See earlier, by the same writer: Unequal Justice In Fields Charlottesville Trial—And, Increasingly, Throughout The Left’s America

America is once again reeling from political violence. A young white man attacked a synagogue in a bid to murder random Jews [Motivated by hate, gunman kills one and wounds three in synagogue attack, police say, by Kristina Davis, Sarah Parvini, J. Harry Jones, and Cindy Chang, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2019]. The suspect’s manifesto was scathing towards President Trump, insulting him in vulgar terms not suitable for a family website; nonetheless, the president will certainly be blamed for having inspired the violence. The hero of the day was a Border Patrol agent working as a security guard, but that is curiously under-emphasized in many media reports. [Latest: Rabbi identifies the victims of synagogue shooting, Associated Press, April 28, 2019] Unfortunately, this sort of thing will inevitably get more common, as America’s ongoing immigration disaster stokes ethnic conflict.

Note, however, that there was another shooting, on Sunday in Baltimore, with an equal death toll to the synagogue shooting (one). Six were wounded as the shooter fired into a crowd. [Gunman opens fire on Baltimore cookout, killing 1, wounding 6, by Tim Stelloh, NBC News, April 28, 2019] Because it was near a church, it briefly looked like the story might go viral—until the Main Stream Media realized it was just another banal act of black-on-black brutality, just the latest incident in a city with a soaring crime rate, where Mayor Catherine Pugh can’t decide whether to resign after a corruption scandal because her attorney says she’s not “lucid” enough. [Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh Not ‘Lucid’ Enough To Make Decision About Resignation, Attorney Says, by Devin Bartolotta, CBS Baltimore, April 25, 2019]

Some violence matters, and some doesn’t. The slow-motion collapse of a great American city is less of a story than that of a murder that can be weaponized against the president, his supporters, and free speech.

And the most important tool in the censors’ arsenal is the Legend of Charlottesville.

I say legend because it now has something of a mythic quality. After months of intense propaganda, the average American really believes that thousands of “Nazis” descended on Charlottesville in August 2017 with no other objective than to cause chaos and destruction. Former Vice-President Joe Biden began his campaign with this lie, accusing President Donald J. Trump of having supported people who were “spreading hate” instead of the brave Americans opposing it.

In response, President Trump reiterated his previous point: that his comment there were “fine people on both sides” did not refer to Nazis and “white nationalists,” but to Southern Heritage buffs and others who opposed removing the statue of General Robert E. Lee. Lee was “a great general, everybody knows that,” in the president’s words. [Conway defends Trump over renewed criticism over Charlottesville comments, by Andrew O’Reilly, Fox News, April 28, 2019]

Now, finally, there does seem to be some pushback from the Right against the MSM’s smear. Of all people, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, has been perhaps the most consistent defender of the president. He has noted, accurately, that the president did in fact a condemn neo-Nazis and “white nationalists” and that his comment about “fine people” did not apply to them. Adams also noted, accurately, that not all people at Unite The Right were “neo-Nazis.” And he further noted, accurately, that there was violence caused by Antifa, an organized communist vigilante gang that cannot considered “fine people” at all. [‘Dilbert’ creator defends Trump remarks on Charlottesville, by Aris Folley, The Hill, October 30, 2018]

Adams is claiming victory, even if the MSM and Biden continue to believe the lie:

In recent days, more Respectable Right types have been willing to make these arguments and support the president. The MSM has responded with fury. Vox complains that there “were no fine people” at the rally on the right and casually ignores violence from the Left. [Trump’s new defense of his Charlottesville comments is incredibly false, by Jane Coaston, Vox, April 26, 2019] The Washington Post condemned the president for “re-writing” his words. [Trump tries to re-write his own history on Charlottesville and ‘both sides,’ by Aaron Blake, Washington Post, April 26, 2019] The Daily Beast complained that Fox News were not sticking to the approved narrative in private email conversations. [Fox News Reporter Rips Colleagues Over Charlottesville: You Sound Like ‘White Supremacist Chat Room’ by Maxwell Tani and Andrew Kirell, Daily Beast, April 26, 2019] Once again, this is a story with “emails obtained” by a hostile publication—likely meaning they were sent by someone at Fox News trying to a get a co-worker fired for political reasons.

