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Title: One Dead in Charlottesville Author: CrimethInc. Date: August 12, 2017 Language: en Topics: fascism, death, Charlottesville Source: Retrieved on 23rd April 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/12/one-dead-in-charlottesville-why-the-right-can-kill-us-now
Today, in Charlottesville, Virginia, participants in a fascist rally did
what they have been threatening to do for a long time, driving a car
into a crowd and murdering at least one person.
We are not surprised.
At Standing Rock in November, police nearly blew off the arm of
21-year-old Sophia Wilanksy with a concussion grenade.
The North Dakota legislature responded not by condemning police
violence, but by introducing a bill that would make it legal for drivers
to run over protestors.
At an anti-fascist demonstration in Seattle in January, coinciding with
Trump’s inauguration, an alt-right assaulter shot Hex, an unarmed
anti-fascist protestor and IWW member, in the stomach, sending him to
the hospital for weeks. Police initially responded by declining to
charge the shooter with a crime, while continuing to condemn and repress
anti-fascist demonstrators.
After the Seattle shooting, we wrote that the alt-right “is actively
working to create momentum for a fascist movement that will not stop
short of murder.”
Today’s murder of an anti-fascist protestor is the first to take place
during a demonstration. It is probably not the last.
When the state sends the message that both police and other
totalitarians can freely attack and injure those who stand up against
racism and injustice, no one should be surprised when that continues to
happen.
When the state moves to legalize using vehicles to murder protestors, no
one should be surprised when the alt-right takes up their invitation.
Meanwhile, the state intends to use this tragedy to consolidate its
position. Trump condemned hatred and bigotry “on many
sides”—deliberately obscuring who perpetrates the violence and who
suffers it, and what distinguishes the values of anti-fascists from the
hatred of fascists. Melania Trump reminds us that “no good comes from
violence”—again, equalizing anti-fascist militancy with fascist
murder—while her husband brings the world closer to the brink of nuclear
holocaust than it has been for generations.
And as our friends lie bleeding in the streets and cold in the morgue,
as unapologetic neo-Nazi violence escalates to a level not seen in
decades, Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer tells us to “go home.” He
cannot bring himself to say, “A neo-Nazi murdered someone fighting
against white supremacy while I stood and did nothing.” So he
diplomatically mentions that “a life was lost”—like a misplaced set of
keys, rather than a horrific and deliberate act of racist violence.
The discourse of “law and order” functions the same way, whether from
the mouths of liberals like Mayor Signer or authority-worshipping Blue
Lives Matter zealots. It is intended to play on our fears of violence
and chaos to convince us that the only alternative is to accept the
economic, political, and racial status quo, defended by ever-escalating
control and surveillance.
But we have to realize that their laws and their order are precisely
what produced this situation—a situation in which pipeline company
profits are worth more than the lives of water protectors, in which cops
murder black men with impunity, in which torch-wielding Nazis can murder
those who organize to halt their racist agenda.
We must identify the forces underlying their laws and their order—white
supremacy, patriarchy, policing, capitalism, and the state. We have to
work together to keep ourselves safe and reimagine the world without
them.
No, we will not go home. We will not forget. And if we can ever forgive,
it will only be when we have ensured that no policeman or fascist will
ever again be able to cause the slightest bit of harm to any living
thing.
See you in the streets.