How Many Must Be Witness?
I was 50 or 75 feet away when James Alex Fields drove his car into that crowd, and killed Heather Heyer. I heard the bodies bouncing off the car before I saw anything, then the crash of his vehicle pushed two cars sitting in front of it at a stop sign into the crowd in the intersection, and then as I ran to the corner, the screeching tires and revving engine as he peeled away. That was when I saw the bodies littered on the street. The screaming, the twisted limbs, blood and a few exposed bones. I tried to direct medics to the injured as they came running from every direction, then I just got out of the way, to let those who had at least some training be able to have room. Standing around gawking and being in the way would have been no help. There is absolutely no doubt they saved lives.
I went to Unite The Right to participate in the counter protest because I had spent the years prior, watching the rise of white supremacist rhetoric and ideology spread like wildfire online, and had followed the few journalists and activists who had been sounding the alarm about it. I went because I hoped that if there was a large enough crowd to stand against them, it would send them away, tails between their legs, and not attempting anything like a mass rally again. Five or six hundred bullies faced with a crowd of a few thousand wouldn't have attempted to provoke that number of people standing in opposition. Instead, it was a day of constant skirmishes, and finally murder.
The day itself was traumatic. It was a few months before the variety of hyper vigilance that caused me to jump or feel the need to flee at any unusually loud or surprising sound was gone. Personally, it wasn't the day itself or the events I witnessed that were most traumatizing though. It's been the weeks, months and year that has followed.
"... fine people on both sides."
I grew up in NY, so news coverage of Trump wasn't new to me. His hucksterism was plain to most people who'd grown up seeing his name in the regional papers. Winning the Republican nomination was a relative surprise, but it was then it became clear he could actually win the election. As the general election campaign lurched forward, it became clear to me he was actually going to win, even as a part of me desperately tried to hope for a different outcome.
I was shocked and embarrassed, dismayed and angry to see how easily so many people were hoodwinked by a con man whose con didn't even have any decent artifice or elegance. The equivalent of a carnival barker was elected president. It wasn't just that he was elected, it was the convergence of that growing white supremacist movement and his constant messaging to it, and worse, that the majority of the press and people who are either paid to be or are held out by society to be politically astute were unwilling to call it exactly that. His misogyny was clear, but our politics have been so dominated by the ability of white supremacy to dictate the framing and parameters of any discussion or debate, that even now, it's not clear to the majority of even the #resistance understand that misogyny is one of the fundamental pillars of white supremacist ideology. I was worried and nervous, for all of us.
But it was the "... fine people on both sides," comment that really told me how bad it all was. For all of the possible political gimme's any elected official could be presented with, putting the rhetorical hammer down on people who had marched with swastikas or next to people who marched with swastikas and who all chanted, "Jews will not replace us," seemed impossible to screw up. It would have been the easiest thing to do, and if American politicians can be counted on for anything, it's that they will do the easy thing. Within a few days it was clear he didn't want to take the easy win, because to him it was a loss. That he wanted that fight was the clearest sign that opportunism wasn't really his strategy. No, he was perfectly willing to have the fight, to defend that position. It wasn't a screw up, it was a declaration.
The op-ed sections of most of the highly respected news outlets ran pieces in contrast. One would point to the blatant white supremacy, the overt fascism, and another would overlook all of that to make some claim about free speech or debating people we disagree with. And it continued, for nearly a year, despite more and more far right violence in different places across the country. Portland. Oakland. Boston. Seattle. Cable news broadcast more useless fucking panels arguing "both sides" than should ever even be organized in a VFW basement, much less beamed into the homes of 300 million people. "The death of Heather Heyer is terrible, but..." But.
All of it ignored the growing number of hate crimes, and very public instances of far right adherents actually killing or attempting to do so. The well worn, "lone wolf," as an explanation. Where it's well understood that the extremists who twist Islam to inspire violence use the internet as a tool of radicalization to inspire individuals to commit acts of violence of their own design, there has been a blatant will to refuse to understand that the far right has been engaging in that exact same strategy for decades, and now, due to the convergence of a number of different factors, they're finding adherents in every corner of society.
