Charlottesville – 1 by cvillereader

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"The last time I checked, the Virginia State Police and the Virginia National Guard are not small time operations. Both of them were on the scene and did nothing.

And McAuliffe is on the record saying that the State had planned for months for this, and that he thought the policing of the protests was a success.

Charlottesville City Council is up to their necks in this, and is dominated by Leftists. This includes the mayor, who was educated at Berkeley, teaches at UVa, and has long and deep connections with McAuliffe.

They used this event as a way to score political points. Disgraceful.

I will also point out that long after the police broke up the rally, and most of Unite the Right group had departed, they allowed Antifa and their supporters to roam the sidewalks and streets of downtown Charlottesville armed with bats and pepper spray.

There is no explaining this away, because the internet is filled with videos that show this."  cvillereader

—————-

Perhaps "cvillereader" could explain to us what polling and public opinion in Charlottesville has been with regard to the statue and the mayor/city council.  pl

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88 Responses to Charlottesville – 1 by cvillereader

  1. Cvillereader says:

    Unfortunately, I don’t think most people in Charlottesville have a problem with the way things were handled.
    It is stunning to me that the Virginia ACLU has condemned the actions of Mayor Signer, though.
    But as you pointed out, Charlottesville and Albelmarle County are blue islands in a sea of red. It will be interesting to see how things play out.

  2. Lemur says:

    The left is trying to blame the right for the ‘violence’ after they engineered circumstances such that clashes would invariably erupt between leftist attack dogs and the attendees of the rally (who had a legal permit and did not initiate violence). If you take the constitution seriously, everyone has the right to peaceably assemble without being attacked.
    It’s unclear exactly what happened with the car incident.
    That said, the rally was an embarrassment from a PR perspective, and was less a positive statement of what the alt-right stands for than an IRL demonstration of how alienation affects those of conservative inclination in an epoch of dissolution (gleefully promulgated by the cultural left and the economic right). We’re seeing the wages of ‘diversity’, ‘tolerance’, and ‘political correctness’ play out in real time.
    According to research from the Hispanic Heritage Association, 86% of white Generation Z boys would have voted for Trump, along with 70% of white girls. Unlike their boomer grandparents and liberal Gen X parents, the Zees experience of cultural ‘enrichment’ and ‘vibrancy’ up close and personal. White America is rapidly lurching right. As Julian Assange pointed out on Twitter a few days ago, the American electorate is fracturing along racial lines. It began with Trump, who won every class of white Americans except cat ladies with post-graduate degrees. Soon, the only whites left in the Democratic party will be upper middle close coastal snobs and 1%ers.
    C’ville is the cartoon version of this quarrel, a sort of hyper-reality running parallel to the MAGA – Stronger Together conflict. This clash ultimately isn’t about the assorted stable of minorities. It’s a plurality of coastal whites using the so-called ‘POC’ and mass immigration to wipe out the political clout of the majority group of whites they intensely dislike. This majority has started to realize the fate envisioned for them, and is beginning to fight back.

  3. Fredw says:

    I’m sorry, but the internet is full of all kinds of things. I believe “anecdotes” is the technical term. There are always some idiots around to provide good video. If you show me video of actual violence, then I will take that seriously. But the actual violence that I know of came from a 20-year old with serious anger issues. He should now have many years in prison to confront his issues and grow out of them. Not a leftist, by the way. And his actions fit well with the rhetoric, if not the actions, of the “rightists”.
    I am always amazed at how people spouting threatening rhetoric are so taken aback by any similar response. And I am old enough to remember how California was an open carry state until black panthers began carrying. Some people need to keep in mind that whatever the rules are, they are supposed to apply to everyone.

  4. Anna says:

    http://www.unz.com/article/unite-the-right-who-got-it-right/#comment-1968108
    “That’s right: The problem was white nationalist violence. It was as if the demonstrators had behaved just like Black Lives Matter or masked antifa: looting, burning, stopping traffic, and roughing up bystanders. Of course, what caused the violence was hostile counter-demonstrators, many of them wearing helmets and carrying shields. If they had not been there, there would have been no violence, and the rally would have taken place as planned.”
    A complementing perspective: “What You Wish Upon Others, You Wish Upon Yourself.” http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/08/charlottesville-what-you-wish-upon-others-you-wish-upon-yourself.html
    A question to the U.S liberals: “Julian Assange asks why the US said nothing when Obama supported Ukrainian neo-Nazis” http://theduran.com/julian-assange-asks-us-said-nothing-obama-supported-ukrainian-neo-nazis/

  5. Cvillereader says:

    I am not defending the actions of Fields. At first glance, it appears that he is the stereotypical young man (booted from Army, perhaps unemployed and with mental problems) that gets attracted to white supremacist ideology.
    What I do question, however, are the policing decisions that were made that allowed a mob of protesters to block the streets. The street that the homicide occurred on is lined with several street level parking lots and a high rise parking lot. There is clear video evidence that the Antifa protesters were harassing people who were trying to access their cars and leave the area.

  6. Fred says:

    Fredw,
    “Some people need to keep in mind that whatever the rules are, they are supposed to apply to everyone.”
    I agree. Can you point me to a link showing BLM or Antifa had a permit to rally?
    “He should now have many years in prison to confront his issues and grow out of them.”
    Yes, just like the DisruptJ20 inauguration day protestors:
    http://www.disruptj20.org/event/disruptj20-protest-the-inauguration-of-donald-trump/
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/as-prosecutors-press-new-felony-charges-inauguration-day?utm_term=.swZkqgVLy#.hwbxbRenO

  7. Croesus says:

    Back in 2000 – 2004 when I lived in Charlottesville, a “free speech” board had been erected, at the end of the Mall near where there was an amphitheater (iirc). Somehow, Peter Jefferson was involved. Is the Free Speech wall still there?
    Also — be aware that action is underway to change Monticello from a monument to Thomas Jefferson, Father of his country, to an emphasis on Thomas Jefferson’s Slave Plantation. https://www.c-span.org/video/?426148-1/slavery-thomas-jeffersons-monticello

  8. Cvillereader says:

    I am often on the mall in the summer, but not quite as far down as City Hall, which is where the board is. The last time I was there, the board was still there.
    And I do know about the rumblings about Jefferson. Maybe they will eventually even remove the crossed swords from the Cavalier logo!
    I think some of this has to do with long term plans for economic development in the area. There are civic leaders who have big plans for Charlottesville, and a lot of that has to with attracting certain kinds of industries and people to the area. Being tarnished as a backward, Southern city damages the image that some people are trying to project.
    I was most interested in Signer’s comments over the weekend about ideas and movements that belong in the trash heap of history.

