Charlottesville Revisited

Joe Biden in beginning his campaign for President saw fit to smear President Donald Trump’s statement in the aftermath of Charlottesville. He is not the first to deceive about Charlottesville and Trump’s statement for political purposes, and he won’t be the last.  So it’s time to revisit Charlottesville.

First, Trump did not call white nationalists and the like “fine people.”  He did not, as Biden said, assign “a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”  Here is what Trump said, in context:

You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. ... I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. ... So you know what, it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and White nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.

And Trump’s statement was and is accurate.  You had peaceful people who, like me frankly, are concerned about taking down history for current political motivations.  And on the other side you had peaceful people who, also like me, oppose extremist racist ideologies. (Please see my note below for more.)

At the same time, there were also violent extremists on both sides.  But all we hear about are the Neo-Nazis and the like and the man who ran down protesters and killed a woman. And we should be reminded of them.  But we rarely are reminded of the role violent Leftist groups, particularly Antifa, played that day.  But a great deal of violence came from Antifa and therefore some of the violence from the other side was in self-defense.  (Obviously, the car attack was not and should be condemned without equivocation.)

Don’t take my word for it.  Here are testimonies of eyewitnesses from various sides of Charlottesville, such as this:

University of Virginia student Isabella Ciambotti: "I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. when a counter-protester ripped a newspaper stand off the sidewalk and threw it at alt-right protesters. I saw another man from the white supremacist crowd being chased and beaten. People were hitting him with their signs. A much older man, also with the alt-right group, got pushed to the ground in the commotion. Someone raised a stick over his head and beat the man with it, and that's when I screamed and ran over with several other strangers to help him to his feet."

Such is par for the course for Antifa, along with using excrement as a weapon.  But we don’t hear much about that (By the way, although I remember numerous reports of Antifa violence in Charlottesville, search engines are not much help digging up those reports.  Funny that . . . in an Orwellian way.) – a double standard which enables more hate and violence as I noted shortly after Charlottesville.  Distorting history has consequences.

Sadly, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has enabled and even participated in distorting the history of Charlottesville. I do not think that was the intent, but it was the effect.  The Anglican Multi-Ethnic Network (AMEN) issued a Charlottesville Statement.  There was nothing really wrong in it and much to be commended.  What it omitted is the problem.  While repeatedly denouncing racism and “white supremacy,” it did not even mention Antifa or other violent Leftists or their role in Charlottesville.   And ACNA and Archbishop Foley Beach endorsed and promoted this statement.

Such partial truths are inadequate and can be used to deceive.  We in ACNA must do better.  All Christians involved in the political sphere must strive for better.

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NOTE: Now one may ask how the heck can “fine people” find themselves on the same side as Neo-Nazis (and Antifa for that matter).  I will tell you how from personal experience.

Back during my college days, I joined a rally against the Greensboro shooting verdict in 1980 (or 1981, my memory of the time is fuzzy.). I saw the not guilty verdict as unjust.  But during the rally, I saw that it was really more a platform to smear Reagan and promote loony Left ideas than to protest the verdict. Eventually I had enough and walked away.

Also in my college days, I participated in Marches for Life. I noticed some, well, interesting people there.  For one thing, I was intrigued by the leaflets in the Ticked Mary genre I was handed.  But the scattered odd balls were more amusing than obnoxious.  And the main cause remained the main cause.  So I marched on.

One can certainly question the judgement of those who were not White Nationalists or the like but were there in Charlottesville to protest taking down historic statues.  But sometimes when you get involved in honorable causes, you find yourself alongside dishonorable people.