Political Violence in Charlottesville VA
Aug. 13th, 2017 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amyvanhymIt is difficult to assess the motivations of someone simply by their decision to drive a car into a crowd of people when the relevant politics are not regularly associated with vehicle attacks. The driver could have been someone on the right retaliating against Antifa. Or, it could have been a driver scared or angered by aggressors who were attacking the car. It could have been a skilled driver hired as part of an organized scheme. It could have been someone thinking they were attacking Unite the Right rather than Antifa. This may have been a premeditated political strategy, or it may have been a mad moment of overwhelming frustration. At time of writing I don't know.
More important to public discourse is the atmosphere surrounding the crash. The way power was exercised by the people who have it -- that is, police, judges and politicians -- is what matters here. Once violence starts, it doesn't matter who has the right political ideas. What matters is minimizing violence first, and maximizing the freedom to express ideas in very close second, including the ideas we hate the most, so they can be defeated using better ideas. What interests me is whether politicians and police performed their duties well.
I've listened to several interviews with eyewitnesses, who witnessed the crash and/or the entire Unite the Right rally Saturday August 12th. Here is what I've gleaned from my sources, which I will provide*. I gave each interview only a single listen. If I've made a mistake, it was not intentional and I will accept a correction of my summary.
Although a state of emergency was declared in Virginia in response to the tension between Unite the Right and Antifa, it was ruled in court that the Unite the Right group's permit to assemble would remain legal. While the rally was scheduled to officially begin at noon, people on both sides arrived at the designated location, a park, before noon. Unite the Right populated the park while Antifa surrounded the park, so that Unite the Right participants would have to get close to, and even cut through, Antifa protesters to get into the park. This resulted in some violence. Police set up barricades between Unite the Right and Antifa, but Antifa tore the barriers down before noon. Violence erupted between the sides. At this point, police declared Unite the Right's assembly unlawful, contradicting the court ruling in a way that rally participants allege was illegal. Police then began to disperse the crowd in a disorganized fashion. Rather than send the groups away in opposite directions, the police allowed both sides to spill chaotically into the streets where they mixed together and broke off into miniature makeshift militias. While people from both sides did engage in some violence, Antifa initiated the majority of it, and did more damage, as they are notorious for doing and openly take pride in doing. I'd also like to note that both left and right sides contained both peaceful and violent factions.
Effectively speaking, and assuming these separate corroborating witness accounts are correct, the police did what Antifa wanted them to do. Antifa is such a violent movement that when judging them by their history of warlike messaging ("liberals get the bullet too"), arson, beatings with fists and flagpoles (punching "Nazis"), smashing shop windows, tossing explosives into crowds, and above all their use of black-bloc anonymity tactics to avoid individual consequences for organized violence, I think it's fair to describe them as a terrorist group. Antifa tore down the barriers in order to commit violence against Unite the Right, and rather than put them back up or act as a human barrier between groups, the police backed down and allowed Antifa and their targets to run wild.
I am aware that the police in Charlottesville may have been afraid to get involved. Maybe they were undermanned. Maybe they were aware that dealing physically with protesters could result in optics which would martyr protesters in ways that would spread like wildfire through media, including the smartphones of attendees, resulting in escalation. Maybe the police were ordered to act exactly the way they did. I'm not blaming anyone on the ground, nor am I accusing the police on the ground of choosing sides.
Rewinding a few months: I watched the entire Battle of Berkeley live, via 3+ livestreams and other supplemental material. To summarize, a right-leaning (but also diversely populated) free speech rally in Berkeley was attended in part by people with shields, helmets and weapons to use in self-defense, as they expected the rally to be attacked by Antifa. Police confiscated all of their weapons and most of their shields, and left. The rally was then violently attacked by Antifa, who did have weapons, and the police were nowhere in sight. Officers reported on video that they had been told to stand down by the chief of police. If I remember correctly, it was later found that these instructions came from the mayor of Berkeley, Jesse Arreguin, who was affiliated on social media with Yvette Felarka, the leader of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), an Antifa-friendly and cultlike pro-violence far-left political group that stretches across several states. It appears very likely that the mayor and/or chief of police in Berkeley hoped Antifa members would attack and seriously injure the free speech rally participants until they gave up and left. In the end, the rally participants lost their patience, fought back and chased Antifa away on their own.
