Aug 18, 2017
This week's special episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show examines the white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville, Virginia which took place last week.
The first guest is Adele Stan. She is a journalist for The American Prospect. Her work has also appeared at Alternet. Adele was present in Charlottesville during the "Unite the Right" hate festival and shares her first person account of what transpired there.
The second guest is "James" from the leading antifascist, anarchist, and human rights information clearing house and website "It's Going Down". James has been tracking the white supremacist and other fascist organizations who ran amok in Charlottesville. He explains their connections, funding, if the "Unite the Right" hate festival was a success, and the role of physical active resistance in standing against fascists and their allies.
The third guest is Amanda Marcotte. She is a politics and culture writer for the online magazine Salon. Amanda shares her thoughts about resistance and non-violence in the aftermath of Charlottesville, as well as Trump's statements about white supremacist violence.
The fourth guest is Tim Wise. He is one of the United States' leading anti-racism activists and scholars. Tim reflects on the role of white privilege in the white supremacist political violence and mayhem in Charlottesville, toxic white masculinity and the white supremacist movement, how last weekend's events were very predictable, and white folks' denial about the dangers posed by the so-called "alt-right".
The fifth guest is Dr. David Reiss. He is a psychiatrist who has written extensively about Donald Trump. Dr. Reiss also a chapter in the forthcoming book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President which attempts to assess Trump's mental health. Dr. Reiss offers his suggestions about maintaining one's sense of self and wellness in the aftermath of the terrorism in Charlottesville. He also provides some insights about the mental health of the white supremacists and other fascists who attended the "Unite the Right" hate festival and carnival of thugs.
During this week's episode, Chauncey implores white Americans to clean up their own house and to finally confront the deep sickness of racism and white supremacy that ran amok in Charlottesville--as well as the broader problem that is Trump's cabal and political cult.
If you want to figure out what is wrong with Trump, in order to find a means to thwart him, trust your gut. There is no doubt this man is pathologically inclined in a manner that is consistent with Sociopathy, and seriously egocentricity. The fact is, he has more in common with Jaufery than he does Jon Snow, and he's not just awakened the ugliness of the bigots, he's awakened the ugliness of our Society's sociopathic assembly line. There is a nexus of Pathologies coming together, for those who are avoiding calling the man Nazieque, they refuse to see what Hitler was like prior to becoming the man history Abhors. His flighty, fickle, clownish nature isn't a negative on his impact, it makes him that much more dangerous, because he's causing people to feel falsely comforted by the buffoonery. That means two things, You cannot reason with him, and nothing you say or do will mean anything if it doesn't further his self-indulgent sadistic nature. There are no good options left for those clinging to the fantasy our system can protect itself from this man it helped pave the way for. Take him for what he is, if he weren't a civilian, he'd have been sitting in a mental hospital for decades, or a federal prison for innumerable crimes of predation and gratuitous violence and corruption. He's exactly what he appears to be, and so too are his lackeys and followers. It is my sincere belief that we are not at a turning point, we are dangling off the end of the rope we've hung our democracy by giving permission for these forces to have equivalency to those seeking to foster progress and civility. Europe learned it's lesson in limiting the fostering of destructive supremacist forces, and dealt with it appropriately. We have missed that boat for the last 70 years when we had the chance as a nation we allowed our leaders to shirk their responsibilities under the law and have their cake and eat it too. We are under attack by our nation's Frankenstein's monster, and it's out attacking the villagers. What is left after the miasma will be what must be able to learn from this debacle to not rebuild our failed hypocritical experiment in democracy as a facade, but a real combined social effort to make it a reality, instead of a hollow caricature of what it's become.