Top 10 Charlottesville Mistakes

As we await the verdict in the Sines v. Kessler trial, I will go ahead and share my regrets and what I have learned from attending the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

1. Trusting the System

As everyone here knows, I was a League of the South activist for years. I enjoyed activism. It was fun to go to these events. Some of my fondest memories are attending various rallies. It feels good to exercise your rights and get out on the road and meet other people who share your views.

By the time the League of the South arrived in Charlottesville, we had held dozens of rallies all over the South. We had attended previous rallies in Pikeville, KY, New Orleans, LA and Gainesville, FL in 2017. We weren’t deterred by Charlottesville and went on to hold another rally later that year in Shelbyville, TN. This history of attending rallies is what ultimately led us to Charlottesville. The same is true of other groups like the NSM which over the course of decades held more rallies than the League of the South.

The League’s approach to Charlottesville was no different than any of these other previous events. We fully cooperated with law enforcement. We obeyed the orders of law enforcement. We trusted law enforcement with our security. The federal court in Charlottesville ruled that we had the right to be in Lee Park. The only reason that we were there that morning is because we had worked within the system.

In the wake of Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, we were slow to appreciate just how radically everything had changed even though the signs of it were evident at previous events in Auburn, Pikeville and New Orleans. We had never found ourselves before in a volatile situation where law enforcement refused to do their jobs and attacked us and pushed us into Antifa to deliberately provoke a violent confrontation. We had never been a situation before where Antifa was allowed to beat people in front of a police station while police officers just stood by and watched and did not intervene.

In Auburn, Pikeville, New Orleans, Gainesville and later Shelbyville, the police separated the two sides. What happened in Charlottesville at the Unite the Right rally was something new that had only previously been seen in a few West Coast cities like Portland and Berkeley. There had also been two rallies in Charlottesville including a public rally by a Klan group which was mostly peaceful and in which the two sides had been separated. There was no reason to believe with months of time to prepare that the Charlottesville Police and Virginia State Police would respond the way that they did at the Unite the Right rally.

Sadly, the trap we walked into in Charlottesville is now typical. In these leftwing hothouses, Antifa and BLM have a free hand to engage in violence. Progressive DAs look the other way at their violence and prosecute only people who are on the Right. The police stand aside and watch the mobs go wild because there is nothing that they can do. Democratic mayors and Democratic governors refuse to uphold the law. The DOJ and FBI ignore Antifa and BLM violence and persecute people on the Right.

The moral of the story: the system is no better than the people who are in charge and outcomes vary wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. We might have the First Amendment right to hold a rally in a place like Charlottesville, but it is meaningless due to the political climate inside that city and the way it impacts law enforcement. Only a fool would trust the system in these cities at this point. This is why virtually no one took Jason Kessler up on his offer to attend the Unite the Right II rally in 2018.

The single biggest mistake we made in Charlottesville was trusting the federal court, the police and the judicial system. We saw how that worked out. Fortunately, we learned our lesson on that front.

2. Thinking Nationally, Not Locally

I’m not from Charlottesville.

I live 10 hours away in rural Alabama.

In hindsight, one of our worst mistakes was our failure to realize that short of moving there that there was virtually nothing any of us could do to affect the situation in Charlottesville. It is a state and local matter. We would have been far better off staying in our own states and our own communities and quietly organizing here than wasting our resources on these road trips and pointless stand offs.

In retrospect, we used to spend most of our time going to where the enemy lived, which is to say, places like Portland, Berkeley, Charlottesville which were roiled by these local issues like mobs who vandalize and topple historic monuments. It would have made far more sense to force them to come to us. If the Unite the Right rally had been held virtually anywhere else in the South, it would have been uneventful. Leftwing college towns like Berkeley and Charlottesville have been the most prone to disorder.

3. Volatile Public Events

I don’t attend these anymore.

You can never know who is going to show up at a volatile public event. There are people who seek attention who show up who have their own agenda. Those people have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to step over any message or point that is trying to be made by organizers. It is true that these events generate publicity like January 6th, but that publicity turns out to be harmful for organizations. Usually, it is a convenient excuse to invite more attention and subversion by the “intelligence community.”

