Charlottesville Untold

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and this is, in my opinion, an important episode.

00:20

I had the pleasure of reading a book on the Charlottesville situation from 2017.

00:26

For those who remember, there was a rally in Charlottesville called Unite the Right. And then after that rally, there was some violence.

00:35

Someone even died. Donald Trump made some statements that gained some national media attention, in which he said that there were good people on both sides of this rally, counterprotesters and protesters.

00:45

And that actually became such a big event, a big statement from Donald Trump that it even made its way into the national election last year.

00:55

Biden tried to use this against Trump. And the spin was that Trump was calling Nazis, neo -Nazis, racists, essentially good people.

01:06

And this could not be further from the truth. But this has been something that the left has tried to pin on the right's political conservatives for, well, since the

01:16

Charlottesville Unite the Right rally happened. And so that's the background to this.

01:21

Well, I read a book called Charlottesville Untold over the weekend, and we have the author of that book with us,

01:28

Anne Smith. She also runs the Reckonin website. She's the founder of Reckonin.

01:34

Is it Reckonin .com, Anne? How do people get there? Yes. Reckonin .com. And you can find her book,

01:41

Charlottesville, on Charlottesville at the Shotwell Publishing website. They didn't want to just use

01:47

Amazon. You can go to Amazon and find it there as well. But if you want to get the e -book, you got to go to Shotwell Publishing to find that.

01:54

And Anne, I'm just so grateful to have you with us to talk about this, because I think this is important to get this right.

02:01

And so I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for being here. Sure. Thanks for having me. So I want to say,

02:07

I want to ask this. As I was going through the book, and I did it in one sitting, basically,

02:12

I couldn't stop listening to it. I kept thinking of January 6th because I was,

02:20

I was there, the audience knows, I wasn't inside the Capitol or anything, but I didn't know anything was really going on inside the

02:25

Capitol so much later. And I kept thinking about the tactics used in Charlottesville. It sounds like almost the exact same scenario.

02:34

Did you see that? Yeah, I did. In fact, I wrote a little blog post about it. Now, I think the nature of the actual protests were pretty different.

02:43

But as far as how the media handled it afterwards, how they kind of portrayed the people that were there, even though they were mostly well -intentioned people as terrorists, and they, you know, the media narrative was used to further that agenda.

03:00

Yeah. So the thing that bothers me about both Charlottesville and what happened on January 6th is how the media has taken these events and within,

03:11

I mean, the paint's not even dry. We don't even know all the facts and they're already, they already have the narrative pre -written that they're radical insurrectionists, or in this case, neo -Nazi racists, white supremacists, et cetera.

03:24

They have this narrative already built in that there's this emergency, that there's this rampant threat out there that all the

03:33

American people need to bond together against to stop because it's this impending danger. And they use these events as their justification for it.

03:41

And when you look deeper into them, you find out their narrative, it's almost built on nothing.

03:48

There's really not much to actually support it. So is that, was that the reason that you wrote the book?

03:54

Because you were just upset about this narrative? Or what was your reason? Yeah. I mean, the fact that having been there and seeing what really happened, and it is just dramatically different in the eyes of anyone that was there from what was portrayed in the media.

04:10

And it's just, you know, the media is not truthful, but when you experience this egregious lie about such a massive thing, it's just, it just has such an impact on you.

04:22

And I, and I felt like the people that were there had never been really gotten a chance to get their, their side of the story out.

04:29

Even the organizers have never been interviewed by the mainstream media that most of the people involved have been kicked off mainstream social media.

04:36

And, and, you know, and, and I think even though a lot of people know that they shouldn't really trust the, the mainstream news, they've never heard the other side of the story presented.

04:45

And I just thought someone needed to do it, it really needs to be put out there. So tell me a little bit about the story itself.

04:52

Let's get into some of the details here. You were there. What made you want to go to the rally in the first place?

