The C-ville Mess

[El Jefe]

Disclosure
I worked with local antifa groups for over a decade, spending about 10 years as an active antifa, with the last four as simple support to help with event planning and staging supplies. Unfortunately, I can no longer risk the potential physical altercations, because that would likely lead to very serious and permanent injury to my back. The two particular groups I worked with were not direct action groups (more on that later, as it is important). But they were strong supporters of antifa philosophy, so there is some obvious bias here. I'll try to keep it as factual as possible, but all should be aware that there is a definite slant on my thoughts.

Background
From roughly the mid-80's until 2002, federal law enforcement had increasingly made domestic white nationalists a priority (in particular, after OKC). After 9/11, huge resources were shifted into the War on Terror. And few have returned to domestic terrorists to date. In some cases, entire units that previously had dozens of personnel assigned moved to a single person overnight. (In specific, that was what happened with the Aryan Brotherhood unit, which drastically helped that same organization rise in power through the 00's as a prison gang.) All of this has a direct impact on this past weekend's mess.

White Nationalists vs. Everything Else
Let's clear up the first thing here. The alt-right isn't an actual thing. The Associated Press has a pretty good article covering why they avoid using the term as much as possible. It's a soft cover term to hide proper titles for groups like white supremacists, fascists, and white nationalists. Far more experienced folks have covered the differences in those groups, so I'll leave them to explain them. For the moment, I'm exclusively dealing with white nationalists. These are the groups that were the core leadership behind the C-ville rally. Events planned by these groups haven't received as much public coverage (or national response) in the past few years/decade, which led too many of us to think that they lost strength and support. That isn't the case, as this weekend showed easily.

So why the distinction with white nationalists? Because an event planned by such a group is very different from the more typical David Duke/Richard Spencer variety supremacist. Nationalist groups are direct action groups, with a great deal more national (and international) support and organization to call on. You're dealing with very zealous adherents to their cause, willing to square off against law enforcement and counter-protesters. The most important distinction is that nationalists are ACTIVELY PLANNING for an event to become violent. When you hear progressives or liberals start to talk about actual Nazis or fascists, these are the sort of groups they are really discussing. That key difference needs to be kept in mind as you look at the events from this past week. While not exclusively true, nationalists also tend to come rather well-armed to any events and travel better nationally. These are very devout soldiers to a cause, in their own minds.

Tactics
Nationalists learned over the decades (especially Western European nationalists, who imported a great deal of their teachings to the States in the 50's and 60's) that two tactics held the greatest rewards.

1. Breakouts - This is a planned attempt (generally, several attempts) to surge, overwhelm, or slip through police lines along assigned protest routes or around assigned protest grounds. This allows for members to regroup in an area either lacking any police coverage or having an inadequate number of police personnel. For their own safety at that point, police will typically pull back to a more defensive position, meaning that the nationalists have a much greater opportunity to act however they wish. This tactic became so successful for white nationalists that was quite literally copied from their playbooks by the black bloc style anti-capitalists made famous during WTC/G20 meetings. This could be as simple as having vehicles along protest routes to slip ahead of police coverage, or as complicated as breaking down and hiding dozens of squads prior to the protest. According to reports on the ground, both of those attempts occurred (rather successfully, it appears) in C-ville.

2. Targeting residents - More modern (we'll say post-70's) white nationalists are not stupid. We think of them as backwards hicks at our own peril. Protest routes and locations are typically planned with multiple options (knowing that the municipality will reject some options). But those routes are always planned with the end goal of having access to residential areas. Ideally, these will be residential areas with a majority POC population. Whether the residents come out of their homes, or the nationalists start to infringe on their neighborhood, this is the end goal of the breakouts. (Again, this happened over the weekend, and led to the as-yet only confirmed report, via police blotter info, of counter-protesters initiating violence.) This now puts nationalists in a position to directly intimidate and terrorize residents. Whether or not the residents initiate first no longer matters. They have the powder keg they are looking for, and legally (in many jurisdictions), they start to reach into gray areas. Castle doctrine, stand your ground laws, and similar legal precedents will allow both the residents and the nationalists to fear imminent harm. Once the violence starts, it becomes an utter mess for police to gain control and also leaves a massive legal headache in the aftermath. Kyle or somebody more legal-savvy may be able to give better info here.

