Counter-Currents
Unite the Right Did Nothing Wrong
(But There’s Still Room for Improvement)
Greg Johnson
1,623 words
Well, the unity didn’t last long. Immediately after Unite the Right, those who did not participate started attacking the speakers and organizers. For instance, Katie McHugh and AntiDem have used Unite the Right as a pretext to attack Richard Spencer. Now the speakers and organizers are blaming and disavowing one another. Richard Spencer, Eli Mosley, and Baked Alaska, for example, have disavowed Jason Kessler over a tweet about Heather Heyer, who joined the violent mob that attacked Unite the Right and died as a result.
We can come up with a long list of problems with Unite the Right. The fact that the Unite the Right planning sessions on Discord had an antifa mole who recorded everything does not speak well of the prudence and operational security of the organizers. Nor does the fact that the organizers did not have lawyers on hand in case of arrests, and they did not impress upon the participants the necessity of not talking to the police until provided with a lawyer. The biggest problem, however, is that the event was announced four months in advance, giving the enemy time to organize a response.
But even with all the organizational problems, the fact remains that Unite the Right would have gone off without a hitch if the police in Charlottesville had done their jobs. We have to hold fast to this fact and insist that 100% of the blame for the deaths and injuries in Charlottesville must ultimately be laid on the city government and the governor of Virginia. It is not the fault of Jason Kessler, the principal organizer. It is not the fault of Eli Mosley, who conducted his organizational meetings in a most impressive manner without knowing that the enemy were listening in. It is not the fault of Richard Spencer. It is not the fault of James Fields, who was clearly acting in self-defense. It is not the fault of anyone at Unite the Right.
Blaming the government does not, of course, absolve the rioters of their own responsibility. But they never would have been able to attack the rally with a whole array of lethal and non-lethal weapons if the police had done their jobs. And the fact that many of the people at the rally were carrying guns, but none of them killed any of the protesters, even after being assaulted with deadly weapons, shows a miraculously high level of restraint and discipline.
Blaming the government does not, moreover, imply that Unite the Right did not make mistakes. Clearly, things could have been handled better, and they will be handled better in the future.
As for Jason Kessler, if we can give Kessler the bulk of the credit for what went right about Unite the Right, we also have to assign him the bulk of our “room for improvement” list to study. But it is a list that everyone else should be learning from as well.
Frankly, though, I am disgusted by the disavowals and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories being directed at Kessler.
- Yes, Jason Kessler once supported Barack Obama. But nobody is born a white advocate. We were all something else before we came to this movement. Julian Langness, for instance, was actually an Obama delegate at the 2008 Democratic convention. If being something else before he joined this movement disqualifies Jason Kessler, it disqualifies us all. Furthermore, as our movement grows, it is inevitable that more ex-liberals are going to join our ranks. These people should be welcomed, not greeted with paranoid finger-pointing from the lunatic fringe. Remember: Every lunatic we coddle is keeping a hundred normal people from joining our ranks.
- No, Kessler is not a Jew
- No, Kessler was not part of the Occupy movement.
- No, Kessler does not work for George Soros.
- No, Kessler did not write for CNN.
- No, Kessler was not a paid Democratic consultant.
As for Kessler’s tweet about Heather Heyer, here it is:
It is in bad taste to mock a dead woman just because she was “fat” and “disgusting.” As for the assertion that her death was “payback time,” perhaps Kessler believes in God or karma, or at least “poetic justice,” so that those who join a rioting Leftist mob take on responsibility and merit punishment for all Leftist crimes.
Such a view might well be theologically or philosophically defensible. But in any case, it is highly likely that it is consistent with Heather Heyer’s own views, and the views of her fellow rioters. After all, if white people today are collectively responsible for slavery and colonialism, why are Leftists today not collectively responsible for the millions of victims of communism?
But there is a more down-to-earth, less metaphysical sense in which Heather Heyer really is responsible for her own death. After all, she joined a rioting mob that had committed countless crimes, including assaulting the car of James Fields. To escape them, Fields stepped on the gas and crashed into the cars in front of him, killing Heather Heyer. I hope that James Fields will be found not guilty on grounds of self-defense, if his case even goes to trial, and Heather Heyer will be classed not as a victim but as a perpetrator. I am going to save my tears and sympathy for the innocent victims of that mob — who were beaten, slashed, burned, and blinded with acid — not the perpetrators.