04:59

Well, I talked about this a little in my introduction. Having been from Columbia, South Carolina, the

05:04

Confederate flag was always an issue here in Columbia. There were always rallies and, and after the, the

05:10

Dylann Roof incident was used to kind of open the floodgates to attack all sorts of Confederate symbols.

05:16

I sort of felt helpless. I felt, and it was, it's infuriating because, I mean, Dylann Roof doesn't have anything to do with those things, with the

05:22

Confederacy. But, but it was just, you know, I had been watching all the, the surge in the attacks on statues and all kinds of emblems of Heritage America, and nobody was really doing anything about it.

05:35

So when I learned that there was going to be a very, a large protest, a bold statement against these erasers of heritage, that I really wanted to be a part of it.

05:46

Yeah, so I mean, when that happened in 2015, preceding the Charlottesville event, this Dylann Roof incident,

05:53

I remember telling, I wasn't married to my wife yet, but we were dating, we were very serious.

05:58

I remember on a date, we were walking, and I said to her, like, right after that happened, I said, this is going to be the pretext for ripping down all of American symbols.

06:07

And she was like, how could, why, you know, wouldn't they just kind of stop with that? And I said, no, because the logic that they're using to take this down, to, to, to interpret this symbol from the past, they're going to use that same kind of logic to interpret other symbols.

06:25

And, and we've seen that. Trump predicted it, you have in your book, during Charlottesville, Trump said, okay, it's

06:30

Robert E. Lee today, it's Thomas Jefferson tomorrow. And that's exactly what we've seen, the left has not stopped with Confederate monuments, they have gone on from that to any, any symbol of America that they can, or a person that they can somehow connect to racism or, or oppression, even if they have to fabricate something in two steps or less.

06:52

And and so that's been my concern, is that the this knee jerk reactionary, let's, let's condemn something without first trying to understand it without trying to understand why these monuments were put up in the first place, what their, their actual, their plaques say, what the intentions of the erectors were.

07:14

This kind of thinking of we can just take a present narrative and then impose it on the past is, is destroying so many things.

07:21

And it's going to get into Christianity, it's going to get into scripture, it already is in some, you know, this ancient book that has all sorts of oppressive things.

07:28

So that's my concern. I know, that's your concern as well. And I know you're a Christian, as well as you're looking at this, tell me a little bit about when you were at the event, give me give me the pulse of the crowd.

07:41

Are these are these really a bunch of neo Nazi white supremacists who were there? Because I know there were some, right?

07:47

Or was it the majority of them? Were they like you, they just wanted to defend traditional American symbols and things that they had ties to?

07:56

Well, it was quite a mix and they were all kinds of people and some of them were extremists and out of the mainstream.

08:01

But I would say I think several people that I interviewed thought that about 80 to 85 percent were regular heritage supporters.

08:11

OK, so there wasn't any white supremacy, no neo Nazi or Klan connections, nothing like that.

08:16

They just thought, you know, we shouldn't take these monuments down. We want to go and make our voices heard.

08:22

That was it. Yeah, I think for a lot of them, that definitely was it. Yeah. OK, so so you're you're defending them, essentially.

08:30

You're saying that don't don't leave this out, then don't leave out the 85 percent who were there because for really a cause that wasn't anything about hate, it was really about love for their their own ancestors, their own past, their own connections to military service or something of that nature.

08:47

But there were some radicals there. So the media has, it seemed like, taken those radicals and then use them to portray the rest of the audience was just like these guys, just like Richard Spencer.

08:59

Were you offended or were you personally that angry you when you saw that happening, when you were being put into the same category as someone like a

09:08

Richard Spencer? Well, I wouldn't say it angered me, I mean, because people there were all kinds of people there.

09:15

But but it was it's really not fair for them, for the media to decide how to portray people who were not allowed to speak for themselves.

09:21

I mean, that's the point. They weren't allowed to hold a rally. And they're, you know, assuming these evil intentions that nobody was allowed to speak.

09:27

I mean, and you don't know what they believe because they weren't allowed to say it in public. That's kind of the issue for me.

