Daryl Davis: Media Failed to Report Unite the Right Was About Hate

And I'm going to tell you something. Our country, I'm going to tell you where it's headed so you understand. Our country can only become one of two things. It can become number one, that which we stand up, I'm sorry, that which we sit back and let it become, or number two, that which we stand up and make it become. So we are charged with this question. Do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes? Or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see? And I've chosen the ladder because I don't like the direction it's going in. Well, you've chosen a very noble, not just the ladder, but a very noble path. I mean, what you've done is pretty incredible in the amount of time and energy that's required for you to get close to these guys and the fact that you could be doing a lot of other things. You're a successful musician. I'm sure you have friends. I'm sure you're busy. But you chose to spend an extraordinary amount of time pursuing this. I would much rather be on stage playing music and making people happy and causing them to jump up and dance and carry on and sing along than attending Klan rallies. But I find it more and more necessary because we have dropped the ball. The topic that you and I are discussing right now, 20, 30 years ago, would have been taboo talking about it on radio or whatever. People did not want to discuss it. And I know we can't talk about that, just keep it in the closet. Because out of sight, out of mind, denial. And denying it does not make it go away just because you can't see it. It's always there. So now we're forced to address it. But let me tell you where it's going, which is what a lot of people do not talk about and don't understand. Well, first of all, let's define what it is. Back in the day, there was only one group, the Ku Klux Klan. They were the first and the largest gang, if you will, of racists. At one point in time, they had four million members. All right. It's a pretty big gang. What was that? Back in the 1920s and into the early 30s. How many people were even in America in the 1920s? More than that. Yeah. It wasn't even a hundred million. I don't even know. But in Indiana. I bet it's probably about 80, 90 million. Oh, we can look it up for sure. Yeah, because if there's four million, that's an extraordinary number of people. And the majority of them were in Indiana. Indiana. Indiana, yeah. About 110. 110 million. Wow. And how many? Four million? Four. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. So it's basically somewhere in the neighborhood of 4% of the entire population of the country who's in the fucking Klan. Now, at that time, it was called white supremacy because that's what they believed in. This is our country. We're in charge. We're supreme. They didn't call it the Klan? Yeah, it was a Klan, but the ideology was called white supremacy. And a lot of... I started in 1865. A lot of violence, a lot of lynchings, bombings, dragging people behind vehicles, all kinds of stuff, began happening. And it became a lot of baggage with the term white supremacy, where a lot of white people did not like black people or did not like Jewish people. They did not want to participate in this night writing, lynchings and murder and all that kind of stuff, either for moral reasons or legal reasons, whatever. The membership began dwindling. People began dropping out. All right. It was too violent for them. This white supremacy word became unpalatable and became negative. So when the membership decreased, they had to rebrand. So they changed it from white supremacy to white separatism. I'm a white separatist. I don't hate black people or Jewish people. I just love my own. Perhaps some Jews should be able to have their own schools, their own neighborhoods, their own churches, their own workplaces. We should be able to have ours. And that way we don't have to mix. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like that idea. Sign me up. I'm a white separatist. Membership began increasing. And of course, the more people you have, somebody's going to start acting up. So here comes the violence. So now the term white supremacy also became unpalatable and people began dropping out. So membership went down again. And then they had to rebrand. Next they call themselves white nationals or white nationalists. All right. Now what is a nationalist? A nationalist is someone who loves their country like a patriot. So you're a nationalist. I'm a nationalist. Why do we have to say white nationalist? Why don't you say I'm a nationalist, right? But no, white nationalist. So yeah, I love my country and I'm white. Sign me up. Here comes the violence. So once again, they rebranded it and now they call it the alt-right. I hate to use a cliche, but as they say, a rose by any other name is what still a rose. So you can call whatever you want to call it. It's still white supremacy. Do you think that Charlotte was a wake up call for a little bit? Charlottesville. Excuse me. Yes. It was for me because I knew that it still existed, but I didn't think they would show