Charlottesville and the Flood of (Mostly Bad) Ideas

In the wake of tragedy, everyone is an expert and nobody is. "Expertise," it seems, is limited to repeating existing beliefs and prescriptions with the volume turned up higher. If there is one positive to emerge from that, it is that dumb and pernicious ideas are more likely to be exposed rather than lingering under the radar. Here are but a few to emerge after this weekend's brutal display in Charlottesville:

Dumb Takes

The Take: The Unite the Right Rally wasn't about hatred. It was about honoring white cultural heritage and protesting its erasure.

Who Said It: Peter Cvjetanovic, a student protester at the rally.

The Rationale: Robert E. Lee is an important figure in Virginia history. Acknowledging this does not make one a racist. Taking a stand against the erasure of history does not make one a Nazi.

Why It's Still Dumb: Robert E. Lee may be an intrinsic part of Virginia history, but he is a poor representation of white cultural heritage writ large. After all, he led forces that killed thousands of white men and defended an institution that plenty of white Americans opposed. When out-of-staters like Cvjetanovic of Nevada (or worse, protesters from Union states such as the disgraceful logo-stealing Detroit Right Wings) try to claim Confederate figures like Lee as part of "their" heritage, it isn't a white Euro-American cultural heritage to which they are referring; its an ideological, white supremacist one. Moreover, while it is true that not everyone who attended the rally identified as a Nazi or Klansman, they allowed themselves to be used to racially propagandistic ends. Even Cvjetanovic acknowledges that the now-viral image of him chanting and carrying a torch has "a very negative connotation." That patently obvious connotation (and his indifference to it), coupled with the presence of avowed hate/white supremacist groups at the rally, makes "I'm not one of them" an untenable position to take.



The Take: Free speech does not protect hate speech. / It's OK to punch a Nazi.

Who Said It: Jeff Winder, who assaulted white nationalist rally organizer Jason Kessler.

The Rationale: Hateful speech endangers peoples' lives and must be stamped out. Those who hide behind the banner of hate deserve what they get.

Why It's Still Dumb: Free speech DOES protect hate speech. No such exemption exists in the Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech. From a less legalistic perspective, it is worth remembering that one person's hate speech is another person's truth. We would not want our ideological opposites determining what is or what is not "hate" nor would they abide by our determination. It is also worth remembering that speech is not action. A word, no matter how ugly or obscene, is not a punch. A word is not a bullet. We are not justified in answering the former with the latter. The remedy to objectionable speech is more speech: condemnation, vilification, and scorn. (NOTE: As a Jewish man, I would probably find punching a Nazi to be viscerally satisfying, but neither that satisfaction nor the odiousness of my victim's views would make me right to do so. I would, however, invite him to heed the words of Jello Biafra).



The Take: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

Who Said It: President Trump, in his initial statement in response to the rally

The Rationale: Bigotry, hatred, and violence should be condemned regardless of who spreads it, and contrary to media narratives, the Alt Right is not the only faction spreading it.

Why It's Dumb: The Trump presidency does not exist within a vacuum. It exists within a specific context that Trump is (or at least should be) well aware of. This context includes the presence of Naziphiles like Sebastian Gorka within the Trump administration as well as white supremacist David Duke announcing that the rally will "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump." Based on that, Trump's initial refusal to condemn white supremacy specifically reads as an act of moral cowardice, at best. Furthermore, while it is certainly true that Antifa is violent, "on both sides" suggests a false equivalency. Only one ideology's adherents ran people down with a car or viciously beat a man in a parking garage, and it wasn't the Alt Left.

Dumb Memes

"This is What a Terrorist Looks Like"

The Rationale: Self-explanatory

Why It's Dumb: "This is what a terrorist looks like" would fit pictures of Dylann Roof and Timothy McVeigh and many other white mass murderers as well. However, it would also fit pictures of John Allan Muhammad,

Omar Mateen,

and several more who were not white. All of them are terrorists by virtue of the acts that they committed, and the "terrorist" label is apt. However, "this is what a terrorist looks like" invites hostility toward those with a passing resemblance. If "this is what a terrorist looks like" suggests to you scapegoating when applied to a man with brown skin but not a man with white skin, your own biases bear closer examination.

One Smart Take

The Take: "Keep your history before you." Do not sanitize the past. Confront it and learn from it.

Who Said It: Condoleeza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State

Why It Makes Sense: Tearing down monuments makes for convenient martyrs. Leaving up monuments forces us to confront the legacy of the memorialized. Despite their prominence, monuments and named buildings are not automatic hagiography. Because of their prominence, they are learning opportunities. This is as true of Northern racists and virulent anti-Semites like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and Stalin apologists and totalitarian propagandists like Paul Robeson as it is of Confederate defenders of slavery like Lee.