Politic?

Truth and Consequences

"It pretended to be 'unite the right' but it was basically Nazis saying, 'shit or get off the pot, become a white nationalist or f---k off'. And a lot of people told them to f--k off."
"It seemed like they were drifting into the arena of the unwell. This gathering was a lie. It purported to be about statues; it purported to be about community, but it was really about polarizing the right and saying, 'You are with us or against us'. And I think they're going to find that everyone is against them. Their rhetoric got a woman killed ~~and a boy put in prison~~."
"It cut the alt-right off from everyone else. [the left and the media] see us all as one dumb unified group, and we're not. And I think what we learned this weekend is, we shouldn't be."
Gavin McInnes, Vice co-founder, head, Proud Boys

Alt-right rally members on Aug. 12, 2017 in Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va. Rebel Media's reporting from the rally could spell the end for the right-wing organization, Tim Harper writes. (Go Nakamura / TNS)

Suddenly, Canada's most prominent right-wing personality and his online website The Rebel have been bathed in a very compromising and unattractive light, shading it with a link to a ideology it would vastly prefer not to be associated with. Some of Ezra Levant's most prominent contributors to The Rebel have reacted with viral distaste to any hint in the public eye of possible association however remote and however much denied with the odious alt-right which distinguished itself with brute violence in Charlottesville last weekend.

The white supremacist gathering of neo-Nazis, the KKK fascist/racist illuminati, and the alt-right that used the concept of a protest against the removal of an historical monument to General Robert E. Lee of Civil War fame, to further their agenda of racial bigotry, decrying the presence of immigrants, of Blacks and particularly of Jews in America diluting the fabric of white culture and society as an affront to the United States that must be resisted by any means -- violence if necessary, and violence is always necessary to prove they mean business -- made conservatives blanch in disgust.

"When I first heard of the alt-right a year ago, I thought it simply meant the insurgent right, the politically incorrect right, the grassroots right, the nationalistic right", wrote Ezra Levant in a 'memo' to his staff and contributors explaining his reaction and instant efforts to distance himself and The Rebel from any whiff of connection to those who distinguished themselves in Charlottesville. The situation is similar to what occurs at leftist peace gatherings protesting war, where signs accusing Israel of war-mongering held by Palestinian sympathizers are hoisted alongside the flag of Hamas.

"But the alt-right ha changed into something new, especially since Trump's election. Now the leading figure -- at least in terms of media attention -- is Richard Spencer, and other white nationalists. By that, I mean people whose central organizing political principle is race", he went on, anxious to impress his audience with the sincerity of his rejection of all that the alt-right and its pals represent.

"There were actually some Nazi swastika flags in Charlottesville. Whether or not they were being genuinely carried, or carried by agents provocateurs trying to embarrass the alt-right isn't even important. They were there -- and Spencer's torchlit walk had other Nazi symbology, including the 'Sieg Heil' arm salute, and the chant of 'blood and soil' -- which was a slogan popularized by the Nazis. Sorry, that's not conservative, that's just racist, and I think it's unpatriotic to mimic one of America's greatest historical enemies."

Up until this sordid and violent event in Charlottesville, The Rebel appeared to support the alt-right to a degree, but now that it has linked with white supremacism, backing away with haste certainly appeared the best-case scenario to assure staff and contributors that there was no support of the unsupportable from that quarter. The manslaughter charge against a 20-year-old for vehicular homicide of 32-year-old Heather Heyer has transfixed the U.S. with the horror of internecine warfare.

That it was actual internecine warfare that cost the lives of an estimated 620,000 Americans ideologically polarized over Black slavery among other issues that brought about this current atrocity makes it all the more appalling in that race and bigotry have never been very distant from the public mind. The 'boy' mentioned by McInnis has been a Nazi admirer since childhood; that he also has a medical record of psychosis he was treated for years ago, somewhat complicates the issue, but it was hate, pure and simple, that led him.

"What may have started as a concern over the [Rebel's] harsh tone taken on some subjects came to a head with this weekend's events in Charlottesville, Virginia. [The protest] was really an anti-Semitic white power rally."
"I am not comfortable being associated with a group that, rightly or wrongly, is being increasingly viewed as associated with the likes of Richard Spencer. Like many of you, I had family that fought the Nazis. I never want to be in the same room as one."
"What The Rebel suffers from is a lack of editorial and behavioural judgement that left unchecked will destroy it and those around it."
Brian Lilley, Rebel co-founder