  9. BillWade says:

    the far left: “we won”
    the far right: “we won”
    the rest of us: “we all lost”

  10. Red Cloud says:

    The MSM message seems to be: “Being racist is unacceptable but violently shutting down free speech is perfectly fine.”

  11. BillWade says:

    whoops, forget to add
    The globalists:
    “The far left has been won over, they are deluded as well as is the far right, too bad the rest of them know the truth, we’ll have to work on them some more”

  12. Philippe T. says:

    In June 2013, in Paris, an antifa leader, Clément Méric, mounted an ambush against 3 extreme-right youngsters (2 males, 1 female). During the street fight, C. Méric received a punch in the face and died. Since, there is repeated demonstrations of antifas against “fascism” in France. The socialist government used this pretext to disband many right-wing groups. Two young proletaires, Esteban Morillo et Samuel Dufour, are waiting to be judged. E. Morillon spent one year in jail.
    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_Cl%C3%A9ment_M%C3%A9ric

  13. turcopolier says:

    all
    Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate for governor is not running well in the polls. I suspect that McCauliffe is looking to firm up their base and make himself look good to the left. pl

  14. johnf says:

    This story, if true, seems to put several spanners into several works simultaneously:
    “Ukraine denies selling North Korea nuclear missile engines”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/14/ukraine-denies-selling-north-korea-nuclear-missile-engines/

  15. Stephanie says:

    The far right lost. They were the aggressors for all to see and the PR disaster is such that Republicans across the spectrum have been uncommonly forceful in their condemnations regardless of the risk of offending part of their base. It will also in future be that much harder to preserve Confederate statues, which will now be irretrievably linked with their neo-Nazi “defenders.”

  16. Cvillereader says:

    It is not clear at all to me that the far right were the aggressors. That assumes of course that you don’t think their presence in and of itself was an act of aggression. If you do, then I suggest you take another look at the first amendment.
    The failure of people like you to acknowledge the many acts of violence committed by the counter-protesters may have the opposite effect of what you may think.
    Because it pushes a lot of folks who are not extremists farther and farther to the right.

  17. Hood Canal Gardner says:

    Gosh Pat .. do you really think that McCauliffe past being that tempted (sic)? We have only just begun to see/hear the spin on this one .. cheap ta/da MSM news. Rest assured that on both sides the “semi-automatic locked and loadeds” are tanking-up for the next go-round. Not nice/surely we’re better than that.

  18. DH says:

    Once on C-SPAN, Brian Lamb was hosting a remote tour of George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon. He was interviewing a black woman, a reenactor, who was sitting in a cozy slave cabin, wearing a nice colonial dress. At the same time, Brian was taking viewer calls. One lady called and berated Washington for being a slave owner. The reenactor said (paraphrase), “Oh, he wasn’t that bad,” and if memory serves, didn’t add anything else.

  19. BillWade says:

    You probably don’t read “alt-right” web sites. They believe this was a victory of sorts, they believe that ultimately the law is on their side and lawsuits will be flying soon.
    Oddly enough, this Kessler fellow, the organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally, was a once an Occupy Wall Street type and Obama supporter, strange, no?
    source: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jason-kessler

  20. Bill Herschel says:

    b’s post that the Left in the U.S. supports neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine and condemns them in the U.S. is very hard to controvert, but I would add that anyone who wants to have a statue of Robert E. Lee removed is compelled morally to also want the removal of the Washington Monument and most especially the Jefferson Memorial. I favor removing all three.

  21. turcopolier says:

    DH
    I was once at Carter’s Grove, a plantation belonging to Colonial Williamsburg with some foreign guests. A docent took the larger group we had attached ourselves to down to the slave cabins. The group was from somewhere south of Virginia. The docent/guide told the crowd that these poor people had been forced to live on cornbread, collards and parts of hogs like smoked hocks. Nobody reacted so she asked “how would you like to eat hominy grits every day?” one woman in the group said,” would you like my recipe for grits?” pl

  22. Stephanie says:

    Extremes meet, I guess.
    If they do see this as a win, I think they have it wrong. They’ve forced Republican officials and pols to come out firmly against them, the White House is already walking back Trump’s initial statement, and their standardbearer just insulted a rich black businessman. Even Jeff Sessions has had to promise to come after them. Until recently they were just a gaggle of harmless fringies, and now they have people scared. They’ve been feeling their oats and went too far.
    (In the process they are also tarnishing what Joseph E. Johnston would call the “fair fame” of my favorite WBS general, so I’m peevish. Isn’t there a statue of Braxton Bragg they can rally around?)