Charlottesville was a public event in the most progressive college town in the South. Hundreds of people came who did not know each other. The groups who attended barely knew each other. Few people knew Jason Kessler and some of those who did in Virginia steered clear of the event. The reasons that we all went to support the Confederate monuments and Kessler’s civil liberties were just, but most people went to meet other people and go to a big event and to have fun afterwards. It was completely unnecessary to attach this to a volatile public event hosted by an inexperienced organizer in a progressive college town. In retrospect, it is not surprising that it spiraled out of control like Berkeley.

4. The Sheer Pointlessness Of It All

Why did we even have the Unite the Right rally?

The Alt-Right held a flash rally there in support of the Confederate monuments in May 2017 which was fairly successful. There was no reason to return. The first rally was a success because the organizers did not announce the rally ahead of time and cooperate with the police.

I was reminded of the sheer pointlessness of the Unite the Right rally by the most recent state election in Virginia. In spite of everything that has happened since Charlottesville with activists on both sides, public opinion on Confederate monuments hasn’t really changed in Virginia.

The most striking thing that has come out in court to me is the mutual hatred of Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer. Ultimately, I think this has a lot to do with why we all got sucked into Charlottesville. I think Kessler’s ego was bruised that Spencer and IE had held that flash rally in his hometown and he wanted to upstage Spencer by hosting a larger event. It is obvious that Spencer and Eli disliked and distrusted Kessler. This jockeying of egos over who would get credit over the event turned into a disaster.

5. Bad Optics

There was a grain of truth in the Optics War.

It is true that our side is brimming with people who are too extreme for public consumption. We have countless people who are poor communicators. They don’t communicate our message in a palatable way to the public. They express their own emotions and viewpoints which alienate people.

Are we gaining anything when we take these people and parade them in public in front of a sea of “journalists” to an audience of people who by definition hold significantly more moderate views on a range of subjects? Are we better off being seen in the public spotlight or staying out of it?

I would say the last few years have shown that we are better off when we ARE NOT in the public spotlight. When it is just Antifa and BLM out there rioting and engaging violence and we are not in the same frame with them, they repulse and alienate people and become less popular. It seems that our ideas advance and gain traction more and permeate the national conversation when we have fewer messengers.

Loud and annoying and highly visible groups who are associated with violence and extreme ideas alienate the public. The national conversation has shifted and is now about how this is happening with Wokeism. Charlottesville demonstrated that becoming more visible and annoying isn’t necessarily in our interest.

6. Media Spectacles

I don’t have a high opinion of media spectacles.

Charlottesville was a huge media spectacle. It was a mistake. The whole Alt-Lite model of ecelebs trolling and owning the libs with free speech rallies which turn into huge media spectacles is over.

When I went to several of these Alt-Right events, I was struck by how eager some of the leading figures were to talk to the “journalists.” In particular, Matt Heimbach paraded around the country with Vegas Tenold who later went on to write a nasty book about him. Several of the “journalists” who covered the Alt-Right back then openly work with Antifa now and went on to land jobs at the ADL and SPLC. Tenold himself is now an “Investigative Researcher at the ADL’s Center on Extremism.”

7. Engaging With Antifa

We don’t do it anymore.

It is not in our interest to be in the same frame with these people. We are better off when they are attacking ICE or police officers or burning down buildings or fighting with anti-vaxxers. They are now universally hated by the Right, deeply unpopular in the Center and controversial even among Democrats which is a major change from how they were perceived in 2017. The best way to deal with Antifa is to give them the national spotlight to show everyone how toxic they are and the space to self destruct.

8. Killing Our Brand

Charlottesville was a terrible idea on this basis alone.

Who was supposed to be impressed by joining forces with all these different groups? It is true that we have some shared beliefs, common interests and common enemies. It certainly didn’t help us though to get mixed up with these other leaders and groups who have different social visions. It must have been difficult for anyone outside of these circles to discern what message we were trying to communicate.

9. Why Charlottesville?

You couldn’t throw a dart at a map and hit a place in the entire South including NOVA where fewer people who share our views live. The people who share our views and who are sympathetic to secession are White working class people in rural areas and small towns. That’s where we should have focused on organizing instead of wasting our time on media spectacles with “journalists” in college towns.

