Recently there has been something of an uproar over the removal of several statues dedicated to the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. Many Southern communities have elected to take down these monuments in the name of anti-racism and inclusivity. In late April, the city of Louisiana began the process of removing four pro-Confederate monuments to Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and the Battle of Liberty Place.

The Battle of Liberty Place monument commemorated the 1874 attempt by the Crescent City White League — a white terrorist organization — to overthrow the Republican state government. In 1932 an inscription was added to the monument denouncing the “carpetbag government” of Louisiana, but added that “the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”

On April 24, 2017, the statue was taken down in the dead of night as police snipers stood guard on nearby rooftops — a response to violent threats by monument supporters.

The city of New Orleans then proceeded to take down the statues of Jefferson Davis on May 11th, P.G.T. Beauregard on May 17th, and Robert E. Lee on May 19th. For some people, this decision was an affront to history and tradition. To others it was another example of a major U.S. city capitulating to the forces of political correctness. For white nationalists, Southern nationalists, neo-Confederates, and others on the racist Right, it only meant one thing: the continued ethnic cleansing of the majority white population.

Indeed, the movement collectively known as the “alt-right” has been abuzz with the usual cries of “white genocide” and “white displacement.” On May 13th, 2017, the aforementioned hodgepodge of far-right activists descended on Charlottesville, VA to “defend” the statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. A host of familiar faces — Richard Spencer, Sam Dickson, Mike Peinovich — took turns speaking with a bullhorn while others stood, listening intently and holding Confederate and Identity Evropa flags.

Peinovich claimed this was about more than just Confederate monuments. To him the controversy is removing “images of white people” and “white heroes” and “white warriors” in order to “attack and demoralize” whites. “They wanna destroy our future, they wanna replace us with some sort of mixed, muddy people that would just be easy consumers who won’t stand up for themselves, who’ll just go buy, shop, be part of the cogs of the machine,” he said.

And he warned the crowd that it won’t end with statues dedicated to the Confederacy either. “It’s not gonna stop with Robert E. Lee. It’s not gonna stop with Jefferson Davis. They’re gonna go after Andrew Jackson. They’re gonna go after Thomas Jefferson. They’re gonna go all the way back, as we said, to Shakespeare. They’re gonna go after any white person that was a hero, that represented Europe, that represented white culture, white civilization.”

Then the bullhorn was passed to Spencer, who stated that he and the alt-right were taking the angst and unease of millions of white people and putting it into words. “This is not like a genocide of yesteryear,” he said.  “This is not a war with bullets and trenches and tanks. This is a psychological war. This is a moral war.” And Spencer vowed to fight this war on the “battlefield of symbolism” and “morality.”

Because what Spencer believes his enemies want is “a world in which we do not exist.” Spencer may be partially correct — many people want a future in which he and his compatriots do not exist, but not because of their lack of melanin.

Nonetheless, Spencer claimed that this goal of a world without white people — which again, came from the fevered imagination of white supremacists — would result in a “horrifying parody of the civilization that our ancestors built.” One might add through the blood and sweat of blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and others.

“They are trying to take away our gods. They are trying to take away our ideals. They are trying to take away who we are,” said Spencer. “And in the stead of these monuments, god knows what they’re going to erect: some monument to death, some monument to slavery and the Holocaust, some monument to the black cloud that hangs over everyone’s heads. Or perhaps quite literally it will be a statue to Lady Gaga, I would not put it past them. They want to memorialize equality. I don’t want to live in a world of equality.”

The audience clapped and cheered.

He then proclaimed, “We will not be replaced from this park! We will not be replaced from this world! Whites have a future! We have a future of power! Of beauty! Of expression! [Inaudible] it’s a greater civilization than what our ancestors were capable of! That is our future! That is your future! And we will seize it!” 

The popular alt-right show Red Ice TV livestreamed the event in its entirety, and, between events, aired discussions with pro-Confederate figures. In one such discussion, hosts Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren spoke to James Edwards of The Political Cesspool podcast and Michael Hill, President of the neo-Confederate organization League of the South (LoS).

Lokteff asked Hill for his thoughts on what she called the “war on Confederate statues.” Hill replied that “this is simply another example of cultural, ethnic cleansing” and part of an “anti-white purge” of monuments, statues, and flags associated with the South. “But it won’t end there, I guarantee you that,” he claimed, adding that once anti-racists finished dismantling statues they will “come for the flesh and blood” of white people.

James Edwards was next to give his take on the possible removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. Edwards used the controversy to denounce multiculturalism as a “fool’s errand” and advocate for racial separation. “Blacks will never view an upright man like Robert E. Lee as their hero, nor will we ever view a degenerate like Martin Luther King as our hero,” he said.

“And once you reach critical mass — and we’re fast approaching that point — you’re gonna see certainly the genocide of our monuments, and I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Hill that the day will come and, if present trends persist, in the not-too-distant future they will come after us as flesh and blood beings.” And yes, Edwards actually did call this a “genocide” of monuments — something which I heretofore never knew was actually a thing.