Antifas
Anti-fascists like to trace back to a long history in Western Europe, post-WWII. And while that's true, there are a few key differences with American antifa groups.

1. We're more heavily influenced by the second and third-wave punk culture, than the original direct-action anti-fascists. That leads into the next one.
2. American antifas became far more aligned with anti-capitalists and anti-globalists over time (Black Bloc style) than European counterparts (who tended to find more in common with anti-communists, anti-immigration, and anti-homophobic groups initially).
3. Antifas are not a monolithic group. We've got fractures and divides like anything else. But the biggest topic of debate comes from the role of direct action. Direct action groups generally believe that nationalists are outright fomenting war against their enemies. This implies an imminent threat to all sane citizens, which means that preventative or unprovoked violence is an acceptable tactic. Black bloc style groups are the most extreme example of this, but by no means are alone in that belief.

The groups that I worked with were not direction action. That doesn't mean we didn't scrap it out, in what were definitely legally questionable situations. Predominately, we focused on two main goals: aid activities (aid stations, roving medics, documentarians, and communications) and counter-protester protection. If you haven't attended a large protest against nationalists, it is difficult to explain the level of intimidation and outright hostility being projected at counter-protesters. The level of noise and hatred thrown about can be outright terrifying. So the antifas I dealt with worked on being the Wall, when not engaged with aid activities. We put ourselves between the counter-protesters and the nationalists. We were taught not to engage or initiate unless someone was at risk of severe bodily harm AND police on-scene could not reach them in time. We would take the pushes, the spit, the curses, whatever, so that they didn't need to. Restraint was the order of the day, but it is impossible to maintain a perfect record or total balance in these sort of situations. But above all else, your job was to work in SUPPORT of law enforcement and FOR the benefit of the counter-protesters. Our groups were lucky enough to receive some rather intensive training from a former corrections officer, which changed a great deal of how we operated. (Side note: If it isn't clear, counter-protesters are not the same as antifas. Two different groups with very different motivations. News media will often confuse and conflate the two.)

Aid activities are exactly what was mentioned before. You ideally should have planned for aid stations, roving street medics, people to document anything for possible legal proceedings, and communications with other groups AND law enforcement. (A high-quality antifa action has established local, on the ground contact with police personnel long before an event even takes place.) In C-ville, the only aid stations (one more part of why things were bungled) were from antifa groups. They ended up treating both nationalists and others, which is not uncommon. In various videos (the Vice ones being the most recognizable), when you see nationalists being handed water and milk to deal with mace, most of those supplies came directly from the antifa aid stations. (Also...these folks are REALLY overdoing how awful mace is.)

[El Jefe]

Why did things get so fucked up?

It will be weeks before you have enough details to pick through everything that fell apart here. Here's what I can point out as an outside observer with some prior experience.

1. Confusion on official protest locations - Two different parks were designated as protest areas for the nationalists. There was a great deal of confusion on which was the appropriate spot, and which was the overflow location. Friday night, this is what led to the counter-protesters being attacked around the statue itself. Police were out of position, as groups were gathering in both parks. This allowed the nationalists to surround the counter groups, assault them, and force them out (as you can see pretty well in the Vice videos).

2. Disregarding counter-protesters - Local residents made it very clear, in the weeks leading up to the rally, that they were very unhappy with allowing the rally to take place. The ACLU became involved for the nationalists (as they often do, sticking to their core mission), and it was eventually taken to court proceedings. The problem is that it doesn't appear that police engaged with the residents after things were decided. While the nationalists were the ones holding the permits, any potential counter-groups need to be engaged and encouraged to have a central committee. You want both sides to be organized, in contact with local law enforcement, and communicating. For what I could see, that didn't seem to be the case here. Once outside counter-groups got involved, and national antifa crews started showing up, it was too far gone in the process to retain some central direction.

3. Lack of national oversight - Those previously mentioned federal resources were very important to local municipalities when it came protest permits. National lists were maintained with info available on an (ideally) current list of white nationalist groups and best local procedures for allowing protests. This would include details on the group, preferred methods of operation, expected numbers for a protest turn-out, ideas and plans for local law enforcement to cut down on the potential for uncontrolled violence, as well as places for local level to reach out for more assistance and/or resources. After 9/11, these lists were no longer maintained with any degree of current accuracy. Off-the-record statements have already been made that federal law enforcement found as many as a dozen newly named organizations involved over the weekend. That's...not a good sign.