  23. Lyttenburgh says:

    Despite the fact that it IS entertaining to see Poroshenko and Turchinov twisting themselves trying to prove the allegations wrong (Turchinov already said that the NYT article “[I]s not based on any grounds, provocative by its content, and most likely provoked by Russian secret services to cover their own crimes,”(c)”. Like, remember that time when Poroshenko also accused the NYT editorial board of all the people of being Kremlin Stooges? Here you go! EuroUkrs truly believe that the rest of the world functions by the similar, ah, “rules”
    The fact that Yuzhmash was dying out became apparent in 2015. Newsflash – all Ukrainian heavy industry is dying. Yes, that includes the MIC of the Ukraine, whatever remains of it. Remember “Antonov”? Gone. Some engineers relocated to Russia, others, reportedly, are planning to restart the whole enterprise… in China. Whenever you read the Ukrainian news about this or that long established military hardvare factory, you will encounter only the stories about them closing down, or that they have no money to pay the workers, or that they hade to downsize the workforce. Oh, but everyone and their dog in the Ukrainian (and among the lazy Western MSM) pushes up the trope, that “the Ukrainian Army of today is much stronger than the one after the Maidan”.
    The story of Yuzhmash (which from making rocket engines now switched to making trams) sound plausible. We had it here in Russia in the 90s. A not so distant relative of mine worked on UWZ at the time. They, naturally, were not paid any money for months. Then in either 1996 or 1997 a miracle happened – Iraq send nearly 20 of its tanks there for upkeep, repair and upgrade. They gave enough money for the factory to be able pay their workers salaries for months! But after that – nothing.
    Of course, Poroshenko will claim to the “Civilized World” that he had no idea that the state owned enterprise of Yuzhmash sold anything to the NK. And they will swallow that, cuz… Russia and stuff.

  24. Kooshy says:

    I agree I oppose removal of history, regardless how bad or good it may taste today. History should be respected as a lesson, an experience and not fashion,

  25. jdledell says:

    All I can say is my father who fought Nazis in Europe and suffered thru the Battle of the Bulge would be turning over in his grave at the thought of Nazi flags parading thru the streets of America. Why is white supremacy acceptable? Should part of America become the new Aryan nation? Is that what they want? Going through the comments on Reddit and similar sites you can read tons of comments extolling the superiority of whites and how blacks, hispanics and jews are inferior beings that are ruining everything white Americans have built in this country.
    Nazism and white supremacy are a cancer to the America, the Founding America that believes all of us are created equal. As a Jew, I have certainly experienced the hatred of white america, from my school days harassed as a kike. In my youth, my father, a WWII veteran, was not allowed to buy a house in certain towns.
    Why would any Christian American support Nazism and white supremacy which defies the tenets of their religion and our American ideals. I can vividly remember one white racist telling me as a Jewish boy who was disabled by polio that I better not get married and have kids to add inferior genes to society. What did we learn in our fight against the Nazi? Nothing?

  26. BillWade says:

    Stephanie, after further reading I’ve changed my conclusion, the alt-right, as I know it and I can be wrong, is now calling it a disaster and are recommending any and all followers to disavow Richard Spencer, this Kessler guy who organized it, and especially any KKKers or nazis.

  27. BillWade says:

    right, it’s our history, right or wrong. My very liberal wife agrees. I live in Charlotte county Fl, Lee county is to my south and there are rumblings.

  28. ked says:

    No stranger than a committed Italian Socialist becoming a Fascist.

  29. John Rowan says:

    Agree. I come from the yankee North and am horrified seeing the stupid destruction of Confederate general statues. This whole thing in Charlottesville was over Robert E. Lee. While I’m no historian, even amateur, I believe Lee was not sanguine about slavery. Also, he decided not to turn the war into a guerilla campaign which would have kept the country divided and bled the North. So Lee was, in the word’s a dim-witted former President, “A uniter, not a divider.” Big league.

  30. Old Microbiologist says:

    My wife read me a Russian article yesterday that China has imported 30,000 Ukrainians from the now closed Antonov plant ( including families) and also has imported the workers who former,y manufactured the RD-180 rocket engines. I cannot validate this but this journal has proven to be reliable in the past. If true, this is a major game changer for China. Just building the Antonov tansports is highly significant.

  31. turcopolier says:

    All
    People are now writing to me to detail the horrors of American chattel slavery; forced labor, sexual subjugation in some cases, an absence of choice in life, etc. I am aware of all that. They need not write to tell me about it. I spent decades studying the subject. A reminder is not necessary unless the intention is intimidation. At the same time the record of the time makes it clear that race relations in the antebellum South were not an unmixed picture in which the South was simply a vast concentration camp for Blacks. No, it was a complex concentration camp for Blacks and not all White/Black relations were bitter and miserable. Some others raise again the “incontrovertible” commission of treason to the United States by the Confederates, all of them, but especially the leaders. Actually, their guilt of this particulate crime is quite controvertible and always was. ask yourself – why was no Confederate leader tried for treason? If the issue was “incontrovertible,” then they should have been tried. A number of them were imprisoned like JF Davis but in the end the US government simply released him. RE Lee waited for years for the knock on the door that never came. IMO they were not tried because they made it clear that unless they were tried “in camera” they would make their defense on the basis of secession of the states having been legal and that therefore their armed support of the Confederacy had not been treason because they were no longer US citizens when that support occurred. The US Government did not want that argument made. It is clear from the US Constitution that only US citizens are legally capable of treason to the US. Foreign soldiers captured in war are not considered to be guilty or accusable of treason to the US. One should also consider the fact that the US government required the seceded states to be re-admitted to the Union during reconstruction. If they had still been US States while they were in the CSA why did they have to be re-admitted. The same is true of those who took service under the Confederate government with their states. But, no matter, I expect that I will continue to receive the same nonsensical messages in what has become a nonsensical country. http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2011/01/the-tycoon-re-lee.html pl

  32. Bill H says:

    “Why is white supremacy acceptable?” Because of the first amendment which your father, and mine who was also at the Bulge, fought to preserve.
    I forget the source, “I despise every word that you speak, sir, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to speak them.”

  33. Lyttenburgh says:

    Oh, not only Antonov – MotorSich as well! Now they’d have the aircraft AND the engines for the. Both of them were not just factories, but a so-called “concerns”, which outgrew from the Soviet era construction bureaus (KBs).
    Globalization at action.