Edwards also called Lee the “epitome of a Christian soldier” and, although we warned that it might sound a tad blasphemous, “the most Christ-like figure that ever trod the North American continent.” He also revealed that every year for “Confederate History Month,” he makes a habit of watching the 2003 film Gods and Generals which boasts a whopping 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics consensus lambasted the movie for its “two dimensional characters,” “pompous self-righteousness,” and “pro-Confederate slant.”

Another participant in the discussion, Mencken’s Ghost, agreed with both Hill and Edwards, as he called the removal of the statues a form of “genocide” by way of “removing the outward symbols that define a people and their identity.” And at Identity Dixie — a website where Mencken’s Ghost co-hosts a pro-Confederate podcast called The Rebel Yell — an anonymous contributor called for a boycott of New Orleans in a May 24th article.

“We must lay economic siege and treat New Orleans as the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississippi it has become,” he wrote. 

Meanwhile, the crowd of protesters had gathered to give speeches, with alt-right activist and Daily Caller contributor Jason Kessler kicking things off by praising his white nationalist brethren for their spirited defense of white supremacy. “I think one thing that I have in common with all of you here today is I don’t give a goddamn about being called a racist!” he declared to cheers and applause.

“And that’s what it’s gonna take as a people: all of you out here, you have the cajones to stand up here and be leaders of our movement, to not apologize for being white, for being European-Americans! These statues are a symbol of our former greatness, and we have to protect them if we are to continue into our greatness in the future. There are so many great things we can accomplish together.”

And like Mike Peinovich previously claimed, Kessler predicted that this was only a slippery slope to removing statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. He said that this “standard” was only “applied to our people.” Which begs the question of what standard Kessler means. If he means that only white slave owners and mass murderers and terrorists are having their statues removed, then maybe he has a point — if not because we in the U.S. do not tend to erect statues of people of color in the first place, let alone hugely controversial ones.

Of course that isn’t what he meant by that. Kessler is under the impression that statues of white people in general are being targeted regardless of what those people did in life. And then he conflated the removal of statues of slave owners to ancient relics and historical buildings constructed through slave labor. He asked his audience whether anti-racists wanted to “take down the Great Wall of China because it was built with slave labor,” or the “Mayan and Aztecan pyramids which were built with slave labor.”

The answer is no, since anti-racists can distinguish between historical sites built with slave labor and modern statues celebrating white supremacy. There are no calls to tear down the Pyramids of Giza or the White House because slaves constructed them. So Kessler’s claims of anti-white persecution fell totally flat. He then proceeded to thank everyone who made the event possible, including “Eli Mosley,” Nathan Damigo and Identity Evropa, Mike Peinovich, and Sam Dickson. 

The next speaker was Identity Evropa (IE) founder Nathan Damigo. Damigo, an Iraq War veteran who did a stint in prison for armed robbery, became nationally famous this year for socking a female antifa protester in the face. IE members are responsible for posting racist flyers at college campuses, often depicting Greco-Roman sculptures and captions like “LET’S BECOME GREAT AGAIN” and “OUR FUTURE BELONGS TO US.”

He began his speech by referencing his infamous sucker-punch, and joked that he had done it in order to take the heat off of Richard Spencer after his Nazi salute video went viral. Several people cheered when he asked how many people in attendance were IE members.

Damigo seemed surprised by the number. “I’m just shocked right now. I never thought that when we started this thing last year that there would be this many people, high-quality, high-agency individuals willing to do what it took to make a difference … This is about people coming together and finding ways to occupy space and bring about a new critical junction in which our people might have a chance again.” 

Mike Peinovich took the mic next, and gave a short statement advising folks on the alt-right to point out anti-white hypocrisy to win over normies and ordinary Republicans. For example, by informing them that “it’s only our stuff that gets taken down, it’s only our ancestors, it’s only our heroes that get taken down.” Although one possibility is that he and the rest of the audience are just looking up to the wrong people — traitors, slavers, terrorists, and champions of white supremacy.

Perhaps Peinovich should have listened to Right Stuff contributor Julius Ebola, who called the Confederate statues the “last stand of explicit White Supremacy.” Forgoing any pretense of standing up for “history” or “white heroes,” Ebola noted that it is “impossible to truly defend the Confederacy without defending the racial caste system,” and it is “impossible to defend the racial caste system without valuing Aryans above non-Aryans.”

In other words, he recognizes the significance of these statues, what they stand for, and why anti-racists want them brought down in the first place. 

And, finally, Sam Dickson stepped up to praise long dead white supremacists like Revilo P. Oliver, an editor at a major Holocaust denial outfit who called Franklin Roosevelt a “diseased and part Jewish monster,” and Wilmot Robertson, author of The Dispossessed Majority (1973) and The Ethnostate (1992) — both of whom he considered his friends.

He recalled how most of the people in their movement would stumble into a pitfall of simply reacting to news of black-on-white crime and lamenting how awful it was. This, Dickson pointed out, got them nowhere.

But today, with the Internet’s ability to connect millions of people together and spread white nationalist propaganda, today’s crop of alt-right activists have an opportunity to organize and introduce their message to everyday people throughout the world. “You are the leaders, you are the change agents,” he informed them. “You are the people who will lead this change, and someday I can hope that some of the people here, there will be statues up to them.”

That is because their movement is now offering white people the solution of an ethnostate, or homeland of their own.