{"id":1738,"date":"2017-08-15T17:29:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T21:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2017-08-15T17:29:13","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T21:29:13","slug":"charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html","title":{"rendered":"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As everyone who cares now knows, the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday \u201cturned violent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It \u201cturned violent\u201d just as did so many of Donald <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2016\/06\/03\/ugly-bloody-scenes-in-san-jose-as-protesters-attack-trump-supporters-outside-rally\/?utm_term=.3773152d77aa\">Trump\u2019s campaign<\/a> rallies, the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2017_Berkeley_protests\">free speech<\/a>\u201d rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/more-100-inauguration-day-protesters-indicted-rioting-charges-n718626\">inauguration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it is only within the fantasyland of the Fake News media that any of these rightist (or pseudo-rightist) events \u201cturned violent.\u201d The latter is one of the many stock phrases that Fake Media trots out whenever it is leftist \u201ccounter-demonstrators\u201d\u2014another of its terms of choice\u2014crash the events in question with every intention of stopping them <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/BAMN\">by whichever means necessary<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The happenings that unfolded in Charlottesville on Saturday fall all too neatly into a pattern stretching back for the better part of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2016_Donald_Trump_Chicago_rally_protest\">two years<\/a>, a pattern that has become nearly an ironclad law.<\/p>\n<p>Listening to the coverage of Charlottesville, one could be forgiven for thinking that those in Big Media, whether \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cconservative,\u201d were oblivious to the existence of this phenomenon.\u00a0 Commentators struck the unprejudiced observer as either scandalously ignorant or just as scandalously (but predictably) dishonest.\u00a0 Particularly disappointing were \u201cconservative\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/450473\/president-trump-charlottesville-response-disappointing-says-krauthammer\">commentators<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OXxlbiRu09I\">showboating politicians<\/a> who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their \u201cliberal\u201d counterparts of inhabiting.<\/p>\n<p>First, while there were indeed some self-styled neo-Nazis that were present among the rally\u2019s attendees, they were, by all appearances, a tiny minority.\u00a0 And they constituted a far smaller fraction of the totality of the group than, say, that which on multiple occasions comprised the totality of Black Lives Matter demonstrators that marched through busy city streets shouting such murderous slogans as, \u201cWhat do we want? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hqQXmnMr_w8\">Dead cops<\/a>! When do we want it? Now!\u201d and \u201cPigs in a blanket, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kQrnEdjQWKI\">fry them like bacon<\/a>!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Second, the Charlottesville demonstrators organized their rally months in advance of its occurrence. Their application for a permit to march was initially denied. To its <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2017\/08\/13\/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville\/\">eternal credit<\/a>, the <em>American Civil Liberties Union<\/em> (ACLU), a left-leaning organization, came to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2017\/8\/12\/16138326\/aclu-charlottesville-protests-racism\">organizers\u2019 defense<\/a> and helped them to appeal this decision.\u00a0 A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailyprogress.com\/news\/local\/judge-allows-unite-the-right-rally-to-stay-in-emancipation\/article_9965d0be-7ee6-11e7-ab0e-f342e0cf9488.html\">federal judge<\/a> eventually ruled that it was illegal for the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia to prevent people from exercising their Constitutional right to peacefully assemble.<\/p>\n<p>And this is a crucial point: Those in attendance at the \u201cUnited the Right\u201d rally <em>did <\/em>peacefully assemble. They had speakers lined up to speak at Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park).<\/p>\n<p>Hordes of \u201cAnti-fascist\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-40930831\">Antifa<\/a>) and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.therebel.media\/faithgoldy\">Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u201d agitators assembled to \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/knowyourmeme.com\/memes\/bash-the-fash\">bash the fash<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 As always, it is they who initiated the violence. Even the <em>Washington Post <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/powerpost\/wp\/2017\/08\/13\/fear-of-violent-left-preceded-events-in-charlottesville\/?utm_term=.00ecbec62bb0\">admits<\/a> that it was the fear of <em>leftist <\/em>violence that provoked Governor Terry McCauliffe\u2019s State of Emergency.\u00a0 Yet it was this move legitimizing the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefire.org\/rejecting-the-hecklers-veto\/\">Heckler\u2019s Veto<\/a>\u201d that rendered a lawful event unlawful.<\/p>\n<p><em>That\u2019s<\/em> when all hell broke loose.<\/p>\n<p>Third, but even then, it wasn\u2019t the rally attendees whose rally was being sabotaged who unleashed the violence. According to reports of those who were on the ground, police turned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=q8JP4lmrUhY\">violent<\/a> upon some of those who, evidently shocked upon hearing that before things even began they were ended, didn\u2019t leave the area as quickly as the officers\u2014and their superiors\u2014would have preferred.\u00a0 The boys in blue sprayed mace at rally-goers and kicked them.<\/p>\n<p>Then, the police, upon breaking up the group, redirected them out of the park through the sea of Antifa and BLM terrorists who proceeded to besiege them with an arsenal of weaponry, from bricks and bottles filled with cement to baseball bats, bows and arrows, urine, feces, bear mace, and\u2014this is no lie\u2014a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/national\/jason-kessler-blames-charlottesville-clashes-local-cops-article-1.3408166\">makeshift flame thrower from a spray can<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>A flamethrower.