4. The gear - First thing to deal with when it comes to protest permits. Banned or restricted items. Ideally, the federal lists help to provide suggestions here, which lets the local level warn any groups in advance. Anything on this list will get you pulled aside and stripped of said item on the day of the protest. If you look at the pictures, you'll see the nationalists working in self-made body armor, holding homemade reinforced shields, and many of the signposts were very heavy, reinforced bludgeons doubling as sign-holders. Those are three of the top items on most recommended lists for local permits to disallow. It cuts down on the amount of nationalists (and antifas) from coming in overtly geared for war.

5. Street closings - In large-scale protests, streets absolutely need to be closed to motorized traffic. You need to work with civil oversight to make sure traffic can flow, and foot-bound protesters are kept safely away from conflicts with traffic. Due to the breakouts that happened, this became a big problem on Saturday afternoon. This in part, led directly to the tragic loss of life and injuries from the murderer-by-car. I wouldn't be surprised to see some pretty rapid restructuring for emergency response plans after this.

6. Not enough cordons - I don't know if there weren't enough bodies for the police, or what the exact situation was. But footage from Sunday showed a really prime example of things breaking down. The initial local organizer of the nationalist protest tried to have a media event from in front of a civic building (Maybe it was town hall? Not sure.) on Sunday. He was pretty immediately swarmed and attacked by counter-protesters. All weekend long, it looked like there were not enough police cordons. He should have been surrounded, as a permit-holder. In no way, for the safety of both him and the counter-groups, should anybody else been allowed to stand less than five feet away. The counter-groups, furious by this point, were almost right on top of him, and when the inevitable went down, it now takes too much time for the police to fight their way through from outside, to separate groups and people.

[Stan]

Very informative. I knew maybe 10% of this. I wish national news had this much info.

[buckett]

Yeah, thanks for this. Very edifying.

[Zen]

Exactly! It is good to know what's actually going on. I had searched for info and hadn't found jack. (Not incredibly hard, mind you... just enough to satisfy myself that I was actually right when I replied to my son's girlfriend's a$$hat of a father who was being a Trump apologist on her feed and pissing her off that he was way off base and that what I saw was aggressive action by the right and defensive action by the left. Then a pastor friend, who she and my son lived with over the summer, chimed in on the fact that there were plenty of NON combatants who were caught in the middle who never retaliated. None of them were on the right.)

[El Jefe]

If you're looking for more info, those are decent places to start.

[Phoebe]

[El Jefe]

Well, that's largely because Black bloc antifas are pretty much the first image that everybody conjures up (either in their mind, or even in a web search). So spreading that narrative isn't difficult.

Full disclosure: I don't believe that significant societal change can be successfully accomplished without the expression or implied threat of violence against oppressive parties. Example, to be clear on what I mean - The existence of groups who followed philosophies mirroring Malcolm X were part of the process that brought parties to the non-violent table that Dr. King sought to create. "You can talk with me, or you can deal with them." So understand that my view on direct action groups is not likely to line up with societal expectations. I'm not a fan of the extreme tactics and outright warfare practiced by Black bloc antifas (and in particular, more noticeable among the anti-globalists). They were not the way we (the groups I worked with) operated. That was not where our philosophies ran. But I also don't feel that I can completely disavow those practices.

It's hypocritical, and I won't deny that in the least. But I can't bring myself to outright say "Punching Nazis is bad." Because those same aggressive Nazi-punchers literally saved my life on two separate occasions. Twice, when police cordons cut off our groups, we got corralled into a small area with only a handful of antifas and several dozen nationalists. It went about as well as expected. On the second occasion in particular, I was in the fetal position on the ground, trying my best to keep my skull intact as boots were stomping down over the course of several minutes. ADA (Antifa Direkt Aktion...I didn't make up the name) physically forced their way through the police cordon. Officers were injured, without a doubt, during that process. It was 100% some form of an assault charge, in legal terms. Understand that when police kettle or corral groups, they typically section them off in a small area, and then no longer intervene. The goal is to try and let these smaller groups calm down. If ADA hadn't forced their way through and started knocking people the fuck out while they pulled (well, really, threw) us out of the corral, I don't believe I would be posting today.