  34. Stephanie says:

    With all due respect, it seems pretty clear from the reports that in this instance, they were. Leaving aside that showing up in combat gear flourishing semiautomatics doesn’t exactly convey a message of “I come in peace,” apparently they started breaking up into small groups and randomly beating people. Plowing a car into a group of people whose political views you do not wholly agree with pretty much speaks for itself.
    I can’t imagine anyone looking at the events in Charlottesville and being pushed farther to the right, but YMMV.
    A statue dedicated to ordinary Confederate soldiers just got toppled in Durham. A direct result of Charlottesville.

  35. Stephanie says:

    Hard to have a serious discussion with people who think Jefferson Davis is the moral equivalent of Hitler.

  36. Stephanie says:

    Hmm. If that is indeed happening, it opens the possibility that the disavowals are occurring for tactical reasons and not moral ones, now that Spencer and Kessler have become toxic on a national level(?)

  37. Ishmael Zechariah says:

    Col. Lang, SST;
    Here is a non-rhetorical question. I wonder if you all could suggest any realistic, reasonably peaceful, greater than 50% probable means by which True American Patriots-TAP- (of every sex, religion and color; from North and South) can fight against the provocations of the Borg. I assume that the TAP folks lack the organization, financial and media powers of the Borgistas and are underground in government apparatus despite Trump.
    To elaborate: it seems to me that the Borg is intent on getting the public to identify true patriots with the ultra-right groups. This would marginalize and disenfranchise the only group who might pose a realistic domestic threat to their dreams of world domination (globalization). Having seen islamic democratization up close and personal in Turkey-the same scenario was extant- I would not put it past the Borg to be funding some/most of these ultra-right groups as well as their opponents on the left and using their media domination to push this narrative. Their efforts in Turkey resulted in the semi-destruction of the secular state, but we are slowly recovering (look over the latest promotion lists of the TSK. Our success is by no means guaranteed but we are still here. If Russia had not intervened in Syria, the izzie-saudi-borg axis would have dominated MENA by this time, with liver eaters dancing on our graves.
    Ishmael Zechariah

  38. Dr.Puck says:

    Here you go:
    Section 3.
    Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
    “IMO they were not tried because they made it clear that unless they were tried “in camera” they would make their defense on the basis of secession of the states having been legal and that therefore their armed support of the Confederacy had not been treason because they were no longer US citizens when that support occurred.”
    IMO the war is called the Civil War for an actual reason.
    Anyway, I haven’t read With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era by William A. Blair, and I’m fairly sure you have, so there’s that!

  39. turcopolier says:

    Dr. Puck
    “IMO the war is called the Civil War for an actual reason.” Yes, Northerners call it the CW so that they can feel good about invading THE confederacy. PL

  40. Clueless Joe says:

    It might be worth noting that most other European languages refer to the American Civil War as the Secession War – which is a bit more descriptive about what the war was about, I think.

  41. Mark Logan says:

    All,
    At great risk of skunking up the picnic…
    How it came to pass that Confederate symbols were adopted by fascists I have no clear picture. As I understand it the Confederacy stood for nearly the precise opposite. I suppose the Hindus wonder about the swastika in the same way.
    Some things just happen and fairness cannot be mandated. Terrible news for true southerners, and I’ll opine with confidence that if RE Lee was around to see his statue being used as a rallying point for those folks he’d have torn it down himself. The first in line to slap the colors of the Army of Northern Virginia from those hands should not have been “liberals”.

  42. Stephanie says:

    Washington and Jefferson founded the United States and led the young country as presidents. R.E. Lee waged war against it. I think that Lee, who lived in a house surrounded by mementoes of Washington, did what he thought was right and believed he was acting in the spirit of the founders by throwing off a government that no longer represented him, but the distinction is quite clear and I don’t think many will have problems understanding it.

  43. Stephanie says:

    Actually, that should read “who lived in a house filled with mementoes of Washington.” Obviously Mr. Custis’ memorabilia wasn’t lying around on the lawn.

  44. mikee says:

    I do not believe the Antonov factory in Ukraine is closed.
    From July 5th: “Air Transportation: Ukraine Makes Another Friend”
    https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairmo/20170705.aspx

  45. Fred says:

    jdledell,
    “What did we learn in our fight against the Nazi?”
    Two of my family lost thier lives fighting the Nazis. We as a societly learned far more that you are giving credit for.
    “I can vividly remember one white racist telling me…”
    I vividly remember multiple black racists beating me in Key West High School in 1976. I wasn’t the only victim of such attacks. All blacks were not collectively responsible for what those racists did then any more than than all blacks being responsible for BLM inspired killings now nor are all whites being responbile for Charlottlesville or Charleston. Thanks for the guilt trip though.

  46. Babak Makkinejad says:

    You are not going far enough. The Old South was the only counter weight to Puritans’ Project in the United States. Once that was removed, the Imeperial Puritans got going; men like John Hay and later TDR.
    Moreover, every child born to the Union of an African-American and another race exists because of Slavery; what is one to tell those children?
    It is best to let the sleeping dogs lie, in my opinion.

  47. Tel says:

    “American electorate is fracturing along racial lines. It began with Trump”
    No, no, no.
    Obama was very deliberately working the racial divisiveness so it began at least 8 years before Trump.
    Some of the race baiting divide-and-conquer strategies happened well before that. Minimum wage was originally designed as a tool of eugenics just to bring up an example.

  48. LondonBob says:

    I am seeing a lot of references to Mussolini short lived political ideology of the 1930-40s. Left-wing 1968 types like to call people ‘fascist’ long after George Orwell rightly dismissed the word as having no real meaning. I reproduce his words from ‘Politics and the English Language’: ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. This is even more true than it was when Orwell first wrote it in 1946.
    I also recall that the fascist powers were allied with the communists until the summer of 1939-41. The word ‘fascist’ was adopted by the Comintern instead of ‘Nazism’ because ‘Nazism’ tended to remind people of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Whatever my grandfather was fighting for from 1939-45 I doubt it was to fight fascism, I suspect like most he was fighting for the British Empire against the Germans.