10. Get Togethers

If our people want to meet up and socialize, there are far more effective and enjoyable ways to do so than being attacked by bricks, bear mace, acid, sticks and bombs of shit and urine in a place like Charlottesville. Sure, it is bold to go into a place like that, but it is not worth the cost.

None of this is news.

I’ve been saying all of this for years.

If we ever decide to reboot our activism, it needs to be done on this basis.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

46 Comments

  1. Makes sense.

    How about doing unannounced flash appearances that aren’t formal demos?

    How about a lit distribution, meet and greet outside of an SEC baseball game, guns shows – finesse race, make it about gun rights, get a table.

    The gun show promoters probably won’t like it, won’t ask you back but again finesse it.

    We can’t just give up all public space in the South or Midwest.

  2. Also, understand that Lib college towns like Charlottesville VA and Berkeley CA, Boulder CO are always going to be extremely unfair to all types of Conservatives, nationalists, traditionalists.

    My God Berkeley CA wouldn’t even let Milo have any free speech. He’s a Gay Libertarian part Jewish comedian. People just wanting to hear him speak got attacked with bear mace, skateboard attacks in the face (sound familiar – Kyle R got the same) and metal U locks. Police stood by did nothing.

    Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor the J*w Dwarf Robert Reich (teaches something at U Cal Berkeley) went on CNN where he was a paid expert and suggested the Berkeley rioters were probably sent by Breitbart News.

    OK, so don’t expect any fair shakes from anybody – protesters, police, local and national media if the protests, confrontations are at some Lib Leftist College town like Charlottesville VA

  3. Charlottesville did unmask the Government for many people hundreds of miles away however, people who assumed Constitutional rights would be upheld and that the police would maintain order. There are many people outside the South who didn’t want to see monuments destroyed, vandalism everywhere and Constitutional rights violated by the State. These things transcend the particular issue in Charlottesville and caused the Left to unmask itself in all its ugliness which was all to the good although at great cost to those who fell into the clutches of the Left.

    • The media inversion of the story was also a wake up call. It really felt like an extension of the Holocaust narrative.

      • ” It really felt like an extension of the Holocaust narrative.”

        It is. OUR Holocaust. Jews, Fags, Dykes, and your basic idiot ‘Fa, all WANT WHITES GENOCIDED.

        As I have said for years (to quote HW), “The Second ‘Civil’ [C’ville] War began on a hot August day in a mindless liberal enclave in (now) Red-State Virginia.”

        If we do not realize FEDGOV, the DEMS, RINOS, and most (if not all Israeli-trained ‘knee on neck’ [!]) Police forces, Chambers of Commerce, Mega-corporations are OUR [Christendom’s/White Man’s] ENEMY, we can watch what the Nazis rightly did to the Christ-killers almost a hundred years ago happen to U.S., here and now. And remain Butthead ignorant, as they wipe us off the 48-state map (but not the earth).

        Because we didn’t implement a ‘final solution’ when we could have/should have (in 1939), Satan’s seed is bent on the most hellish revenge imaginable. Think of all of the images of evil you have seen: Gates’ wife with an inverted cross, Pizzagate, that witch with the cattle skull, Li’l Nas, all of Hollyweird, tatted and ear-holed pervs claiming to be (what? human?!) – Trannies, Fags, Dykes, Baby boy hookers, egged on by PARENTS!>!> -indeed, all of the SHIT humanity so far removed from NORMALCY, as to make one puke…. and you don’t think they can descend even further? Even on this site, ASSHOLES who deny Augustinian/Calvinist Total Depravity, and yet think they speak for White self-interest?!? No creo yo!

        That’s why people as far apart ideologically as Ann Barnhardt and Andrew Anglin have made this clear, on their respective sites- and which is why I read them, both… along with HW. Even with all these witnesses, many of your readers, Brad, will not admit they are just steps away from that psychological aberrationism, because they deny Christ God, and are therefore already halfway to Hell.

        Wake up people, the image at the head of this column, is U.S.
        For We alone are the REAL America.

