03/31/2024
Above, Judd Blevins and some of his local detractors.
VDARE.com has reported on the smear campaign being waged against Enid, Oklahoma city councilman Judd Blevins. Though accused of no wrongdoing in fulfilling his duties to his constituents, he has been under fire by communist activists pushing to overturn his election based on his attendance at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville seven years ago. His ward will hold a recall election on Tuesday, April 2.
The recall election has drawn national attention, with articles that accuse Blevins of “white supremacy” and paint the radicals who wish to redo his election in an heroic light, e.g., This Oklahoma city elected a commissioner with white nationalist ties. Will voters recall him from office?, by Adam Kemp, PBS, March 29, 2024. These articles rely on the false narrative of Unite the Right that I thoroughly debunked in my book Charlottesville Untold. Regime media painted the 2017 rally gone awry as an uprising of violent neo-Nazis, but the truth was almost the exact opposite. In reality, the legally permitted rally in defense of the Robert E. Lee statue was intended to be peaceful, but was attacked by violent communists and their fellow-travelers, enabled by complicit Democrat officials. The false narrative has been used to justify the persecution of law-abiding attendees, who are still being hunted down and harassed by left-wing militants. It has also been used to give credence to the Biden Regime’s claims about the phantom threat of “white supremacist terrorism.”
Blevins has faced his accusers publicly at least twice in the past two weeks. At a scheduled city council meeting on March 19th, a parade of activists took turns airing complaints and accusations. Some unhinged hysterics went so far as to name-drop James Fields and Dylann Roof, seemingly implying that anyone with right-wing views is a dangerous potential killer. Others noted with alarm that Peter Brimelow’s VDARE.com and Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance have run articles supportive of Blevins [Far-Left and Media Try to Stage a Coup, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, March 18, 2024]. (One pointed out that Dylann Roof had liked Jared Taylor, and another read aloud a supposedly inciting tweet from Peter Brimelow.)
And in case mentioning unrelated criminal cases and respectable right-wing publishers failed to chill the blood of the citizens of Enid, other speakers piled on with accusations about the affiliation of one of Blevins’ donors with the Left’s boogeyman-of-the-hour, the Patriot Front [He Didn’t Deny Being A White Supremacist. Then He Was Elected To City Council, by Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post, March 13, 2024].
Not all citizens who spoke at the council meeting parroted the claims of communist websites. One local woman, Marie Landwehr, said she had doubts about the credibility of the members of the group spearheading the recall efforts, the Enid Social Justice Committee. She stated, “they’re quick to falsely accuse other people of being Nazis or Nazi sympathizers when they have zero involvement with any of that. I myself have been accused on social media.”
Landwehr also addressed the national media attention that has fallen on Enid, attributing it to radical priest James Neal of the ESJC, who has been a vocal opponent of Blevins. She explained:
As far as all the national attention, it’s because they pursue it, and James Neal who used to work for the Enid news and Eagle is always feeding into the frenzy and reaching out to all these media outlets. I’d just ask for you guys to stay strong and not cave in to this judgment.
Blevins again was called on to defend himself at a forum on March 26 sponsored by the Enid News and Eagle at which he shared a stage with his recall challenger Cheryl Patterson.
Patterson touted her status as a fiscal conservative and lifelong Republican. Regarding her decision to run, Patterson stated, “Contrary to the rumor, I was not recruited by the Enid Social Justice Committee, but I will represent them equally if I’m elected. A group of well-respected business leaders and friends encouraged me to run… With the recent national attention on my opponent’s past involvement with a white nationalist group, I felt it was time to step forward.” In other words, local cuckservatives are allied with local communists.
In his opening statement, Blevins addressed the reason for the recall election, and blamed the mayor for the fact that it was unduly delayed:
I am here tonight because I have been recalled by leftists who wanted me to hand them the oversight voters hold over me. Instead of caving in, I chose to put my future in the hands of voters, and let them decide. I have made it well known who is behind the recall effort and so have they. What I have not made well known is the extent to which the mayor has assisted them. Last November the mayor told me he hoped I would be recalled, and that he would recruit my opponent. He then took measures to ensure this election took place in April, instead of February. You see, despite having ten months, the leftists failed to produce their own candidate. In all likelihood a February election, with a mid-December filing period would have come and gone with no challenger filing to run. This would have ended this entire ordeal five days before Christmas. But because the mayor needed more time to recruit my opponent, this election was extended to April. The mayor of Enid wants politics as usual, and I don’t fit into his plan.
Questions submitted by attendees were presented to the pair, and about half of them addressed Blevins’ attendance at Unite the Right and alleged white supremacy. The first question posed to Blevins asked about his alleged involvement with groups like Identity Europa. He replied:
Right off the bat! Well, those organizations no longer exist. And I think that this election is really about the next three years in this city… Now if speaking out against what was being done against this country, what is continuing to be done to this country is a crime, then I would gladly plead guilty to that.
Blevins was also asked why he attended Unite the Right — a question that has rarely been publicly asked of attendees, who are usually assigned the most nefarious of motives without being granted an opportunity to speak for themselves.
Blevins stated to his purpose was
…bringing attention to the same issues that got Donald Trump elected in 2016: Securing America’s borders, reforming our legal immigration system, and frankly pushing back on this anti-white hatred that is so common in media and entertainment.
This answer was met with applause.
Asked a similar question later during the forum, he replied:
I felt it was important to protest the removal of statues of American soldiers, of American figures. That if they remove statues of men who fought in the Civil War they’ll move on to whoever they want. Defending, protecting, protesting against the removal of historic Americans is important to me. It’s our history, it’s our heritage, it’s who we are.
Applause followed this statement as well.
Responding to a series of questions about racism and white nationalism, Blevins explained:
I’ve said I reject all forms of racial hatred and racial discrimination. But I’m not going to play this game where I take things that the media says are problems from America’s past that are no longer problems today and pretend like they’re serious issues. They’re not. I don’t care what the FBI says, I don’t care what the White House says. These are not issues to Enid residents, they’re not issues to American citizens. And if I get censured for that, so be it.
He denied posting online under the pseudonym “Conway,” and scoffed at the suggestion that he harbors admiration for Adolf Hitler.
When asked her views about racism, his opponent Cheryl Patterson responded “I pray that anyone who has that racial bias would check their heart.”
One odd moment during the forum occurred when Patterson was asked about attending meetings with people who practice witchcraft. To this question, which evoked laughter from the audience, Patterson replied:
I can only assume that they are talking about when I attended the Democratic women’s luncheon. I do have friends that are in the Enid Social Justice group. These are friends that I’ve had for a long time.
It is significant that this struggle session has enlisted the national media to rally sentiment against the holder of a small-city commission seat at a time when backlash is growing against anti-white bias, and after Americans have seen the Regime’s injustice and lies about the January 6 Insurrection Hoax.
Will the false narrative about Unite the Right finally begin to crumble, allowing Heritage Americans and immigration patriots a role in public affairs?
This is just the start.
Anne Wilson Smith (email her) is the author of Charlottesville Untold: Inside Unite the Right and Robert E. Lee: A History Book for Kids. She is also the creator and editor of Reckonin.com.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.