  49. Nancy K says:

    Most Ameericans do not and never will think it is okay to March carrying Nazi and KKK symbols and spouting hate rhetoric aimed at Jews, Blacks, immigrants. The U.S. is not a country of and for white men only. We are all going to have to share and play nice.

  50. Dr.Puck says:

    This is researchable. It is more descriptive.
    I note that the idea that this war was between a Union and a newly minted foreign country, the Confederacy has taken on some new life here on STT. Before it did so I always associated it with rebel dead enders, or the ridiculous Lost Cause concept, or the groups POTUS implicitly defended yesterday in his insane presser.
    Of course there is the fact of the immediate or later recognition of the Confederacy as a newly minted sovereign entity by all those foreign countries, numbering to the impressive quantity of. . .

  51. Dr.Puck says:

    Babak you are aware of what the average racist thinks of a person that is multi-racial?
    Anyway your argument founders on the basics of contingency, since it could be redeployed to defend just about anything, given its structure; or (as experts in the informal logic would have it, its composition.)

  52. jdledell says:

    Bill H – If white supremacy ONLY involved speech, I could understand it better. However, it has a tendency to expand into active discrimination and that is when I have to call it out. Freedom of speech has always had limitations. Just as one cannot legally yell FIRE in a crowded theater, certain symbols of speech should be curtailed – like Nazi flags. Maybe you could agree with that if you were a Jew like me.
    I can still remember, in the late 1940’s as a child going to the town hall in Minnetonka, Minnesota where my father was trying to get a Building Permit to build a house for us and being greeted by a wall of protesters blocking the door with signs that said “Don’t let the Dirty Jews in our Town”. That kind of discrimination leaves a lifelong impression.
    He avoided Real estate agents for 2 years (the ones who had spread the word previously)living in a rented house in St. Louis Park,MN(aka as Jewtown) and then hired a straw man contactor to get the permit to build a house on land bequeathed to him by a gentile uncle.
    This is the genesis of my problem with white supremacy and unlimited free speech.

  53. turcopolier says:

    Dr. Puck
    Your opinion on the sovereign status of the CSA is interesting but merely reflective of hard core Northern bigotry. The only state that recognized the Confederacy was the Papal State, then about a third of Italy. But, in fact the US treated the Confederacy as a belligerent in matters of transfer of postal service and mail and exchange of prisoners of war. There was also a certain amount of trade, especially in cotton between the parties. pl

  54. turcopolier says:

    jdledell
    As a contrast between the two sides in the WBS, JF Davis had a Jew in his cabinet (Benjamin) as well as a Catholic (Mallory). There were also 9,000 soldiers in the CS Army who were self-declared as Jewish in War Department records now held by the US Archives. As to the building permit requested in Minnesota in the Deep North, I am not surprised. Having both Catholic Irish and ancient WASP ancestry I can tell you many such stories from the Irish side of the family. And, I remember being taken to a Jewish country club in the also in the Deep North around 1960. I was astonished that such a thing existed. pl

  55. Nancy K says:

    jdledell
    My father also fought in WW2 and was a POW in Germany, and he also would be turning over in his grave. My husband is Jewish and remembers while living in England being called names and beaten up because he was Jewish. He emigrated to Israel when he was 16 because of how he was treated, and arrived just as the 6 Day war begin but had to lie about his age to serve.
    Christian Americans who support Nazism and white supremacy are not Christian, either that or they have forgotten that the man they supposedly worship was a dark skinned Jew.

  56. Nancy K says:

    Of course not all whites are responsible for Charlottesville or Charleston because not all whites are KKK or white supremacists, or Nazis. If however allegiance is pledged to one of those groups than they do have shared responsibility for the outcomes.

  57. Nancy K says:

    The Vice President of the Confederacy was Jewish and I believe he went to live in England after the War. There were Sephardic Jews living in the South prior to the CW who had slaves.

  58. dilbert dogbert says:

    This might be a tactic for those who don’t want to confront the new American NAZI party with violence:
    https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/20799833_10209480334276454_3315101315179546864_n.jpg?oh=01ee1c546844de468855c5ca49d773df&oe=59F0E2B6

  59. Stephanie says:

    Davis got a lot of criticism for promoting Benjamin, who was called his “court Jew.” He told his critics where he could put their criticisms. Toward the end of the war Benjamin also argued for arming and freeing the slaves.
    He was a great favorite of Varina Howell Davis aka That Western Woman.

  60. turcopolier says:

    Nancy K
    So far as I know Alexander Stephens was not Jewish. You are probably thinking of Judah Philip Benjamin who undoubtedly was. He was successively Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State in Davis’s cabinet. He fled to England after the war, resumed his British nationality (born in Barbados)and became a famous British judge. pl

  61. turcopolier says:

    Nancy K
    A Jewish lady friend of my wife who is originally from Oregon ysed to work for the ant-defamation league or B’nai Brith, on of those. She worked in the editorial branch of their publications and says that most upper-class families in the pre-war South had some of that Sephardic blood. pl

  62. turcopolier says:

    jdleddell
    Looks like you left the italics on. pl

  63. Sam Peralta says:

    All
    Why do the liberals conflate Confederate symbolism with slavery & racism? Why is there no nuance in discussions on the Confederacy and the war with the Union states?
    It should be obvious to anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of the history that the dispute and subsequent war and especially the motivations of the protagonists were complicated. It wasn’t as black & white as many claim today.
    Slavery no doubt is abhorrent. However, human history is replete with instances of slavery from the Egyptians on. As Richard Sale’s essay notes there’s a demonic side to every human.