Anyway, my point is that it is demonstrably possible for politicians in positions of power, as well as police chiefs, to be so corrupt that they deliberately escalate political violence by one side while deliberately disabling the other side, which naturally moves the victimized side closer to future violence and increases mutual villification. These powerful people, who are either strategically or negligently fueling political violence, are the people to watch and expose.
Whatever else happened in Charlottesville and Berkeley, better policing is needed. Cops need to be not just reprimanded when they do a bad job, but also rewarded when they do a good job. They need good strategic training, safe numbers, competitive pay. They need politicians and chiefs whose allegiances lie with keeping the peace above all else.
Why are the peacekeepers failing?
This is the question I want to see asked and explored until it is sufficiently answered across all media, mainstream and alternative. I fear that instead I'll see violent footage repeated and repeated to sate morbid fascination and serve as bias-confirming hate-porn, while politicians and pundits sing gutturally about bigotry and disgust to the tune of disavowing every doubleplusungoodism under the sun.
When people don't spill out through the streets to fight, when tensions aren't fed by apparent double standards favoring the more violent factions, when people aren't bottlenecked down sidestreets and mutually provoked toward their boiling points by aggression and confusion, it is much more difficult for peppersprayings, bikelock beatings, horrible crashes, and deaths to occur.
* Charlottesville violence eyewitness sources:
Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange interviews Ford Fisher
Lauren Southern interviews James Allsup
PeterSweden interviews Hunter Wallace
Man punches reporter recording the Charlottesville crash
[EDIT @4AM - Why sleep, right?]
Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas was reported to have put the department through a "major overhaul" in an article published last month. link. I wonder whether some of the issues managing violence in Charlottesville may stem from the timing, that is, many officers adjusting to large recent changes at once under stressful conditions. But I don't think I'll be reading the whole article tonight.
[EDIT @1:25PM]
Police ordered to stand down.
ACLU has confirmed that police inaction was in accordance with orders.
Charlottesville mayor [Michael Signer] defends police response to deadly protests
"I think we have a responsibility as a government sworn to the Constitution to not just allow free speech, but to protect it, as long as it's done peaceably, which is what we attempted to do this weekend. [...] If you have folks who come in and act unpeacebly, you'll get unlawful assembly declared, which is what happened yesterday."
There were many peaceful attendees on left and right, but in this interview Signer does not seem interested in protecting their speech from violent retribution. Nor does he show interest in the nature of the conflict or the source of violent instigation. He seems more interested in blaming the victims. One group got a permit and hosted an event. Another group surrounded their event and initiated violence to get the event shut down. The police/mayor responded by doing exactly what the violent aggressors wanted them to do. The mayor does not seem willing to acknowledge that this is a problem.
Mayor Michael Signer and police chief Al Thomas must work much harder in the future to ensure violent individuals are separated from public protests, and from each other, in order to preempt escalation and protect the free expression of the nonviolent. These leaders must also be thoroughly investigated (perhaps good journalism and a lawsuit will accomplish this?) to ascertain whether their failure stemmed from a political conflict of interest. If their negligence was criminal, prosecute them. If the escalation was instead the result of innocent mistakes, or wholly out of their control, find out why and adjust strategies so that future peacekeeping efforts in Charlottesville and elsewhere will have greater rates of success.
Signer and Thomas, not to mention Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, were entrusted to protect Heather Heyer, and the 19 injured in the crash, and the droves of people pepper sprayed and pummeled at the Unite the Right event. Why did they fail?
[EDIT @5pm]
Quality coverage by Sargon of Akkad.
If you care about what happened in Charlottesville, do watch the above linked video in full. Among many other things, it corroborates mayor Michael Signer's apparent willingness to use his power to act upon his ideological hostility toward Unite the Right, which he did by stopping peacekeepers from intervening. All evidence suggests that Mayor Signer deliberately prioritized ideologically-fueled street warfare over strategies for deescalation; that Charlottesfille/Virginia authorities knowingly fueled violence in order to create justification to shut down the legally protected expression of a group of political undesirables. This was a short-sighted and irresponsible thing to do. People who do this are not qualified to hold positions of leadership.
[EDIT August 19]
Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy has some really interesting beliefs too. (album mirror)
CNN did not interview critics of AntiFa for the following piece, and fails to mention AntiFa is communist:
"People put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous. And then therefore we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do, whether it is illegal or not."