As Ivy League racists have been getting puff profile pieces in the most well respected publications in the country, the same tired, worn out, fact resistant narratives have been trotted out by even those who believe they want to see white supremacy beaten. Despite example, after example, after example to the contrary, the old canard that white supremacy is the dominion of "those country hillbillies" was trotted out again and again. Sure, there's plenty of racism to go around among poor rural whites, but they don't make policy. They don't enforce policy. They don't fund political campaigns. They don't fund or staff think tanks. They do none of those things, and still, the number of different areas where the research shows outcomes for people of color being dramatically worse than for whites paints a picture that wears a white hood. Those "dumb country rednecks" may not be against it and many of them may support it, but they didn't institute what amounts to a racial caste system in this country. That took power and money, which they have neither of.
It was a desperate desire to not believe those white supremacists came from our neighborhoods, our schools, our families. Our nephews, sons and brothers whiling away their days playing video games, watching YouTube and listening to podcasts are being radicalized while we are on Facebook or Twitter blaming poor people for being poor and uneducated, because it was easier than recognizing that being wealthy or middle class and educated was no insulator from white supremacist ideas or sympathy. The educated and upper class don't get called rednecks and hicks though, they get called "The Intellectual Dark Web," or "conservative provocateurs." The Daily Caller, Brietbart, and the industry of conservatism is rife with them, but we can't call them white supremacists, because we'd be indicting "conservatism," even as conservatism has been welcoming them with open arms, and cashing the checks that are the profits of spreading white supremacist ideology. The long con for the entire conservative media ecosystem hasn't just been about making mediocre white people very wealthy. It's been about making possible what the next few years of our lives are looking to be.
Anti-racist and anti-fascist organizers and students of those disciplines warned constantly over the last year, "You should really not debate with people who are trying to define other people out of humanity." Scholars and historians pointed to the historical weaknesses of liberal democracies that have been used by fascists to spread their message. People who dedicated their lives and careers to studying the history, who were extremely familiar with the way that authoritarianism and fascism take hold, and others who have spent their lives dedicated to understanding the underpinnings, the messages, the environments which are most beneficial for racist ideologies all agreed, "Don't give these people a platform." It changed nothing. Networks and news publications have kept at it.
We blamed Russians. There is no doubt there was a Russian campaign to influence the election, that it was focused on exploiting the divisions we already have, but Russians didn't create those divisions, and Russians certainly didn't employ politicians and a majority of our most respected press outlets to continue printing and publishing the bullshit claims about "campus free speech," the debunked idea that "conservative speech" is targeted or my personal favorite, "The Intellectual Dark Web," which apparently consists of a number of proto-fascist intellectuals making a good living giving talks, printing their writings and selling their speeches and publishing books being systematically targeted because they are "conservative." Where do a sign up to become that kind of target, who isn't also casually racist and misogynist and trying to provide cover for white supremacist ideology? That would be a good gig.
The president and prominent members of the Republican Party have recently taken to using "George Soros" as a punching bag in campaign ads, stump speeches and the like. That he's been a favorite stand in among the white supremacist set for "Jews" as they've tried to mainstream their message, doesn't seem to matter. The day following Chuck Grassley's pronouncement of his belief in and Trumps unveiling of the "Soros paid protesters" narrative as part of his rallies, a Jewish Community Center in Northern Virginia, just outside of DC, was vandalized with spray painted swastikas. Soros is being named as responsible for the protesters at the Kavanaugh confirmation, and now, the Honduran asylum seekers who are currently making their way through Mexico. They don't care that it's anti-Semitism. They care that their supporters believe it, because dissent can't be legitimized, at all. That it's been repeatedly pointed out to be a narrative with an anti-Semitic lineage, and obviously doesn't matter to them.