09:34

OK, so it's a free speech thing. It's that we're not hearing the other side. OK, so tell me the story sequentially then for the audience, because here's the story we get from the mainstream media, a bunch of almost like anarchists who are hateful

09:48

Nazi white supremacists, all in an unlawful assembly convened in Charlottesville to try to terrorize the minority population there.

09:59

And Donald Trump then came out and said that they were good people. That's what most people listening to the mainstream media, that's what they think.

10:05

Donald Trump called a bunch of Klansmen and neo -Nazis really good people. And they were out there, you know, terrorizing people in the

10:12

Charlottesville community. What actually happened? Well, what actually happened was the people that were there to hear the speeches were kind of they were abandoned by the police.

10:25

That's an important thing. A lot of people don't know that. And this is this was proven. It was in an independent study that was funded by the city that they researched everything.

10:35

They talked to, you know, over 100 people. They looked at all the video and they basically determined there was just a long list of failures by the police, that the police that they didn't they didn't have a stand down order, but they essentially did nothing all day.

10:50

And not only did they not intervene, but they didn't even separate the parties that were going to be in opposition.

10:57

And after the dispersal order was called, they actually pushed the hostile parties together. So, so the authorities created a situation where they first, you know, the rally attendees were funneled into the park, surrounded on most of the way by hostile mob, and then were dispersed and forced into the mob.

11:17

And the fighting ensued at that point. So the people that were in attendance didn't go there to attack.

11:23

They went there and they were pushed into a situation where they had to fight to get back to they were ordered to disperse or be arrested.

11:29

And they had to get they had to leave and they had to fight their way through a hostile crowd. So these are people who they had a permit to be there, right?

11:37

Yes. Okay. So the people who attend who organized this rally, they were doing it in reaction to the city wanted to take down a

11:43

Robert E. Lee statue, which they've now taken down. And they came out, they got a permit.

11:49

They did this the legal way is my understanding. And then there's what's the what's the ratio, if you would, of counter protesters, meaning the people from Antifa and socialist organizations who came out against the people who are trying to support the statue?

12:07

Well, I would say there were probably roughly about 1000 attendees and statue supporters. And I would say there was several times that many,

12:16

I don't know the exact number, but they were they were very, very much outnumbered. A lot of people from out of town came in were bussed in.

12:23

You say bussed in, you talk about this in the book, as well. And I found it very disturbing.

12:28

You talk about some of the banners and equipment and things they had. It was it was not cheap. They clearly some paid protesters.

12:35

And this is before 2020. This is I think now people understand. Hold on. There's a whole organization, a whole organized effort to bring protesters out when there's an event like this.

12:46

But but but you saw it before 2020. And what you're saying is that the police just stepped aside and allowed those who had a legitimate permit to be there to be harassed by this mob.

13:04

What did the harassment look like? Was it violent? Yes. And there's something that Antifa does is they're good at when they train to for this these kind of protests, but they do things that don't really rise to the level of, you know, murder that would get attention or something.

13:24

But they they do things like they'll throw they throw feces and urine. They would pepper spray.

13:31

There's a lot of pepper spray. They would throw, you know, you know, rocks.

13:37

They hit people with sticks, things like that. A lot of chemical weapons. People were like water balloons that had chemicals in them, things like that.

13:45

So is the design of this to provoke the people on the right to attack them then and then to get it on camera?

13:52

I believe so. Yes. Yeah. People that have studied Antifa think that they are trained to provoke and they also are trained to break up groups to draw individual people or small groups away from the large crowd so they can, you know, gang up on them.

14:08

Things like that. Yeah. OK, now. OK, so we so you have a group just to set the stage here.

14:15

You have a group about a thousand people, 85 percent of which are just ordinary regular Americans there to support a statue.

14:21

You have, I guess, about 25 percent of groups that might be considered radical, maybe people that I wouldn't or we wouldn't even agree with with some of their ideas.

14:30

But they're there for the same reason. But they can they're more vilified and focused on by the media.

14:36

And then you have on the other side a bunch of what is it, socialist groups primarily or do we even know?

