08/12/2023
Today is the sixth anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. VDARE.com is among a small handful of outlets which have reported facts about the rally which prove that the permitted event, which was carefully planned to be peaceful and lawful, was sabotaged by a violent left-wing mob with the implicit approval of Democratic officials at the local, state, and national levels. Anarchy was unleashed in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, and within hours, legacy media and career politicians were proclaiming their perfidious version of events to the masses: Violent white supremacists, fueled by hate and a thirst for blood, had descended upon Charlottesville visiting mayhem upon innocent residents and peaceful counter-protesters.
This myth became the germination of a dominant narrative of communist revolutionaries. When President Biden first announced his candidacy for President in 2019, he cited Charlottesville and then-President Trump’s misrepresented “very fine people” statement as his motivation. More recently, Biden has asserted that “White supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat in our homeland.” This assertion, while patently false, is important as a justification for the punitive actions the regime is taking against heritage Americans who dare to oppose their plans.
New books have been released which advance the myth, presenting unchallenged accounts of left-wing activists’ interpretation of events as journalism. One example is 24 Hours in Charlottesville: An Oral History of the Stand Against White Supremacy, by Nora Neus, who has written for CNN, Vice, Politico and the Washington Post. Her work “crafts an extraordinary account from the voices of the students, faith leaders, politicians, and community members who were there…” UVA Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy, whose studies have been “focusing on media and white supremacy in comparative historical context,” was herself a counter-protester at Unite the Right. In her book, she posits, “ … [t]he ’Unite the Right’ organizers basically flipped the civil rights script. They chose Charlottesville because it had the right ingredients for the violent confrontation they were planning.” The dominance of this single-sided narrative ingrains partial truths and untruths into the national psyche.
Not only are politicians, NGOs, and pseudo-journalists solidifying the mythical interpretation of Unite the Right, art and fiction are now being created which engender empathy and moral justification of Leftists' fanciful interpretation of events.
One work of fiction, Fireflies and Zeroes, by Liz Larson, is set in the year following Unite the Right. According the Cavalier Daily, the Charlottesville native protagonist “ … learns to see past his denial of his hometown’s flaws by looking at the city through the eyes of the underrepresented. Larson skillfully weaves in the perspectives of women, people of color, immigrants, queer people and other outsiders in Charlottesville, carefully considering how their experiences changed after August2017.” Author Ann Beattie released a collection of short stories entitled “Onlookers,” which are likewise set in the aftermath of the rally.
Indian-born actress and performance artist Priyanka Shetty, who was enrolled at UVA during Unite the Right but out of town during the event, has received accolades for her off-Broadway show entitled #Charlottesville.Her one-woman show was inspired by interviews with local residents, and reportedly “explores deep-seated racial inequities that have existed historically in Charlottesville and how it escalated to one of the most terrible manifestations of racial violence…”
Artist Jonathan Horowitz “Puts Hatred on View” in an exhibit curated for the Jewish Museum of New York. The collection “was conceived from a starting point in 2017 following the most public display of America’s resurging current of broad-based hatred, the ’Unite the Right’ rally, where a horde of villains converged upon Charlottesville, Virginia, proud of their diseased thinking and looking to broadcast it.” It includes an untitled sculpture which “depicts the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee as it appeared covered by a black tarp.”
The importance of fiction in engendering emotional resolve and moral authority cannot be overstated. One historian explains that “[t]he most influential literary contribution to the politics of the northern States during the mid-to-late 1850’s — helping incite State Secession and a horrific four-year war that killed 360,000 Federals — was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin… It was a propaganda masterpiece that became bigger than life and painted for many northern States people their mistaken perception of the people of the southern States.” This was true, despite the fact that Stowe had almost no reality-based knowledge of slavery or the South.
Myth-building about Unite the Right is an important tool of the communist revolutionaries. As the false narratives build, eclipsing the reality of a seminal event in modern history, the mission of VDARE.com to preserve and disseminate the truth is more important than ever.
Update: There are a few book options for people who would like information other than that which supports the elite-approved fallacy. I myself endeavored to catalogue the overlooked facts and unheard stories of attendees in the book Charlottesville Untold: Inside Unite the Right.
Attendee Padraig Martin authored A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story,which details his personal political path to the dissident right, his experience at Charlottesville, and an analysis of the event in political and historic context.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.