Sup you beautiful bastards! I hope you're having a fantastic Monday
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show and let's just jump into this.
The first thing we have to talk about today is Charlottesville and this whole situation is and isn't about the removal of a statue.
In Charlottesville, they have a huge statue of Robert E. Lee.
So you have this Robert E. Lee statue in a park that used to be called the Robert E. Lee Park. It is now called Emancipation Park.
The Charlottesville City Council also voted to remove the statue. As of right now it has not been removed because there is a court injunction.
There have been protests in the past about people not happy with the statue removal, but nothing was as big as what was planned for Saturday.
Even before Saturday, on Friday night there was a torchlit demonstration. They marched up to the statue.
Also at one point a violent fight broke out, it kind of at the end looked like just mobbing.
I'll be honest with you, the whole thing disgusts me. I woke up Saturday morning and the first images I saw were people throwing out the Nazi salute.
A bunch of angry, white guys in the middle of the night with tiki torches surrounding a statue screaming white lives matter, throwing out Sieg Heils.
Once again, I say this as someone that is very for freedom of speech. I have had to defend the Westboro Baptist Church and their disgusting views in the past.
Once it gets violent that's obviously a different story.
But then to use my own freedom of speech I want to say fuck Nazis. It's not a hard thing to do.
Fuck white supremacists. Not a hard thing to do.
Plainly put, a lot of what we saw here was hate and bigotry hidden under the veil of patriotism.
And to the people that were a part of this protest saying "I don't know why I'm being called a Nazi" or "a white supremacist", "I was just there for [insert blank] free speech thing." How can you be shocked?
There was a right activist by the name of Baked Alaska that went to this event.
After Saturday, he ended up in the hospital. There is potential eye damage there. We're going to talk about that in a minute.
In the past day I've seen him tweet things like "I'm not a neo-Nazi"
He has taken offense to be called a white supremacist, a Nazi in the past.
But I have to say I'm not saying you are, but you can't be surprised when you live stream and you put out videos of - like this one from Friday night.
"I'm proud to be white. Heil victory. Hell yeah!"
So you say "Heil victory." For those that do not realize, Sieg Heil means Heil Victory.
They're saying Sieg Heil, but in English.
Then in the same minute, this happens
"White lives matter, white lives matter, white lives matter, white lives matter, white lives matter"
So you and a bunch of people around you who are definitely not white supremacists or Neo-Nazis
are shouting white lives matter and you, yourself, focused on the people throwing out the Nazi salute who
are also chanting the same thing as you and you're not like "well, that's wrong."
Also, it doesn't help your argument when you tweet out videos called "The 14 Words", a song version of a quote from David Lane, a noted white supremacist
Those 14 words reading "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"
Once again, I'm not saying Baked Alaska is a Neo-Nazi or a white supremacist
but I don't understand how he can be confused as to why he is being bunched in.
But let's move on.
So all of that happened and then we have Saturday morning.
Saturday morning before the protest was actually supposed to take place, what was scheduled.
Protestors and counter-protestors met at Emancipation Park and it got ugly fast.
At first it started with disrespectful chants.
Then very quickly to the shock of very few, we saw fights breaking out.
People were throwing rocks, bottles with concrete in them, glass bottles.
We had people there with helmets, homemade shields, batons.
After protestors were being pushed out of the park by police, we saw other fights breaking out in the streets.
At one point we saw this horrifying mobbing. A state of emergency was declared and soon after something horrible happened.
Someone drove their car through protestors and then crashed into another car.
And the big point I want to hit here is technically there was a car crash. One car hit another.
But from all the angles where video was being recorded, this 100% looks like an attack.
Just a warning before I start showing this video: this is graphic.
From the first angle, we can see that there are three cars involved in a crash.
After that video blew up, there were a lot of claims saying that people had surrounded that car and he just tried to take off and that's why the crash happened
But from a second video, we see that Dodge Challenger uncontested, speeding into that alley.
Accelerating, it's gaining speed as it heads towards the crowd.
The Challenger then sped away from the scene of the crime, but luckily the police were able to find him.
The driver was arrested and has since been identified as 20-year-old James Fields.
He's from Ohio and was found in pictures to be a part of Vanguard America.
Vanguard America is a white nationalist organization that believes in the motto of "Blood and Soil"
and that's a motto derived from the Nazi slogan. It's all about racial purity in a national territory
Part of their manifesto reads "A multicultural nation is no nation at all"
"Our America is to be a nation exclusively for the White American peoples"
I explained their points there so you understand what James was a part of.
James Fields, the man who drove his car accelerated into a group of counter-protestors he did not agree with
injuring 19 of them, 5 of them critically, and killing 1 that being 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
And as of right now, Fields is facing charges for second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.
Also adding to the death count in Charlottesville, there was the death of two state police officers
Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen and Trooper pilot Berke Bates
Reportedly these two died as they were trying to help with public safety when their helicopter crashed into a wooded area.