14:43

Well, they do tend to be kind of secretive, but there was really a wide variety.

14:50

There were some some left wing militias. There were some anti -fascist groups or Black Lives Matter, different anti -racist type groups.

14:58

So there was a lot of different groups of people. OK, and then the police, what did they just kind of back down in the middle of this or what?

15:08

It's it seems almost like it was by design. I mean, they were carrying out orders and they some of them even liked what they were seeing that not all of them, but some of them enjoyed watching these legitimate, you know, protesters who had a permit get the snot beaten out of them.

15:26

Is that is that accurate? I think some of them were. And I think it might have been poor planning on the part of the authorities that they they didn't have the right gear where it was supposed to be.

15:36

Or, you know, the police felt that they weren't they weren't going to be safe if they intervened. And and so they were saying they were standing back.

15:43

And I don't know the organizer, the main organizer, Jason Kessler, he's been filing a lot of FOIA, freedom of information lawsuits, trying to get the information released of the things were going on at the command center that day.

15:56

And a lot of it has not been released. Some of the devices were lost or destroyed or they're trying to get forensics people to examine them.

16:02

So a lot of what what happened behind the scenes with what was going on between the authorities just doesn't know that it's a subject of an ongoing suit.

16:10

Is this arouse suspicions that they're trying to hide evidence then of their Absolutely. Absolutely.

16:16

Yeah. Thinking about January 6th and what happened there,

16:21

I see parallels here. And I've talked about, you know, when I was there, I was there just to be there to support election integrity, as were the vast majority of people in the audience.

16:32

And I remember seeing a long line of police cars with officers and they weren't at the

16:38

Capitol. And, you know, after the event had happened, then you see riot police coming in and it's just, you know, three hours too late.

16:45

And it's it was very suspicious that they had, you know, it was like they were inviting people and they had

16:50

I remember surrounding the Capitol, these barriers to prevent cars from coming in. They're all down.

16:56

It just there was so many things I could go on and on about that just did not add up. And I'm seeing the same thing with the

17:03

Charlottesville situation where the police, the crowd expected the police to do their job and protect them.

17:10

And then they failed. They did. And what's the result of this? I mean, there hasn't been anything quite similar to this since then.

17:18

It seems like all these monuments are coming down. There's not a lot of pushback. Do you think it's because of the fact that they people know they support these monuments, they're not going to have a police backup and they could have

17:30

Antifa after them? Yeah, absolutely. I think and a lot of people I talk to, they don't they don't go to rallies anymore.

17:37

Those who do have trouble getting other people to attend because they're they feel like, well, the police aren't going to protect me.

17:42

And if I if I get into a scuffle trying to protect myself, I could be arrested. And and so so, yeah, that's that's absolutely a problem.

17:49

And that's that's why there's a suit against the city about the hecklers veto, which is an issue, which is when the police don't protect the controversial speakers from the angry mob.

18:00

And if the police don't do that, then basically you don't have free speech for dissenters. So that's the issue with the lawsuit.

18:07

And that's your main concern, too, is that the free speech that we're just this isn't the America that we even had six, seven years ago.

18:15

It's we don't have the social media, the freedom we did even on social media to post what we want.

18:22

There's only one narrative that seems to stick. One of the things I was thinking, I don't know if you're familiar with this.

18:28

Are you familiar at all with Theodore Adorno from the Frankfurt School and his F scale? Have you ever heard of that?

18:33

So long story short, Theodore Adorno had this this F scale that he created, which showed whether someone had

18:41

Nazi tendencies or not. And there's some things like loving your family too much, you know, could be a Nazi tendency, things like that.

18:47

So this made its way into academia. I mean, this this became a big thing in universities across the country.

