View on Charlottesville
Tom Pinney
On Friday night, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK gathered on the campus of the University of Virginia for what had been planned for weeks as a “Unite the Right Rally.” There were speakers planned far in advance for this thing, and across the alt-right websites, this was going to be a huge deal.
From there, the rally turned into a march through Charlottesville where the white supremacists gathered there began chanting a few concerning slogans. “Jews will not replace us,” “White lives matter,” and “Blood and soil,” the last one being a direct rip from a chant German Nazis used to scream in the 1930s as Hitler rose to power.
Black Lives Matter activists organized a quick counter-protest to meet up with the white supremacists, and that’s where things turned violent as the white supremacists used the torches they were carrying to beat counter protesters.
Saturday morning, everything seemed to pick right up where it left off, but with a bigger counter-protest group including members of Antifa. As the alt-right protesters stormed through Charlottesville, they were met with immediate opposition, sometimes lining the sidewalk as they marched the streets chanting the same blood-curdling words they were chanting the night before.
Then, there was a terrorist attack, as a man who lived in Ohio had made his way to Virginia by car, and when he got there, he carried out an attack on counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 20 others by ramming his car into the crowd.
After a few hours, Donald Trump took the stage to condemn the violence “on many sides, on many sides” without actually calling out anyone by name. On Monday, he took the stage again to, in stronger terms, condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis in a prepared statement, but on Tuesday, he doubled down on his “many sides” rhetoric in a press conference by calling out Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters for not having a permit and bringing weapons.
He also defended the original rally as a protest against tearing down a statue of Robert E. Lee, saying that if we’re going to tear that down, we should also tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were also slave owners.
I laugh to keep from crying. Here’s everything that’s wrong, line by line.
Donald Trump is not a measured man, by any sense of the term. He is quick to respond to just about anything before he has all the facts, from an insult on Twitter to provocative words from North Korea. Remember the Obama wiretapping claim? Or the “millions of illegal voters” claim? He jumped on those before realizing they were fake, and when he found out they were fake, he still shared them.
He’s also very quick to call out Islamic terrorism and condemn liberal and moderate Senators, Representatives, and people in his own staff that don’t immediately kowtow to him. So why did he hesitate calling out white supremacists on Saturday?
Some, including Trump himself in a statement Tuesday, say he was waiting for all the facts (see what I said above). But if you ask the alt-right, Saturday’s statement and Tuesday’s equivocation are right on message. David Duke, in an interview on Saturday, said the protesters are there to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to “take our country back,” and on Tuesday, white supremacist threads were once again praising Trump for essentially backing down.
I’m not saying that Trump is also a white supremacist. But when you consider that he has filled his cabinet with white supremacists like Steve Bannon, who ran Breitbart News, which calls itself the “voice of the alt-right,” your defense gets a bit weaker.
On condemning Antifa and BLM: No. First off, no one in BLM or Antifa or anyone counter-protesting brought weapons to use against protesters, nor did they start the violence. Second, he called them out for not having a permit to counter-protest.
At best, this means they should have shut up and gone home to let the white pride parade move through. At worst, this means those counter-protesters deserved the violence perpetrated against them, including the terrorist attack that killed Heather Heyer. Considering who Trump surrounds himself with, it could really be either.
On bringing Washington and Jefferson in because they were also slave owners: Nope. You are equivocating two men who formed this country with a man who wanted to destroy it.
Lee wanted to dismantle what Jefferson and Washington put together to form a “better” world where people could own other people. You can fault the founding fathers for being slave owners, but this is a comparison of apples to racist Frisbees.
On the fact that they were there to protest removing a statue: Eh. It can be argued that they organized the “Unite the Right Rally” to protest removing a statue, but it’s a statue that should be removed.
This isn’t sanitizing history. It’s showing that we’re not so proud of our history that we erect statues of people that actively fought against us, encouraging possible copycats. Some people see those monuments and think, man, if he got a statue made of him trying to destroy the country’s founding principles, maybe I can, too! White supremacy and Confederate values still exist because we immortalized them.
Trump needed to do one thing on Saturday to stop all of the media attention, and he didn’t do it. When he spoke on Monday to condemn the white supremacists, he had a second chance: all he needed to do was leave it alone from there.
But when he spoke on Tuesday, he revealed his true personality by, once again, screaming fake news at reporters asking him questions about his response and shouting false equivalencies, all the while further empowering the groups that committed the violence this weekend by backing away from his condemnations.
That’s why no one was wearing masks on Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t because it was hot in Charlottesville; it was because white supremacists can now be proud of who they are. It makes me sick that those people still exist.
So now, it’s up to us. We have to be hyper-vigilant to make sure this kind of hatred stays out of our community, out of our homes, and out of our lives.
Maryville is a diverse melting pot of cultures and ideas, and that’s what makes this place beautiful. We are a place that takes care of our own, that loves our neighbor, that helps everyone in need.
We are a place of love. There is no room for racism, white supremacy, or hatred here.
Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum.
