Press and Politicians are Blind to the Truth If you get your news from NBC, this is what you learned about yesterdays Unite the Right rally: Charlottesville White Nationalist Rally Violence Prompts State of Emergency. Thats 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.
Of all people, it was Donald Trump who came the closest to getting it right, condemning hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. This, of course, earned him near-universal condemnation. As former Vice President Joe Biden explained, There is only one side, and the problem was Unite the Right. This prompted a storm of retweets and similar sentiments. Virginias attorney general Mark Herring tweeted that violence, chaos, and apparent loss of life in Charlottesville is not the fault of many sides. It is racists and white supremacists. Actress Leslie Grossman probably expressed the only-one-side view best.
Here, one side is demonstrating peacefully, though provocatively; the other sidethe good sideis committing violent aggression. (Swastikas were extremely rare in Charlottesville, but they make for better anti-racist graphics than Confederate flags.) So this is the moral calculus of Joe Biden, the Virginia attorney general, and the rest of the Left. It wouldnt matter if every hand lifted by Unite the Right was in strict self-defense; the violence is their fault. Racially conscious whites deserve violence simply because of what they think.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe saw only one side, in a widely praised speech, telling Unite the Right, You came here to hurt people, and you did hurt people. Is Terry McAuliffe a mind-reader? Would they have hurt anything or anyone if counter-demonstrators had not showed up with shields and batons, screaming and throwing smoke bombs, determined to shut down the demonstrationand hurt Nazis?
One young white man did crash his car into demonstrators, killing one. We dont yet know his motives, but even if he deliberately hurt people, there was just one of him, and everyone associated with Unite the Right has condemned him.
Click for Full Text!