Commentary: "Charlottesville" history gets rearranged for history

"To revisit the Unite the Right rally, as the former CNN producer Nora Neus does in her excellent oral history “24 Hours in Charlottesville,” is to realize that the patterns of right-wing violence that are now familiar were then still new. “Just hearing lots of reports of people bringing guns. I was like, Oh my God, is this something we’re going to experience today?” a news photographer named Zack Wajsgras told Neus. Part of the novelty was how confident the militias were, raising Confederate and Nazi banners in the center of one of America’s premier college towns. In some ways, they behaved, nine months after Trump’s election, as if they were in control. Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from the region who was at the rally as a counter-protester, told Neus, “You could not tell who was National Guard and who was white supremacist. They were in full camo. They had earpieces in. They were moving in formations. They had open long guns. They were, in every meaningful way, exactly how National Guard would be out in the streets. And they saw themselves that way.” - Benjamin Wallace-Wells, How to Treat Right-Wing Violence in the U.S., The New Yorker, August 29, 2023

As what happened in "Charlottesville" becomes history and writers like Wallace-Wells attempt to make broader, more philosophical arguments about what that history means it’s remarkable to me how the facts get rearranged and the elements that made the story specifically local fall away. It’s like a historical shorthand develops that ends up leaving out key details.

I'm not sure what Tom Perriello is talking about here (maybe his comments are taken out of context) because you could absolutely tell the difference between the National Guard (in their gray uniforms, riot gear, and MP patches on their shoulders), the State Police (in their dark uniforms and riot gear), and the 30 or so armed, organized militia members who showed up. Wallace-Wells and Perriello seem to be confusing the militia members with some of the white supremacists gathered who fancied themselves a militia, dressed in their absurd, makeshift “battle gear." As already reported, the actual militia members with tactical gear and long rifles, led by the commander of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, were not active participants in the rally, and while their presence was disconcerting and their reasoning for being there somewhat confused, they actually policed the event better than the police did. I witnessed them assisting people on both sides of the battle lines and helping de-escalate a tense confrontation in a parking lot along Water Street.

While the white supremacists gathered there certainly appeared emboldened and confident, the overwhelming majority of them were not "moving in formations" with "open long guns." They were packed into fenced-off and unfenced sections of the park in an unorganized scrum, hurling and receiving objects and insults, pouring out onto the street to tussle with counter-protestors, and finally squeezed like rats out of the park by columns of State troopers with shields and riot gear.

What's more, there was no particular focus to the gathering, no speeches, nothing choreographed, no attention paid to the Confederate statue they were supposedly there defending, and at one point as I stood there watching I realized what this was - a gathering of various right-wing internet trolls and social justice warriors who had decided to step out into the real world. Many were frantic, clearly amped up for battle. It was like a nasty social media comment thread come to life. There was something performative about it all as well, with so many observers and media gathered there. This image of the faces in the crowd has continued to fascinate me:

You’ll notice also that Jason Kessler, who was responsible for organizing the rally, is rarely mentioned anymore when think pieces like this appear. Neither is the specifically local, and unique dynamic of the debate over race and monuments we were having, which later involved a visit from the KKK and protests only a month before the August 2017 rally. The New Yorker story from Wallace-Wells mentions nothing about the battle over our Confederate monuments or the attention Kessler attracted, without which the deadly rally would never have happened.

I mean, I get that “Charlottesville” is history now, and think pieces like this are trying to explore a larger historical movement, but it’s presented as if the events in Charlottesville just materialized out of thin air. That’s unfortunate because what led up to the rally is such a significant part of the story, a series of specifically local events, which have a lot to teach us.