Of course Heyer might have simply been a political innocent who was manipulated and deceived into joining the mob. But by 1:45 in the afternoon, surely she had seen enough violence and enough weapons in the hands of her fellow protesters to get a sense of what she was lending herself to. Beyond that, people who join these events out of naïveté need to know that the reason the police stood down was not just to allow the antifa to attack, but also to goad Unite the Right into fighting back, so that they could then be blamed for any injuries and deaths among the Leftist mob. Heather Heyer and everyone else in that mob was regarded simply as cannon fodder, as the raw material from which the Left could manufacture martyrs after they engineered anarchy and mayhem.
It turns out that Kessler — at the end of what is surely the worst week of his life — had sent out a tasteless drunk-tweet linking the far more tasteless attacks on Heyer at The Daily Stormer. The next morning he thought better of it and took it back. I forgive him. Richard Spencer, who knows quite a lot about drunk tweeting (and far worse), probably should have forgiven him as well, rather than joining the mob to denounce Kessler.
Since Kessler was simply relaying a link to The Daily Stormer and stating the substance of the article, does this imply that Spencer will no longer associate with Andrew Anglin and Weev? Does it imply that he thinks that nobody else should?
Kessler’s gaffe is just one more reason why what as come to be known as the “Alc Right” should seriously consider adopting Harold Covington’s General Order #10: Nobody working for a white homeland may use drugs or alcohol for the duration of the struggle.
Unite the Right is history. What should come next?
First, we need to take a page from the Identitarian playbook. Unite the Right was a high-risk, low-reward gamble for a movement that has very few people and resources. We need to think in terms of low-risk, high-reward events that can be replicated in every city and town across the country.
- Instead of large, unity events open to all comers — including undisciplined clowns — we need smaller, more disciplined groups with more focused messaging.
- Instead of informing the enemy media and antifa rabble in advance, we need to spring these events on the world, document them ourselves, and disseminate them to the world with our spin.
- Instead of big national events in one place, which require huge expenditures for travel and lodging, we need smaller local events all over the country.
Second, as one commentator wrote, if Unite the Right did the torchlight march on Friday night, then cleared out of Charlottesville and let the Left tear the city apart before the eyes of the world media, that would have been the best possible outcome. As Mike Enoch pointed out, if the media had accurately covered the behavior of the Left in Charlottesville, the whole country would be on our side. We need to give them many, many more chances to get the story right.
Going forward, I hope that our activists will stage small, disciplined, Identitarian-style events all over the country, and propagate them to the world with a twofold aim: to get our message to normies and to trigger the Left into melting down. Then, if the Left does riot the next day, our people should not go out to oppose them, since we will be blamed for all their violence. Instead, we should blend in with the mob and film everything they do, so we can propagate that message to the world as well
If we can stage enough of these edifying spectacles, we will slowly bring the public around to our way of seeing things.
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32 comments
Excellent & reasonable analysis. Thanks, Greg. donating today.
All in this movement planning an event should presume there is a mole or “shill.” G. Lincoln Rockwell’s group was filled with them, but it doesn’t matter if you are keeping it legal.
Keep it legal!
No doubt the Governor of Virginia will pay a slight (if any) price politically for this and Charlottesville’s city government will pay through the nose due to the inevitable lawsuits, but these are tiny costs compared to what the anti-white left won. A great many websites were taken down or hacked in the wake of Charlottesville including sbpdl.com, Anglin’s Daily Stormer, alt right blogspot, and Red Ice Radio. That may have been the plan all along.
Kessler’s drunk tweet forced Spencer’s response. Richard has been smeared as a homegrown Hitler by the media this week and has repeatedly (and truthfully) said that he does not condone or encourage violence and would immediately disassociate himself from anyone who does. On ABC’s 20/20 he said “speech is not violence and violence is not speech”.
You are right about Heyer, though. Her own stupidity and participation in mob violence led to her death. But that is too adult a thing to say to an America mostly populated by mental children.
Anyone showing up is risking their life.
Every Beerhall Putsch must have its Ludendorff. Cantwell serves that purpose nicely but there are other parties to this. If I recall there were a couple of Putschists who were secretly spying on the marchers.
One must have a scapegoat.
But even with all the organizational problems, the fact remains that Unite the Right would have gone off without a hitch if the police in Charlottesville had done their jobs.”
I don’t often disagree strenuously with GJ, but this will be one of those rare occurrences.
