Written by Paul Craig Roberts; Originally appeared at paulcraigroberts.org
What the liberal/progressive/left is trying to do with Charlottesville is to associate Trump supporters with White Supremacists and in this way demonize Trump supporters so that they will not have a voice when Trump is overthrown in a coup. Or it can be put in a different way: Charlottesville is being used by someone to discredit Trump and the people who elected him in order to pave the way for a coup, and the liberal/progressive/left is enabling the plot.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Upon reflection, I think that for most of the liberal/progressive/left the denunciations and one-sided interpretation of Charlottesville are just the ingrained knee-jerk reaction of people brought up in Identity Politics. In Identity Politics, everyone is a White Hat except racist, sexist, homophobic, gun-nut white males. The only tolerable white males are those who accept this characterization of themselves. All others are “white supremacists” or “nazis.”
From what I read on progressive websites, those imbued with Identity Politics are letting the emotionalism of the politics run away with them. My friend, Rob Kall, who is fair and open-minded and posts my columns on OpEdNews, including those to which he takes exception, writes: “Trump is Now the Leader of White Supremacists and Nazis.” Rob reaches this conclusion because Trump held both sides responsible for the violence in Charlottesville. By seeing equivalence between the two sides, “He made it clear that he was siding with the White Supremacists, giving them aid, support and encouragement.” https://www.opednews.com/artic (You might remember Jean Kirkpatrick who denounced liberals for seeing moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the US.) I doubt this is the way Trump saw his statement. From the news videos I saw, there seemed to be plenty of hate on both sides. Certainly, there is plenty of hate for Trump among progressives.
In the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri finds Trump’s words condemning the violence on both aides to be “despicable words.” Petri apparently thinks that, counter to what the news coverage shows, the counter protesters did not engage in any violence, or else she thinks that violence from this side was justified but not violence from the other side. She condemns Trump for his statement: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” In her opinion, the last three words, “on many sides” shows that Trump is partial to White Supremacists. http://www.denverpost.com/2017
Richard Eskow joins the chorus. He links together deaths in Charlottesville, New York, Portland, Charleston, under “white nationalist terror” and hands them to Trump. https://www.opednews.com/artic
The Daily Kos also equates Trump’s blaming both sides for the violence, which is what the media reports show to be the case, with a defense of “white supremacist/neo-Nazi violence.” https://www.opednews.com/artic
Joe Macare at Truthout tells us that “Truthout will continue to report on the threat of neo-Nazis in the street — as well as those in the White House who are in lockstep with their agenda. We’ll talk to the people organizing against fascism on all fronts. We won’t equivocate or condemn ‘both sides.’ We won’t blame the Nazis’ targets for the hate they receive. But we know that these are not the only faces of racism. Whether it manifests itself in education policy, in gentrification, in economic inequality, in racist policing or in the United States’ immigration and ‘defense’ policies, Truthout will continue exposing white supremacy in all its forms.”
Truthout’s Anna Sutton expresses her “Heartbreak, Anger.” She doesn’t know where to begin. But she sees a fundraising opportunity. Make a donation and Truthout will “tell it like it is” against the “corporate and right-wing media” that are “bending over backwards to normalize Trump and the violence and xenophobia displayed by his rabid followers.” One wonders what corporate right-wing media she is talking about, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, all of which denounce Trump 24/7?
How do we avoid the question: who is over the top, the “alt-right” at Charlottesville or their progressive critics?
Over at CounterPunch, a remnant of America’s left-wing, John Eskow tells us that he has walked among white supremacists “since I first learned to walk. They surrounded me in blue-collar Utica, New York—an early capitol of Rust Belt America, back in the 1950s.”
Here is Identity Politics’ association of the working class with White Supremacy. The all-powerful, all-threatening White Supremacists could do nothing to prevent—who?—from offshoring their jobs to Asia. But these people, who are so powerless that they could not even save their own jobs, are a great threat to us good people, who sat sucking our thumbs in unconcern while their economic lives were snuffed out. https://www.counterpunch.org/2
CounterPuncher John Wight, prior to affirming the dogma that from the very beginning America has been “synonymous with white supremacy,” first unleashes both barrels on the liberal/progressives: “Strident declamations against fascism in Charlottesville from those who supported fascists in Kiev, calls for action to be taken against extremists in America by those who’ve been supporting them in Syria. What is this if not rank hypocrisy?”
Ah, so, why did the liberal/progressives align with the military/security complex and the neoconservatives against Donald Trump who declared, to his undoing, his intention to normalize relations with Russia, thus removing the enemy needed to justify the $1 trillion annual budget of the military/security complex? These vast monies could have gone into health care for the unprovided, into public assistance for the unprovided, but the liberal/progressive/left would not have it. If the liberal/progressives are so against violence and hate, why do they support the hate campaign against Trump and Russia?
