This was a Lynch Mob, Not a Protest

As the news filters in from Charlottesville, VA, what emerges is a day that will likely be immortalized in history books for the next several decades, and not in a good way. Throughout the winter and spring of 2017, protest marches have become a regular occurrence, as Donald Trump’s draconian agenda has brought opposition from women, minorities, scientists, environmentalists, the LGBT community, native Americans, the elderly … it’s really hard to find a group that has not protested his administration.

In every single one of these, the condemnation of these marches by Trump was guaranteed, a tweet at 3 am claiming these people who were exercising their constitutional rights were traitors or worse. In only one incident, a protest at Berkeley, was there any property damage — a cart was set afire — or supposed violence — an alt-right spokesman was punched in what looked suspiciously like a staged incident. The right wing media ate it up, claiming that the leftist fringe of the US was becoming violent, proving what they had been screaming without evidence for years.

Yet one thing has been true since before Trump became president.

No one has died. Until now.

The call to arms went out to alt-right groups, to the Ku Klux Klan, to white supremacists, to everyone who felt that all those “snowflakes” were the real enemy and should have been stopped. The gathering at Charlotte was meant to be a show of support for James Damore, a Google engineer who wrote a loaded and controversial memo that asserted that Google should dismantle its diversity hiring program, making veiled references that women in particular were not up to the task of being programmers. He was fired several days later, his firing instantly becoming a cause célèbre among the far right.

When Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a company-wide meeting, the response from this group was to send death threats to everyone at Google, forcing Pichai to cancel the planned teleconference for fear that someone would carry these threats out and Google employees would be hurt or killed. This has been a common tactic of late among the alt-right — a recent set of talks at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington was canceled due to similar bombardments of threats, and the list of people who have cancelled public appearances because they talked about these controversial people is now numbers in the dozens.

So the alt-right gathered, and the counter protesters gathered. Then one person, James Alex Fields Jr., decided to use that opportunity to show what he really thought of those “snowflakes”, taking a tactic out of terrorist attacks in Europe. He rammed his car into the counter protesters at high speed. Witnesses reported seeing people flying from the impact. More than a dozen people ended up being sent to the hospital even as police captured Fields.

One of those people died, en route.

Fields came from Ohio specifically for the event. He was young, only twenty, but old enough to know right from wrong. What he did was unequivocally an act of terrorism against Americans. It was not a foolish lark. He did it for the cause, and may have been encouraged by others around him. Two police officers, Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen, 48 and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates, died when the helicopter they were in crashed while trying to control the mobs.

Donald Trump, upon hearing of the incident, praised the alt-right group, claiming they were true patriots, while not even mentioning the fact that this same group that he has been pushing and promoting at rallies and elsewhere was responsible for the death of a person. He later came out condemning the hate on all sides (ambiguously), and extended his condolences to the family of the victims, but again refused to single out any one group, even after being pressed multiple times by reporters.

He wants this. Trump has made no secret that he wants to encourage this violence, wants people to be afraid of his home grown army of nazis, klansmen and thugs. Perhaps he sees it as a way of silencing his opponents, perhaps a way to distract from the mounting investigations into his actions before and during the election. Perhaps he truly is just as much of a bigot as the people he supports.

This is not a question of Left vs. Right any more. It has become a question of a terrorist group fomenting a campaign of violence against all Americans.

The right to protest is enshrined in the first amendment. The right to murder is not.

Kurt Cagle is the editor of The Cagle Report.