It's been more than a year of arguments about "free speech," and the needling wonks going through every single legal case to say that everyone has to deal with speech they don't like or makes them uncomfortable. Then came a few elected representatives having to listen to people who are angry and felt excluded in the political process. Now, apparently, even as the express purpose of the entire basis of that legal history is TO EXPRESS GRIEVANCES TO GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES, to do so makes for an "assault" by a "mob."
There's so much more that I could go through...
The combination of Trump becoming the national recruiter for the white supremacist movement, and their already established online presence is producing spoiled fruit, in the same way that ISIS is able to use it's online presence to radicalize individuals who then act on their own impetus to make it's enemies pay.
The list is long, exhausting and disheartening. We don't have to go very far back to demonstrate what this is producing though.
Three weeks ago, following the Kavanaugh confirmation Mitch McConnell was doing interviews and talk shows, the president was heading to his rallies, both were talking about "being under attack," and referring to protesters as attempting to institute "mob rule." Chuck Grassley, and the president both trotted out the "paid protester" canard, then added a sprinkle of anti-Semitism by including the specter of George Soros as some kind of evil mastermind.
At the same time, the founder of right wing goon squad The Proud Boys, Gavin McInness, was invited to one of the conservative movements most respected venues for speeches, debate and "uplifting conservative ideals." McInness was invited to give a speech about and do a re-enactment of a Japanese fascist assassinating a Japanese socialist on live television. He went on to discuss the popularity of socialism currently, and despite the long evidentiary history to the contrary, accused the Democrats of trying to install it. Directly following his talk, his goons immediately began assaulting people who'd shown up to protest their presence. The Proud Boys have brought violence to more or less everywhere they've gathered. Charlottesville, California, Oregon, Boston, New York...
This week began on Sunday with the announcement that the Trump administration was basically going to try to use the power of the federal government to erase trans people from legal existence. The ability of the executive branch to define terminology across a wide variety of government agencies is being brought to bare to insure that none of them recognize the existence of trans people.
Then across the span of two days, beginning on Tuesday, 10/23, twelve different bombs were discovered to have been mailed to people who had been publicly critical of Donald Trump. Not surprisingly, the person in custody for sending bombs to George Soros, a number of Democratic Party leaders, CNN, and Robert De Niro, ended up being a rabid Trumpian devotee, and big believer in conspiracy theories. Notably, it was the largest single attempted political assassination in American history, and it seems odd this particular fact isn't being pointed out more often.
Not a full day had passed since a bomb had been discovered in Soros mail box before Trump went into one of his rallies, hit on the anti-Semitic "globalist" narrative, then joined his crowd in a "lock him up" chant about Soros.
In this same week, a white man attempts to gain entrance to a black church, and upon being unable to, decides the nearest Kroger grocery store is a suitable place for targets of opportunity. He kills two black senior citizens, and upon being confronted by a white patron who was himself armed, he responds, "I won't shoot you, if you won't shoot me. Whites don't shoot whites."
Friday, 10/26, it's reported in the Washington Post that Representative Steve King gave an interview to the website for a Austrian neo-Nazi group. "Unzensuriert, which translates as “Uncensored,” is a publication associated with Austria’s Freedom Party, which was founded by a former Nazi SS officer and is now led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who was active in neo-Nazi circles as a youth." Mind you, this all takes place while King is on a Holocaust Remembrance trip in Europe (and no, that's not a joke). It takes about five minutes of looking into Steve King's record as a representative to find he's a white supremacist. The entirety of the Republican Party remains silent.