Has Identity Politics made the liberal/progressive/left deaf, dumb, and blind such that their reality is limited to the emotions that Identity Politics produces?
This is a valid question. It is not meant to be derogatory. It is meant to lead to an understanding of our plight as a country. How does a country in which blacks are taught to hate whites, women are taught to hate men, and whose history is explained as white oppression successfully deal with the defining issues of our time?
Indeed, such a country is incapable of even recognizing the real issues. It seems clear enough that our doom is certain.
Identity Politics has such a firm hold on universities, media, all sorts of subject areas in public schools such as black studies, women studies, race studies, native American studies, and in Democratic Party politics that reality is absent from the picture. Most of what is deplored by Identity Politics are simply products of history, not of the evil intentions of white males. It once was the case that the function of liberal progressivism was to reform what was inherited from the past and had been morally outgrown.
But this progressive agenda has been abandoned to hate that is just as wrong and deadly as the hate to which the liberal progressives object. So we are left with what: hate against hate. This is not promising.
We have to come back to the question, why is the liberal/progressive/left comfortable with being aligned with the warmonger neoconservatives and the military/security complex against President Donald Trump who intended, until he was blocked, to reduce the extremely dangerous to all of mankind tensions between the US and Russia created over 24 years by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes? If you are really against violence, why oppose the only president we have had since Reagan who wants to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict?
I have asked this question a number of times. I have never had an answer from the liberal/progressive/left.
Are we to conclude that they are unaware, lost as they are in their hatred of white, heterosexual males, that they don’t care, that they want Trump destroyed even it Pence, the replacement, leads us into unwinnable war with Russia and China?
Why do the environmental and wildlife preservation organizations jump on the anti-Trump bandwaggon. Are they unaware of the consequences to all life of nuclear war?
What explains the total unreality in which Americans exist? We are supposed to be the leaders of the world. How can we lead when we are so utterly, hopelessly blind and stupid and consumed by hate?
Racism, how about the Jews? Jew first, goy are inferior or sub human. These pedophile cult racist fascists are trash. Their evil cult should be outlawed. It’s the source of a lot of the problems on this planet.
These liberal, nigga-and-gay-loving white left-trash is responsible for the defense position of whites in Western Europe and the US. Since 1968 all things turned worse and finally they called it political correctness. It is needed to blow all these scum away – together with their beloved multi-cultural way of life basing on the import of masses of naughty and lazy immigrants.
In all likelihood most of the groups participating in the political Kabuki ritual in Charlottesville have been thoroughly infiltrated for years by various state security (police) agencies. What does say about the honesty about the events there?
As to violence. What is happening in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Libya etc is violence. What occurred there was a stroll in the park.
The belligerent people who are into showing up at these events wearing ski masks, motorcycle helmets and carrying baseball bats and chains so that they can engage in violence are part of the problem, and when they break the law they need to be arrested and prosecuted regardless of whose side that they’re on. People dressed like that should have their IDs checked before they even have an opportunity to engage in hostilities.
Do you want them on the street in front of your home, office, shop or someplace that you want to go?
It is sad that individuals can not settle their differences without force. I am for less police and less laws, not more. There seems to be a direct correlation of the two.
Unfortunately it are the corporate fascist oligarchs of the world that make that difficult. How is it that those criminal parasites end up in control of the two?
In a phrase I am for “less suppression and less oppression.” If only….
You didn’t answer the question:
“Do you want them on the street in front of your home, office, shop or someplace that you want to go?”
And if they are there, what do you suggest doing about it before and when they become violent?
You have your answer. Is one to take it, it is not the one you were hoping?
This whole Charlottesville altercation thing was avoidable and pointless. Someone should have bitten down on their lips and let the morons go unhindered to their demo. Instead they chose to make a point that really did not have to be made.
Now the corporate state is misusing it as a pretext for further acts of repression.
How convenient.
No, you didn’t answer the question. These types of trouble makers show up at numerous demonstrations. What’s your answer, let them riot?
That is one way of keeping the “alpha male” population in check, at least those with more brawn then brain.
Seriously, there would be far less chance of “riot” (or revolution) if there was an equitable program/plan of resource apportionment and say in governance then what currently exists. Of course that would mean for some keeping in check some of their baser more animal instincts.
When it comes down to it, this is what this is all about.
I didn’t ask you about your social views, I asked you what you think should be done with trouble makers wearing masks and carrying clubs and chains when they show up at demonstrations to engage in violence.
