One of my most controversial
predictions is that North Americans are sleepwalking towards a Second Civil War
in which the growing estrangement of the increasingly polarized halves of its
electorate will have to act out the enormous reservoirs of animosity and spite
they have been building towards each other for the last decades. The recent
events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which rightists and leftists clashed in
the streets causing enough turmoil to force Governor Terry McAuliffe to declare
a state of emergency, and a counterdemonstrator (32 years old Heather Heyer)
was killed, would seem to be a validation of the direness of my predictions,
and a clear harbinger of the more virulent clashes to come. However, as is
usually the case, there is more in the picture than meets the eye, and a sober
assessment of the events rather makes me be more cautious, and even a bit more
optimistic. Let’s see why.
1-
What
happened (are the streets burning yet?)
First let’s unpack what actually
went on in the Virginia locality (population: 48,210 as of the 2010 census, and
home to the University of Virginia) had announced its intention to remove a
statue to Confederate general Robert E. Lee from the eponymous park (previously
renamed Emancipation park, which already tells you a lot about Charlottesville
municipal government).
A loose network of rightist groups opposed to the
measure plan a rally on Saturday, Aug 12th under the denomination
“Unite the Right”. Such rally is duly notified to the authorities and nominally
permitted. The previous day (Fri, Aug 11th) Governor McAuliffe
notifies via Twitter that, although demonstrators are protected by their
constitutional right to express their views, he finds such views “abhorrent”
and encourages Virginians of all persuasions to stay away of the march.
The night of the 11th
hundreds of demonstrators march through the campus of the UoV carrying torches
(as seen in countless photos, most seem to be oddly out-of-place tiki torches
that would be more fit for lighting a barbecue in a patio in the ‘burbs than to
be wielded in an exhibition of white power or whatnot…) and chanting niceties
like “White lives matter”, “you will not replace us” (most journalists
transcribe it as “Jews will not replace us”, as it has more sinister overtones
and surely sells more papers) and “blood and soil”. Along with the
torch-carrying and white-supremacist slogan chanting, a number of marchers can
be seen unequivocally extending their arms in what undoubtedly can be construed
as the traditional Nazi salute. Such march is widely and luridly transmitted by
all major media organizations in the country.
On the morning of Saturday, Aug 12th
demonstrators start gathering around Emancipation park, both for the planned
march and to protest against it. A significant number on both sides are armed
with visible weaponry and paramilitary gear that would be unimaginable in any
other country but, Virginia being a permissive open carry state we can assume
nothing out of bounds in the USA. To the surprise of exactly nobody, given the
level of publicity achieved by the rally, as many counter-demonstrators as
potential demonstrators can be seen around the park, and there are a number of
clashes between both (check the NYT account: People pretending to fight - badly ). Around 11:00 AM Governor
McAuliffe declares the state of emergency, revoking the authorization for the
Right’s march, and ordering the attendants to the rally to abandon their
location and dissolve. It has to be noted that such “dissolution” would force
them to march through the throngs of
counterdemonstrators gathered around the park, multiplying the chances
for fights, clashes and brawls (check the alternative account of an avowedly
alt-right attendant: What Loretta saw at C-ville ).
Clashes and widespread violence
continue (but, amazingly given the stupendous amount of guns seen all around in
every video and photo, no shootouts are reported… of the somewhere north of 30
wounded most are by punching and being beaten with blunt objects, plus some
pepper-sprayed), reaching its high point (regarding lethality) when a Dodge Challenger
driven by a James Alex Fields Jr. slams a group of counter protestors, killing
the aforementioned Ms. Heyer. Later in the day, the crash of a police
helicopter monitoring the day’s developments would add two officers to the
total body count.
