing candidate. (A video in which Donald Trump clearly told his supporters to protest "peacefully and patriotically" is being scrubbed from the internet.)

Another similarity in the Charlottesville rally and the Capitol "siege" is the conspicuous absence of law enforcement. In Charlottesville, witnesses on both sides of the political spectrum reported, and an independent investigation confirmed, that an ineffectual and passive law enforcement presence was a major factor in the calamitous turn of events. It is shocking that our Capitol building could be easily breached by a disorganized group of mostly unarmed protesters, and it is puzzling that this egregious failure of law enforcement is almost completely unnoticed by those who are most enraged by the "siege."

Another aspect of the Charlottesville fallout is beginning to be repeated. Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Charlottesville rally, has for several years been reporting on the journo-activists who targeted attendees of Unite the Right - activists like Ford Fischer and AC Thompson who created the award-winning "Exposing Hate" documentary. For this work, they besieged Unite the Right attendees by, for example, ambushing them with camera crews at their place of employment. Their reporting omits mention of the threats and violent behavior of the left-wing participants, and uses deceptive editing and scary music to portray the rally participants as dangerous instigators of violence. Kessler explains, "These men essentially blood libel the participants of the protests by omitting crucial evidence that makes them look bad." They have begun work on a new project focused on the events of January 6th.

Unite the Right participants did not expect the events to go awry as they did. However, most of them at least realized that they were on the edge or outside of the Overton window and that expressing their beliefs would shock some people and draw strong criticism. Participants of Stop the Steal are, by contrast, lambs to the slaughter. Most of them are moderate, conservative Americans who are operating under the assumption that we still live in the country in which they grew up. Unite the Right attendees were disabused in 2017 of the idea that the freedom of speech and assembly are still protected. MAGA-Americans are for the most part unaware that we are experiencing a shift to a new regime - a regime in which expressing a belief in traditional American values may be considered domestic terrorism. They have no idea that they are potential targets for doxxing, violence, un-personing, and abusive prosecution which befell the Charlottesville attendees. As the nation becomes assimilated into the reality of the communist regime, they are about to learn a painful lesson.