But even with all that being said, I still agree that the ADA was rightfully (later) charged. I'll acknowledge that they broke more than a few laws on those days. It didn't stop me from making sure to thank every single member of that crew, when I saw them later.

I don't have a simple, clear answer to the question of "Is punching Nazis bad?" As other friends have said elsewhere, protests (direct action or otherwise) are only a part of the equation. Outreach and support for those leaving nationalists organizations is essential. Education prior to anyone joining is essential. Legal and financial avenues to cut support for these organizations is essential. But on a personal level, I cannot bring myself to throw support behind the idea that non-violent protest is the only option when confronting white nationalists. Part of that comes from the distinction I make in my own beliefs regarding true white nationalism. A bunch of those tiki-torch polo folks were weekend white supremacists. They were shit for brain racist assholes who met other racist assholes on the Internet, and thought the thing would just be another example of toxic masculinity to make them feel empowered. Those aren't white nationalists. (It doesn't excuse their actions, or excuse their beliefs.) White nationalists, to me, operate on an entirely different level. They fully believe that they are soldiers in a war to save their own culture and race from extinction. They are committed body, mind, and soul to the goal of racially pure, autocratic utopia. And when the opportunity presents itself in any limited form, they will injury, harm, or kill the enemy (literally everybody not them). So I can't simply square the circle on that, and say "Punching folks who believe that is bad." There's an implied existing threat that calls into question an opposition protester's safety at that point. And quite frankly, they truly believe that me and mine should be dead.

So if you ask me "Do you think punching Nazis is bad?" My answer is going to be "Legally yes and morally no." Keep all that in mind when you're reading my posts, because that is definitely a bias present in what I'm writing.

[Stan]

[Zen]

Jeff: I'm pretty much in exactly the same mental space as you, man. I just don't have the experience. (I also don't have the physical ability to have the experience and haven't for years...) That Vice video is chilling...

[Phoebe]

It worries me how many extremely wealthy and powerful people seem to have been converted to at least a cognate ideology. I wonder where people who control lots of private army and $ like E Prince are with all this, or people with access to and possibly control over lots of information about other people, like Peter T.? The few white nationalists I know are getting bankrolled by someone. Who? Why?

[Phoebe]

Mostly separate issue:
I encounter more than my share of people who have a very, ahh, cerebral approach to life. I notice that the current events situation, where people are engaged in very important and heartfelt discourse about race, violence, and equity, can be rather awkward for them simply because of the way they choose to approach things. Some things don't go very well when you apply the logic chopper dispassionately. Then you start saying things like, hey, isn't it just true that women are more anxious than men, and maybe that has some effect on their employment situation? And the woman sitting next to you coolly eviscerates you without warning, because obviously she shouldn't have to put up with that crap. Yet there sits the guy who applied the logic-chopper, having no idea why he got that reaction, and apparently actually incapable of finding any other method to communicate about the topic in question. Meanwhile, people are talking about Charlottesville... Oh please, no, know when to stop, and why! But I see this all the time. I'm not talking about the people who have a disingenuous ulterior motive, like memo-guy, but others who truly don't get that others are not up for the latest logic-chop, have zero patience left for it, and have good reason to be offended. It's parallel to people who bring their frank assessments and analysis to a funeral and honestly can't seem to figure out why that's gauche. Yeah, it's gauche, but I still feel a bit sorry for such persons.

[Bonefish]

Jeff, I've been wondering about the different sorts of Nazis, or whatever we wanna call these guys. Not so much along idealogical splits though.

1) The hardcore. These guys tend to be pretty easy to spot: they look like bikers, skinheads, punky kinda of dudes. Plenty of them sport tattoos that let you know, ranging from the obvious(double lightning bolts, swastikas). Physically and mentally capable of committing violence. plenty of them have prison time under there belt, where it's likely they were involved in some form of gang activity. The seem to serve two rolls: elite front line fighters who go in and bust heads, and leadership and possibly training capacities. One guy in particular seems to pop up twice, once leading a charge of shield bearing nazis to break through a crowd in a wedge, and later, standing in the back ground while Derril Harris was beaten by multiple nazis with bludgeons. I can't find the identification of him now, but the one I saw suggest he was a long time activist with multiple prison stretches.