Greg, in my judgment, the significant damage resulting from Charlottesville has little to nothing to do with Fields’s action with his car (put vaguely because I’m *still* uncertain as to what precisely happened there, and am consequently suspending personal judgment). The real damage to the Right was the association between the swastika/Nazi salute and the Confederate flag. This has sparked a tsunami of removal of Confederate symbols, statues, etc. – a torrent that I do *not* believe would have been unleashed if UtR had suffered from the Fields fiasco but not that of the Nazi imagery. See, if we’d just seen the car crash, the Right could have pointed out that statistics still favor the Right with respect to political violence incidents, deaths, and so on. But the association of Nazism and respect for Confederate history that has crippled the Southern Identity movement – one that’s *actually* implicitly White, as opposed to “conservatism” – is a qualitative (not quantitative) phenomenon, and one that is likely to be further and further reinforced by pop culture and government.
I’m afraid I repeat myself in my posts about this event, but it would be comforting to think that the Right is drawing the right tactical conclusions from the event. And to me, the proper conclusion is that imagery can be more powerful than even violence. By the way, I liked your characterization, in the debate with Vox Day, of the adults in the Right as having to clean up the vomit from the night beforehand. The analogy that sprang to my mind when I heard about what had happened was a parent having to deal with an insurance company after a teenager takes out a car for spin, drunk, and totals someone else’s car… but the ideas are similar enough.
Completely agree with the point regarding police. “Just following orders” only carries so far; from a certain point on each and every policeman will have to decide where he stands and act accordingly. Otherwise, their only remaining choice will be between a Nuremberg 2.0 or a stab in the back from the very hordes and traitors they are dutifully protecting until now, for a pension that is by no means certain will ever come (viz. Houston, Dallas, LA and more).
It is worth noting that Weev (whom Mr. Johnson has interviewed [and it was a fascinating and great interview]) has claimed credit for hacking Kessler’s Twitter to post that tweet and elicit recriminations from Spencer et al.
I would quote Weev’s Gab.ai post here if the site were not currently down.
Yes, well Weev is a trickster. But it did not happen.
Thank you for your reply. I’m sure you know more about the situation than I do.
I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to see a response from you, my absolute favorite thinker in the North American New Right whom I owe so much to intellectually. I have gained such a wealth of knowledge and intellectual courage from your articles, podcasts, and interviews. You are a great hero of mine and I feel honored. Thank you.
I actually thought that Weev did a noble thing by claiming that he had hacked Kessler. He used his reputation as a trickster and a troll to give someone (a relative newbie who was trying to do something great, screwed up and ended up taking tremendous heat) the perfect get out of jail free card. I was thoroughly impressed with that.
I watched the Kessler tweet and WEEV’s response unfold during the night and was deeply impressed by how quickly WEEV stepped in and tried to provide Kessler an out. My opinion of him after watching moves like that and the effort he’s put towards keeping the DS up, is at an all time high.
Greg, excellent advice on staging and presentation of future events. I watched your conversations with Vox and Woes and agree with you on adopting European approach to events, spreading our own narrative through social media and keeping unstable persons out of participation.
Which brings me to Kessler. When others brought up his support of Obama I didn’t think much of it, many are coming from mainstream left. But this defense you put up of him, especially interpretation of “payback time”, is ridiculous.
It’s at the level of Jews now attempting to pass Goy, Bye as a neutral phrase.
Tasteless and crude is the least of it. As someone who enjoys watching compilations of Americans running over leftist protesters I have zero sympathy for this worthless antifa trash.
But to publicly do what Kessler did is not only stupid, it is dangerous, given that the innocent driver is being charged, and this tweet from the organizer will likely be used in trial against this young man.
The fact that you don’t think that organizer of the biggest alt-right event drunk-tweeting what will be described as evidence of premeditated white supremacist murder is cause for disavowal is surprising.
I hope everything goes ok with moving the site, I’ll be donating next week.
A tweet from Kessler is not evidence of anything in terms of the guilt or innocence of James Fields. It would have no legal standing.
Kessler’s remarks about Heyer’s personal appearance were in bad taste, but the idea that some sort of higher justice played out in Heather Heyer’s death is not absurd or morally repugnant as the cucks and signalers proclaim.
Extremely canny analysis. It seems to me that Mr. Johnson’s suggestions for going forward in particular should be heeded.
The blame directed at the government and at the police is clearly deserved, but even this point must be extended in some degree to the organizers of this event: it was a mistake on their part—and it will always be a mistake—to assumed that the government and the police will behave in a reasonable and strictly lawful manner. Enormous, unwieldy events like Unite the Right are perfect staging grounds for any number of subversive elements who wish to foment outcomes deleterious to our cause—as there is good reason to suppose happened in Charlottesville.