Yes Richard a staged event. The behavior of this daily stormer website also looks staged calling on persons to disrupt the funeral of the woman who was killed and applauding her death. She was an innocent did nothing to them. It seems like a psyop (problem, reaction, solution technique) to me where the Daily Stormer is to be used to try to discredit anyresistance to the global criminal elite. They create the problem and use the media etc. to produce the desired reaction, something must be done, so their long desired solution can be implemented, which could never be enacted without the psyop. A similar thing happened in Canada the later 1980s and early 1990s. Another government run so called hate group, the heritage front, was created, led, run, and financed by the RCMP Canada’s federal police. The leader of this group an undercover agent of the RCMP, ordered and financed his followers, to commit all kinds of violent and illegal acts, making the RCMP and him responsible for all the violence etc as the group would not of even existed without the government creating it. This was then used to pass so called hate laws in Canada, which ban free speech against the criminal global elite, who own and run the country, removing the last elements of democracy from Canada and the empire as it is now illegal to criticize or to have anyone run against the empire in Canada now.
The main problem is that the USA is an hypocritical society. For example, you can’t talk about jews without being called anti-semitic. Even if israel bombed the USS liberty, no one in the USA will talk about. What is the role of israel in 9/11 ? No one can talk about it.
USA wants to bomb Iran. Nobody knows why. There is absolutely no debate. Just criminals that want blood.
So, this has led to reduce the freedom of speech, the fundamental concept for a healthy society.
So now, you have to be tolerate with everyone even if they are not tolerant at all.
And the main problem problem is that races do exist (so why racism don’t ?). And also freedom of religion is also a problem because the abrahamic religions are violent and political religions.
And I see that the right blame the left but the right is as much hypocritical and criminal as the left. the irght is the UISA has nothing to do with the right in Europe because USA is not a real country. In the USA, the right is just a globalist right.
What we are seeing is the failure of the Republic. The republic is not a democratic system above all in USA. In USA you must choose between Dem or Rep. Choosing from two choices is not a choice, it’s an illusion of choice.
USA wants to spread the reublic over the world. But, what we are seeing is that the countries that copy this system are having a lot of problems.
The actions of the repressive and disingenuous anti Trumpers seems the only thing that keeps this crowd from being at each others throat, which are full of hypocrites. BLM will espouse the virtues of leaders such as Martin Luther King Malcolm X which both supported segregation and promoted racism as both talked about Black power and separation of blacks from whites, the only one to say kill whitey so plainly back then was Malcolm X or Detroit Red . The lives they led were in contrast to their public image while being with white women and both being adulterers, the image many want to see is the one presented by the media but the small few see the other. They had those around them who would reflect their real true selves such as Elijah Cummings for MLK,Louis Farrakhan for Malcolm X. They reason why their image would remain was that both had such strong women they were married to who kept to this public image , if they weren’t these men would have been seen as they truly were “Hypocrites” espousing one thing and actually being another.
The old saying behind every man is a strong woman, yet they failed in being honest to themselves and others and in the end have shown their true weakness. That epithet has become incomplete and tarnished with the real images that are the actuality of it.
This style of continued rhetoric was further emboldened by the election Barack “Insane” Obama , why “insane” because only a madman would have done the things he did to create racial division and sow world instability by supporting radical political groups and terrorists as he has done. Obama signed a secret executive order in financially supporting ISIS and Radical Islamist factions including support for Al Qaeda. Obama also removed any reference to the Magna Carta to the Constitution this man was on a path of destruction and that meant destroying the US constitution and it’s people.Obama has never been a stranger to the ideas of segregation and racial divide and support for the Islamic religion. Many thought when said the word change didn’t mean the change we see unfolding today.
There are always those who revel in chaos such as being brought to the front in the world with the various issues besetting the world. They will always be willing to sacrifice others so they may gain but if they were to face the same dilemma that others faced, they will destroy their creation in order to survive. This in the long run will mean a total erosion of the constitution and Martial law will be employed to wipe out both sides while they tell those who are not part of it to stay in their homes. Once this have been quelled they will claim that safeguards need to be put in place and the Constitution will be rewritten since Obama did start working on it destroying it during his 2 terms.
The problem is this will embroil the whole North American Continent , there will be none left unscathed by these actions.
Sir, you know as well as me, that is the way they do.
Paul, People who support Clinton and her war agenda are not liberals. Clinton barely qualifies as a wedge issue liberal having voted for late term abortion ban and caved in on many other issues that true liberals hold dear.. The bitterly disappointed Clintonistas are the opposing forces in a battle between oligarchs. Those that tag along are simply distressed what they don’t understand. How a nation that prides itself on freedom can be enslaved by a handful of regressives. To say that offering courses on women’s and African American history teaches hatred is to ignore our own true history and circumstances that made that kind of exploration necessary. Debunking a skewed account of who we are is no more teaching hatred than investigative journalism is teaching hatred. If the facts are deplorable that is not the fault of the messenger.