Interviewer: "People will push back on that and say that the black bloc is to keep people from being identified and arrested when they break the law, when they commit crimes."
"Damn right!" (big grin) "It's a good way to avoid the ramifications of law enforcement."
-- Scott Crow, ANTIFA-organizing professor (timestamp 2:23) (KiA link)
More important to public discourse is the atmosphere surrounding the crash. The way power was exercised by the people who have it -- that is, police, judges and politicians -- is what matters here. Once violence starts, it doesn't matter who has the right political ideas. What matters is minimizing violence first, and maximizing the freedom to express ideas in very close second, including the ideas we hate the most, so they can be defeated using better ideas. What interests me is whether politicians and police performed their duties well.
I've listened to several interviews with eyewitnesses, who witnessed the crash and/or the entire Unite the Right rally Saturday August 12th. Here is what I've gleaned from my sources, which I will provide*. I gave each interview only a single listen. If I've made a mistake, it was not intentional and I will accept a correction of my summary.
Although a state of emergency was declared in Virginia in response to the tension between Unite the Right and Antifa, it was ruled in court that the Unite the Right group's permit to assemble would remain legal. While the rally was scheduled to officially begin at noon, people on both sides arrived at the designated location, a park, before noon. Unite the Right populated the park while Antifa surrounded the park, so that Unite the Right participants would have to get close to, and even cut through, Antifa protesters to get into the park. This resulted in some violence. Police set up barricades between Unite the Right and Antifa, but Antifa tore the barriers down before noon. Violence erupted between the sides. At this point, police declared Unite the Right's assembly unlawful, contradicting the court ruling in a way that rally participants allege was illegal. Police then began to disperse the crowd in a disorganized fashion. Rather than send the groups away in opposite directions, the police allowed both sides to spill chaotically into the streets where they mixed together and broke off into miniature makeshift militias. While people from both sides did engage in some violence, Antifa initiated the majority of it, and did more damage, as they are notorious for doing and openly take pride in doing. I'd also like to note that both left and right sides contained both peaceful and violent factions.
Effectively speaking, and assuming these separate corroborating witness accounts are correct, the police did what Antifa wanted them to do. Antifa is such a violent movement that when judging them by their history of warlike messaging ("liberals get the bullet too"), arson, beatings with fists and flagpoles (punching "Nazis"), smashing shop windows, tossing explosives into crowds, and above all their use of black-bloc anonymity tactics to avoid individual consequences for organized violence, I think it's fair to describe them as a terrorist group. Antifa tore down the barriers in order to commit violence against Unite the Right, and rather than put them back up or act as a human barrier between groups, the police backed down and allowed Antifa and their targets to run wild.
I am aware that the police in Charlottesville may have been afraid to get involved. Maybe they were undermanned. Maybe they were aware that dealing physically with protesters could result in optics which would martyr protesters in ways that would spread like wildfire through media, including the smartphones of attendees, resulting in escalation. Maybe the police were ordered to act exactly the way they did. I'm not blaming anyone on the ground, nor am I accusing the police on the ground of choosing sides.
Rewinding a few months: I watched the entire Battle of Berkeley live, via 3+ livestreams and other supplemental material. To summarize, a right-leaning (but also diversely populated) free speech rally in Berkeley was attended in part by people with shields, helmets and weapons to use in self-defense, as they expected the rally to be attacked by Antifa. Police confiscated all of their weapons and most of their shields, and left. The rally was then violently attacked by Antifa, who did have weapons, and the police were nowhere in sight. Officers reported on video that they had been told to stand down by the chief of police. If I remember correctly, it was later found that these instructions came from the mayor of Berkeley, Jesse Arreguin, who was affiliated on social media with Yvette Felarka, the leader of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), an Antifa-friendly and cultlike pro-violence far-left political group that stretches across several states. It appears very likely that the mayor and/or chief of police in Berkeley hoped Antifa members would attack and seriously injure the free speech rally participants until they gave up and left. In the end, the rally participants lost their patience, fought back and chased Antifa away on their own.
Anyway, my point is that it is demonstrably possible for politicians in positions of power, as well as police chiefs, to be so corrupt that they deliberately escalate political violence by one side while deliberately disabling the other side, which naturally moves the victimized side closer to future violence and increases mutual villification. These powerful people, who are either strategically or negligently fueling political violence, are the people to watch and expose.
