The days following Charlottesville have seen a remarkable spectacle – President Donald J. Trump, of all people, getting in trouble for sticking to a principle. The principle in question, that fascists and antifa simply hold two conflicting but equally valid opinions, is of course completely insane. We should remember though, that before Charlottesville it was the default position across the mainstream political spectrum, when they bothered to acknowledge antifascism at all. Since August 12 that stance has become untenable, a basic political fact recognized by everyone but Trump. Trump is thereby ignoring the flip side of Stalin’s infamous dictum – the horrific murder of Heather Heyer by white supremacist James Fields is a tragedy, not a statistic.
This failure to carry out a simple political maneuver, namely jettisoning a relatively small group of supporters who have become a liability, is already costing Trump dearly, and there is no immediate end in sight. Politicians from both parties have condemned white supremacy and Trump’s statements on Charlottesville. Even VP Mike Pence, one of Trump’s most loyal bootlickers, refused to endorse the “two sides” argument. Trump was forced to disband his business council after the corporate CEOs involved began resigning en masse, distancing himself from one of his natural constituencies. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement condemning racism, an indirect but still unheard-of rebuke of their commander in chief.
David Graeber has expressed puzzlement over the tendency of the right to nurture their extremists, while the left prefers to stab theirs in the back at the slightest provocation. With all due respect, it’s not really that hard to understand. Liberals and conservatives are engaged in the same project of social control, they just differ on the best way to accomplish it. If the extreme right gets what they want the result is a dictatorship of some sort. While dictatorship is not the preferred form of government in industrialized nations, from the point of view of the ruling class it’s still way better than nothing, constituting a potential stopgap should democracy fail temporarily. If the extreme left (that’s us!) gets their way however, the ruling class is toast. Our fondest dreams are their vision of hell: police stations in flames, landlords strung up from lampposts, 19-year-olds shotgunning Natty Ice right out in public. Nobody (except us!) needs that. We get stabbed in the back because we’re way more dangerous than the fash.
Nonetheless, right wing tolerance for extremism is not unlimited. Fascist uprisings end either by overthrowing the existing democratic government and taking power, or, more often, by being slapped down when they become more trouble than they’re worth. Witness Greece’s Golden Dawn, which rose to become the third largest party in the country – before being suppressed by the government after one of their members murdered antifascist hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, an act which aroused similar outrage in Greece to that of Heyer’s killing here. Under the “normal” course of events one would expect a similar fate to befall the alt-right, especially since they are far weaker here than Golden Dawn was in Greece. But Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions may continue to reject political sanity. Sadly for Trump however, more talking isn’t going to get him out of the hole he has dug for himself by talking. The only question is whether he will take action to salvage his reputation by ordering criminal investigations of the alt-right.
If not, his support for them will continue to hobble his presidency. The difficulties of running a scandal-plagued administration will multiply. Impeachment will become a real possibility if enough Republican Congressmen come to believe that the short term embarrassment of getting rid of their standard bearer is preferable to having him destroy their party. All this, and he can’t even help the alt-right very much. Richard Spencer and company are now such pariahs that not even the president can rescue them.
For starters, the ostensible goal of the Unite the Right rally, to prevent a statue of Robert E. Lee from being removed, has backfired spectacularly. In the wake of Charlottesville, Confederate statues are coming down all over the south, officially or otherwise. Uniting the right isn’t happening either. The Proud Boys and Kyle Chapman never even showed up in Charlottesville. The 3% militia were there, but have since disavowed the action and declined to protect right-wing counter-protesters at Charlottesville vigils. The big picture looks just as ugly for them. The alt-right’s strategy of making racism socially acceptable lies in tatters. All the edgy memes and hipster haircuts in the world will never erase the image of Fields’ Challenger plowing into a crowd of antifascist protesters.
At least for now, explicit racism is less acceptable than ever before. Spencer and Jason Kessler (the organizer of Unite the Right) have both been been forced to cut short or move press conferences. Apple Pay has cancelled service to white supremacist online stores. Fascists photographed in Charlottesville have been fired from their jobs and disowned by their families. Even OK Cupid has gotten in on the act, cancelling the account of uber-douchebag Chris Cantwell for being a fascist. Other examples abound.
The case of neo-nazi web site The Daily Stormer is particularly interesting. So far they have had their domain name revoked by Google and GoDaddy, as well as a Russian domain registrar. More importantly, their protection against denial-of-service attacks was cancelled by Internet security firm Cloudflare, temporarily driving the site to the refuge of the dark web. In short, the Daily Stormer is getting the Wikileaks treatment, but not for the same reason as Wikileaks. They don’t embarrass the state by revealing sensitive information, but, since Charlottesville, by the pure toxicity of their politics. Despite Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s claim that he “woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet”, it seems likely that he was motivated by the same threat as Google and GoDaddy – losing massive numbers of customers if he kept doing business with a major neo-nazi propaganda outlet.
None of the above should be interpreted to mean that white supremacy is on its deathbed. Racism remains an essential pillar of social control in the US. But white supremacists, at a minimum, have some serious rebranding to do. The alt-right theme is done for, and no obvious replacement is at hand. The countless thousands of racist keyboard warriors posting Pepe memes from their moms’ basements were probably never going to take to the streets in large numbers, but any of them who were thinking of venturing out into the sunlight before Charlottesville have surely given up on the idea. The few hundreds of committed fascists willing to show their faces in public have to choose between trying to slink back into obscurity (if they haven’t been doxxed yet), or doubling down on a failed and bankrupt strategy. Some few of them will choose the latter course, and the memory of Heather Heyer demands they be crushed wherever they appear. This shouldn’t be too difficult though. Last Saturday’s Infowars-organized “free speech” rally in Boston was met by literally a thousand times their number of counter-protesters, and had to be not just escorted away by the police, but actually carried out in cop cars to keep from being mobbed.
What the white supremacists will come up with next remains to be seen, but militant antifascism has clearly led to their current decline. So lets keep it up. Stay vigilant and smash the fash wherever they show their faces!
Rest in power, Heather Heyer!