18:54

And and we see the left using this kind of thing to vilify any

18:59

American who's just a ordinary American into being a Nazi if they don't, you know, dot the

19:05

I's and cross the T's on the left's list of issues to care about and have good right positions on. And one of the things that seems to have happened,

19:13

I'd like to get your opinion on this in Charlottesville, is that F scale kind of got out of the lab because it used to be it was only just it was

19:19

Nazis. That was the main everyone's vilified by being a Nazi. But now, since Charlottesville, there's there's two other categories, major categories that have arisen that one is

19:32

Neo Confederates and the other one is nationalists or Christian nationalists or just just nationalists in general.

19:41

These are two other terms that are now used. And they're basically they have the same emotional attachment to the left, at least, as a

19:49

Nazi would have. And it's like it's like they're doing the F scale thing. It's a well, you know, you support the Robert E. Lee monument.

19:55

Well, you're a Neo Confederate or, you know, you're supporting the Thomas Jefferson statue or whatever. Well, you're you're just a nationalist.

20:01

And they use these terms then to as a club. I think

20:06

Charlottesville was the point when that that happened. It's like the switch went off and we can start vilifying regular ordinary

20:13

Americans who are just patriotic and that's all they are. Do you see that as well? Yeah, definitely.

20:21

It's I think anybody who holds beliefs that would have been even, you know, somebody that would have been a typical

20:29

Reagan supporter, it would be considered a Nazi nowadays. So, yeah, there's there's really no tolerance at all for differing ideas.

20:35

And one of the things I talk about is that the Antifa have a principle of no platforming where they they believe that they are morally obligated to prevent speech that they believe could be fascist or Nazi hate speech, whatever they they feel entitled and obligated to prevent it.

20:53

And but the catch is that they they decide who fits that label, who doesn't get to speak.

20:59

Well, if you don't get to speak, then, you know, how do they even know? But but they feel entitled to shut down anything that they think might be leading in that direction and deny the free speech to those people.

21:11

I want to talk about Donald Trump for a moment. That's a very good point you just made. He has been vilified for saying there were good people on both sides.

21:19

Your book proves that there were good people on. It wasn't a bunch of neo -Nazis. Eighty five percent of the crowd, at least, wasn't even part of these radical groups.

21:30

Donald Trump's been very vilified for this, though. Do you think there's any way to kind of take that narrative back and correct the record?

21:39

I know your book is trying to do that, but I think people are looking right now for practical ways to expose the truth, to show people you've been lied to on not just this issue, but a number of issues.

21:53

And it's, you know, take the red pill. Realize that the mainstream media is lying to you.

21:58

They have an agenda. Give us some hope, some strategies, some ways.

22:04

Have you seen people wake up and the lights go on after maybe they hear from you or read your book?

22:10

I know it's only been out for a short time. Yeah, well, it hasn't. It's too soon to tell as far as my book, but I do think that, like, for example, the

22:18

January 6 thing, which affected, I think, more mainstream people, the people that were at Unite the

22:23

Right, most of them kind of knew they were, you know, on the edge of the Overton window. But I think that seeing very mainstream

22:31

Republican people get that same kind of treatment, I think and hope that that will cause people to question more the narratives they're hearing, you know, to look outside the news for their understanding what's happening.

22:44

And Donald Trump seemed to be the only one who even came close to trying to accurately portray what happened in the mainstream.

22:50

No one else even even touched it, even Fox News. And that was one of the things that bothered me is that I didn't

22:57

I didn't even realize that there were the organizer, I guess, of the rally who obtained the permit, who you think this would be the guy everyone would be wanting to interview.

23:06

He couldn't even get on Tucker Carlson. What do you make of that? Oh, well,

23:13

I just think that they everyone they were successfully marginalized and vilified, and nobody wanted to touch this this toxic group of people and act like they might be sympathetic to them.

23:23

I think it's a cowardice. And it's also having a narrative that they just, you know, are going with.

23:28

Why are political conservatives in the mainstream media, if you can call Fox News that which

23:33

I think you can, why in the world? They got to see the writing on the wall. They got to realize that, you know, the left doesn't have any fond feelings towards them if they distance themselves.

23:44

So to even just interview someone that that doesn't mean an endorsement. I don't understand this quite this.