To top off the division and shock of
the nation, the President famously talked to reporters from his golf resort in
Bedmister, NJ, condemning the violence, which he blamed on “many sides”,
causing not only liberals and progressives, but members of his (purportedly)
own party like Speaker Paul Ryan to denounce him for “putting on the same moral
plane” the “Nazis and anti-Nazis”. Not one to back off or publicly retract any
proffered opinion, Trump later would say that a lot of “very fine people”
attended the alt-right rally, and would insist in equally apportioning blame to
“both sides” on a speech to reporters at Trump Tower the following Tuesday (Orange one's response ).
2-
How
the media reacted (burning? Man, they are exploding! Crumbling! Sizzling!)
Before I offer my interpretation of
the facts I’ve just described, I think it’s worthwhile to reflect on how the
media has portrayed them, from different points of the political spectrum. We
have grown accustomed to the very post-modern idea of there not being a
“true-truth”, but just different discourses, or narratives, weaving a
hermeneutical network of signifiers that denote no precise significant at all.
What that somewhat obscure assertion means is that for the few that still read
news from outlets with different political alignments it is pretty common to
find entirely diverging descriptions of a single event, to the point of making
it difficult to identify such descriptions as applying to the same underlying
facts. In the case under consideration, the differences have been predictably
magnified: for the mainstream media it has been a national disgrace, the
symptom of a seriously corroded and corrupted social compact that not only
allows, but apparently encourages normal, seemingly well-adjusted young men
(wearing that ultimate symbol of successful integration into middle-class
status: khakis and polo shirts! That is no way to dress for the fascist
takeover of the state, sir! What self-respecting revolutionary would exchange
his jackboots and brown shirt for such a bland attire?) to publicly and
unashamedly proclaim their Nazi sympathies and their scorn for every ages-old
convention of what is acceptable and proper in a democracy. Nazi salutes?
Check. Open proclamation of racial slurs? Check. Embracement not just of
somewhat morally tainted past (the Confederacy and the Old South) but of
beyond-the-pale fringe elements (like the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke and even ol’
Adolf himself)? Double check.
Unsurprisingly, both MSM and
left-leaning circles have been having fits of apoplexy and denouncing the whole
thing as furiously and unambiguously as possible, while at the same time
pointing to the (at best equivocal) reaction of the White House as the
undisputable proof of the racism and
unabashed association with White Supremacism of not just the President and his
inner circle, but the whole Republican establishment (the most commented piece
along those lines is surely the one penned by Ta-Nehisi Coates in “The
Atlantic”: The first white president (how much does the USA suck?) ). For them the right in general is
racist, no exceptions allowed. And with fascist tendencies all along, so no
surprise they resort to threats, violence and finally murder. The sad outcome
of the many clashes in Charlottesville is not an isolated incident carried out
by a mentally unstable individual, but the unavoidable consequence of a noxious
ideology that, left unchecked, will cause many more eruptions like that one,
and many more deaths (hence, combatting it with any means is the only rational
and commendable action).
Fox News, the right leaning
talk-radio hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, etc.), the Murdoch press and the
abundant orthosphere, NeoReaction and alt-right sites in the Interwebz see the
whole story under a very different light. Their sympathies were since the
beginning clearly with the initial demonstrators, not just because they fully
endorse the country’s racist past, which they more or less unabashedly do, and
thus also oppose the removal of any statue of Confederate heroes by the -in
their eyes- minor feature of having led a rebel army against a constitutionally
legitimate government for the sacred cause of being able to keep humans of a
different skin color enslaved, but because in general “uniting the right” is
something they all can rally behind (sharing, all of them, a sense of dread and
disgust towards what they see as an almost unstoppable tide of progressivism
and leftism that constitutes an existential threat to everything they hold dear
and consider sacred). For all those media, the counterdemonstrators were an
unholy and ragtag alliance of everything that is wrong with America today:
feminists (“feminazis”), BLM sympathizers (“race traitors”), LGBT advocates
(“faggots and butches”) and in general progressives and liberals. Instead of
“proud boys” impeccably white and well-groomed marching in their khakis and
polo shirts (oddly complemented by a peculiar assortment of shields, kneecaps
and helmets), a bunch of blacks, short-haired girls and old hippies with
questionable fashion sense carrying bullhorns and placards that seemed plucked
from some outdated documentary about racial protests of the 70’s (but let’s not
forget the mobile phones, which where mercifully absent back then… one can only
wonder about the volume of uploads in Instagram, FB and the like of
demonstrators from every sign preening about their exploits, in a new and
social-media age version of the old “radical chic”).