Saturday, 10/27, brought the killing of 11 and injury to 6 others in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The killer, walked in during a naming service for a child, and screamed, "All Jews must die," as he opened fire. A virulent anti-Semite, the perpetrator apparently believed that Jews were responsible for the asylum seekers making their way through Mexico, that the president has spent the last few weeks spewing conspiracy theories about. He has criticized the president for not being anti-Semitic enough, a sentiment also expressed by one of the Unite The Right organizers who was otherwise quite pleased with the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Monday morning, 10/29, there was a new tweet from the president:
The man who attacked The Tree of Life synagogue, killing 11 people, also referred to this "caravan" as "an invasion."
At the same time, and in the previous two weeks, new efforts at voter suppression by Republican state governments and officials have been streaming into the news. Amazingly, with the Voting Rights Act stricken down by the Supreme Court, the people being removed from voter rolls are overwhelmingly black people, Native Americans and other people of color. An effort this massive and focused hasn't been in place since Jim Crowe. Greg Palast is doing some absolutely incredible work on this. He's been following the voter suppression efforts for over a year. He deserves a Pulitzer or a Medal of Freedom or something akin.
Also on Monday, not a full week after the first set of mail bombs were discovered at CNN, a specific organization regularly targeted by Trump and company, another suspicious package is discovered to have been sent. The president sent out the tweet below, earlier the same morning:
The Enemy of the People... before the bombs had even stopped showing up in the mail.
Tuesday, 10/30/18, it was revealed that Trump is going to sign an executive order in an attempt to end birthright citizenship when a parent is not a legal resident or citizen of the US. This is another topic that has been an obsession of the white supremacist movement, basically since the 14th Amendment was passed.
In response to the many, many, many journalists, lawyers, scholars, observers and basically everyone who can and has read any of the Constitutional law related to citizenship who said that an executive order would not be enough, and the courts would never uphold it, Senator Lindsey Graham issued a promise to introduce legislation with the same result in mind:
This list covers about three weeks in October. Just three weeks.
Just more than a year after a violent mob descended on a small Virginia city, carrying swastikas, chanting "Jews will not replace us," and many of the nations "great minds" declared "both sides."
What we've seen is a continuing escalation of violence and targeting of minority and marginalized communities. The leadership of the Republican Party and the conservative movement identify the targets, sometimes through the press, sometimes through policy initiatives, then the fascist goons find their motivation in the radicalizing community of online "conservatism" and white supremacy.
The press then continues to treat the claims of Trump, Republican leadership and fascists (who can even tell the difference these days) as being in "good faith," and when anyone criticizes what is now a very clear record of signaling acceptance of white supremacist and/or fascist ideology, somehow, it becomes a narrative of "both sides."
Trump isn't a leader, of anything, in the sense of the word as it's used traditionally or in popular vocabulary. He's not developing and instituting an agenda. He's taking the white supremacist agenda, popularizing it, and leaving it Republican leadership to institute it. He's a figurehead, and more important, he's the Recruiter In Chief. Even among those who aren't becoming card carrying members of the white supremacist movement, he's popularizing their ideas, and creating space for them in the political landscape, where there wasn't before. It's why they may feel Trump is not extreme enough, but are still very much on board with his presidency. For Trump, popularizing the white supremacist agenda means power for him, and equal to or above his own prejudices, power is the ultimate measure of success.
Here's a simple list of those who have been recently targeted by legislation, enforcement, spoken threat by Trump and the current Republican Party or the white supremacist movement they are now essentially welcomed into their coalition. This only covers October:
- The trans community: trying to define them out of legal existence in the eyes of the federal government.
- The black community and many other people of color: A renewed focus on voter suppression, numbering in the millions, across a number of states.
- Racism specifically targeted at black people has it's own specific dimensions in the United States. It is the most virulent and violent form of racism in the country, to this day. It's a complicated web of misplaced focus of anger and willful erasure of reality. In Louisville Kentucky, it claimed two more lives.
- The immigrant community: Threats to citizenship access, now sending a total of about 8,000 military, border patrol and other law enforcement to the border, (this isn't even including the family separation policy previously, and the still ongoing forced adoptions or the two years the president has spent referring to immigrants as animals, rapists and criminals).
