Editor’s Note: I’m turning comments off for a while because emotions are running so hot right now.
Step #1: Style yourself as a champion of civil liberties.
Step #2: Claim your civil liberties are being violated by organized harassment from local Antifa groups and that there is a legitimate Southern heritage issue in your town. This is true.
Step #3: Assert your First Amendment right to assemble in public in your ultra leftwing progressive college town. It will be fun to trigger the libs. It is also your constitutional right as an American.
Step #4: Persuade other rightwing groups and influencers from around the country to join you at your rally.
Step #5: Spend two months fighting your local government in court to acquire a permit to host a Southern heritage rally in Lee Park. Antifa repeatedly disrupt City Council meetings which become a televised circus.
Step #6: Fully cooperate with local law enforcement.
Step #7: Join forces with the ACLU of Virginia to win an injunction from the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Virginia. Your free speech rally can proceed.
Step #8: When everyone shows up to attend your free speech rally, the local police barricade themselves away from the crowd, refuse to intervene as collisions happen and fights break out with Antifa and the Virginia State Police push you out of Lee Park into the crowd of Antifa to cause more violence. Police officers idly stand by and watch as violent Antifa attack you in front of the police station. The governor declares a “state of emergency.” James Fields, Jr., a loner who came to the event who no one knows, plows his car into a crowd hours after the event is over and you have dispersed and left town.
Step #9: The media blames you for the violence, not the local police, the state police or the governor whose responsibility it was to maintain order and ensure the safety of everyone exercising their First Amendment rights.
Step #10: The local progressive DA turns a blind eye to Antifa and BLM violence and only prosecutes people on the Right who were assaulted by Antifa and BLM who defended themselves or came to the aid of others. They are free to go because of their race and ideology.
Step #11: The DOJ and FBI prosecute people who attended your rally who were attacked by Antifa and BLM. Once again, they ignore Antifa and BLM who are emboldened by the event and go on to start dozens of riots and cause millions of dollars of property damage for years.
Step #12: An individual who attended your rally who harmed no one and who was dispersing from the event and returning to his vehicle and who was violently assaulted by DeAndre Harris on video steps forward to press charges. The whole incident is captured on video. DeAndre Harris swung a mag lite at him in the face on video. DeAndre is acquitted due to his race and ideology and raises over a $100,000 on GoFundMe.
Step #13: The ACLU sharply pivots away from defending civil liberties in favor of evangelizing for woke causes like open borders.
Step #14: You are deplatformed from social media and payment processors. Many people you know are doxed and fired from their jobs. Antifa and BLM are free to continue to use social media to organize violence.
Step #15: After being blamed for the violence by the media, you are denounced by Republican senators who praise Antifa as heroes. You are officially condemned by Congress.
Step #16: You are sued in federal court by a bunch of New York law firms connected to the Democratic Party who raise millions of dollars to financially destroy you. No one comes to your aid.
Step #17: A jury rules that you owe $500,000 in punitive damages and your group owes $1 million in damages. It is now a “civil conspiracy” to exercise your First Amendment rights. Antifa and BLM can show up at your event and engage in violence against you and get away it. The police can stand down, refuse to protect you, allow the streets to descend into anarchy and watch you be assaulted. Whatever happens next in this chaos is your fault even when you have left town.
Step #18: After studiously ignoring what happened at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the mainstream Right reassures itself that what happened is not a “slippery slope” and that the same tactic will not be used by Democrats to deprive people with more moderate views of their First Amendment rights. It is not a hill to die on.
Step #19: You end up dying on the hill of liberal norms. You were stupid enough to trust institutions and believe in norms which the other side has abandoned. You pay the price for doing so.
I’m not blaming Jason Kessler for what happened in Charlottesville. I think this evolution of Democratic states and cities and the emergence of the social justice system was inevitable. It is what they believe. The other side DOES NOT believe that our side has constitutional rights in which they are required to respect in spaces under their control. If the Unite the Right rally had never happened, this would have eventually come to pass anyway. It would have just happened to someone else in another city.