themselves publicly like that in the age of the internet and walk down the street with tiki torches. Let me tell you something. I'm going to show you something. Okay. Okay. The rally there was called Unite the Right Rally. I know the guy who put it on. I know all the speakers there. I know them personally. All right. What was your understanding as to why they were having this big Unite the Right Rally? I only knew of it peripherally. I didn't know why they were doing it. I just had probably heard it on the news or something like that that was going on. Then when I saw the KKK showing, were those guys, the Charlottesville guys with the torches, were those KKK or was it another white supremacy movement? All of the above. They had different, it was Unite the Right, all the different right wing groups came. Right. The League of the South, the Ku Klux Klan, National Socialist Movement, different entities. Socialist Movement. Yeah. The National Socialist Movement. Like the Nazis. Exactly. Really? Yeah. Okay. They were there too. In the media, they gave a reason as to why were they there? What were they protesting? What was their reason for being there in Charlottesville? I have no idea. Okay. Well, what the media put out was they had come together to protest the removal of the Confederate statues. Okay. You call that? Yeah. I remember they were tearing down the statues. Right. And I had a conversation with somebody about it that those statues, most of them were very cheaply made. 160. And they ended up during the Civil Rights Movement. Right. Exactly. In response. Yes. Okay. So that was not the reason why they had the rally. Okay. That's what the media said. Okay. Anytime. Okay. The reason why they had this rally there. Yes, there were some people who went there to legitimately oppose the removal of those statues, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, whoever else. But the majority of people who came there were there to start the initial steps of the race war. What? That's right. The race war. Okay. The white supremacists have been predicting and have been preparing for a race war. Just like Delon Roof was trying to start the race war, as he said, when he went to that black church and gunned up the place. All these places were trying to... The guy who shot all those people in El Paso, he said the race war. All right. Here's what's... Anytime you want to occupy a piece of public property because you want to have a rally, a demonstration, or even if you want to set up a lemonade and hot dog stand, if it's going to be on public property, you must have a permit. Right. You go down to the city, get an application, you know, fill out your name and state your purpose. You cannot very well say on the application, I want to start a race war. You will not get the permit. All right. So you provide some quasi legitimate excuse. My great, great, great ancestors fought in the Confederacy. That's my heritage. I don't want you messing with it. Okay. That's legitimate. Sign off. Here's your permit, sir. And now you can occupy that corner of 12th and Main from 12 noon to 4 p.m. or whatever. Okay. So they went through all the procedure. They got, they legally got a permit to have their United right rally under false pretense. All right. Now, two things. Anybody who knows American history knows that they were also blacks and also Jews who fought in the Confederacy. All right. The black slaves had to fight for their slave owners in the South. There were a number of Jewish slave owners. They didn't want to give up that free labor. So blacks, Jews, and whites fought together in the Confederacy against blacks, whites, and Jews in the Union. My great, great, great ancestors were slaves who also fought in the Confederacy. I have ancestors who fought in the Confederacy. All right. My parents are from Virginia, Roanoke, and Salem. I was born in Chicago because that's where my dad was working at the time. But Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy. All right. So there are black people today and some Jewish people who honor the Confederacy. They don't condone slavery, but they honor the Confederacy because of their great, great ancestors. They honor it how so? Like they have Confederate flags? Yeah, they have Confederate flags. Where is this taking place? So there's black people in the South that have Confederate flags? Yeah, absolutely. Look them up. You'll find them. You'll find them. Yeah. And no, they don't condone slavery. They're just honoring the Confederacy because their ancestors were in it and died in it or whatever. I honor my ancestors. However, I don't honor the Confederacy, me personally. If some of the blacks and Jews want to do that, that's their business. I don't do it. So and ironically, ironically, this is a historical fact. The Confederate army was integrated. The Union army was segregated. All right, which doesn't make any sense. So here, we're fighting to free slaves and the Confederate army has blacks and Jews and whites fighting together and the Union had them all segregated. It doesn't make sense, but it does because it's also ridiculous. That's what humans