        NOT Biden, Kabala Ha’aretz, et al. Not the fags, dykes, Jews, libs, ‘fa, or any of the other god-damned (literally) freaks out there.

        Repent, fast, and pray. Cuz politics ain’t gonna save you. Nor will Odin, Buddha, or any other BS ‘god.’

        • I never understood the idea of having to beg God, or convince him to do what is good. Or any god, really.
          I agree that these strange people out there have agendas. But when it’s God’s chosen who have the agenda against us, it makes it hard to believe he is on our side…

  4. Cool. Good lessons. As a Charlottesville resident, I particularly like the part about you never coming back and only holding little rallies in the places where you’re already from.

    • Yes, it was clear from the most recent election in Virginia where we should hold our little rallies. Virginia is a Red State now because of those “Assad-like margins” with rural voters. Clearly, there are plenty of people in the state who think like we do and we should be reaching out to those people instead of the degenerates in college towns like Cville

    • AJ, just wait until we regain hegemony.

      Be afraid, be very very afraid.

      “ He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
      Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.” – Ps.2

    • AJ,

      We won’t visit your cities any time soon because we are outnumbered and the system is on your side, but know this: The complete and total refusal of Leftists such as yourself to leave Normal Whites alone means we are NOT compelled by honor to leave you alone either.

      You want to cage us in pods and force us to eat serf gruel because its “Good for the Environment,” you want to flood our neighborhoods with shitskin murderers and rapists to “combat White Supremacy,” and you want to give our children puberty blockers and turn them into trannies.

      You don’t get to act surprised when we take over the entire North American continent, cleanse it of the filth and degeneracy, and shape the world in a way that makes it safe for us once again. Fear us. We are your eternal spiritual enemies. And your cities will one day become ours.

  5. One thing that I think has finally dawned on our sector in the United States is that people tend to dislike politically whoever is “on the streets.” The only reason why it doesn’t seem that way is that the Civil Rights Movement was on the streets. But the difference there is that the CRM in the streets meshed perfectly with organized activist Jewish interests, and the general post-WWII egalitarian verve.

    Which is why, when Antifa et al. scream “Whose Streets? Our streets!” — Our reaction should be: “Exactly.”

    Note: What’s true about post-WWII America and people being on the other side of whichever side is on the streets, is even more true about this country, both its pre and post reunification versions. It’s also why German riot cops are really good and allowed to do their jobs, as cucked as they are otherwise. It’s because of the fear of militant street theater of both the extreme right and left disastrously affecting conventional politics, relatively recent history considered.

    • That was 65 years ago and most of the people who lived through it are dead. I got the impression talking to my late father and aunt back in the day that the civil rights marches weren’t very popular either. Just the jewish television industry has ret conned them into manna from heaven.

  6. Excellent summation, Hunter. I agree that C’ville shouldn’t have happened. I remember watching the tiki March as it was happening & someone said that they should just go home afterward because that was perfect.
    I was like, yeah, that’s probably true.
    Now I’m certain of it.
    Oh, well. Hindsight really is 20/20.

  7. If you’re White and on the right, you have no rights, the govt will do everything in their power to bring you down and call you domestic terrorists. If you’re nonWhite and left, you can intimidate, threaten, riot, loot, burn, etc and you will be called protestors and the media will praise you and the govt will applaud you.

  8. 11. Making it all about the Jews for no particular reason

    12. Forgetting this is actually all for Whitey, and son of Whitey, not statues of dead Whitey past

    13. Torch march…. it should have been mentioned under the optics thing. I’m no opticuck, and I’ve supported Cantwell to the very bitter end of cringe, but a torch march?

    • Re: 11 – Not much of it was about Jews as far as I could tell. A lot of hypersensitive Jewish ethnic activists thought it was and pushed that narrative, but they think everything’s about them anyway (a trait they share with a lot of WNs.)

      Re: 13 – The torch march was cool. Makes the viewer ask “Who are these guys, and what are they all about?” Mysterious and seductive to our allies, frightening to our enemies. Obese dudes in stahlhelms brawling with antifa in the streets? Not so cool.

    • The jew memes was a part of what the newly pro-white thought funny, so that was unavoidable. I don’t really see the problem either, as the jews would oy vey, shut it down to the max even if it was only mild criticism.