Few have claimed that the victim
between the counterdemonstrators somehow deserved it, or “had it coming”, but
the narrative they weave leaves little doubt this is how they see it. For the
right-wing media the whole episode is a further illustration of the inability
of the current state (seized by liberals and traitors) to protect decent
citizens, from the declaration of the state of emergency (which only served to
further curtail the constitutional right to freely express its opinion to the
always silenced part of the social body that does not share the left’s
worldview) to the failure to protect the people gathered in Emancipation park
from the taunts and aggressions of the dangerous “Antifa” mob. Never mind that
the only actual casualty was in the ranks of the supposedly aggressive,
dangerous and deranged anti-American extremists that went to disrupt a
perfectly peaceful and tranquil event. Again, it was all the fault of the “Cathedral”,
in this case personified in the Democratic Mayor, the Democratic Governor, the
mob of dangerous radicals bent on violence and mayhem grouped under the label
“Antifa” and, of course, the devious mainstream media that distorted and
manipulated the emotions of some young man so he ended committing a crime.
3-
So,
all of this validates the narrative of “civil war tomorrow”, right?
Er, actually wrong. Always the
contrarian, I see more positive than negative aspects to take into
consideration after the events in Charlottesville. And remember I could
construe it as a validation of my predictions of quick descent of the American
polity into fractiousness and conflict (Guys, you're screwed ). But that’s not how I read it.
For one, I won’t claim to be the greatest street brawler and bruiser of all
time, but I’ve been involved in my share of fights (most of them had unwise
amounts of alcohol involved, so take my account with a pinch of salt) and I was
surprised, watching the many videos of the “violence”, by how… “performative”
it looked like, and how little actual rage or aggression they showed. The few
punches that are exchanged in front of the cameras (whose presence may be a
distorting factor, or the other way round, the catalyst for all the action)
resemble more a limp attempt to swat a mosquito than an actual intent to cause
maximum damage whilst minimizing the puncher exposure.
We humans are a social species, and
as every military instructor will tell you, getting normal people ready to
shoot towards their fellow human beings (even at considerable distance, where
the feeling of common humanity can be more easily overcome) requires quite
extensive reprogramming. When I was younger (actually, much, much younger) I
knew my share of seedy neighborhood gyms, all of which had its crew of
testosterone-addled asocial troublemakers (and yes, a disproportionate
percentage among them were already “extreme-right” and trained to either join
the armed forces, the police or any self-styled anticommunist crusade in
not-so-distant-Francoist Spain, their fathers or grandfathers having typically
fought side by side with actual, honest-to-God German Nazis and Italian
Fascists, the real thing and not the imagined bugbear so easily peddled in
leftist fantasies). Even the most apparently psychotic between them had some
difficulties overcoming the innate human revulsion towards doing harm and
seeing other people suffer (although in some cases, it has to be said, they
became quite good at such overcoming). I’ve seen how those guys hit, and that’s
very different from what the footage by the NYT, CBS, ABC, WaPo, CNN or Fox
shows. What that footage (much of it seem to be the same limited number of
events shot from different points of view) depicts are a certain, limited
number of posers running in front of the camera to have a go at throwing a
(typically ineffective) jab at the least-imposing element of the opposite
tribe, and then retreating precipitously back to safety among their own numbers,
having accomplished its main goal, which we can surmise was never to gain
territorial control of the contested streets, but snatching a nice graphical
testimony to hang in their snapchat or Instagram account.