are. Exactly. Exactly. You got it. Irrationality. So, okay. So now, if blacks and Jews and whites could fight together 150 years ago, why can't they march together in 2017? Wouldn't it make more sense and give more credibility to your cause? If your cause was truly to preserve those statues, why not invite descendants like yourselves of blacks and Jews to march with you in Charlottesville and say, hey, that's my heritage too. Leave it alone. Would that not add more credibility? That certainly would, but what are the numbers? Can you get? Even if you only got five or ten. Right. Okay. That still would lend some credibility. Okay. So instead, so they're claiming this is their heritage. Instead of inviting or including blacks and Jews, they excluded them in 2017. So if blacks and Jews wanted to march, they would not let them. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know that there were any who did. Or they just implicitly stated that this is for white people. This is Unite the Right. Okay. Yeah. White supremacist organizations. So instead of including blacks and Jews, you know, heritage should include everybody in that heritage. You talk about the, you want to preserve the Confederacy? Well guess what? There were blacks in the Confederacy. You know that. That's historical fact. There were Jews in the Confederacy. The Confederacy was simply a reflection of the South. Okay. So instead of including them, they excluded them and they marched through the University of Virginia campus with their tiki torches and the streets of Charlottesville yelling and screaming anti-Semitic and racial epithets. What does that tell you? It tells you their protest was not about heritage. It was about hate. That's number one. Number two, nobody in Charlottesville or anywhere else ever met their great, great, great ancestors who fought in the Confederacy. Right? Those people were long dead and gone by 1865. Even if you weren't even born then, right? Now you tell me, but it's okay. You know, you can honor people that you don't know. All right. That's fine. But how do you honor your great, great, great ancestors in the Confederacy? And at the same time you dishonor the very ancestors who you do know, the very ones who raised you, your fathers, your grandfathers. And if you're lucky enough, you may have met your great grandfather. These people, many fathers of these people in Charlottesville, many fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers lost their lives fighting, not in the Confederacy, but fighting in World War II. And who were they fighting in World War II? The Nazis. So how do you tell me you're going to honor your great, great, great ancestors and you're going to walk down the streets of Charlottesville side by side with people wearing swastikas? We went to war against the Nazis. Why are you marching with Nazis and flying swastikas? Now wait, wait. So what did the Nazis have to do with our heritage? The Nazis had no heritage in Charlottesville, Virginia. In fact, the Nazis weren't even in existence during our Civil War. Adolf Hitler was not even born during our Civil War. So what were the Nazis doing in Charlottesville? It wasn't about heritage. It was about hate. And that's what the media failed to tell us because what the media did was they went to City Hall, because it's public record, just pulled the permit and read, oh, they're there to protest the statues. They took it verbatim and they reported it like that. They didn't do the background check. Now, was it a small percentage of them that were the ones that were marching with the torches and the swastikas? No. Did they join into the entire group or was the entire group all about hate? So everybody was there. I would say probably about 95% of the people there were about eight. And so there was a few misguided people that were there because they really thought they were protecting their southern heritage and they were lumped in with all these other people that used it as a ruse to sort of set up this hate meeting. To have a permit. How many people went there for that thing? I mean, there were more protesters. Of course. As usual, which there should be. I don't have the exact numbers myself. I'm not sure I can get them. They get skewed by the side. The police would tell you one number and the people there would tell you another number. The guy who was the killer that ran those people over. James Fields. That guy seemed to... 20 years old. The epitome of a lost soul that got sucked into a horrible ideology was not very smart. And that must be a large percentage of what they prey on. Absolutely. Lost people. And then they give you a meaning and a reason and a heritage to defend. And then everyone else in a status. And then a bunch of crazy names like Cyclops and Nighthawk. And I know Susan Breaux. Susan Breaux is the mother of Heather Heyer, the girl who was murdered and run down by James Fields. That 20 year old boy threw his life away. And it was premeditated. He had said stuff on the internet before even going there. And praise Hitler and so forth and so on. Those are things that we have to be very much aware of.