- The Jewish community: Leadership of the Republican Party, including the president, has been repeating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories long used by white supremacists. Robert Bowers acted as a response to the specific conspiracy theories now often used by both the president and Republican leadership.
- Dissenters/Protesters: Those same anti-Semitic conspiracy theories being used to disqualify the legitimacy of expressed dissent by survivors of rape and sexual assault. Equating the expression of speech, in it's literal sense, as in people speaking, with violence, a mob mentality and mob rule. Violence committed against those who expressed dissent against the fascist platform of a street gang with a previous history of violence, as it presented an expression of its desire for violence in one of the places recognized as a theater for mainstream conservative thought.
- Mental health community: As usual, amid acts of political violence, people in the US who are living with issues related to mental health are being scapegoated amidst both the administration and the Republican Party trying to remove protections for pre-existing conditions, eroding funding for mental health treatment and producing no plan for a better way of insuring people who do have mental health issues can get treatment. All this, while ratcheting up violent rhetoric and creating a wider acceptance for the use of political violence through their invitation of the white supremacy movement into their inner circle. That's even before taking into consideration that people who live with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. If there were even any truth to the idea that mental health treatment would curb violence or even specifically politically targeted violence, the administration and the Republican Party are actively inhibiting the chance to do so, while encouraging an environment where violence is more likely to occur.
- Journalists: The press has been one of the favorite targets since Trump began his presidential campaign. It's been a favorite target of the right wing, and especially right wing media personalities. Now, we have bombs being mailed to CNN, an outlet specifically targeted by the president, right wing media personalities and Republican leadership on a repeated basis.
Take a look at that list again.
Trans people.
Black people and people of color generally.
Native Americans.
Immigrants.
Jews.
Dissidents and protesters.
The mentally ill.
Journalists.
This should be a familiar list to anyone who has spent any time even casually considering the history of fascism, and authoritarianism more broadly.
In the months before Unite The Right in Charlottesville, a wide range of anti-racist and anti-fascist activists, professors and clergy tried to spread the message that the rally wasn't something to be ignored or taken lightly. The city of Charlottesville administration, police, the University of Virginia, all failed to hear the warnings. At best, they were ill prepared. At worst, they were incompetent to the point of being complicit to the violence that was visited on Charlottesville. The claims that they didn't know are plainly refutable. Charlottesville's city council was presented with intelligence from the infiltration of organizers communications that demonstrated exactly what the risk was, down to and including the use of cars as weapons. It's not that they didn't know, it's that they didn't want to know.
What we've seen since is what they feared, and why they risked their safety and well being to stand in opposition. What we've seen in the last few weeks is an escalation. There is no doubt that all of this began before Trump. It's been a part of everything that has happened here since the first settlers arrived. It's no less disingenuous to say that the rise of Trump hasn't empowered what were previously organizations and a movement in search of power.
These past few weeks have been in a way, a moment not significantly different from August 12, 2017, when fascists and white supremacists descended on Charlottesville. This though, has been an escalation. Violence, and the threat of violence, the dehumanization of people who live among us, the rhetorical con jobs in response, the blaming of those who dissented or tried to sound the warning bells, but across city and state lines, basically across the country if you take the attempted bombing locations into account.
All of this is to say that I don't want anyone else to have to witness anything like what I did on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, and whether or not I want to, it's not only still happening, it's escalating. At what point does it become clear that enough of us have had to bare witness? How many of you have to be directly traumatized, instead of indirectly terrified through your television, phone, tablet or computer screens? Do you want to wait until you have to be an unwitting or unwilling witness? How many of us have to be on the lists names of victims?
