Charlottesville: Violence, Death, and a Rusty Old Statue

“With malice toward none; with charity for all … let us strive to achieve a just and a lasting peace among ourselves.”—Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, President Lincoln’s words still hold relevance today, over 150 years after the end of the bloody brother war. On Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, a clash between nationalist and “anti-fascist” protesters, both sides armed and fervent, left one person dead and dozens injured. Ironically, the overlooked issue at the heart of all this violence is an inanimate, rusting, old statue of General Robert E. Lee.

The reaction of the mainstream media has been expectedly one-sided. President Trump was slammed for purportedly failing to condemn white supremacy after writing a tweet denouncing “hatred, bigotry, and violence … on many sides.” While most would agree that “hatred and bigotry” more than accurately describe white supremacists, it was the “many sides” part that angered progressives. In this instance, the victims were “anti-fascist” rioters, injured and killed at the hands of a white supremacist from Ohio. Yet, both sides were armed to the bone and ready to fight. Antifa, BLM, and other far-left organizations have incited violence many times before. It is disingenuous of the mainstream media to cast blame solely on one side when it could have, just as easily, fallen on someone from the other side. One expects rioters to be violent, just like one expects our media outlets to twist the truth in their favor.

Before I fall into the same rabbit hole as Trump, I unequivocally denounce the KKK, white supremacy, and any infringements on the rights of others. Of course, this goes for “Nazi-punching” anti-fascists as well. I am a Ukrainian Jew who lost great-grandparents in the Holocaust and having recently returned from a trip to Auschwitz, I would be first to denounce racism and Nazism in all of its forms. As a student of history and all of its nuances, however, I understand that (to paraphrase Nietzsche) too often in fighting monsters, we risk becoming monsters ourselves. Fascism depends on the burning of books and the targeted suppression of history, and yet, the “anti-fascists” of today seem to be the ones intent on tearing down and rewriting history.