23:53

This reaction that I see over and over again from people on the conservative media world where they want to just distance themselves, distance themselves, distance themselves as if they're going to make points with the left by doing so.

24:06

Is it cowardice? What do you attribute that to? I think it is. I think it is sort of it's just it's what they're the world, their paradigm, it would require a paradigm shift to look at things differently,

24:18

I think, and a lot of people just aren't aren't ready for that. But yeah,

24:24

I do. I think at the core it is it is cowardice. You know, you have to, you know, stand up and say things that will get get you shunned or attacked.

24:32

That's not everyone wants to do that. Well, your book, Charlottesville Untold, is the only book that I know of or the treatment of this that is actual real journalism to some extent where you're you were there.

24:44

You're talking about your experience. You went through the experiences of many others. You've done interviews. I mean, this is well done.

24:51

I haven't seen anyone even on the concert in conservative media try to to do any of this.

24:57

And it does bother me a little bit. I'm so glad that you did it because we have it now. And we and I would recommend people get this because you can go back, you know, read the book, obviously read through what happened, but you can use it as a reference when this is brought up and say, hey, you know,

25:13

I have a complete, you know, record of what happened. And it's probably the best thing that's that's come out about this so far.

25:22

And and we can really overturn this narrative. This is not a true narrative at all. And I will confess to everyone,

25:29

I bought the narrative to some extent when it first happened. I remember on Facebook, I think I had posted something like, look,

25:35

I don't have a dog in this fight. We got a bunch of Nazis and a bunch of communists fighting it out. You know, that's I'm nowhere to be found in that.

25:42

But that wasn't what was actually going on. And the media portrayed it that way. What are some lessons, some takeaways for you personally being there?

25:51

I mean, have you have you learned something about, I don't know, the media or has it changed your life at all?

26:00

Yeah, I think even though, as I said, I think, you know, to, you know, not put too much stock in what the media tells you just to have something that affects you that personally and see it, you know, something that powerfully false, just take over everything.

26:15

It's really makes an impact on you in a way you can't explain. And you sort of I think the people that were there all feel kind of a kinship because of having been through something that most people don't don't understand.

26:26

And yeah, so that that absolutely has an impact on you. You know, it's sort of life changing.

26:33

Yeah. Yeah. Did you have I mean, I've had a few experiences where I've seen, OK, I was at an event and then

26:39

I saw it in the newspaper or the television, the events reported and they get it totally wrong.

26:44

And I'm like, oh, my goodness, like these people are not after the truth. Was that was this the moment for you that you just kind of realized?

26:52

I think January six was one of those moments for me. But you thought, oh, my goodness, there's even even those on the right.

26:59

Truth is not the issue. They don't care about that as much as they do. I don't know. I don't know. Being in fashion or something.

27:06

Yeah. And it really impressed upon me how I mean, how evil the our leaders can be that they because I mean,

27:13

I felt like it it was allowed to happen that they are and they, you know, use it for their own purposes.

27:19

And just it's just appalling to see that they're willing to do that. I mean, you know it on some level because you see,

27:25

I mean, you know, history. But when you experience it, it just really has an impact. Yeah. There is one event from that day

27:32

I wanted to pick your brain on. Probably should have done that earlier. But they're constantly whenever the

27:38

Charlottesville situation comes up, we are reminded of the one death that did take place that day.

27:45

And I don't remember where you were not in that vicinity. I don't think where you know, I was in my hotel.

27:50

OK, so you saw what was going on. You left when that that's the thing that they point to, though.

27:58

And they say, look, it's this Nazi guy. And it looks like he was. And you were honest about this. Looks like the guy does have a kind of a messed up background.

28:06

And he is he does have some some very radical beliefs. But he it seems to me that he was surrounded.

28:16

And why don't you just tell us since you did the research on this? What actually happened there? Well, there as you said,

28:24

I mean, there's reason to believe that it might have been intentional. But there's also a lot of mitigating information that most people haven't heard.

