Right and Left on the Violence in Charlottesville
Source : The New York Times
After violence erupted over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., writers from across the political spectrum were overwhelmingly united in their condemnation of the white supremacy and racism underlying the “Unite the Right” protest.
Pundits on the right who have been consistently critical of President Trump saw his equivocating response to the events — blaming “many sides” for the violence — as yet another sign of his inadequacy as the Republican leader. Others on the right condemned white supremacist ideology, but were eager to point to the violence of Antifa, the anti-fascist group that comprised many of the counterprotesters.
On the left, writers sought to connect the policies of the Republican Party to the violence of the weekend. While some on the left were heartened by the Republican denunciations of the so-called alt-right movement, others argued that conservative leaders deserved no credit until they acted more substantively to battle racism in their ranks.
Read a full guide to The Times’s coverage of the violence in Charlottesville »
What follows is a collection of partisan writing from the right, left and center in response to the events out of Charlottesville.
Have feedback on this series? Email us at ourpicks@nytimes.com.
For an archive of all the Partisan Writing Roundups, check out Our Picks.
From the Right
• Bill O’Reilly in The Hill:
“In cases where Americans are fighting other Americans, clarity is desperately needed. Trump would have been wise to articulate his anger with ‘many sides’ in very specific terms.”
President Trump wasn’t wrong to call out “many sides” in his response to the violence out of Charlottesville, writes Mr. O’Reilly. However, he argues that the president should have defined “the ongoing radical left political agitation that has caused violence in a precise way,” rather than “lump[ing] it in with those who started the Charlottesville fiasco.” Read more »
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• Scott Greer in The Daily Caller:
“Law enforcement was on hand at the dueling demonstrations on Saturday, decked out in riot gear and looking prepared for the worst. Except they weren’t allowed to do their job.”
Articulating a point hammered home by many on the right, and even some on the left, Mr. Greer questions why the police were not more active in quelling the violence at the rally. “The chaos,” he writes, “seems like it could have been contained and fewer people hurt if police were a more active presence.” He ultimately finds Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Mayor Mike Signer of Charlottesville, both Democrats, responsible for the “police inaction” and ensuing violence. Read more »
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• John Podhoretz in New York Post:
“Perhaps those who say I have an obligation as a conservative to support Trump should wonder what their moral obligations require.”
Mr. Podhoretz has been a vocal member of the Never Trump movement since the president’s rise as a serious Republican candidate. To his fellow conservatives who wonder why Mr. Podhoretz has resisted support for the president, even in the face of conservative policy victories, he has a simple reply: “Charlottesville is why.” Read more »
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• The editorial board of National Review:
“President Trump obviously has defects and shortcomings as a political leader, but we do not believe for a second that those failures include a sneaking anti-Semitism or a secret taste for neo-Confederate revanchism. At the same time, he has made common cause with those who have flirted with those elements for political and financial gain.”
The protesters rallied under the banner of “Unite the Right,” a matter about which the editors of National Review believe that they “a little something to say.” In no equivocal terms, they write that they do “not wish to be united with Jew-haters, bigots, racists, and the morally and intellectually defective specimens” protesting in Charlottesville. The only rebel banner that appeals to them is “the one raised by George Washington.” Read more »
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• D.C. McAllister in The Federalist:
“We hear complaints about Trump giving a nod to the radical Right, but we hear precious little about Democrats, liberals, and the mainstream Left giving not only a nod but a nudge to the violent radical Left.”
Ms. McAllister launches a vigorous repudiation of the Antifa and the “radical Left,” condemning the leftist practice of “labeling of Republicans” as racists. She says there is a false narrative that all Mr. Trump’s supporters are racists. Moreover, Republican leaders like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who called for an investigation of the violence as a matter of domestic terrorism, are “playing the useful idiots” and “giving legitimacy to Antifa by downplaying or dismissing its role in the violence.” Read more »
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From the Left
• Shuja Haider in Jacobin:
“President Trump’s reticence betrays a reactionary bias, which comes as no surprise. But his rhetoric was not unique to him — the mainstream media and liberal intelligentsia had set the precedent.”