But these guys also seem like the least likely to be swayed by doxxing or legal threats. I mean, when you go up to the tire shop they work at, and you see the rebel flag hanging on the back wall, you just kinda feel like, his boss probably doesn't care. Or if he bounces at a biker dive, his boss probably doesn't care. Hell, he probably see's the intimidation factor as a bonus. Or the guy is pushing meth or coke, and, well, yeah, he doesn't care. Jail and Prison time doesn't really bother him, because he's got the contacts on the inside. Violence is really the only thing these guys understand.

You could see these guys on the wings of the Polo shirt brigade when it was marching with torches. I wonder if that was purposeful: the light of the torches drew the attention towards the Polos, and away from the scary men in the shadows, who were performing a role similar to an NCO during a march.

2) Poloshirt Brigade. As you say, these guys are weekend warriors. They generally look clean cut enough to work in some kind of professional setting, like somebody you could run into while getting a loan, going out to eat, applying at a best buy, or getting your computer fixed. They may range in their devotion, but generally, I'd say they all feel pretty racist. But they're not "violent", in that they haven't hardened themselves to violence or the consequences of violence. I think this is evident in how many of them have broken down and started blubbering when the Doxxing hit them.

These guys are fodder. They're rank fillers. They may participate in violence, hell, they definitely will. But they arn't really as good at it as the Hardcore. They are rank fillers. They also lend an air of respectability, which helps from a recruiting standpoint: "we're just like you man. We are professionals, college educated. We're smart. We see what's going on.". I think these guys also help to recruit more Polos. They provide the "red pills" in hushed conversations by the watercoolers. They're the guys who say "I'm not racist, but...".

They may also provide more technical services. Having a manager at a business with hiring r firing, or just the recommendation privileges, can get your hardcore guys jobs they need to fufill their probation. They can gather information, or other wise act in ways that we wouldn't expect from the Hardcore. And they can blend in. And that's what is scary about them. On monday, these guys were back in the office, back to regular life, and no one knows.

Which is what makes them both frightening, and vulnerable. By outting them, we can remove their anonymity, revealing their secret identity. This can serve as a useful way to discourage them from supporting the direct action Hard Core guys actively, and hopefully prevent them from performing indirect support outside of events. Because that scares me. Polo shirts could perform a lot of useful stuff on the technical side, if they get their shit together. I'm sure are tech savvy, and if that can be co-ordinated and used, it could be dangerous. They can infiltrate groups that would otherwise recognize a hardcore nazi and disallow them, perform doxxing, or, at the most extreme, cyber-attacks(it sounds silly, but if you follow Mayden and the Ukrainian civil war, then there's some pretty impressive feats of cyber warfare to look at).

3) The Kekistanis. I know you kinda lumped these guys in with the polo shirts. They certainly seem casual, and alot were wearing the polos and khakis, and they tend to share the above's lack of combat aptitude. But they're also younger, and typically don't have the same fear of being doxxed. I mean, if a 21 year old already lives in his mom's basement, just how bad can you hurt him? And, like the hardcore, but unlike the Polos, they have a support system. Sure, it's a demented and weird one, but it's there. And they are somewhat dedicated, in their own sick little way.

These are kinda the new nazi youth. They're young and impressionable, and with the right guidance, can easily become a better Polo or even a Hardcore. They are also unpredictable and somewhat hard to identify. Are they just here for the lulz, or are they here for something more nefarious?

Not sure how accurate this is, at all, but it's just weird.

[Phoebe]

I think a handful of fairly clever people finally found their way to becoming intellectual leaders of this movement and managed to figure out how to coordinate between what you're calling the "hardcore" and a group of young people with an entirely different background and aesthetic. The guys willing and able to do great harm are now being organized by guys who are working feverishly to make their movement more palatable to the mainstream. I suppose Spencer was after this too, but he screwed up badly with both his sieg-heil Trump public moment and his ego, making it all about him as a figure. But there are far smarter guys deep in the shadow, who don't protest in public, working on making this movement acceptable and seemingly intellectually justified, and raising real money. They're pushing to be open to gay men, to members of what they consider "model minorities" compatible with white cultural hegemony, and to women who join on their own, i.e. not due to boyfriend/husband.

