How did Charlottesville become the Gettysburg of extremist political theater? The media are hyper-focused on the details: statues, rallies, hate, violence.
Charlottesville has endured the national spotlight for months now, the news cycle stalled over us. It’s all just ‘Charlottesville’, with the era-defining impact to society as Gettysburg was to American history. To understand the overlying events, step back from the political drama and focus on the underlying script of this Shakespeare-in-the-Park play.
The picture above (from Monday’s Daily Progress) is a small, telling moment during the Unite the Right Rally. The reaction against Rally participants wasn’t typical, but it wasn’t unusual. This was the kind of deep reaction the Rally brought to our town from across the nation.
And this violent response was exactly what the Rally organizers were hoping for. The Rally participants were precisely the right cast to bring out the absolute worst reaction in our community, as well as the out-of-town counter-protesters.
What did the Rally organizers want? First, in some theatrical way, to make Rally participant tactics (helmets, shields, batons, side arms, etc.) look like a proportional “response”. Second, goad and bully the protesters off the moral high ground. This success was already partly established at the white supremacist rally on July 9th, but they were taking no chances, bringing in every aggressive tactic they could think of, while blaming every other entity in earshot of doing the same thing.
The result? Moral high ground got flattened. The tactic proved highly successful.
The larger plan — the Rally organizers’ strategy — was to open the door to mainstream publicity and build up some solid ground for a run at legitimacy. The more it looked like a battle of honor and pride between two equally violent groups, the more the umbrella political movement could earn open support from sympathetic, but as-yet unspoken, political entities. And nothing earns legitimacy better than large crowd numbers.
Within 18 hours, things went from bad to a national day of mourning. Three people were dead, and a cry of outrage. We’d lost a piece of our national soul. The only word you needed was “Charlottesville”.
One problem was that most of the players weren’t from Charlottesville, just as General Lee was not from Gettysburg. The Rally events over that weekend inflamed the target audience (literally and figuratively), the Charlottesville community and anyone else attending. Local rally organizer Jason Kessler was quoted in the weeks running up to Rally day, saying that Charlottesville itself was the target, since it was (paraphrased) “80% liberal voters and elitists”.
After the disaster, Rally organizers and participants cried victory and announced that similar rallies would take place at 10 or so other target venues, including Boston and San Francisco. The rhetoric posted on Rally goer websites and by Twitter was something like ‘we marched on the UVA grounds, and held the ground near the [Jefferson] statue for over 20 minutes’.
And then the Rally movement began to circle the wagons. As the negative reaction across the nation erupted, Rally organizers turned to their scapegoats to diffuse mounting blame. The Rally participants, among other easy targets, provided the bounty. At first, the Rally pinned the violence on the protesters, as planned. Later, the distancing commenced, and they added the more extreme participants made culpable for the violence. Rally organizer Jason Kessler, after some pretty amazing Twitter and internet news rhetoric, was openly disavowed by the more “centrist” organizers, such as alt-right leader Richard Spencer. Then organizers began blaming the local Police for the violence.
Will that be enough to diffuse blame for the unbelievable mayhem and violence? The “Unite the Right” organizers filed suit against the Charlottesville Police. This is an easy move, and leverages the bad press the Police were already enduring over the event. However, targeting the police doesn’t provide enough political cover, so they need to move to larger, more politically valuable targets.
So far, the more centrist organizers and participating organizations have had some success diffusing blame to the fringes and the local elements. They basked in weeks of international internet-media attention. Bad attention, you might say, but to some, bad attention is the best kind.
Let me take about 10 steps back. In the same Monday’s Daily Progress article, there’s a more telling picture (they have video, too). Taken at nearly the same moment as the first picture, this shows the Rally participant pointing a pistol toward the man holding the flaming aerosol can. And fires his gun — through the crowd — and exits, stage right. Thankfully, based on the pictures, Police arrested Richard Wilson Preston, 52, in Towson, MD for discharging a firearm into the rally crowd next to Emancipation Park. This was only a crime because it was within 1000 feet of a school.
The larger strategy of the Unite the Right organizers may have been too heavy-handed. 200 or so armed male Rally goers, many extremists, are bound to “mess up” in front of that many cameras and phones. The post-Rally arrest list is increasing daily, and influential political players are publicly disavowing anyone associated with the Rally in the national press.
Yes, guns and clubs were overkill. Helmets, shields, torches and flags would have portrayed them MUCH better as the underdogs, and victims of discrimination, marginalization, and societal disenfranchisement.
On the minus side, the solid middle-ground didn’t materialize for the Rally movement. Neither did the mainstream legitimacy they were hoping for. On the plus side, some significant and surprising allies have tacitly taken them in, simply by publicly separating them from the more extreme elements of openly hateful and violent organizations represented at the Rally.
Does implicit forgiveness translate to implicit acceptance? Yes, in politics. Rally organizers were able to separate themselves from the groups they included in their own Rally. And that acceptance came from President Trump, the highest seat in the nation.
Act 1 results? One out of two for Rally organizers.