  64. TimmyB says:

    The claim that the “secession was legal” defense is what prevented treason trials after the Civil War doesn’t make much sense.
    First off, that defense depends upon a judge allowing a jury to hear it. Do you think the judges hearing treason trials would be from the North or the South? Obviously, the judges would be chosen by the victor, same as in all wars. So the chances are low that a Northern judge would even allow such a defense to be used.
    Moreover, there are good arguments for preventing that defense. It’s not as if the Confederate states sued the federal government in federal court for the right to secede. Instead, they took up arms. Thus, the right to secede isn’t really an issue. Instead, the issue is whether a State’s citizens have a right to take up arms against the federal government when their state has a dispute with the federal government. US courts have taken a dim view of parties in a dispute using violence to settle disputes, instead of using the court system. Frankly, I can’t see any US judge allowing that defense to be heard by a jury.
    But let’s assume that the judge allowed that defense to be heard by the jury. Again, does anyone really think that these trials would be held in the South? That is highly unlikely. Remember that many hundreds of thousands of Northerners were drafted into the Army. A few hundred thousand died fighting. Thus, it is difficult to believe a Northern jury would free Jefferson Davis because they bought the “secession was legal” defense. Common sense says it is highly unlikely that Northern jury would decide to free Jefferson Davis after everything the North was told about the war being just and all the sacrifices made during the war.
    In the highly unlikely event the trials were held in the South, the jury pool wouldn’t contain people related or connected to anyone who served in the Confederate military. Instead, it the jury would be made up of exslaves, carpet baggers and Northern occupation troops. That’s not a jury that would free Jefferson Davis either. Exslaves are unlikely to decide they should still be slaves because secession was legal, merely to free Jefferson Davis and others.
    Thus, the claim the North was afraid of Civil War defendants would use a “secesion was legal defense” and that such a defense would work and thus throw the government into chaos is unbelievable.

  65. Fred says:

    Nancy K,
    Does the “shared responsibility for the outcomes” include antifa, BLM and others who Trump last night labeled as the alt-left?

  66. Lyttenburgh says:

    “I do not believe the Antonov factory in Ukraine is closed. “
    Note the date. Now – from the mouth of the Ukrainian government itself (July 19th): http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/uk/cardnpd?docid=250157282
    Later that month, the Groysman’s cabinet approved the list of 1255 state enterprises, which are to be either liquidated (2/3) or privatized (1/3). Antonov included. They plan to do this by the end of the year.

  67. Lyttenburgh says:

    “I also recall that the fascist powers were allied with the communists until the summer of 1939-41.”
    “Allied”, LondonBob? Care to support your claim here?

  68. jdledell says:

    Fred – I am not making a statement against all whites – specifically white supremacists and neo-nazis of any color. I have a lot of sympathy for whites (and others)who have been screwed over economically in this country. We need to fix that. Until we get better economic equality these kind of race skirmishes will continue as an economic zero sum game. However, until we call out those who think they are better than others because of the color of their skins or the nature of their religion, we as a country and a society will not progress like we should.

  69. turcopolier says:

    timmy B
    The states had no need to sue the federal government on an issue of secession because exercising the option they would be outside the US federal system. what would have been the basis of the federal courts refusing to allow whatever defense an accused offered? pl

  70. Huckleberry says:

    White Identity Politics is here. White Identity Politics is not going away.
    White Identity Politics is the inevitable consequences of
    the approaching minority status of the native white population of North America
    aggressive anti-white / pro-multicultural Marxism
    and the failure of the Baby Boomers to leave a functioning political economy behind for their posterity.
    The sooner this is understood, the better this is going to be.
    Now you cannot say no one told you.

  71. mikee says:

    I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. The IMF will get a piece of the proceeds while a few oligarchs get some rust belt industries for pennies on the hryvnia.

  72. Fred says:

    jdledell,
    “We need to fix that. Until we get better economic equality these kind of race skirmishes will continue as an economic zero sum game.”
    The actions of the left and right at Charlottesville and after have everything to do with political power and nothing to do with economic equality, or more precisely equality of economic outcome. That is a notion that had noting to do with the foundation of our nation.

  73. jdledell says:

    Fred – I don’t disagree with your point on economic vs political power. I’m trying to point out that whether it is whites or blacks if those same people who feel powerless in our country were to have a decent middle income lifestyle many would not be tempted to join white or black extremist organizations and those organizations would be smaller and less disruptive.

  74. DH says:

    A very professional video showing the people in the crowd being plowed through, a young black woman describing how oppressive it feels to have Monticello looming over Charlottesville, and at 19:00 a not very bright man.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P54sP0Nlngg&feature=youtu.be
    I wonder what the estimated numbers on each side is.

  75. smoke says:

    On Monday afternoon, the Cville police chief, who appeared exhausted, said that the street Fields drove down was supposed to have been closed; that is what the plan was. “I don’t know if it was closed.”
    Since Fields ran into the rear of two stopped cars (stopped by jubilant counter demonstrators), it seems unlikely that the street was open when he turned into it.
    I have been unable to find any description of the “plan”, referred to a few times by the chief, nor any mention of what was the counter-demonstrators legal status. Has anyone found this information?
    It appeared that organization and discipline was much tighter on the part of the Right. But in my dawning awareness of antifa, it may be that they actually repudiate any but the loosest organization and coordination for themselves. They were not the only counter demonstrators, but witness consensus seems to place them at the scene of many of the more troubled incidents, often as provocateurs, sometimes as initiators of violence.
    It takes two to rumble. Hard to gather the overall picture, between absurd press reporting and the fact that incidents seem to have been scattered in time and place. On Monday, the police were still trying to sort it out, the chief encouraging any one who had information about any incident to contact the police and make a report.

  76. smoke says:

    Did you here of anyone being shot?
    Accounts I found reported that the armed guys in combat gear were from a nearby militia group (Loudon, maybe). They said many were veterans. The group were asked to serve as private security because 1) antifa has established a pattern across the country of showing up and causing trouble and sometimes violence at Right gatherings and 2) because often,in these situations, police have failed to protect demonstrators.
    These men stood at the edge of Emancipation park to separate demonstrators from counter-demonstrators, something the police seemed unprepared to do.
    Of course, if a reporter did not go into the park itself, this would have been what he saw, the defensive line mounted around the park by the demonstrators. There are long, live videos from inside the park – a completely different scene.

