| My photo of Richmond's Lee Monument (2007). |
The Unite the Right movement came to Charlottesville with a mission. Ostensibly, its publicity stunt was to designed to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee on horseback from a public park. However, we can now see the planners' plan was more ambitious – the movement's leadership wanted to unveil itself as a new player in today's roiling political milieu.
On the Friday night before the planned alt-right-sponsored assemblage of white supremacists, KKKs and their ilk, torch bearing marchers served clear notice of where they are coming from in 2017: “Blood and soil,” they chanted, “BLOOD AND SOIL.”
Note: If those words have a scary ring to them, well, they were borrowed from the Nazis. The original Nazis.
In Charlottesville Neo-Nazis openly strutted along side of flaggers and other staunch defenders of the Lost Cause. Rather than something to keep denying, to keep bothering to hide, apparently they now see their shared hatreds as the very thing to display. In the new amalgamated association of haters bandwagon that's emerged from the melee in Charlottesville, the Ku Klux Klan is one of several franchises.
Let's get real: The new normal simply can't include the acceptance of white supremacists, or white nationalists, as legitimate players. They can't have a seat at the table of honest citizens who want peace, freedom and equal rights for all. Hey, if you are carrying a Nazi flag or a Confederate flag you have excluded yourself from the discussion.
So let the amalgamated haters march up and down Jefferson Davis Highway. Let them convene a meeting the RIR racetrack chant “blood and soil” and mill around with torches. But convene a mob at Monument and Allen Avenues, spoiling for a fight with counter-protesters, waving banners that symbolize hate AND packing heat?
Ha! What could go wrong?
Meanwhile, I hope Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Mayor Levar Stoney will soon announce that no hate groups or bands of terrorists are allowed to stage a rally anywhere in the Fan District (where I live). It's a matter of public safety. Sorry, you don't get to do anything you manage to dream up in the name of free speech.