28:32

You know, for example, that he was, you know, had an antifa with a with a weapon, shoot him away just a block or two before a few, you know, a minute or two before.

28:44

And that he had put his home address into his GPS. And every route he was trying to take was blocked by crowds, which were not supposed to be there because it was a state of emergency.

28:54

But the authorities didn't clear the streets. And that these mobs had been attacking cars, you know, throughout the day.

29:01

So, you know, those are that's the mitigating information now. Now, he did have a history of, you know, mental illness and some temper flare up issues.

29:12

So whether he was just simply afraid or whether he had a moment of rage,

29:17

I don't know that. But I do know that there was some reason to question that it was deliberate.

29:23

Well, he had put in you wrote that he had put in his home address, right? That he was trying to get home and he couldn't.

29:32

And so at the very least, we'd have to look at this and say this is a horrible situation. We obviously my heart goes out to the parents and the family of this young lady who died.

29:43

But at the same time, the police dropped the ball there. There's a and then and then they get an ambulance there, right?

29:50

As soon as this happens and someone's actually they're in danger of losing their life. I don't know if they were had passed away at that point.

29:57

The all of a sudden the police kick into gear as if, you know, they had the resources. It just shows they had the resources, but they weren't willing to deploy them against the crowds.

30:09

And so so it's very it's discouraging to read it. But I'm glad the truth is important. I'm glad that you that it's out there that you put it out there that we can read it.

30:16

And no more in detail. This is a more complex situation than the melodrama that we've gotten.

30:23

And I think it's important for people to know that. As a Christian, you know, truth is important to me.

30:30

I see this this battle as more than just a political battle.

30:36

I see this as even more than just a cultural battle. I think there's a spiritual battle going on as well. Doesn't mean that everyone who supports a

30:43

Robert E. Lee or a Thomas Jefferson or George Washington statue is a Christian. I'm not saying that. But what

30:48

I am saying is that there are some very good men. Robert E. Lee Center, like everyone else, but has been he's known as a noble Christian man.

30:57

He's been known. That's been his reputation since the really before even the Civil War. He was known as a hero of the

31:04

Mexican -American War. And and and anyway, he he has a stature that has been very hard for people to vilify and rip down.

31:15

And yet it's happening and it's happening as things are getting more pagan, anti -Christian. Do you see that angle to it as well?

31:24

And I'd like to know also, when you were there, did you notice in the audience any,

31:31

I don't know, occult symbols or were there anti -Christian things going on there as well, in addition to anti -American history stuff?

31:42

And I didn't see any overt occult stuff. But I did. I do think that there is a spiritual element.

31:49

And I mentioned in the book some of the left wing clergy who had done some training with the left wing protest groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

32:01

No, I didn't see anything occult related, but I do think that there is a spiritual element to it. Absolutely. Yeah. The reason

32:06

I was asking some of the Stop the Steal protest and things like that.

32:12

I'd gone to a few of them before January 6th. And I do remember groups that literally were out there with occult symbols.

32:20

And they were very overt about their intentions. But you didn't. Yeah, you didn't see that, though, in Charlottesville.

32:28

You just reminded me about the pastors. That was a disturbing element to me as well, that there's pastors out there. They were described that situation.

32:35

They were using profanity. What were they saying to? Well, one of my interview subjects said, gave me some very specific vulgar things that the clergy had said to him.

32:46

And at least one of these clergy members has been using some of that kind of language online.

32:53

So it can't be a one time incident. But yeah,

32:59

I mean, they're left leaning. They're definitely left leaning. And we're working training with the left wing activist groups.

33:10

Yeah, and they were all together. Is that correct? A bunch of clergy. Did they have a group that they were called or something like that?

33:18

There were a lot of different groupings of them. So they lent some spiritual legitimacy to the left as, hey, we're on the right side.

33:28

But meanwhile, they're using filthy language. They're saying provocative, inflammatory things, things that you wouldn't see

33:34

Christ saying. And somehow at the same time, maintaining some kind of a status of being a pastor.

