In 2017, over the course of two days, at least 500 far-right protesters marched on Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia as part of the “Unite The Right” rally. Their call to arms—or rather, tiki torches—was the city’s removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate Civil War General who was willing to (and did) die to defend the institution of chattel slavery.
The event started out badly and quickly got worse, with the first brawl occurring before the fascists even made it to the park when they encountered a small group of counter-protesters. By the morning of the second day, nearly a thousand anarchist and antifascist counter-protesters had arrived to deal with the threat; some, like the armed leftist group Redneck Revolt, brought semiautomatic rifles. Fists, pepper spray, brass knuckles, flashlights, Nazi salutes and middle fingers were exchanged. Before noon, the police finally intervened and shut the event down.
During the chaos, Richard Preston, the Grand Wizard of the Maryland Ku Klux Klan, called black counter-protester Corey Long a racial slur and shot at him. When Deondre Harris, another black demonstrator, came to Long’s defense in a later altercation, four Swastika-adorned white men nearly beat him to death. And finally, neo-Nazi James Alex Fields plowed his car through an assembly of counter-protesters, killing one and wounding 35 others.
In the days and months following, Preston (the KKK guy) was not convicted of attempted murder or a hate crime but rather, misdemeanor disorderly conduct for which he spent 20 days in jail. Fields went to prison for life and pled guilty to everything to avoid a death sentence. Those of you who were online at the time will remember law enforcement’s complete lack of interest in finding the men who attacked Deondre Harris, and it was actually Shawn King, a black civil rights activist and journalist, who—along with his audience—tirelessly analyzed footage and scoured social media for months until the attackers were identified and the cops had no choice but to make arrests.
But Unite The Right and its fallout isn’t what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the little-known 2018 sequel protest, Unite The Right 2, held on the much grander stage of Lafeyette Square in Washington DC. This time, 25 fascists were met by thousands of antifascists and a wall of cops. This time, the fascists’ rallying cry had the opposite effect, and instead rallied a community who weren’t going to tolerate that shit again. The event was called off when it started raining.
It’s clear why the neo-Nazis didn’t show up the second time: they were scared. They are cockroaches emboldened by darkness who scatter when the kitchen lights come on. In the case of Charlottesville, that darkness was the Trump election. For the first time in decades their nakedly racist rhetoric was co-signed by the highest office—and further enabled by smug liberal opposition who steadfastly regard winning an argument as making a difference—until they felt emboldened to march in Charlottesville. Then a thousand antifascists showed up and beat the shit out of them on camera, the kitchen lights came on, and by 2018 they’d scattered again.
This is both a beautiful and inspiring example of antifascist praxis, and a terrifyingly rare one. Liberalism’s collapse and immutable descent into fascism is not unique to this country, but our unwillingness to stand in its way certainly is. Some will argue that it’s because of all the guns; elsewhere in this world, there’s a lot less joking about punching Nazis and more doing it because nobody will get shot (boys, I loved living in Australia).
Some might point to deeper cultural issues, like the uniquely racial lines seared into American class divisions, or the cultural toll that individualist boot licking has taken on white communities (Amber A’Lee Frost said it best, “Nobody’s part of a union anymore, nobody knows their neighbors, and the only way for them to engage politically anymore is just to vote every few years'“).
White folks need to realize that this is a white problem, and white folks are the only ones unequipped to face it. The African American community in particular has always lived under fascism. Furthermore, they’ve always understood that the antidote is leftist praxis; they’ve been the primary stewards of leftist thought in this country, passing knowledge between generations to better organize and defend their communities (our Latin American communities are similarly fortified, owing to their own rich history of leftist thought and matriarchal family structure).
And the thing about the black community is they know how to defend themselves. While they’re still under the boot of white supremacy in all of its institutional forms, and still too often maimed and killed by racist state police and the occasional militant Nazi, you will not see pickup trucks full of good old boys terrorizing their neighborhoods like back in the day. Why? Because those racist hicks know that it’s not safe; because the days of them driving into that neighborhood and coming out alive are long since passed. Their kitchen lights are on, and the roaches stay out of sight.
White people aren’t just lacking the knowhow for this. They’re lacking the heart too. Frankly, that heart comes from not having a choice, and white people have always had one. Every week I make calls to action to an audience of millions, and every week I read thousands of comments telling me “I agree with you, but I’m not gonna risk my safety for this.” The paradox of white activism—believing to their core in a cause, yet being categorically unwilling to risk an ounce of personal safety for it—both fascinates and infuriates me. Since the election in November, you may have heard black folks say something like “you (non-rich white people) are going to find out what it’s like to be black in this country.” They’re right. And if you non-rich white people don’t find some heart quick, and drop this notion that you can effectively combat violence with condescending lectures, God help you. Our lights are off and roaches are swarming.
In the years since Charlottesville, a lot has changed. Republicans have seized upon this country’s anger towards liberalism’s profound (yet predictable) failings to unite more and more people under a message of hate, and Democrats have completely abandoned their BIPOC constituency to the wolves in as stunning a betrayal as I’ve seen in my lifetime. Redneck Revolt—the nationwide anarchist group who showed up to the rally with AR-15s—collapsed after explosive sexual misconduct allegations. The John Brown Gun Club, another armed leftist defense group, stays atomized and deep underground to avoid infiltration. Elon Musk is somehow one of the most adored men on earth. We are all about to go under the tires.
Thousands of good, rule-following white leftists & liberals alike, with the weight of the world on their hearts, will hit the streets in protest next month; their white-washed memories of Gandhi and MLK shining as non-violent inspiration; the memory of Charlottesville absent entirely. I want to address this group directly:
Awaiting you are some certainties that the real MLK knew all too well. Cops will forbid you from bringing a weapon to a protest, but not the Trump supporters open-carrying in a firing line across the street. They will allow Trump supporters to menace you with violence, but punish you if you retaliate. The Klansman who tries to kill you on camera will spend 20 days in jail, if any. If there is a mass shooting, and you pull a gun to respond, cops will shoot you first. You’re not a white American anymore, you’re an enemy of the state. You’re following new rules now—but established ones—that were never designed to protect you. You are the frog in the boiling pot. My only hope is that when things go south, you finally find that heart that only comes when you’re out of choices.
Bring a gun inside your waistband. Tape a razorblade to the sole of your boots. Cover your face. And if somebody wearing a Black Sun gets close to you, deal with it with some finality. You’re headed to the original Unite The Right, not the embarrassing sequel, so act like it. We know what works. Turn the kitchen lights back on, for fuck’s sake.
I just woke up screaming from a nightmare where my family home was being raided by people that wanted to assassinate me. I check my phone and your post is on Bluesky with your first substack article telling me I need to tool the fuck up for the upcoming fights ahead. My mind is a bit blown at the moment, to say the least.
Roaches scattering when the lights turn on was a bar