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Fourth, a life was indeed lost on Saturday.\u00a0 A counter-demonstrator was killed when someone who was allegedly one of the demonstrators plowed his car into a mob that had filled the street.\u00a0 The suspect has since been identified as James Alex Fields, a 20 year-old white man from Ohio. About 19 or so others were also injured.<\/p>\n<p>This is the one event of the day on which the media have fixated.\u00a0 No doubt, it was the most serious of events, given that a person was killed.\u00a0 But insofar as it is abstracted and isolated from the context of violence that, to repeat, the Antifa and BLMers had been unleashing long before it happened, it is Fake News in the extreme, a tactic by which the day\u2019s violence can be dropped exclusively upon the shoulders of those who exhaustively pursued legal measures to express themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Confessedly, when I initially heard that \u201ccounter-demonstrators\u201d had been struck, I immediately assumed that the motorist\u2019s car was surrounded and his life imminently imperiled.\u00a0 This was the most reasonable assumption given that Antifa and BLM <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=g-2erFh4Bm8\">regularly<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rjUIMAux0Zo\">block<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.campusreform.org\/?ID=8247&amp;CFID=4866630&amp;CFTOKEN=75ee662e0d7cbba2-7695A278-FBA9-B451-23100135C5C63950\">thoroughfares<\/a> and subject to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlotteobserver.com\/news\/local\/crime\/article103175292.html\">violence<\/a> those who they regard as \u201cfascist\u201d and \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the driver is guilty of malice, then, being the proponent of capital punishment that I am, I submit that Fields will deserve nothing less than death for his crime.\u00a0 Yet there is evidence that my initial suspicion is correct.\u00a0 Although he is being blasted as a homicidal neo-Nazi, what we do know for sure of Fields is that he was an <a href=\"http:\/\/heavy.com\/news\/2017\/08\/james-alex-fields-jr-charlottesville-suspect-arrested-driver-crashed-rally-republican-age-bio-video\/\">active duty service member<\/a> of the United States Army. Until Saturday, he worked in law enforcement as a security officer, and he has no history of violence.<\/p>\n<p>And, according to a writer for the <em>The Hill, <\/em>those Charlottesville police officers who she spoke with think that Fields may have not acted with malice, but from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/taylorlorenz\/status\/896499617877176320\">fear<\/a> for his life. Video seems to show a pedestrian hitting Fields\u2019 car with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.departmentofmemes.com\/article\/protesters-attacked-charlottesville-drivers-car-baseball-bat\/\">a bat<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The point, though, is that no one knows for sure, at this point, all that happened.<\/p>\n<p>Yet none of the moral exhibitionists who unleashed the tsunami of denunciations of the \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d (there were some unsavory characters in attendance, to be sure, but many present, and certainly the event\u2019s organizers, explicitly disavow this moniker), uttered a peep concerning the brutality of those who started the violence.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Cernovich, a Jew who reportedly declined an invitation to speak at the Charlottesville rally, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0acNlX9nsbI\">reminded<\/a> his followers this weekend of when he attended a White House press briefing some months back and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y3XOL8s-rWk\">called out<\/a> leftist journalists for refusing to disavow Antifa.\u00a0 They still refuse to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Nor do they dare to wax indignant over the violence of BLM.<\/p>\n<p>To those who object to any of my assertions, I challenge you to present the video footage of \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d initiating violence against the thousands of masked agitators who came to greet them with weapons.\u00a0 In this day and age, when everyone has a camera, it shouldn\u2019t be hard to find\u2014if it exists.<\/p>\n<p>That there are plenty of reasons for objecting to both this rally and the ideology that is associated with it is grist for another mill.\u00a0 The purpose here is to establish that the consensus among the \u201crespectable\u201d folks that \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d are responsible for the bloodshed in Charlottesville while the \u201ccounter-demonstrators\u201d are victims or bystanders is a Gargantuan Lie that every lover of truth, decency, and, yes, Constitutional liberty must expose for what it is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As everyone who cares now knows, the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday \u201cturned violent.\u201d It \u201cturned violent\u201d just as did so many of Donald Trump\u2019s campaign rallies, the \u201cfree speech\u201d rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump\u2019s inauguration. Of course,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As everyone who cares now knows, the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday \u201cturned violent.\u201d It \u201cturned violent\u201d just as did so many of Donald Trump\u2019s campaign rallies, the \u201cfree speech\u201d rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump\u2019s inauguration. Of course,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-15T21:29:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction","og_description":"As everyone who cares now knows, the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday \u201cturned violent.\u201d It \u201cturned violent\u201d just as did so many of Donald Trump\u2019s campaign rallies, the \u201cfree speech\u201d rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump\u2019s inauguration. Of course,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2017-08-15T21:29:13+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html","name":"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-08-15T21:29:13+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-15T21:29:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-fact-vs-fiction.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Charlottesville: Fact vs. Fiction"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. 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