Mr. Haider condemns the “middle-of-the-road tongue-clucking” of those in the mainstream media who direct their criticism at “all sides.” (He includes a tweet from The New York Times’s reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg as an example of this tendency.) According to Mr. Haider, in this situation, moral equivocating is “a stance that history has never revealed to be anything but moral cowardice.” Read more »
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• Laura Smith in New York Magazine:
“When it comes to identifying the perpetrators of racial hatred in this country, it is tempting to comfort ourselves with gender tropes. But women have always played a determining role in white-supremacist movements.”
Ms. Smith offers a historical perspective on the underemphasized history of women’s participation in the white nationalist movement. “When we think of the Klan,” she writes, “we imagine male faces under the pointed white hoods.” But during the height of the K.K.K.’s popularity, “a woman was the mouthpiece and arguably its most influential member.” A “comprehensive picture” of the composition of the hate group is crucial to understanding its wide reach. Read more »
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• Jamelle Bouie in Slate:
“Yes, the proximate reason for Unite the Right was to defend the city’s Confederate memorials, but the actual reason was for the marchers to show their strength as a movement.”
By traditional metrics, writes Mr. Bouie, one could argue that the white nationalists’ protest in Charlottesville failed. After all, hundreds of counterprotesters showed up to oppose the rally, and what was scheduled to be a five hour march was disbanded after 15 minutes. However, he argues, the real victory belonged to the Nazis and white supremacists who received “tacit support from a White House that refused to condemn them by name.” Read more »
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• Paul Blest in The Outline:
“In the wake of recent protest movements including Black Lives Matter, authoritarian state legislators across the country have been working to legitimize the act of crashing a car into people on the street if those people happen to be protesting.”
In recent months, Mr. Blest points out, Republican lawmakers across the country have sought to introduce legislation that would quell civil rights movements. The trend began with the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, where a bill shielding drivers who hit protesters narrowly failed in the legislature. “It’s not a coincidence,” he writes, that Republicans from six states are “attempting to ease restrictions on drivers murdering demonstrators” and “criminalize peaceful protest.” Read more »
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And Finally, From the Center:
• Perry Bacon Jr. in Five Thirty Eight:
“This strain of white identity politics, which sees white people as the group in need of special protection, is relatively new.”
There is “nothing new,” writes Mr. Bacon, about anti-Semitism or white supremacy. However, “what is different about this iteration of white nationalism is how the movement is framing its ideas, and the place those ideas occupy in U.S. politics.” Read more »
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• Katherine Mangu-Ward in Reason:
“But if fascists are to lose their free speech rights, someone must take them. And if you believe, as many of the counter-protesters do, that the white nationalists and their brethren were emboldened by the presence of a man in the White House who sees them as part of his coalition, then why on God’s good green earth would you want to turn around and hand that very man the right to censor anyone whom he labels fascists?”
To those who would limit the speech rights of those with whom they disagree, Ms. Mangu-Ward, the editor in chief of the libertarian Reason magazine, has one question: “Do you really want Donald Trump deciding who gets free speech?” Read more »
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• Rosie Gray in The Atlantic:
“The paradox of the alt-right in this moment is that just when it had seemed to achieve political legitimacy beyond its wildest dreams, it has also shown it can’t figure out how to bring itself out of the darkest corners of political thought.”
Rosie Gray explains how the so-called alt-right’s efforts to rebrand itself have failed. As some of the movement’s leaders — including Richard Spencer and Mike Cernovich — attempt to erase traces of overt racism to focus on rooting out “globalist” influences in the White House, Charlottesville proves “that they were always white nationalists.” Read more »
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• Ross K. Baker in USA Today:
“Our president’s unwillingness or inability to make critical moral decisions may also signal a blaze of unimagined destructiveness.”
Toxic words, writes Mr. Baker, “tend to have a long half-life.” Mr. Trump has “astutely but cynically played the polarization card,” something Mr. Baker judges to be the “most irresponsible and destructive course of action taken by any major political figure in American history.” Read more »
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