Before the angry debate last week about the President’s
response; before the violent clashes in Charlottesville a week ago last Saturday
and the tragic deaths of an innocent young woman and two police officers;
before the inspiring and overwhelmingly peaceful march in Boston, 40,000 strong,
and other counter protests around the country, there was this, the one spark
of hatred that started it all.
Friday night, August 11th, on the campus of the University of Virginia
in Charlottesville. Dozens of white men and women, neo-Nazis and
white supremacists, many carrying firearms, march in a torch lit
procession. They chant: “blood and
soil”, a Nazi era slogan meaning one race (white) and one place (the United States) reserved
for them alone. They chant: “Jews will
not replace us” and “You will not replace us.” At evening’s end, “Unite the
Right” organizer Jason Kessler, who helped organize the rally, wrote on
Twitter, "Incredible moment for white people who've had it up to here
& aren't going to take it anymore."
Hard to quote Kessler, to remember the chilling and seemingly
otherworldly images of those protestors. It seems an image more akin to 1930’s Berlin than 2017 America and yet there it is. Here
it is, still. White supremacists hatefully, violently, virulently, unashamedly
declaring that they are superior to all others.
One religious faith above all others too. One warped and racist ideology right and true;
all others wrong and false.
White supremacy. Religious supremacy. Human supremacy.
It haunts me to even write these words, to face into the
truth of such ugly, deadly beliefs and yet as humans we must not turn away from
or imagine we can ignore or wish away this side of humanity, humankind’s
stubborn and unyielding original sin. Supremacy: the declaration that one group
alone stands above and over another.
That one tribe has the right, even a self-proclaimed God-given right, to
supplant another, oppress another, hurt another, hate another, even kill
another.
And so what happened in Charlottesville and the whirlwind that ensued:
it needs to be remembered and not just swept away in our voracious hyper-fast news
cycle or by our collective horror and shame at such human sinfulness. That’s the temptation now. To turn away: because it is all too awful to
contemplate. Because it indicts us as a nation and world, reminds us that human
hatred is still alive and well despite our hope that such beliefs are the stuff
of our parents’ and grandparents’ world, certainly not our own. We want to look away because we imagine ourselves
standing in this 21st century, awash in unprecedented technology and
global interconnection and interdependency, all so post-modern. How could such
things still happen?
This is how it happens.
This is how it always happens.
A mob gathers in the cover of night, their faces lit by the flames
of hatred. They are bullies and
braggarts, skinheads and cowards, racists and terrorists, united by fear and
paranoia and bloodlust. They carry clubs
and guns and knives and seek to do harm.
They march. They have always marched, led by the Hitlers of this world.
Their power comes, not just from the terror they seek to inspire but also from
the unwillingness of the good folks in this world, the ones on the edge of the
mob, to confront them. To name them and
their beliefs as evil.
With no equivocation. No moral equivalency. No hesitation.
Charlottesville
reminds us that for all the great aspirations of humankind—to live in peace, to
honor every living soul, to name as good all peoples and faiths and races—we’ve
still got a lot of work to do as a species.
The enemies of the common good may hide in the shadows but the allies
for justice and mercy must speak up and out from the light and in the
light. Folks of faith too must declare
that God abhors racism, and any and all –isms that seek to dehumanize and hate any
child of God.
So that’s what happened on August 11th. The mob.
Remember? For our, for God’s sake, I for one, hope that we won’t soon forget.
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