Three Days in Charlottesville…
I am dedicating this post to Heather Heyer who could have been me or a friend of mine. May your spirit be remembered.
“If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.” -Heather Heyer
I have been studying the differences in right and left wing American media for a long time. I grew up in a Republican home and my father and I had a fierce argument about the so-called “swift boat veterans for truth” in 2004 that resulted in him physically attacking me and we didn’t speak for two years.
I struggled to understand why a man with a Ph.D. had such a bizarre attachment to non-facts and I learned that due to his trust in right wing media, he could believe something very different about facts than I did (ie in that case that the “swiftboat veterans” who didn’t serve with Kerry were telling the truth because it was a truth people on the right wanted to believe about John Kerry. Or I learned that a narrative is more powerful than a mere set of facts. In the right wing narrative you could not be both anti-war and have served honorably. On the other hand, honorable soldiers can certainly be anti-war, in my narrative, since so many beloved anti-war poets are[i]).
Sixteen years later, Joe Biden gave a democratic nomination acceptance speech[ii] saying that events in Charlottesville three years ago made him want to run for president this year. He has called his campaign a battle for the soul of this nation.
Immediately after he gave his acceptance speech, Scott Adams, a cartoonist of cubicle office man Dilbert, who has thrown his whole career into his fervent support of Trump (now a political podcast where comments are no longer welcome[iii]) accused Joe Biden of being the biggest asshole in America and the perpetuator of a race hoax who put a target on Adams’ back as a result of these remarks.[iv]
Given that I, too, have been haunted by Charlottesville and a fear of the ever dividing sense of reality in this country, I wanted to look back at the timeline.
Scott Adams and those like him endorsing the ‘Trump is not a racist’ narrative of Charlottesville have produced a long video[v] of Trump’s remarks on August 15, and claimed that the reason people criticize Trump for his remarks in Charlottesville is that the video was edited down and the part where Trump condemned neo Nazis was not shown. There is a twenty minute video where Trump speaks about many things and this video is often edited down to a minute or two. Videos are often edited for length. However, this doesn’t make it a hoax to say that Trump’s remarks were offensive.
Charlottesville Timeline:
August 12, 2017: Date of Heather Heyer’s murder:
August 12: Footage of Charlottesville on and before from National Geographic included men carrying tiki torches and yelling “Jews will not replace us.” Who was at the unite the right rally? Neo Nazi Jason Kessler[vi] had applied for the Unite the Right permit.[vii] People chanting “blood and soil” (slogan of Hitler’s Nazis)
August 12: Trump’s First Charlottesville Statement. On the same day as Heather Heyer’s death, Donald Trump made a statement. He condemned violence on “many sides, many sides” but not white supremacy in particular. Although a Neo Nazi had just murdered a girl with his car at a Neo Nazi march.
August 13: Second Charlottesville Statement. From White House — although not Trump’s lips a clarification that among the many sides Trump had condemned of course this included the KKK. It was a very brief written clarification.
August 14: On Twitter, Trump attacks CEOs Resigning over his blaming of “many sides.” Anger against trump for not condemning white supremacy in his first statement was growing among Trump supporters. Some resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council as a result.
Notably, Kenneth C. Frazier, of Merck Pharmaceuticals, resigned from the president’s council. “As the CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” Frazier, who is African-American, wrote in a statement.
Trump attacked him immediately on twitter while changing the subject from Charlottesville to other reasons to slam Frazier. Ultimately Eleven CEO’s would resign from his manufacturing council over Charlottesville.
August 15: Third Charlottesville Response. Trump’s third time addressing what happened in Charlottesville was a twenty minute press conference. This is the full tape from the Wall Street journal that Trump’s supporters like Scott Adams have referenced.
Trump begins this conference with a question about Kenneth C. Frazier and he again dishonestly describes Frazier and others as leaving the manufacturing council for reasons other than condemnation of Trump’s refusal to call white supremacy out directly in his first remarks on Charlottesville.
In this press conference, three days after Heyer’s death, Trump famously references both sides 10 times. He references Neo Nazis or white supremacists 5 times, and this is mostly to note those who were “not white supremacists” (but marching alongside them at the Unite the Right rally) who Trump vigorously defends. A year after his election he demands briefly that a reporter define “alt-right” to him, but he doesn’t hesitate to hold forth on the “alt-left.”
In other words, after being pressed to specifically condemn the alt-right who had committed murder in Charlottesville out loud in his own words — Trump struggled to. While as an afterthought he said he condemned Neo Nazis, the words that stood out to most people were his ideas about “both sides” being to blame and also “both sides” having “very fine people.”
He also bizarrely mentions the “side” that had a permit to march, multiple times, without saying that the permit was held by a Neo Nazi Jason Kessler. Or that the counter protestors also had permits to protest.[viii]
In the days following the shocking murder of a white girl by a Trump supporting Neo Nazi who ran her over with his car, most found Trump’s obsession with “both sides” and “many sides” bizarre and offensive. His rambling forth about sides didn’t sound like a clear, unquivocal condemnation of a white terrorist murder.
Three days after the death of a young woman who could have been me or a friend of mine.
By way of contrast, in 2016 Trump condemned Muslim killers in less than one day. Within hours without waiting for facts as Trump claimed he tried to do in Charlottesville.
