Post-Charlottesville reading: fighting white supremacy, the alt-right, and more
There are a lot of intense discussions happening on Facebook, on people’s walls and the various activism groups I’m in. It’s a stressful time, and emotions are high. Not only that, some of the topics we’re discussing — how best to oppose white supremacy and fascism, the need to confront our own privilege and come to terms with systemic oppression, and the role of a diversity of tactics in creating social change — are things that have sparked intense debates for years.
If you’re participating in these discussions, or even just following along, now’s a good time to listen to what people who have been involved in the fight for years are saying. Here’s a handful of links that can help. As always, other suggestions are welcome!
And also as always, many thanks to those who gave feedback on the earlier draft!

Welcome to the Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed, Ijeoma Oluo
This article is an excellent starting point for those of us who haven’t spent our lives doing anti-racism work — and all the more so if you haven’t taken part in a lot of anti-racism training. Here’s just two of the many important points she makes
Your privilege is the biggest risk to this movement.
Your privilege is the biggest benefit you can bring to the movement.
So You Want to Fight White Supremacy is a good companion read, with specific actions to take.
If you find these articles useful, please consider joining me in supporting Ijeoma via Patreon and/or subscribing to The Establishment.

When violent White Supremacists show up to “protest” in your city, what will you do?, Malkia Cyril (aka Culture Jedi)
Black and genderqueer communications strategist, media and technology activist and long-time community organizer Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice is a leader in the civil liberties community as well as the Movement for Black Lives. Here, she discusses a topic that people I know in Seattle, San Francisco, Berkeley, and elsewhere are very justifiably concerned about. Her overall framing is extremely valuable even if you’re not in one of those cities:
White supremacy is on the march, and thousands of brave people are confronting it head on. But our capacity to do so is weakened when our legal and journalistic organizations measure the basic rights of free speech, free press, and free assembly against a constitutional standard that has long been unequally applied. In the context of an entrenched racial hierarchy and under the blinding glare of ahistoric constitutional absolutism, people of color simultaneously face discriminatory censorship and the systematic denial of the basic right to dissent and participate — while being assaulted by fighting words that drive episodic and systemic violence, both physical and virtual. This is as true on social media as it is in the news media. It is as true in our schools as it is in sports and entertainment.
Systemic censorship of voices of color and anti-racist voices demands that we not only speak, but that we lay claim to the infrastructure of meaning.
Her specific recommendations are valuable as well. For example:
If you are prepared and operating collectively, use strength in numbers and nonviolent civil disobedience to disrupt and confront.
Consider your action logic. What images should the rest of the world see?
And if all that’s not enough, there are also some excellent tips on digital security.
Center for Media Justice is a vital force for change in these challenging times. Please join me in supporting them.

For our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies, Courtney Ariel
This is another good recent introduction to allyship, with some excellent recommendations, starting with
Listen more; talk less
And including
Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country.
Courtney also has some good points about what it means to be an ally:
Being an ally is different than simply wanting not be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. Read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and so many other great books and articles that illuminate oppression and structures of white supremacy and white privilege. Use your voice and influence to direct the folks that walk alongside you in real life (or follow you on the internet), toward the voice of someone that is living a marginalized/disenfranchised experience.

I Studied the Alt-Right So That You Don’t Have To, Emily Pothast
If you haven’t spent a lot of time looking at the methods of the white supremacist/white nationalist, nativist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic people who call themselves as “alt-right” organizing these violent rallies … now’s a good time to get more familiar with them. This article — by somebody who’s been targeted by the alt-right — looks at the Kekistanis, Patriot Prayer, and other factions. Once again, there are some specific recommendations, including
Stop being on their side.
Listen to what people who have been fighting white nationalism their whole lives have to say, especially people of color.
[As an aside, for those of you who are in technology, I see a disappointing number of well-intentioned white guys doing these things with James Damore’s clueless “Google manifesto” memo. If you don’t understand how this relates, check out Jeremy Keith’s Intolerable, Tim Chevalier’s Refusing to Empathize with Elliot Rodger, Charlie Warzel’s How The Pro-Trump Media Turned The Google Memo Into A National Story, and Sam Levin’s James Damore, Google, and the YouTube radicalization of angry white men]

Yes, What About the “Alt-Left”?, Dahlia Lithwick
There are a lot of excellent articles about what happened in Charlottesville (I’ve got a short list below), but I wanted to single this one out because some of the most intense conversations I’m seeing relate to opinions about antifa and the more general question of whether non-violent protest the only effective option. Mainstream media reporting tends to equate antifa with “black bloc” protestors whose only goal is to wreak havoc, but that’s far from the truth. Dahlia Lithwick’s outstanding reporting from the front lines at Charlottesville gives a different view. Here’s a good quote from Rev. Seth Wispelwey
I am a pastor in Charlottesville, and antifa saved my life twice on Saturday. Indeed, they saved many lives from psychological and physical violence — I believe the body count could have been much worse, as hard as that is to believe….
They have their tools to achieve their purposes, and they are not ones I will personally use, but let me stress that our purposes were the same: block this violent tide and do not let it take the pedestal.
For more on antifa in Charlottesville, Crimethinc’s Why We Fought in Charlottesville on It’s Going Down is a good companion piece. Several interviews with Dartmouth professor Mark Bray have some good perspectives as well: Virginia Hefferman on Slate’s TrumpCast, Matt Galloway on CBC’s The Current, and Sean Illing on Vox. For those of you in the Seattle area, check out Neil McNamara’s interview with Seattle-area anti-fascist Juan Cugaux (and as a special added bonus, Chris Petzold of the highly-effective Indivisible Washington 8th District).
As I said, there are lots of other excellent articles about what happened in Charlottesville as well. Here’s a few more links:
- Jelani Cobb’s The Battle of Charlottesville
- Shireen Mitchells What Happened in Charlottesville Isn’t a Debate About Free Speech
- Emily Gorcenski’s I saw the attack in Charlottesville, I knew it was coming
- Adele M. Stan’s White Supremacist Chaos in Charlottesville Is Just the Beginning
- Son of Baldwin’s Hush Hush Sweet Charlottesville
- UVa Graduate Coalition’s Charlottesville Syllabus

Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Many people new to activism seem to believe that social justice movements have succeeded because of their commitment to non-violence. It’s more complex than that, though. Stonewall is often described as a riot. The suffragettes burned down churches. And here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates looking at the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence — like nonviolence — sometimes works.
The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is inseparable from the threat of riots. The housing bill of 1968 — the most proactive civil-rights legislation on the books — is a direct response to the riots that swept American cities after King was killed. Violence, lingering on the outside, often backed nonviolence during the civil-rights movement.
Charlottesville organizers ask you to take these 8 actions, Solidarity Cville

One of the consistent themes in the articles I’ve linked to is “don’t just talk, take action.” So I’d like to end with this list of requests from the Black Lives Matter group that is part of the local Charlottesville resistance network. For example:
Provide financial support for ongoing mental healthcare, trauma counseling, and living expenses for Black organizers as well as victims of violence Friday and Saturday, especially people of color: https://www.paypal.me/blmcville
Yeah, really. I sent some money; if you can afford it, I hope you will as well. And there are also seven other concrete suggestions. Now’s a good time to get started. As the organizers say:
We need you to work with us to defeat fascism. Join us! Hope resides in action.