      I agree with the torch march being cringy, but as it has been the leftists competing in being the toughest on white supremacists and the wokest of the woke that have created the populist right electorate, who knows how bad it really was? (The torch march was Spencer’s idea, IIRC.)

  9. There’s nothing to be gained by rallies. Being so open. “Hey, look at us!”
    Like they just trusted the system to be fair and do the right thing for them. They were naive and should’ve known better.

  10. It was a learning experience indeed. I learned that Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump were not my friends. They did nothing to fight Governor Terry McAuliffe and the mayor and city council of Charlottesville who denied our brothers their constitutional rights: “…the freedom of speech …the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
    I had until Charlottesville and its aftermath believed Sessions was a standup guy because of his courageous speeches in the Senate against the invasion of our country from the south. I waited for him to do something, anything, to stand up to the enemy but he was nowhere to be found. Same for Trump. I remember Hunter’s comment as he was making his way back to his car after the rally – “Fuck Trump!” Well stated!
    What and education Charlottesville was.

    • The continuing problem is that the whites, who have power and money, have never had to work in the trenches with nonwhites, or put up with them. There’s no nonwhites overtaking their neighborhoods.

      People think there’s some big mysterious political thing out there, that they have to discover. But this has been going on since the Civil Rights Movement began, which forced whites to deal with nonwhites.

      The whites with power, and they are on both sides, don’t have to deal with their over taxed paychecks funding every little thing for nonwhites.

      I’d like to see how they’d react, when they would be denied some medical care coverage, and nonwhites walk in and get it all free, and not even pay into the system.

      I personally think rallies are a waste of time. They give information such as how many of us there are, and what we are like. That being said, I don’t find fault with every person involved.

      Economics is the way to go. The more money that is siphoned off and given to nonwhites, the more we are hurting. Right now, most whites have plenty of money and are not worried about this, but they should be. The constant white “vacation attitude” really is destruction.

  11. If it hadn’t been Cville, it would have been somewhere else, as the “good side” needed a spectacle so they could hysteria and ban us. The unpersoning of pro-whites was also good as a whole, as that robbed the mainstream of their favorite strategy of attacking the man rather than his arguments, so they were left censoring argument and normal people.
    All in all, it’s my opinion that Cville was a bigger mistake by the anti-whites than from our side, if we disregard the personal cost to so many.

  12. Eventually these cities are going to have to be taken, Hunter. Can’t do the rural hidey hole thing forever.

  13. The only good thing to come out of this is the overwhelming humiliation of Richard Spencer. If he is found liable, then that will be the sugar coating. His testimony proved that he is a weak fraud. Clearly, Spencer qualifies as an organizer, and wanted to be much more. His bourgeois character turned out to be his true nature. The racism was just another affectation of his vanity. He really wants to apologize but his self absorption prevents it, so he engages in constantly backbiting, lying, and evasion, which makes him look even more pathetic.

  14. Christ, stop posting Ls and move on already – the Beer Hall Putsch didn’t go quite as planned, either, but jewish-induced problems have a way of sorting themselves out.

  15. By the way, it is amazing that Richard Spencer would compare himself to Jesus Christ for sympathy after routinely denigrating Christians everywhere at all times and preaching “Apollonianism” on Twitter all day with Mark Brahmin, an explicitly anti-Christian, white version of BLM Wakandaism plucked straight from Marvel.

    Shameless, creepy sociopath.

  16. “There was a grain of truth in the Optics War”

    The the “optics war” was disingenuous, it was never about looking more respectable or presenting the message in a palatable way. It was about neutering white nationalism and bringing it back into the Republican Party, in other words making the dissident right Jew-safe controlled opposition.

    It is pretty clear the pro-optics crowd were paid the Zionists in the Trump campaign to launch their attack. Their number one objective was to get dissidents to shut up about Jews and Israel and be good little Trump-voting migapedes.

  17. Speaking to Point No. 2, Think Nationally, Not Locally – My personal activism took me to the rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in the year 2017, as a peaceful observer. If I remember correctly, it was titled a “White Lives Matter” rally, and was in response to a church massacre inflicted by a refugee from Africa (Sudan?). This creature had slaughtered one White woman, and injured seven other people at a church where the White flock had previously reached out in a misguided attempt to “help” him.