As I was not present in the city
during the events, I can not say for sure that all the “street violence” so
luridly reported by alarmed journalists was of this theatrical nature.
Obviously the guy who rammed his car against the multitude, killing one and
wounding multiple others was not “just doing it to look badass on Instagram”,
and caused real, grievous and irreversible damage. Additional people were
physically damaged to the point of requiring medical attention (19 in the car
accident and 14 in other incidents) but if what the newsreels show is any
representative indication, I think Charlottesville was a hybrid between a
theater and a not-fully-grown-up kids’ giant playground, where self-styled
radicals from left and right enacted their fantasies of being badass,
rebellious and violently (and valiantly) opposing the unacceptable ideas of the
other side:
Please note with this first
interpretation of the events I’m not pretending to establish any moral
equivalence between both sides, or pretending that white supremacism, racism
and even ol’ Nazism are somehow OK (or not, I really don’t buy pieties or
second hand opinions from any peddler of political correctness, and my opinions
about such issues are really my own and not to be discussed here). I hope we
can all agree the “Unite the Right” organizers had considered that their little
show turning violent was a real possibility (heck, if not, why come with all
the defensive gear, the shields, helmets, and, specially, the “security
details” of the most prominent figures?), and that organizing a public event
knowing it will turn violent (and thus, assuming people will be hurt) is at
best irresponsible, and at worst outright evil. Yep, I know oppressed
minorities in repressive states may be excused to resort to violence as no
other way of redressing their grievances is open to them, and for many people
in the USA “alt-right” theirs is precisely that kind of state. We’ll get back
to that contention in a moment…
But similarly irresponsible/ evil is
attending such event to be part of that same violence from the other side,
regardless of how virtuous your ideas are. The traditional distinction between “defensive”
and “offensive” violence does not apply, as we are not dealing with people that
were going about their daily lives and
suddenly were presented with a bunch of aggressive fascist threatening them,
but of groups of activists that travelled to the scheduled demonstration location
to harass and confront demonstrators for expressing their ideas, with the
justification that such ideas are obnoxious and morally indefensible (again, I’m
not yet declaring if I concur or not with such characterization). It is the
embrace of violent means which constitutes a) the essence of totalitarian
regimes (which define themselves by abandoning the public, pacific discussion
of policy alternatives as main way of consensus formation and resort instead to
its unilateral imposition, by whichever means -that’s when violence comes in)
and b) the most salient and morally repugnant of its features (an imaginary
“benevolent dictatorship” that never inflicted any pain on any of its subjects
would be much less evil than one which systematically did -see “enlightened
despotism” as proof). Am I saying with this that Trump was right, and we should
condemn violence “from all sides”? does such generic condemnation mean that we indeed
consider both sides “morally equivalent”? (let’s call them, for greater
clarity, fascists and anti-fascists, or white supremacists and anti-white
supremacists -or would it be more accurate to call the latter “white
subserviencists “?). Not to put too fine a point about it, yes and no. I do
indeed oppose (and condemn) every kind of violence, regardless of how honorable
the cause it defends, or how ignoble and vile the cause it attacks. In cases of
terrible oppression, when any other means of redress are closed, it could be
justified to resort to causing pain (including to innocent people), always in a
most limited, most circumspect manner, but those cases are few and far between,
and certainly none of them obtains in modern day America (or in modern day
Europe).
Which is not to say that, once
violence is unleashed, every participant is similarly to blame: Those that
start it (those who hit first) are normally more to blame than those that
respond to it. Those that lose their temper and escalate it (and respond to a
taunt with a punch, or to a punch with a shot to the head) are more to blame
than those that keep their cool and show some restraint, trying to keep it
proportional and not inflict more pain than what they themselves may have
suffered. And yes, those that engage in it to advance a “respectable” cause
(for a Kantian like me the proof of respectability is pretty straightforward:
those that act according to a maxim they can universalize, so they would like
to see it become a rule of nature or, alternatively, those that treat other
people as ends in themselves and never as means) are less to blame than those that defend dubious, non-universalizable,
particularistic causes. Only according to the first two criteria are the white
supremacists who intended to march in Charlottesville morally equivalent to the
counterdemonstrators that tried to stop them, as according the third their
cause, being associated with racial segregation, a celebration of slavery and
sedition (which entails a violation of the rule of law), and thus strictly
non-universalizable, they are clearly inferior to those that showed up to
oppose them.