June 12, 2016: Date of Orlando nightclub shooting:
June 12: Trump tweeted congratulations to himself for being “right on Islamic terrorism” within hours of the attack
There are more many other examples like this for this president. In June of 2017, Vox made a handy list[ix] of the time lag Trump has taken to condemn right wing terrorism as opposed to other forms of terrorist violence. The Vox article was written two years prior to Trump’s seeming reluctance to call an attack on two Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand an act of terrorism. The man who committed the murders had also endorsed Trump in a long manifesto.
Creating this Charlottesville timeline was important to me because Scott Adams claims that Biden’s left wing lies put a target on his back when it seems more likely that the reverse is true. Trump infuriates his base through his transparent lies and then lies about those lies. The lies about why CEO’s resigned from his manufacturing council. Other CEO’s would follow Kenneth Frazier’s resignation. There’s also a whole history of that council that Trump disbanded shortly before the CEOs decided not to work with Trump.[x]
The week of the Republican convention there was a party with no party platform struggling to convince themselves that the reason “the left” won’t work with Trump is that they are so radical and unreasonable. Without acknowledging they elected to office a man who claims to be a business leader who couldn’t even get along with CEOs of corporate America. A man with a campaign manager in prison and personal attorney in prison for felonies, and a political advisor charged with stealing Build the Wall funds. A man who started in politics by attacking the first African American President with a false narrative about his birth certificate and repeating it over and over again. For years.[xi] And now that there are anti-racist marches are in the streets, Trump isn’t working to humanize them with discussions of “very fine people,” but to dehumanize them in ways similar to his dehumanization of immigrant caravans in 2018. He doesn’t call them protestors, but rioters for example. And he was willing to tear gas people peacefully assembled in a Washington Park. He sent in shock troops to Portland.
I keep coming back to this idea of narratives verses facts and how propaganda works. Democrats aren’t above false narratives. Joe Biden called Trump America’s first racist president for example.[xii]
Since Charlottesville (and before it) there have been a thousand think pieces written about the president’s ties to white supremacy. The “white nationalists” who have flanked his administration seem to be a rebranded form of white identity politics. But the narrative of denial among his supporters appears impossible to shake. The narrative that he is somehow fighting for them when he attacks people of other races, women, gay people, or even John McCain or all veterans is a powerful and intoxicating narrative. It pits everyone in the world against one another and somehow Trump’s select group (whatever that group consists of — the smaller the group the greater the hoped for advantage) might have a chance of gaining advantage over “others.”.
I’ve learned you can’t break a narrative by presenting facts alone. You have to show a stronger narrative. Trump is a bogglingly corrupt, violent, and elite politician who is ultimately harming his supporters by lying to them and selling them short. President Obama added more jobs in the last three years of his presidency than Trump’s best year.[xiii] Presidents Obama and Bush helped saved the US auto industry.[xiv] President Obama passed the Veteran’s Choice Act in 2014 that Trump has bizarrely taken credit for over 150 times.[xv]
Yet this has to be more than a footnote. At least two mass shooters wrote manifestos invoking Trump’s name before shooting dozens of people. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the New Zealand Christchurch shooting suspect wrote in manifesto he supported Trump ‘as a symbol of renewed white identity.’ He killed 51 people.[xvi] Patrick Crusius specifically wrote that he was inspired by the above New Zealand mass shooter. But that his racism predated Trump. It looked like his affection for Trump made him want to let Trump off the hook for his murders. He killed 20 people.[xvii] There are over fifty incidents of Trump being listed in criminal incident of physical assault,[xviii] but those two are the most egregious. Reporters have looked for any similar incidents with other American presidents and have not found any.
But that’s the heart of the Trump seesaw. And the danger in his kind of leadership. To use a phrase from Christchurch, on one hand there is the narrative, with examples, of the way Trump is a ‘white identity’ monster inspiring other ‘white identity’ monsters. Is this narrative less intoxicating or less easy for white working class voters to believe than the other, competing narrative that Trump is selling — that he is a ‘white identity’ monster who is somehow their monster? Fighting their battles for them?
A partial list of other anti-racism protestors murdered since Trump took office. Ricky John Best. Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche. Summer Taylor. Anthony Huber. Joseph D. Rosenbaum.
I keep thinking of an article I read about how after the 2016 election, Heather Heyer, 32 years old, would cry in her office wondering what was going to happen to the country.[xix] And when she learned Neo Nazis, white nationalists, and white supremacists had a permit to march in her town she bravely stepped up to oppose them instead of choosing not to get involved.
It’s 2020 and if you aren’t more outraged and distraught than ever, sleeplessly wondering what could or will happen to this country, you aren’t paying attention.
[i] https://www.historynet.com/gi-found-brutal-poetry-war.htm
[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmQr0WfSvo
[iii] https://www.scottadamssays.com
[v] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ovkMSJ6svc
[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Kessler
[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally#Permits_and_court_case
[ix] https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/6/15740628/trump-muslims-terror-twitter
[x] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/16/inge-thulin-3m-quits-trump-manufacturing-council-241705
[xii] https://apnews.com/323bba8b134eaedd188cf73122036a93
[xiv] https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-bailout-study-idUSL1N0JO0XU20131209
[xv] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/politics/trump-veterans-choice-paula-reid/index.html
[xvi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
[xvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting
[xviii] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889