    Members of the League of the South were present at the Shelbyville rally, and the ones I spoke to made and lasting and powerful positive impression me. Every one a hero. I had the undeserved honor of meeting Dr. Michael Hill that day, and knew I was in the presence of a true hero; a leader, a gentleman, a scholar, an intellectual warrior, and truly a “giant” of a man. Had it not been for the presence of the League of the South, the entire event would have been of much lesser magnitude. I also learned a permanent lesson that day in reality versus media narrative.

    Having said all of that, the author of this blog is, of course, right. This nation has fallen, and our individual localities will determine our survival.

    • Torch marches used to be standard American political theater until the Progressive Era. Both parties had torch marches. I don’t recommend it though as it is a disaster waiting to happen

  18. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about the fact that you, Peinovich, and “Dr.” Duke are not victims of this persecution even though you were all there. There is also nothing suspicious about simulataneous vote count stoppages in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee on 11/3/2020.

    • “here is also nothing suspicious about simulataneous vote count stoppages in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee on 11/3/2020.”

      Yep, some very constructive criticism of the incompetence of the Trump regime was his blindfolded pin the tail on the donkey approach to possible election cheating. Why was he wasting effort on wild conspiracy long shot theories like the election machine hacks and wasting time on Nevada and Arizona when the obvious ghetto Chicago style ballot box stuffing machinations took place before our very eyes in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Those four cities should have been where all his limited resources were focused on.

  19. Anything involving the degenerate sodomite Richard Spencer turns out to be a disaster. That is also something to add to the list.

  20. As I’ve said before the UTR’s tiki torch march in Commieville was impressive and made the enemy genuinely afraid. Sticking around after that was the mistake. Commieville was too far behind enemy lines and UTR organizers were too trusting of the authorities. But we can’t sit at home being anonymous keyboard warriors forever. IRL activism must continue and expand.

  21. If future pro-white protests are to take place, they need to be nonviolent in nature à la some of the civil rights marches in the 60s. No fighting back, no weapons, no shields, no ridiculous uniforms, and the language of participating activists must be carefully policed. Then, when Antifa inevitably attack, they can be sued under this Ku Klux Klan Act precedent for violating the civil rights of whites. White activists need to start thinking Ghandi instead of Sturmabteilung.

  22. Come to think of it, the UTR guys should countersue the counter-protesters using the KKK Act and also sue the city of Charlottesville. Cantwell can be the lawyer lol.

  23. As a spectator from Europe i recall that Charlottesville event rather positive. Back then we followed that event with interest and much sympathy for the white ‘Ami-comrades’. The torch march along with that anti-jew slogan was quite impressive. It scared the shit out of many people. Sometimes radical statements and signals must be made. Of course those costume freaks with the plastic helmets were rather embarassing.
    I understand that many see Charlottesville as a disaster and wish it better should not have taken place. But despite all the negative things that happened, it was a very important event. The frontlines are much clearer since then. The corrupted system was exposed to all the world, also the lying media, the injustice against right-wing people, Antifa exposed itself as the vile red rats they are, and so on…
    The American Right experienced that day what we here are experiencing for decades: The ruling System got affected and struck back with full force, eagerly assisted by the mass medias, leftist establishment and leftist organisations. Those who really want to see who is ‘pulling the strings’, can also see it more clearly since then.
    And obviously many normal people also woke up by now. Definitely Charlottesville was an important lesson to be learned, for future activities.
    The Beer Hall-Putsch in 1923 was a disaster too. But 10 years later the struggle for the power eventually was successful.

  24. I was planning on going, and bringing my golf clubs along to see if I could have gotten a good Sunday tee time at one of the courses near C’ville. Well before the fact, my prediction about the day is that I would have met a bunch of people I had not previously met face to face, (my face to face interaction with the sector and the movement in general went way down after your now and late father-in-law and I fell out), and maybe it would result in enough sector comity at least to save the Lee and Jackson statuary in C’ville.

    But then 24 days before the event, I was so rudely interrupted.

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