Think about all the shock and outrage you experience in seeing something like August 11 and 12 in Charlottesville, and then the "fine people on both sides" response. Consider that feeling you have when you see the president attempt to escape all responsibility for being the mouthpiece for detestable ideas that are inciting hate crimes. Think about how you feel when you see Trump and Republican leadership attempt to rationalize away stealing children because they're parents were just trying their best to give those children a better shot at a better life. "You committed a misdemeanor, now we're taking your kids, and we're probably going to adopt them out to another family." Think about how you feel when you see the Republican Party, one of the most powerful political institutions in the country, voraciously defend all of this, and then participate in attacking people who are willing to say it isn't right, and even by employing centuries old racist myths that created some of humanities worst crimes?
I promise you, it's not so profoundly disorienting as watching the attempted murder of a crowd of people, with the successful murder of one, and then seeing the last years reaction. Disorienting isn't even the right phrase. Disgusted is closer, but it's somewhere really between the two. It's an unmooring, a realization of the definitely surreal reality of it all. The disconnect between reality, the attempts to not only deny it, but to manipulate it become frighteningly clear.
It's that idea, that maybe hundreds of thousands or millions more across the country might just have that experience, that frightens me most. That disorientation, the one you have an inkling of by only seeing these things play out as news, but which is so much more profound when what you've seen with your own eyes is rendered unreal. That is the ultimate weapon of fascism, remaking life as a sadistic funhouse out of our worst collective nightmares, until terror and illusion shade everything so thoroughly, we give up even attempting to understand what is and isn't real.
We have a choice, yet again. We can take the experience of these last few weeks and we can heed the warning they were sending us. Legacy publications and media companies can start taking seriously the scholars and academics who have been warning them about taking fascists at their word as good will participants in an attempt to seek the public good. The leaders of the Democratic Party can start treating this threat with the seriousness it presents, The Democratic Party can bring some use some of the resources at its disposal to educate the public and make them available to those who want to organize. If nothing else, the number of bombs sent to Democratic Party leaders should invoke some sense of self preservation. We can start trying to understand how to responsibly deal with stochastic terrorism. Individually we can start beginning to act in concert and build movements that act beyond social media, and beyond the voting booth. Pittsburgh was able to organize in a short period of time. What we can do in a few weeks or a month is significant, if we have the will.
To do this, to organize and to begin to find ourselves in connection with each other, is to stand up and acknowledge that reality is. It's to stop accepting that reality can be manipulated into a meaningless husk of violence, dehumanization and terror. More than anything, more than a hashtag resistance, we need to stand up and assert that we can see. We can understand. We know. We can see them and we know what they are doing. We can assert the hope and desire to recognize our own humanity and the people they are targeting.
We can do those things to start or we can see exactly what form the next escalation takes. If the pattern continues, it will be organized groups going after specific targets. It won't just be the Proud Boys engaging in random street violence. They'll be marching on a women's shelter or a women's health clinic. It won't be one person walking into a synagogue with murderous intent and the weapons to act on it. It'll be five or ten. It won't be one person trying to gain entry to a black church and then going to a super market to murder two people. It'll be five or ten racists, setting the church on fire or it will be a return to the time honored tradition of white supremacists in the US, lynching. For trans people, the same pattern that is already happening will continue or even more frighteningly, accelerate. They'll be lured to their deaths or killed on the street.
It doesn't seem very sensible or responsible to wait around to find out what the American version of the Reichstag Fire or the Night of the Long Knives would be in twenty-first century. We can actually look at where we are, and learn from those who've made these mistakes in the past, and do better, but we should hurry about. By that time, we'll all have witnessed too much to be able to gain our sense quickly enough to response effectively.
The longer we wait, the more unmoored it all and we all become. The more unreal everything seems, the harder it is to hold onto any sense of why decency is worth protecting, why equity and humanity are worth defending. White supremacy didn't start with Trump, it's been with the US since day one. However, it should be clear now that the inability to deal with it, the desire to ignore it, that long preceded Trump are exactly what lead to his election, and the country that existed before is going to be remade one way or the other. We have a chance to do better, now, and it may be the last chance we have for a very, very long time. Between now and then, everyone will be made witness.