[Bonefish]

Respectfully, I disagree with you.

Fascists/White Supremacists have always had intelligent and well-off people who were conspirators and managers(Not, necessarily, leaders. There is a difference between leadership and management). It's not that they "finally" got it figured out, it's that there have been lapses in law enforcement targeting them, as the Hauze pointed out. The actual "message" hasn't essentially changed since, say, the late 19th century. The same talking points I was using in 1999 and 2000 when I was a bit of a white supremacist, are the same ones that are trotted out now as a "red pill" that will make you change your mind on everything. The messages of racial inferiority that were advanced by Maximillian Mueller in the 19th century? The same core message that is advanced today.

There is no such thing as a "reasonable fascist". I have spent a good deal of my life exposed to people who fall on the fascist end of the spectrum, and even the ones who seem reasonable, are not. At the core of their ideology is the belief that White People are the chosen race, who are superior to all other races. All other races exist to be exploited in some fashion: Jews are extorted for their financial acumen, blacks are used for their physical strength, chinks are used for their intelligence, etc. Homosexuals may be useful for purposes, but ultimately, they must be purged from the blood line to prevent contagion of their inferiority. Women exist to breed and raise children, and nothing else. It's a reliably consistent world view.

Folks like Spencer and Cantwell, they're not actually the upper echelon. You won't see the upper echelon at rallies, you won't see them at meetings, most of the membership will never meet them. The people we see are those who have been chosen to be a public face, but the actual leadership are secretive. Most of them have political or financial connections that public knowledge of their activities would probably complicate. Hell, I'm pretty sure they probably limit their involvement to financial distribution, similar to the way the Jihadists are financed by people, but those people don't get their hands dirty.

[Phoebe]

I don't mind discussing the topic and you probably know a lot more about these people than I do. I've just had the misfortune to close-encounter a small slice of their intellectual leadership and observe a few details of methods used, which is what shaped my views about recent developments. I really don't know why you have to use words like the obvious one you did in the post above, though. I get that you're trying to describe people whose views are not yours, but especially when you say that you used to share these views yourself, and we have had a fairly recent trip round the bend disagreeing about Trump, The Holocaust, and Israel, I'm .... I'm at a loss about whether or how to respond. I can't deal with the racist names. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

[Bonefish]

I'm sorry. What I was trying to do, unsuccessfully, is portray their world view. These people, the dedicated ones, they don't have a world view that lends itself to moderation or valuing people as individuals. They don't see an educated black man or woman as someone who has overcome adversity, or simply applied themselves and managed to be successful. They see them as racial caricatures, as lazy people who have unfairly stolen what they have, from the hands of white people. This world view in it's weird way is inherently collectivist and opposed to individuality: you are not a white man or woman with your own agency, but part of the White Master Race, and everything you do has to be suborned to the white race. When you talk to, or just listen or watch, some of the more intellectual members talk about this, you will detect a strain of marxism that is very pervasive. It's more akin to the Marxist-Lenin/Bolshevik school of "socialism" than pure marxism.

[Phoebe]

That's a really important point: to assume this view of the world means committing completely to group identity subsuming individual freedom. Which is odd among today's extremists, if their gripes supposedly include the suppression of free speech or thought!

[Bonefish]

That's the thing, they don't believe in freedom of thought or speech or expression. There is no room for that in advancing the White Race. You can't be open to new ideas, because any idea other than "The White Race is the superior race and must be protected at all costs" is a threat to that idea.

[Bonefish]

Particularly, that's the goal of their street violence. Not only is it supposed to hurt people, but it's to make people afraid, distrustful, and prone to looking for authoritarian figures. I am reminded of Mao's treatise on guerrila warfare: one of the things he advocated was attacks on gathering places for everyday activities, such as a market. You lob a hand grenade in there, and so what if you kill a few people, more importantly you create an environment where people are scared and feel that the government cannot protect them in it's current state. You do enough of this, and you get the result you are looking for: authoritarianism.