On Charlottesville

A few thoughts on Charlottesville, Virginia, as I don’t know where to go from here:

There is no clearer or more present danger to the American way of life than an ideology that seeks to deny existence (political or physical). There is no more strident example of this ideology than white supremacism and its fascist/Nazi political expression of the past 100 years.

This isn’t about Marxism, feminism, progressivism, corporatism, or any of the other features of the current political climate. This is about the destructive viewpoint that only one race and gender are fully human, fully capable of agency and ascension to power.

To fail to be disgusted by such a view on its own lack of merit is a fundamental failure to appreciate our role in the ongoing American experiment of mutual self-government. We cannot govern together with people we do not see as equals in this effort.

While it is necessary to assure the right of people to speak their minds and to assemble for the common good, it is also our responsibility to vociferously reject the views of anyone who would seek to deny humanity to others. What is the purpose of mutual self-governance, what’s the point of this country, if not to work together to prevent the dominion of one faction over all others and seek the mutual benefit of all? Have we not seen an ongoing evolution to extend more rights and freedoms to more people in this country, with successively more rights and freedoms won generation over generation? These are hard-won, and often fraught, but denying their value is to deny the good of these right and liberties for any of us.

I don’t see this as a situation where we get to tell the nazis among us that they don’t get to have their views. That’s not it. I see this as a situation where we all have a responsibility to tell these jackasses that we have heard their horrifying screed, and we reject it. We have a responsibility to teach young white men (and women, but who are we really kidding? Have you seen the pictures?) that these ideologies are counter to the spirit, the letter, and the very expression of American self-government. We also have a responsibility to hear the the outcry about jobs and the diminishing prospects many of these people are ascribing to people who are just like them and point to where the money went when the jobs evaporated. As disgusting as their views are, these nazis are fueled by their mistaken belief that race and creed define their losses rather than a class war within which the people they hate are their real allies.

A white terrorist drove his car through protestors today. He injured and murdered people who were, for the most part, socio-economically just like him. Maybe I’m not very smart, but it doesn’t seem like that helped make it easier for white Americans to thrive. It only seems to solidify the case that terrorism is alive and well in the United States, and it doesn’t come from the Middle East.

I’m suggesting that it’s not appeasement to ask ourselves and each other what we really want. I think it’s a threat to the people who fund David Duke, Breitbart News, and the movement to restrict voting throughout the country to ask this new generation of nazis why they think other workers and other lower income people are the folks who threaten their livelihoods rather than the folks who profit from their misery.

All the same, the Nazi movement is now and has always been an authoritarian movement. It must be rejected and dissipated for mutual self-governance to survive. I don’t see that happening if we do not first remove the conditions that have fueled the revival of Nazism and white supremacy, and it looks like there’s no will on the part of our politicians to address the symptoms or the underlying causes of this strife.