I wasn’t at UTR (Unite the Right) in 2017. As much as the idea of removing the Robert E. Lee statue angered me, I had another trip planned later that year and could not do both. I do, however, remember getting home from having supper with a friend, a fellow dissident, and we were both shocked by just how badly it went. We had been getting bits and pieces of the news throughout the day, but it wasn’t until getting home that we fully realized what had happened. And, we both knew what happened – the police were absent in their duty and allowed antifa to attack the marchers.
But, it wasn’t until the next morning, when I checked Facebook, that I realized that it was even worse than I initially thought. Watching liberals condemn the marchers, Lee, the Confederacy, Southern racism, et al was to be expected. That wasn’t all that was going on. People I’ve known all my life, decent, Christian people, the types of people who played by the rules and voted for Trump (and would again), were also appalled. Post after post, I saw them blame the violence on the pro-statue marchers and they spoke about a racial reckoning for Dixie. Of course, Lee was also attacked. The people who had not abandoned the Confederacy’s heritage after Dylann Roof, were now doing so.
It was after UTR that social media companies finally got the pretext they needed to censor more. Several accounts disappeared within the next few days. If a historian is to ever write the history of the internet, I think that UTR is the day they will pick when the internet’s “Wild West” days ended forever. Those next few weeks were among the darkest and most blackpilling days of my life. Dixie’s symbols, something I have loved my whole life, were being destroyed and anyone who fought back was demonized and found themselves unemployable. The worst of it was that it wasn’t just the Yankees, blacks, and liberals doing this – it was normie conservative Dixians hating themselves and their own culture.
As the trial of Jason Kessler and others is now ongoing, things have changed. Many of those appalled by the violence and blaming the marchers have now become drawn, at least somewhat, to the Dissident Right. They are no longer blaming the pro-statue marchers, rather they are blaming antifa. As of this writing, we do not know what the outcome of the trial(s) will be, but it looks as if Kessler is getting a somewhat sympathetic jury. And, even if he and the others are found liable, I think plenty of normies will see this as an unjust outcome. For example, look at how sympathetic normies have been over the January 6 prisoners. This appears to be a win-win for the Dissident Right. If Kessler and the rest go down, then they will be viewed as martyrs. If they are found innocent, then antifa will surely riot and the media will have a hard time blaming the Dissident Right on that one.
To understand what is going on here, I think it is important to look back at one of the most important events in Irish history, the Easter Rising. As a quick refresher, on Easter Monday, 1916, a group of Irish rebels seized the General Post Office in Dublin and declared the birth of an independent Irish Republic. They were able to hold out for a week before the Brits finally won. Now, in and of itself, this is hardly remarkable. There had always been rebellions against British rule in Ireland, especially when Britain was stuck in a major European conflict. The Easter Rising is important for what happened next.
Amazingly, the majority of the Irish people were appalled by the Rising. Anti-German sentiment was still quite high and the rebels were seen as giving aid to Germany. Plus, Britain had already promised to look at Irish home rule after World War I. The Rising was seen as an unneeded loss of life. Then, something major happened – the British began trying the rebels about a month later and in secret military courts, including executions. By providing time between the Rising and the trials, and the manner in which it was done, it actually enraged the Irish. Britain had to stop the trials part of the way through because they realized they were turning the rebels into martyrs. A man like Padraig Pearse, an unhinged fanatic in his last month before execution, had now taken his place among the great heroes of Irish history in his death. However, stopping the executions was ultimately too little and too late. Two years later, Sinn Féin came to power and the Irish War for Independence began. It is one of the great ironies of Irish history that for all the rebellions that have taken place in Ireland, the one that actually worked was initially extremely unpopular.
I think UTR is on the verge of becoming the Dissident Right’s Easter Rising. A failure at first, but one that eventually led to greater gains. Remember, back in 2017, the vast majority of normies had no idea what antifa was. I knew about them, and I am sure most of our readers did as well, but the average normie had no idea who was attacking the pro-Lee monument marchers. We were trying to explain what had happened by blaming something they had never heard of. As right as we may have been, it was destined for failure. Some of the marchers made things even worse by utilizing the trappings of Nazi Germany. Normies may not have known what antifa was, but they sure knew what the Nazis were. They were the bad guys, and not just because that’s what they had been told but because they were the guys who tried to kill granddaddy.
Things have changed since 2017. After 2020, normies now know what antifa is and have found out, the hard way, that what we told them was correct. Now, blaming antifa no longer sounds like we’re trying to shift the blame, but actually pointing out that the same people who were allowed to riot in almost every major American city for months may have not been innocent in August 2017. Plus, normies now know that contrary to whatever the Left may have claimed in 2017, this is not just about Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy, or slavery, but is an all-out assault on all of Heritage America. Not just Christopher Columbus and Nathan Bedford Forrest (both open targets since at least the 1990s), but so are Washington and Jefferson. Knowing just how bad things are, and what is at stake, is now a mainstream position.
It is important to remember that history is a process, and how something will be remembered is not always clear when it happens. It looked as if the Easter Rising was destined to just be another failed Irish rebellion. If anything, it had even more disastrous consequences than normal (for the British). It wound up being the rebellion that broke Britain’s rule of Ireland. It also appeared as if UTR was a failure at first, another blow against Dixian identity and gave the Left a blank check to do as they wish, and Trump being in power could not stop it.
Will UTR be remembered as the Easter Rising is? Only time will tell. However, what is clear is that, similar to the Easter Rising, things look much different now than they did in 2017.
“You must not grieve for all this. We have preserved Ireland’s honour and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland’s history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations. You too will be blessed because you were my mother.”
Padraig Pearse, in a letter to his mother
“This is the death I should have asked if God had given me the choice of all deaths—to die a soldier’s death for Ireland and for freedom. We have done right. People will say hard things of us now, but later on will praise us. Do not grieve for all this, but think of it as a sacrifice which God asked of me and of you.”
The last letter of Padraig Pearse to his mother
Great article. Now on to something we have never done in our history, actually write our history. I don’t mean in books by the Kennedy Brothers or 100s of civil war yarns, I mean taking what you just said, making it teachable and then distributing it to our children for free. Nothing we do or say matters until we write and teach our own history to our own children and if we can’t do that little bit in 150 years then the statues should come down because we are dead already and don’t deserve what used to be our home. We have to organize as a people, just us and we have to teach our children, nothing else matters, and quite frankly most of the right are morons and Yankees that I have no desire to unite with.
We have to come together, just us or we will vanish from this earth forever. We begin with our history, thats a lot more than the Northern invasion from over a century ago, we must raise every single one of our children to be the absolute best at everything and they must know excatly who our people are, where we are going and why. It may be too late, but if nothing else we may be blessed enough to die as who we are and fighting. Organize now or we die, our people are who all of our efforts of uniting with should be focused on.
“…And I wouldn’t be surprised if we had another Rising, said the Man From the Day Mail”