We cannot afford an ingenuous faith in the “forces of order.”
Here is something to think about
http://www.historytoday.com/daniel-tilles/myth-cable-street
Greg’s analysis here is sound, and is the only reasonable conclusion to draw after listening to the Invictus podcast. No doubt, the violence and deaths are the responsibility of the authorities and of the leftist thugs themselves. But, yes, aspects of this event were very poorly planned. The mole/security problem is distressing, since it reminds me of the pathetic security leading to infiltration of “analog” meetings back in the 1990s (and why aren’t there more racialist moles in Antifa? Do they have better security?). Greg’s suggestion of smaller, tightly organized, more local, and unannounced (with proper online security) meetings is exactly what’s needed. I also agree with commentator Dov – no swastikas and KKK, please.
I’m not sure why folks are throwing Kessler under the bus for his tweet, unless it is to preserve future viability in the political sphere. “Deeply saddening?” Come on, now. I’m only “saddened” to the extent that the death may negatively affect racial nationalism.
One could criticize Kessler’s comments because they are “bad optics” (but, let us be honest, what he wrote is what many of us are thinking to ourselves privately), but to disavow him about it is too much. At worst, Kessler’s tweet reflects poor judgment.
Robert Griffin’s take on all of this is useful:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/08/19/feelings-and-thoughts-on-charlottesville/
Instead, we should blend in with the mob and film everything they do, so we can propagate that message to the world as well[.]
Of related interest, a summary refutation of leftist narratives about Unite the Right, the Alt Right, and White nationalism:
http://eginotes.blogspot.com/2017/08/unite-facts-refuting-system-narrative.html
Trump praises Antifa and other urine bottle-throwing thugs for standing up against “bigotry and hate.”
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/08/20/trump-labels-boston-protesters-anti-police-agitators-then-pra/23075598/
At what point will the Alt Right stop the “4D chess” narratives and admit that Trump’s campaign was his greatest performance yet?
The pot Spencer calling the kettle Kessler black.
If you are looking for low risk activities that can pay huge dividends, how about charity efforts?
How about volunteering to help more mainstream local people to build bonds of trust and influence?
If you make this movement hospitable to normal people (ie expunge the violent and insane rhetoric and optics) you will start growing as never before.
One can only imagine the commanding position we would have currently had if we followed a tack such as this; if we had proper leadership. We would be shutting Google down rather than the other way around. We can still do this, but under a different “brand” and set of leaders.
“Harold Covington’s General Order #10: Nobody working for a white homeland may use drugs or alcohol for the duration of the struggle.”
If so-called revolutionaries of white racial identity could stick to this General Order ALONE, so much incompetence, inefficiency and general idiocy would be completely avoided, especially once the withdrawal symptoms have passed!
You wouldn’t want to be inebriated in a combat zone in the Muddle East, so why the hell would you put yourself into such a state of incapacity in your HOMELAND’S zones of potential combat?! Madness.
It’s long past time to grow up, folks.
Alcoholic “leaders,” drunken communications (tweets), moles, and Third Reich-Confederate-KKK paraphernalia are perennial problems on the right. Why do we tolerate them? It’s time for zero tolerance policies, imo.
Some guy (Kessler) comes out of nowhere, organizes a rally protesting the removal of a statue in a blue city/county/state, and we dutifully respond without vetting his track record. Needy, short-sighted, and stupid screams at me. Trust is earned over time.
Going local sounds like a good idea. The problem is rally attendees will be known to the local community. In blue cities attendees will be fired and blacklisted. Attendance will be minimal, limited to retirees and local misfits. Perhaps these problems can be mitigated in a red city/town. Intelligence gathering on local government, city leaders, and business is required.
Once a city goes blue it’s over. The local yoooman wildlife own the statue, marker, and grave site. This is what it is and your feelings don’t matter. If great-great-grandad is to rest in peace and not be turned into Muti, then remove and replace his Confederate marker.
If you must carry flags, there are other options: Betsy Ross, Pine Tree, and Gadsden flags. I’d love to see the enemy label these flags “Nazi” or “White Supremacist.”
Alcoholism will not secure the existence of white people.
In the 1980s, Britain’s National Front marched through urban areas to demonstrate and attracted lots of attacks from antifa. We got a reputation for violence, and attracted to people who liked violence and gradually our members looked a somewhat fearsome bunch. Not very appealing to say the least!