Whatever else happened in Charlottesville and Berkeley, better policing is needed. Cops need to be not just reprimanded when they do a bad job, but also rewarded when they do a good job. They need good strategic training, safe numbers, competitive pay. They need politicians and chiefs whose allegiances lie with keeping the peace above all else.
Why are the peacekeepers failing?
This is the question I want to see asked and explored until it is sufficiently answered across all media, mainstream and alternative. I fear that instead I'll see violent footage repeated and repeated to sate morbid fascination and serve as bias-confirming hate-porn, while politicians and pundits sing gutturally about bigotry and disgust to the tune of disavowing every doubleplusungoodism under the sun.
When people don't spill out through the streets to fight, when tensions aren't fed by apparent double standards favoring the more violent factions, when people aren't bottlenecked down sidestreets and mutually provoked toward their boiling points by aggression and confusion, it is much more difficult for peppersprayings, bikelock beatings, horrible crashes, and deaths to occur.
* Charlottesville violence eyewitness sources:
Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange interviews Ford Fisher
Lauren Southern interviews James Allsup
PeterSweden interviews Hunter Wallace
Man punches reporter recording the Charlottesville crash
[EDIT @4AM - Why sleep, right?]
Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas was reported to have put the department through a "major overhaul" in an article published last month. link. I wonder whether some of the issues managing violence in Charlottesville may stem from the timing, that is, many officers adjusting to large recent changes at once under stressful conditions. But I don't think I'll be reading the whole article tonight.
[EDIT @1:25PM]
Police ordered to stand down.
ACLU has confirmed that police inaction was in accordance with orders.
Charlottesville mayor [Michael Signer] defends police response to deadly protests
"I think we have a responsibility as a government sworn to the Constitution to not just allow free speech, but to protect it, as long as it's done peaceably, which is what we attempted to do this weekend. [...] If you have folks who come in and act unpeacebly, you'll get unlawful assembly declared, which is what happened yesterday."
There were many peaceful attendees on left and right, but in this interview Signer does not seem interested in protecting their speech from violent retribution. Nor does he show interest in the nature of the conflict or the source of violent instigation. He seems more interested in blaming the victims. One group got a permit and hosted an event. Another group surrounded their event and initiated violence to get the event shut down. The police/mayor responded by doing exactly what the violent aggressors wanted them to do. The mayor does not seem willing to acknowledge that this is a problem.
Mayor Michael Signer and police chief Al Thomas must work much harder in the future to ensure violent individuals are separated from public protests, and from each other, in order to preempt escalation and protect the free expression of the nonviolent. These leaders must also be thoroughly investigated (perhaps good journalism and a lawsuit will accomplish this?) to ascertain whether their failure stemmed from a political conflict of interest. If their negligence was criminal, prosecute them. If the escalation was instead the result of innocent mistakes, or wholly out of their control, find out why and adjust strategies so that future peacekeeping efforts in Charlottesville and elsewhere will have greater rates of success.
Signer and Thomas, not to mention Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, were entrusted to protect Heather Heyer, and the 19 injured in the crash, and the droves of people pepper sprayed and pummeled at the Unite the Right event. Why did they fail?
[EDIT @5pm]
Quality coverage by Sargon of Akkad.
If you care about what happened in Charlottesville, do watch the above linked video in full. Among many other things, it corroborates mayor Michael Signer's apparent willingness to use his power to act upon his ideological hostility toward Unite the Right, which he did by stopping peacekeepers from intervening. All evidence suggests that Mayor Signer deliberately prioritized ideologically-fueled street warfare over strategies for deescalation; that Charlottesfille/Virginia authorities knowingly fueled violence in order to create justification to shut down the legally protected expression of a group of political undesirables. This was a short-sighted and irresponsible thing to do. People who do this are not qualified to hold positions of leadership.
[EDIT August 19]
Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy has some really interesting beliefs too. (album mirror)
CNN did not interview critics of AntiFa for the following piece, and fails to mention AntiFa is communist:
"People put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous. And then therefore we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do, whether it is illegal or not."
Interviewer: "People will push back on that and say that the black bloc is to keep people from being identified and arrested when they break the law, when they commit crimes."
"Damn right!" (big grin) "It's a good way to avoid the ramifications of law enforcement."
-- Scott Crow, ANTIFA-organizing professor (timestamp 2:23) (KiA link)