  77. smoke says:

    When I was a child in Virginia, most people just called it “the War”, but the full name was “the War Between the States”. My mother would correct me, if I said “Civil War.”

  78. LondonBob says:

    Lyttenburgh The Soviet Union helped Weimar Germany rearm in the 20s and carved up Eastern Europe with Nazi Germany.

  79. LondonBob,
    Actually, on the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the evidence is now I think reasonably clear that we pushed Stalin into it. Whether a different approach could have produced an effective strategy of ‘containment’ must remain an unanswerable question, but it is reasonably clear that the policy adopted by the Chamberlain government made the pact his least worst option.
    A central reason is that, as so often, political leaders were trying to avoid repeating past mistakes, and so ended up making new ones. Back in 1939 the British historian Donald Cameron Watt published an article ‘1939 revisited: on theories of the causes of wars’, based in part on ‘How War Came’, the monumental study of the diplomacy leading to the outbreak of war he published in the same year.
    As he brought out, British decision-making was shaped by a fear of re-run of what was believed to have happened in 1914 – that is, the view of the First World War as being due to ‘a series of miscalculations, misunderstandings and fears, in which no government could face the loss of credibility involved in withdrawal.’
    Moreover, it was believed that the Soviet government was deliberately trying to encourage such an outcome, by encouraging the Western democracies to confront German ‘revisionist’ demands, in particular over the Sudetenland, with promises of assistance. The plan attributed to Stalin was to exploit the lack of a direct Soviet land border with Czechoslovakia to stand aside from the war he had supposedly encouraged, and watch Germany and the Western powers destroy each in a new fratricidal war, creating favourable conditions both of direct Russian control and communism.
    As Cameron Watt writes, ‘covert intelligence suggested that bringing about of an Anglo-German war was a major aim of Soviet policy.’
    On 15 March 1939, the assumption that Hitler’s objectives – or at least, those for which he would risk a military confrontation with Britain – were restricted to bringing ethnic Germans into a Greater German ‘Reich’ collapsed, with the occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. The response to this by Chamberlain was the unilateral guarantee to Poland, whose effect was to precipitate Hitler’s overtures to Stalin, which led eventually to the two dictators coming to terms.
    Explaining his thinking in a letter written between these two events, Chamberlain made clear that he believed the ‘covert intelligence’:
    ‘I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty, and to be concerned only with getting everyone else by the ears.’
    Unfortunately, while there were all kinds of problems involved in securing an alliance with the Soviet Union, the ‘covert intelligence’ has turned out to be simply wrong, as was conclusively demonstrated by the 1999 study ‘Grand Delusion; Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia’ by the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky. In addition to knowing the British archives well, he was given unprecedented access to the Soviet.
    From a review by the American historian Kenneth Slepyan:
    ‘Gorodetsky argues that Stalin consistently followed a “balance of power” policy even before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. To Stalin, the Pact was purely defensive. Rather than viewing the coming war as an opportunity to spread world revolution, he hoped to keep the militarily unprepared Soviet Union out of the conflict. To that end, he followed a policy of strict neutrality, and feared that both Germany and Britain might attempt to draw the Soviet Union into the war. If Stalin saw the war as a chance for the Allies and Germany to bleed themselves white and let the Soviets move in and pick up the pieces, as others have argued, then it is not evident in the documents. In this light, the Soviet territorial acquisitions of 1939-40 were not part of any pre-conceived plans for expansion but instead were made in response to German gains, necessary to help the Soviets secure their position in Europe (i.e. the annexation of Eastern Poland came following the German conquest of Western Poland, the annexations of the Baltic States and the seizure of Romanian lands occurred in the context of the fall of France and the Low Countries). While Gorodetsky may be right about the timing of these actions, many historians might still question his portrayal of Stalin’s motives in these cases as being primarily defensive.’
    (See https://networks.h-net.org/node/10000/reviews/10279/slepyan-gorodetsky-grand-delusion-stalin-and-german-invasion-russia .)
    Whether Stalin might have expanded further in any case, in different circumstances, is an unanswerable question. What is reasonably clear, however, is that extra strategic depth caused by the annexation of the Baltics made the difference between success and failure in the siege of Leningrad.
    The ‘covert intelligence’ appears to have come from MI6 – which brings me to a coda to the story.
    One relevant point is that the fact that Stalin’s policy was largely driven by fear was amply apparent to competent analysts at the time. Perhaps ironically, Gorodetsky’s study is in large measure a restatement of the view of Stalin’s foreign policy held by the diplomats of the German Moscow Embassy. These people were not thugs, or fanatics, but were trying to make the best of an extraordinarily difficult situation.
    And indeed, one of the threads in Gorodetsky’s book is the long campaign waged by Werner von der Schulenberg, the German Ambassador at the time, to dissuade Hitler from what he and his colleagues saw as a war which was both totally unnecessary and likely to end in Germany’s destruction.
    In 1953, the former commercial attaché at the Embassy, Gustav Hilger would publish a memoir of those years – as collaborator he had selected Alfred Gustav Meyer, a young German Jewish refugee whose parents had been murdered in the Holocaust. Reiterating what had been the diplomats’ ‘house view’, at the time, Hilger wrote that there could be
    ‘not the slightest doubt that a deep fear of Hitler’s Germany was the essential guide to all Soviet foreign policy in the mid-1930’s. It led Moscow to enter the League of Nations and conduct a painfully futile struggle for active collective security against the Axis. At the same time it made the Kremlin bend every effort and strain every muscle to render the country strong politically, economically, ideologically, and militarily.
    A desperate race against time ensued which was carried on in a spirit of hysterical urgency.’
    The view that there could be ‘no conceivable doubt’ about this was, however, clearly not shared by MI6. Moreover, their view was restated in the study entitled 1992 ‘Icebreaker’ by the GRU defector and British intelligence asset Viktor Suvorov (actual name Vladimir Rezun). As an account of conversations in Moscow in the mid-1990s in Slepyan’s review makes clear, this vesion gained quite a following in Russia at the time.
    The Gorodetsky study developed out his original demolition of Suvorov/Rezun in his study ‘The Icebreaker Myth’, published in Russian in 1995.
    Given that the Suvorov/Rezun study was essentially attempting to defend the arguments made by MI6 back in the ‘Thirties, and that it was published when John Scarlett was that organisation’s bureau chief in that country, and Christopher Steele was cutting his teeth as an operative there, interesting questions are raised as to whether it represented the organisation’s ‘house view.’
    The point here is not to suggest that, as it were, Stalin was soft and cuddly – far from it. It is rather that in trying to navigate one’s way through the treacherous seas of international relations, the relevant question is not whether one should ‘trust’ or ‘distrust’ anyone – it is trying to get the best possible estimate of their capabilities and intentions, so one can anticipate how they may act, and in particular, react to one’s own actions.
    As we have seen time and again in recent years, with leaders one dislikes – sometimes with very good reason – it is the easiest thing in the world simply to make worst case assumptions, and also to assume that everything their opponents in or from the countries they rule say should be taken at face value. But this is not a prudent way to make policy.
    Today – as became very evident in the discussions at the Aspen Security Forum – many of the leaders of the Western intelligence agencies actively preen themselves on taking precisely the approach to Russia MI6 and Chamberlain took in the ‘Thirties. Now as then, there is no attempt to engage with the possibility that Russian agendas might be in large measure defensive – and the picture is painted of that country’s leaders as Machiavellian manipulators cunningly attempting to exploit ‘useful idiots’ to destroy the West.
    Moreover, while – to put it mildly – Putin is hardly Stalin, supposedly rational people in the West are now writing in a manner which makes Chamberlain look moderate. So, for example, in a recent piece in the ‘National Interest’ by the former director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Graham T. Allison, we read:
    ‘Technology, in effect, made Russia America’s insufferable but inescapable Siamese twin. The strategic reality is even more horrific. However demonic, however destructive, however devious, however deserving of being strangled Russia is, the brute fact is that we cannot kill this bastard without committing suicide.’
    (See http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-russia-back-basics-21901 .)
    This infantile drivel, however, brings one back to the need to try to get the history of the ‘Thirties right. For its counterpart, quite clearly, is an increasing reversion in Russia to accounts of that time which also oversimplify the past. Among them the view that rather than simply misreading both German and Russian policy, Chamberlain was doing what he suspected Stalin of doing: trying to get Hitler to destroy his enemies for him.