33:41

This is one thing, as I've talked about the social justice movement in Christianity, it seems to me like as long as you pursue anti -racism or anti -sexism or whatever, the left leaning agenda is, you get kind of a blank check to do a lot of other things.

33:57

You don't have the microscope on you. You can do all kinds of other immoral things. But as long as, hey, you have the right position on race or sex or gender or something, then, hey, you're good to go.

34:09

And it just reinforced that when I was reading this about Charlottesville, I thought, oh, my goodness, that's so shameful.

34:14

But yet that was the display that was there that day. What other things? Well, it's the new religion, as you've noted.

34:20

That's the new religion, the secular religion. It is. It is. What other things would you emphasize, things that you wouldn't want to leave out in a retelling of this, what you want people to know?

34:32

Well, I guess the lasting impact, some of the people that were personally there, the censorship, people have never come back from that.

34:43

That's when the censorship against political dissidents online really ramped up and still continues.

34:49

And that has a lasting impact. The ability of dissident groups to gather and protest has changed.

35:02

Just the free speech issues, the legal issues, things that are continuing. Yeah, that was an interesting thing, too.

35:09

I remember when you were in the book, where you were talking about some of these groups, some of which we wouldn't probably agree with their political philosophy, but at the same time, they should have the free speech, you'd think, to display their views as long as they're not committing crimes or hurting people.

35:26

And so what's ended up taking place is that they've been booted off their platforms and no one really did anything at the time.

35:33

And now we're seeing that mainstream conservatives are experiencing the same thing. In fact,

35:38

I mean, I had a video about a certain disease and a certain treatment for that disease, supposedly, that was taken offline just recently.

35:45

And so this was kind of the pretext. It's almost like they were dipping their foot in the water a little and saying, OK, can we do this?

35:52

You think if the mainstream conservatives had said, hey, they're allowed to say, you don't have to like them, but they're allowed to say what they want to say.

36:02

And the social media is the new public square. We need to protect everyone's right to be a part of it. They could have done that instead, but they were just like, didn't want to be associated.

36:10

So they let it happen. And now it's gotten to where it's affecting more and more people, even the former sitting president.

36:16

Yeah. So the lessons learned for you. I know you talked about kind of your personal lessons, but political lessons here stand up, protect everyone's free speech and their civil liberties.

36:30

And don't, you know, don't be afraid of the mob and what they'll do. The mob is going to come for you next anyway.

36:36

Right. Is that kind of what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

36:42

Yeah. So this book is you can get it on on Amazon, but you'd probably prefer people go to Shotwell, right?

36:49

The Shotwellpublishing .com or? That's right. Okay. And it's

36:56

Charlottesville Untold. And they type that into the search bar and it'll come up. And there's a

37:01

Kindle edition. There's the hard or the paperback cover. You can get that. I have that. And I would encourage people to pick it up.

37:08

It's a good, you're going to want it as a reference because your children in history class or your grandchildren, they're going to be learning about this event and they're not going to be learning the truth about it.

37:18

And you want to have the truth. And I think, and you are, you're the only one I know of who's really put this out there in an understandable way for people to say, yeah, you know,

37:27

I get it. I understand what happened that day. And so I appreciate you for doing that. Thank you. Sure.

37:33

Sure. So any, any final thoughts for us? I don't think so.

37:39

I do want to mention the one cool thing the book has and I can't take credit for it, but Paul Graham, the manager of Shotwell came up with this idea.

37:47

There are QR codes within the text. So if you have your phone, you can open videos to watch what is being talked about.

37:54

So I thought that was a pretty cool touch because, you know, just be able to see things in real time. So that's a neat feature in this book too.

38:01

That is cool. Yeah. So it's interactive. You can certainly get your phone out and participate that way. That's awesome.

38:06

All right. Well, like I said, the book is at Shotwell Publishing and thank you Ann Smith for being willing to share with us about this event and your book.

38:15

And I hope that this gets out there far and wide. So God bless. Well, thank you so much.