We probably should have stopped public demonstrations years before as they were very counter-productive.
The most successful NF public demonstration I ever took part in was one where we were banned from marching through a town centre, but the antifa demonstration was permitted to march through it instead. We marched around some desolate industrial estate seen by no one, but the citizens of the town were treated to a smelly unwashed mob of communists disrupting their Saturday morning shopping.
We had a surge of support after that!
In politics, as in so many things, timing is everything!
Whatever the merits of National Socialism in its first five peacetime years, the German Swastika is not only an inappropriate symbol for the defense of the Southern heritage in the USA, but it fits into the public narrative and reinforces the anti-fa emotions whereby white nationalism is automatically associated with mass-murder, torture and tyranny. The liberal establishment is already at one with the violent left, as everyone already knows.
Unfairly or not, “Nazi” connotes e.g. bodies in Belsen, just as “Klan” connotes e.g. limbless blacks hanging from trees. This may not matter a jot to the nutcase element, but it is an immense disadvantage to legitimate patriotism and racial survival. It is welcomed by an attentive, astute, experienced and well-funded “ADL Fraternity”, and promoted where possible by agents provocateurs and hasbara-sayanim.
Throw in a “martyr”, whether Heather Heyer in the US or Jo Cox in the UK, and the enemy’s propaganda chalks up another success, another memorial, another source of funds and another “proof” of righteous decency.
The enemy needs to be confronted with brawn AND brains. This is my observation of “demos” in Britain from 1934 onward, and America in this particular respect is not too different.
And say if there had been no Nazi Movement or Civil War and thus no Swastika or Klan? And say the resistance focused on Non-Marxist Unionism and Patriotism? Then the Enemy would have conditioned their slaves to loathe those things instead. Stop playing their game. They are going to hate anything that is precious to us. The Communists in Spain used to execute Priests and Nuns, dig them up a few weeks later and display them with obscene or mocking placards. So should the Nationalists have disavowed the Church?
@ There is no logical connection between my post and your last two sentences; and the political aspect points another way.
We have enemies who oppose nationhood as well as the particular Nazi assertion of it, but we need to have today’s legitimate game instead of yesterday’s nasty name when seeking support from a normal, rational and decent public. Debates about Hitler can be left to other occasions. Meanwhile, we need to understand fully how our opponents think and operate if we are to have a hope in hell of defeating them, especially on an increasingly censored internet.
@Glen
One hardly needs to engage in what Johnson characterizes as “tinfoil hat conspiracy theories” to look askew at someone like Kessler, with no history of White advocacy, all of a sudden showing up and “leading” the most high profile event of the year.
Of course we should welcome former liberals, but must we automatically grant leadership positions to anyone that just shows up and claims to be “Alt Right?” Chris Cantwell, who was perhaps a year ago just a typical “not racist” libertarian, is now an “Alt Right” media celebrity, doing features for the anti-white media, showing off his guns for the cameras and celebrating violence.
Is it automatically a “tinfoil hat conspiracy theory” to hesitate before taking any man or woman saying the right words at face value, immediately, without the slightest bit of vetting?
What is the difference between “operational security” and wearing a “tinfoil hat” anyway? If one were to suggest that an antifa might be posing as a WN in a chat room in order to “spy” and record – that is almost by definition a “tinfoil hat conspiracy theory” and will likely be attacked as such.
So how can you have one without the other? Anyone suggesting even a modicum of caution is always attacked as a “conspiracy theorist.”
I had never heard of Chris Cantwell before Charlottesville. I watched a video of the guy during the festivities and wasn’t impressed. A few days later I watched part of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpmWo8f7y2c
I know everything that I need to know about Chris.
I don’t know if Kessler is legit or not. What I do know is he was accepted with loving arms without vetting over time. If that signifies conspiracy theorist, then WN version 2.0 hasn’t progressed very far beyond version 1.0. Version 1.0 simply shrieked, “Jew!!!”
Greg,
Some fine points as always. However, I do think you are mistaken about the whole country would be on our side with accurate media coverage. The result of that, I am confident, would be far more criticism and disgust with the left. But that does not necessarily equate to people being on our side. This, it seems to me, is a terribly inaccurate assessment of the national mood and the job that stands before us. Secondly, I tend to side with Spencer and others in criticizing the trashing of Heather Heyer. It lacks dignity and only serves to lower us to their level…even, I daresay, below.
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