Mask On. Fuck It, Mask Off
Future probably wasn’t talking about Charlottesville as a microcosm of American society… but he might as well have been.
ICYMI: The weekend of August 11, 2017, sunny, utopian Charlottesville, the home of Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the Declaration and was, you know, a nice slave owner), Bodos, Dave Matthews, Chris Long & Malcolm Brogdon, played host to a far less reputable group: rabid white supremacists. Organized by local, doughy jizz rag, Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer and the rest of the pasty, Macklemore haircut-sporting homies infested Central Virginia armed to the teeth for, you guessed it, a “peaceful protest.”
They kicked off the weekend at Home Goods, apparently, buying enough tiki torches for a fraternity luau, and marching straight onto the campus of UVA, blissfully unencumbered by mosquitoes. While chanting popular Nazi slogans such as “blood and soil,” and “Jews will not replace us,” (because, R.E. Lee statue?), they proceeded to surround a group of counter-protesters near the Thomas Jefferson statue and the event (shockingly, right?), became violent.
“Well the ‘tolerant’ left incited the violence. We weren’t allowed to have a peaceful protest,” moans the shit-head squad, brainlessly regurgitating whatever unconscionable verbal diarrhea has most-recently erupted from human-dumpster, Tomi Lahren. I mean Sean Hannity. Or was it Alex Jones? Wait, it was Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Author’s Note: Fuck a crowd, if >0 brown people walked with guns and flaming sticks on a college campus you all would have Tom Brady’d the 1st Amendment out the window and had every law enforcement officer you could find, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Avengers down there in a fucking heartbeat. But I digress.
Let’s get something real fucking clear. If you’re unable to decide who’s right and who’s wrong in the case of violence against Nazis versus being (and/or sympathizing with), a group of Nazis, I urge you, PLEASE don’t reproduce.
But this move is the Spider 2 Y Banana in the White Supremacist playbook.
1. Wrap a racist, homophobic, bigoted turd loosely in 1st Amendment freedoms, as any true “patriot” would.
2. Incite violence without necessarily being overly violent. You know, just strap up and carry torches through private property screaming Nazi propaganda.
3. Appear frightened, confused, and persecuted when sane people retaliate.
4. Cry oppression all over every social media channel (even Periscope… Yeah, Periscope), like a recently-dumped Kardashian. Because nothing says “master race” like crying on camera.
5. Shotgun Miller High Life & burn cross.
And that’s what gets people fucked up, including our prolapsed anus of a “president,” (used in the loosest possible terms), who had the audacity to condemn hatred on “many sides.” Then, the next day, his much anticipated full dissociation with reality (or blatant admission of racism), finally occurred, as he claimed that there were “very fine” people in the group of torch-wielding racists.
Many sides?! Very fine!?
This isn’t a sexy dodecahedron.
There are two sides: Racists and not racists. People trying to intimidate and cause violence to other people because of their skin color and religious beliefs, and people defending them. People beating the shit out of a defenseless black kid in a parking garage yelling “die nigger,” and people who, you know, don’t do that. Period.

If a guy abuses his wife, and she finally hits back, try and sell the “well you know, Cheryl, violence isn’t the answer.”
Without spiraling down a Trump rabbit-hole, it’s quickly worth noting that this is the dude who’s shown a proclivity for denouncing a wide variety of things, faster than a 16-year-old virgin’s first time in the sack.
The fact that he can’t be bothered to speak out unambiguously against white supremacy and domestic terrorism, because it’s perpetuated and perpetrated, respectively, by his voting bloc (as evidenced by David Duke, Andrew Anglin, Jack Posobe — who cares, and others), speaks volumes. Or just reinforces what we’ve been telling you folks for about a year now.
“We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump.” — David Duke, human foreskin
- “But he did speak out against it.”
- “It was implied, obviously.”
- “Other total dog shit excuse because I voted for Trump and want to absolve myself.”
1. It took him three days. Three fucking days! To botch it. Twice! This was the biggest and simplest moral alley-oop of any President’s time in any office in any country. Ever. If a group of people sets a school bus full of kittens on fire and says “we’re inspired by the moving testimony of Price Thomas,” I’m going to disavow that shit immediately, not put my thumb in my ass then blame the kittens in equal measure for scratching the people and urinating in improper places.
2. OK, word, so, if this was a Muslim group, or some brown people, beating white folks with flag poles and wood planks, and driving a car down a side street through a large group of people, you all wouldn’t be blowing up the Fox News phones for our Commander-in-Chief to say the specific words “radical Islamic terrorism?” Or to stand up to, explicitly, the minority “thugs” who carried out this violence?
3. If you voted for Trump, I don’t have beef with you, yet. BUT YOU HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR ROLE IN THIS. Miss me with all of this shit about “the swamp and emails and jobs and business and OMG ‘DEPLORABLE!’” You don’t get a pass. No matter why you voted for him in November you cosigned on this nuclear shit missile that just hit the town that my family calls home. Am I saying you’re equally culpable as the terrorist who drove a Dodge Charger down a side street and killed Heather Heyer? Absolutely not. But you knowingly and willingly voted for the man who flagrantly and repeatedly emboldened him. And you have to own that.

If you find yourself defending what happened this weekend by hiding behind the First Amendment, trying to explain how the “radical left” incited the violence, or blaming George Soros or Obama, have a long look in the mirror and understand who you’re aligning yourself with. You’re positioning yourself squarely in in the company of racists and a murderer. If you find yourself making some ludicrous false equivalency between bigots and those seeking civil rights, take a pause and carefully assess your value system. If you wonder why your POC friends (who may not be that for much longer), are “triggered” or “uptight,” about this administration and how it affects them and their family members, this shit is exactly why.
We can’t let the letter of the law be mistaken for the spirit of the law. The First Amendment protects free speech and assembly, everyone knows this. But to cower behind that in an instance this extreme is spineless and irresponsible. I’ve never heard of anyone hiring a militia for a “peaceful protest,” and coming strapped with enough artillery to invade a small nation. There was nothing peaceful about this from jumpstreet. You know it, I know it, and tragically, a young woman is dead because of it. And if you rationalize that under the umbrella of “free speech” and “constitutional rights,” well, fuck you.

Lastly, for everyone who is quick to say “this isn’t Charlottesville,” I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that your heart is in the right place. But it’s time to educate yourselves. Take stock of what you’re saying and how marginalizing it is to the folks for whom this is exactly what Charlottesville is and has been. It’s not all King Family polo matches and Carter Mountain sunsets for a large part of the community. There’s a more “polite” race problem in Charlottesville, one that’s spanned many years and is all to familiar to people of color. Your privilege allows you to ignore it, and just because there aren’t race riots and hate crimes on your idyllic neighborhood doorstep on a regular basis doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue. It shouldn’t take our city looking like Deliverance fucked Pakistan to make that clear.
I’m light-skinned, I grew up in the suburbs, I went to William & Mary, I don’t say “nigga” too often, and I played the bassoon in band. And even as a relatively palatable man of color, based on the current paradigm of acceptableness in our society (read: whiteness), “NIGGER” was still graffitied onto my family’s car parked right outside my house. I still get followed around convenience stores. I’ve still had the police called on me to my own house because, well, I had to be breaking in, right?
In 20 years, when young people ask what we did in 2017 the answer can’t be “nothing.” This isn’t toothless hicks driving debilitated winnebagos and having cosplay orgies in the woods (mostly). These are your stock brokers, college students, teachers, and politicians. People who have the resources and ability to quickly re-assimilate back into our society and move through their days shedding crocodile tears over what’s happened, disguising themselves as peaceful while planning their next move.
Mask off, America.