But following this horrible car attack and all of the violence there were many responses
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said "this is unequivocally an unacceptable, evil attack"
adding that this attack, quote "does meet the definition of domestic terrorism"
Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, saying
Ted Cruz writing
Barack Obama tweeted out a quote from Nelson Mandela, writing
The FBI is saying they're opening a civil rights investigation into this crash.
And then we had Donald Trump who said this
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides."
And while some saw this as good to the president who is also speaking now
There were others saying "what does the president mean 'on many sides'?"
"Why is President Trump not specifically calling out the KKK, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis?"
Many heading on it's not just that he said this, but at that same press conference when
given the chance two times to specifically condemn the KKK, he just didn't respond.
And while the president did not immediately clarify or respond to this outrage, a white house spokesperson did and they said
You also had a Republican Senator Cory Gardner calling on the president to call out evil by its name, saying
But then today the president in front of cameras got a little more specific and said this
"Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis,
white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."
And so as Trump's statements here, his phrasings, it's been a big part of a specific debate
and that debate is around how at fault Donald Trump is for events like this.
You have people like the former Imperial Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, at this protest saying
"This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back.
We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in, that's what we voted for, Donald Trump.
Because he said he's going to take our country back and that's what we gotta do."
But also in Donald Trump's defense he and David Duke are not one and the same.
When Donald Trump tweeted
David Duke quoted that tweet and responded by saying
But also you had Neo-Nazi sites like the Daily Stormer saying that Donald Trump loves us
posting an article after Trump's "many sides" speech where they wrote "he didn't attack us, he just said the nation should come together
Nothing specific against us. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him."
So not the best thing to hear from a site that literally has a section called Jewish Problem.
A site known for its white nationalism, its anti-semitism, its Neo-Nazism.
Also a website that disgustingly attacked the victim of that car attack saying that Heyer died in a road rage incident
adding that she "was a drain to society, most people are glad she is dead", and then disparaging her appearance.
A post so disgusting that their web host, Go Daddy, tweeted
And a Go Daddy spokesperson specifically pointed to the article about Heyer as the reason, saying
There were also reports that the Daily Stormer was attacked by Anonymous, although that has not been confirmed at this point.
It's also hard to tell with a site like Daily Stormer, who in the past have glorified people they actually hate.
There's always the potential that they're just trolling or maybe someone else is trolling here.
But ultimately to the question "Is Donald Trump to blame for Charlottesville?" I don't believe so.
Now did Donald Trump win the election in part due to people like this? Yes.
And did his winning make those people feel like "maybe this is our time?" Yes.
We even see that from the words of David Duke.
But as far as Donald Trump being responsible, no.
He is as responsible as Bernie Sanders is for that Bernie supporter shooting up that congressional softball game.
And by that I mean neither of them are responsible.
So where does that leave us today? I don't know. I'm sad about the state of my country.
Yesterday I saw that hashtag trending #thisisnotus
but it is. We need to acknowledge the pimples on our country's face.
I will denounce violence regardless of the perpetrator.
I'm talking about Nazis and white supremacists today.
In the past I've denounced the violence from Antifa, Anarchists, BLM.
But when we're talking about the violence of one group, it shouldn't be mandatory to also say "but, oh the other side is also violent"
If we're forced to constantly do that, we lose how important the thing we're talking about now is.
Today we are talking about a white nationalist alt-right protest that resulted in someone that was there for the
protest running over, maiming people, and killing one person.
When it comes to people like Baked Alaska who I think their argument is flawed
they put out, at times, disgusting things.
I would also never support violence against him.
There are differing reports around him as I am recording this video, some say he got sprayed with bear mace
There's also belief that it was another chemical mixture. He's been tweeting out that he might have permanent eye damage
And there are people cheering on violence against him, and I just can't agree with that.
I greatly disagree with him on many things. I've been disgusted by some of the stuff he has done.
If he really is confused as to why people are rolling him and others into white supremacist groups, I think he needs to take a better look at his actions.
When you lie with dogs, you get fleas.
And I also want to throw it out there that I think things are going to get worse.
There's a give-and-take in this country. You would not have gotten Barack Obama if you didn't have Bush.
And we would never have gotten a Trump without an Obama and then a Hillary Clinton.
And when I look at Saturday and I voice my opinion against Nazis, other people are voicing their opinion against white supremacists
there are also people just blaming white people.
Blaming them. We also saw white guilt on display thanks to people like Lorde. Lorde tweeting
I mean that tweet is going to play fantastically in the echo chamber of "look how woke I am"
but all that does is blame and alienate potential allies.
So Lorde, I 100% agree with you on the "we have to do better" part
but the path to fighting oppression and inequality is not paved by making a blanket statement about white people
by the placement of blame and guilt on a single color of people.
And that's where I'm going to end today's show. I feel like I still have a lot to digest.
I'm just generally sad that my country is at this point.
It feels like more and more the extremists guide the conversation, they control our viewpoint of what the other is.
Although I think a big chunk of people realize that there is a very large group in the middle that is very rational.
More and more everyday we have the extremists pac-manning their way to the middle very slowly but surely.
And yeah, like I said, I'd love to know your thoughts here in those comments down below.
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But that said of course as always, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.