Now that has been taken out of the
way, let’s go back to why I find the sad and tragic events that unfolded the 12th
of August still contain a reason to rejoice: essentially, what they showed is
that the US of A is much farther from a civil war than what I feared, as the most
vocal proponents of the de-humanization of half of the country that is required
for such a confrontation to take place are a really tiny minority, unable to
inflame the passions of a sizeable amount of their countrymen (as of today
still very, very far from reaching a critical mass to have any significant
impact on the political, let alone military balance of forces of the country)
and willing to fold when confronted with the possibility of a real fight. During
the campaign of the presidential election I tended to disagree with many
analysts on the left that dismissed the perils of a Trump victory saying that
the amount of his followers that bought into white supremacist phantasies was
very minor, in the order of a few thousands, but now I think they were spot on,
given how easy it was for a bunch of ragtag organizations to outnumber them on
very short notice. Breitbart may claim some hundreds of thousands of readers,
and the Daily Stormer (now disappeared from the “public” internet) some tens of
thousands, but we’ve seen that lurking in unsavory virtual places while safely
seated in your parents’ basement is one thing, and hauling your ass to a demonstration
with fellow extremists where said ass can be repeatedly kicked is a very
different one. A lot of people seem to have signed for the first, but precious
few for the second.
And the media in the right have
noticed, as the diagnostic I’ve met more frequently is that the “Unite the
Right” rally was an unmitigated disaster, brought tons of bad publicity and has
probably set up the movement a few years, if not decades. A lot of people, even
those of a most conservative persuasion, still balk at being identified as Nazis,
or being associated with the Ku Klux Klan. If I were a cynical I would show
some surprise at the apparent inconsistency of endorsing blatant discrimination
towards certain ethnic/ cultural groups (browns and blacks) but being uneasy
about being associated with those who demonize others (Jews), as that’s where
the line seem to be drawn. Sorry, but I fail to see how a Nazi is so much worse
(and thus so amazingly more evil) than a super-nationalist, jingoistic hick
that wants to send “people not like him” (because he considers them inferior
and not fully human) back to their countries of origin, just because the former
includes in the “not like him” category some people externally
indistinguishable from himself (Jews) and the latter does not. And just to be
clear and avoid mistakes, it is not because I sympathize with one more than the
other: for the record, I consider both equally unacceptable and indefensible.
However, a number of alt-right bloggers and neoReactionary thinkers seem to be
happily aligned with the super-nationalist jingoist but reject being labelled
as full-throat Nazis (see Mencius Moldbug, for obvious reasons).
But enough cynicism already, back to
the uplifting consequences of proto-fascist thugs being routed in the streets, we
can expect much less visibility from them, and that is not a bad thing. We will
see similar levels of rancor and spite and foaming-at-the-mouth between
progressives and conservatives, we will see one or the other condone ugly
behaviors (both in words and deeds) as long as it is exhibited by someone from
their tribe and causes harm to someone of the opposite’s, but such ugly behavior
will return to the electronic realm: the usual trolling, badmouthing, toxic
name-calling and occasional banding together to be overheard in front of niche
audiences (sad puppies) but no street fighting (and hopefully, no car ramming
in the enemy’s ranks). So cheer up, Americans! It seems like your simmering Second Civil War will
remain a virtual conflict still for a few years to come. If and when it becomes
real (not that original an idea, see American
War by Omar el Akkad -oh, I forgot you barely read, and much less a book by
an Arab-sounding author) is still up to you to decide.