  80. Lyttenburgh says:

    “Lyttenburgh The Soviet Union helped Weimar Germany rearm in the 20s”
    Germany – not the 3rd Reich. But if we are to remember all abetters who helped void the Veraille treaty – why not remember British and American efforts why we are at it?
    “and carved up Eastern Europe with Nazi Germany.”
    I object to the use of the word “with”.
    The question, if you already forgot it, was: what is your evidence, that the “the fascist powers were allied with the communists” till the summer 1941? Do you know the definiation of the word “aliied”?

  81. Lyttenburgh says:

    “As Cameron Watt writes, ‘covert intelligence suggested that bringing about of an Anglo-German war was a major aim of Soviet policy.’”
    How this remind me of the modern “intelligence” in the US, claiming that Russia hacked their elections! 🙂
    “…and Christopher Steele was cutting his teeth as an operative there”
    HIM?!
    Also – thanks to the NI link.
    My objection here is in the use of the term “ally” to describe Soviet-German relations in 1939-40. I ask for hard evidence, for international treaties which would pronounce both of them Allies. There was a Tripartite Pact and the creation of the Axis. Where was anything similar, that would leave no doubt as to the international status of the USSR and Germany? “Russia was allies with Hitler” is an old trope, most popular in those countries, who failed in 1938 and now wants to forget about it and find to convenient scapegoat while they are at it.

  82. smoke says:

    smoke @77
    2nd paragraph should read:
    Since Fields ran into the rear of two stopped cars (stopped by jubilant counter demonstrators), it seems unlikely that the street was closed, when he turned into it.

  83. smoke says:

    David Habakkuk @81
    Fascinating example of the perilous process of forming conclusions from history and the critical importance of sound intelligence and analysis in decisions of state.
    I have little success persuading spouse or friends that perhaps contemporary Russian actions could be evaluated from the perspective of Russian defense. A hypothetical, counter example is my only gambit that elicits a bit of interest; namely, how would the US react if Russian missiles were set up a couple hundred miles from the Mexican border, and Russian troops were conducting exercises with Mexico? Or Cuba? But one is too far past and the other too unlikely. It is impressive how effective the unrelenting pounding on a theme by public media can be.
    But press reports cannot be the basis for the conclusions of Aspen Security types. They have security clearances and access to far more information than the public. And they have experience and expertise in the area. So what explains it?
    It is possible these experts are correct. Many seem persuaded. The public arguments, as you note, sound weak, both grandiose and simplistically self-serving.
    Until I am persuaded, perhaps your historical example will bolster my effort to encourage broader consideration among a few.

  84. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Collectivization was forced on Stalin, a very prescient man, by the course of events in Germany.

  85. sam says:

    Isn’t the left lucky that Americans, on the right, are consitutional incapable of Salt March tactics.

  86. Fred says:

    jdledell,
    The response of the left after being called out by the President for their own violence has been an explosion of vitriol with a cover barrage of soft peddling excuses like yours. Feel free to ask your friends to denounce BLM and the alt-left and let us all know how that is received.

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