Yet this the lie the president called white nationalists “fine people” is only the lesser hoax of Charlottesville. The greater hoax is that white nationalists caused the violence. I know. I was there.

The truth is that there would have been no violence were it not for Antifa. There would have been no deaths were it not for Antifa. More importantly, even if there were Antifa, there would have been no violence if state and local Democrat authorities in Virginia had not consciously decided to allow street fighting in order to have an excuse to shut down a legally permitted rally.

Remarkably, these facts are not in dispute. The independent Heaphy Report, commissioned by the city itself, revealed truly shocking findings, including a direct quote from the (black) police chief declaring “let them fight.” He has been forced to resign.

Yet somehow, no national reporters seem interested in investigating this incredible dereliction of duty, whether state officials gave the orders, or whether there was a deliberate plan before the event to foment chaos. Instead, there have been months—years!—of painstaking investigations by multimillion dollar companies to dox random college students, blue collar workers, or local residents who participated in the march.

President Trump, apparently alone in the White House and the national press, dissented. Perhaps he watched the videos of that day carefully and saw that masked Antifa were attacking people, or maybe it’s his weird but undeniable instinct. He pointed the Fake News out, and journalists will not forgive him for it—because Antifa and journalists are not just on the same side, they are the same people.

Yet ultimately the failure does not lie with journalists. It lies with the White House. In Team of Vipers, Alabama journalist Cliff Sims (actually rather Trump-friendly) account of his brief but interesting time in the Administration, there’s the extraordinary revelation that “no one in the White House had anticipated” anything potentially disruptive taking place in Charlottesville in 2017 (p. 196). This shows how out of touch Trump’s Conservatism Inc. staffers were with the movement that is regularly praised (or, more frequently, blamed) for helping elect him. Everyone on the Dissident Right was braced for trouble, specifically the editors and writers of VDARE.com, which had nothing whatever to do with the Unite The Right Rally (but was subsequently banned by PayPal anyway).

Sims makes an even more incredible statement on the next page: “What had started as a bunch of idiots causing problems for local law enforcement had turned into a nationwide outcry causing problems for White House.”

This has it precisely backwards. Local law enforcement deliberately, purposefully, and willfully created the violence. Simply separating or the two sides would have been fine. Even doing nothing instead of actively driving people into each other (as the report shows) would have been preferable. But they wanted violence so they could shut down the rally, and they ended up with a bodycount.

President Trump was far from a supporter of the Unite The Right protesters. Instead, he seems to have been a careful watcher of television—with an intuitive grasp of America’s new political reality

Nevertheless, what was really needed was not a statement saying who was right or wrong at the protest, nor some inane debate about mind-reading the motivations of all the protesters. What was needed for the Department of Justice to investigate the state and local officials who, as proved by the Heaphy Report, deliberately facilitated violence.

This is something that could still be done now. And it should be.

Furthermore, instead of the selective prosecutions that have been taking place, President Trump’s Justice Department should be seriously investigating the interstate Antifa gangs that are exclusively organized to stalk and attack political opponents. Even United States Marines of Hispanic descent have been allegedly attacked by these thugs—thugs who are consistently defended by journalists as heroes.

The issue is not fascist or anti-fascist, right or left, racist or anti-racist. The issue is whether government officials have a basic responsibility to ensure public safety. The issue whether all citizens, whatever their views, enjoy the rights guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution.

If we don’t have law, then all that remains to us is conflict. And that means violence from all sides and all groups is likely to increase in the years ahead—as what was once our country descends into a Third World hell.

Charlottesville Survivor [Email him] is a white man who voted for Trump. The Left hates all white men who voted for Trump, whether they were in Charlottesville or not.