CALL TO ARMS FOR CHARLOTTESVILLE

For the third time in recent memory, the combined forces of a growing list of far right and overtly fascist groups are going to descend on Charlottesville, VA.

On Saturday, August 12th, a host of extreme right wing organizations will converge at Emancipation Park to protest the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. It has become clear that they are attempting a crass facsimile of the power brought to bear by the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. However, rather than the unassailable moral high ground of Native Land, Water and Treaty Rights, the fascists organizing this newest, most unwelcome visit to Virginia, are attempting to rally around the threadbare ghost of the Confederacy. They are exploiting the tired myth of the rebel south and attempting to galvanize poor whites toward acceptance of racist violence and the totalitarian state systems so many of our grandparents died trying to wipe from the earth.

The CSA was not a great society then and it is not a tragic glory now. It was and is a con job executed against working class and poor white people in an attempt to get them to lay down their lives for the profit margins of the rich and at the expense of their class allies of color. More than that, it was a Slave State built on an ethic of casual cruelty that places it among likes of the Third Reich, whose architects were open about the inspiration they took from the Confederacy and Jim Crow racial apartheid laws. Far from distancing themselves from this evil history, many of the organizations attending this event openly call for a return of Jim Crow and lynch law. One of the fistful of would-be Fuhrers scheduled to speak, Matt Heimbach of the TWP, has gone even farther, frequently claiming that his ideal society is a feudal one, built on the exploitation of an economic and racial cast system for the comfort and enrichment of a small, white elite. This wish recalls the belief among the aristocracy of the Confederacy that chattel slavery was a social good, and that it should be extended to all lower orders, black and white.

No matter how much they talk of honor or stability or tradition, we will always see through them, and we will hound them through every city and holler. The system of white supremacy is an instrument of social control made to keep us all servants of the rich. Any offer of an elevated status for whites is a trick to keep them distracted from the repression in their own lives. It is a trick to keep us suspicious and feeling falsely superior towards our neighbors while white collar criminals are bailed out by a state that barely even bothers hiding the extent of its complicity in our misery.

Attempts are also being made to cast this as a Free Speech issue. This gloss of legitimacy is meant to pray on ironically liberal notions of freedom of expression, even if that expression is a call for genocide. It is also an attempt to gain sympathy and aid from the Patriot Movement. True to their claims of Confederate lineage, the Fascist organizers are trying to dupe working class white folks into doing their dirty work while they profit far from the front lines. We urge members of the Oath Keepers, 3% and Unorganized State Militias to think long and hard about what they are siding with. History has shown us time and time again that Fascism is not an opinion or a creed; it is a political program with material goals. Goals which never change and when realized, have ushered in some of the most shameful events in human history

The fascists behind the August 12th event have no different intentions today. In a recent publication from their news outlet the Daily Stormer, they stated: "once enough of them join our team, our revolution will be unstoppable", in reference to run of the mill conservatives, and specifically conservative youth. That same article ended with the words "Next stop: Charlottesville. Final stop: Auschwitz". Letting fascists organize publicly and without challenge is the same as standing guard while they build a bomb. In either instance, the goal is mass murder... and you will have been complicit in it.

We are not interested in being the lapdogs of the ruling class, or the sheepdogs of white supremacy. We stand in open defiance of any system that attempts to buy us off with the misery and blood of our neighbors and cheap privileges that can be taken away at any whim. White skin and extra slack in our chains doesn’t make us free. Freedom will only come when all people are armed with the tools of self determination and free and fair access to the means of survival.

To those ends, we are dusting off the guns of 1921 and unfurling the banner of Captain Brown.

To the people of Charlottesville and to all oppressed peoples, Redneck Revolt and the John Brown Gun Club are at your disposal.

To the fascists and all who stand with them, we'll be seeing you in Virginia...