Charlottesville and the Need to Do Better

The Mad Monarchist uses the Charlottesville affair as the springboard for a heartfelt plea for unity amongst monarchists.

From The Mad Monarchist (14 August 2017)

As most of you are no doubt aware, there was a bit of dust up in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday. The original issue was the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park (formerly named Lee Park but re-named recently for the sake of tolerance and diversity). A disparate group of White people came together under the name “Unite the Right” to hold a demonstration in protest to the removal of the statue. It is worth bearing in mind that General Lee himself was not a slave owner, thought slavery was wrong and had opposed secession. This group included people with varying view points from simple pro-White advocates to actual White supremacists (Neo-Nazis and KKK). Some were, in my view, good and some were clearly bad. However, they agreed on the subject that the statue should stay where it is and they obtained a permit from the city to hold their demonstration.

That was when the problems began. Shortly afterward, the city revoked their permit and “Unite the Right” had to appeal to the courts which did finally rule that they had civil rights like the right to assemble and the right to free speech and so ordered the city to reissue their permit. However, as soon as it became known that these people would be holding their demonstration, leftist groups, “Antifa” among others, called on all of their supporters to rally at Charlottesville on the same day to shut down the event. The original demonstration was scheduled to begin at noon but, long before that, a state of emergency was declared as violence broke out between the two sides and so it was cancelled. The police had been ordered to “stand down” and so it is no surprise that a brawl ensued, injuring many and leading to the death of one woman who was hit by a car that sped into a crowd of leftist counter-protestors.

A few things should be clear from the facts of this situation. On the one hand, the organizers were clearly unconcerned about what sort of image they presented to the American public (or were intentionally ‘clowning’) as you cannot hold a demonstration, preceded by a torchlight procession, with Roman salutes and swastika flags and then cry “unfair” when the other side calls you a bunch of Nazis. These people guaranteed that the statue will be removed and that no one with any official position will go anywhere near them. Secondly, it is also perfectly clear that even if they had been goose-stepping down Emancipation Park in brown shirts, they had gone through the legal process to do it and had every right to be there. The Antifa types who came to challenge them did not, the police and civil authorities did not do their duty and have heaped all the blame on one side. It also, needless to say, made no difference to the mainstream media that the leftist counter-protesters had such flags on display as that of the Soviet Union (which killed more people and invaded more countries than Hitler ever did) as well as one or two of the Spanish Republic, that leftist regime which put more people to death in a few months than the supposedly notorious Spanish Inquisition snuffed out in as many centuries.

I can imagine two different things coming from this; those who made up “Unite the Right” will shrink away into obscurity having again portrayed themselves as simply the Nazi Party USA (one of the organizers was Richard Spencer who some may remember from his “Hail Trump! Hail Victory!” speech) or this will ratchet up the extremism on the part of the White identity types who can reasonably say that while others have been allowed to demonstrate, they were not and that while others have been allowed to speak, they are not. Racial or ethnic advocacy groups are allowed for everyone but them and thus there is no need to bother with staying within the law. The law only applies to certain people. So, I am not much of a prophet, I think it will either get calmer as more people just accept the situation or it will not if they choose to fight back.

No doubt some are already wondering what any of this has to do with traditional authority or the cause of kings. Well, for one thing, it displays the hypocrisy of the liberal republican form of government, as I have mentioned numerous times in the past. All of their “liberty” and “fairness” and “rule of law” only seems to apply in the abstract, never when it really matters. You have rights until a crisis arises and President Lincoln suspends habeaus corpus, President Wilson puts you in jail for playing German music or President Roosevelt confiscates your property and puts you in a concentration camp. You have the right to elect you leader, until you elect a leader the ruling class disapproves of and then he is blocked at every turn. You have the right to free speech and assembly until someone shows up, causes a brawl and then the whole thing is shut down on the grounds of being unsafe. You can say what you want, unless the powers-that-be determine what you are saying is “hate speech” in which case they can shut you down. Fail to enforce immigration laws and you’re a “sanctuary city” but fail to issue a marriage license to a gay couple and you go to jail (see Kim Davis). Liberalism sounds so great in the abstract but in practice it means, liberty for “us” but not for you.

Secondarily, I also noticed a number of people on our own side making the case, and God bless them for it, that monarchy, traditional values and authentic Christianity are the only things that can “unite the right”. Unfortunately, and this is where we need to do better, I could not agree. Yes, me, the “Mad Monarchist” could not agree that this was a truthful statement. Why? Because the fact is, we are not united even among ourselves and I certainly know as I get the angry messages almost on a daily basis. For some, usually the Catholics, it is a sectarian issue as only Catholic monarchies will do. Even there, many problems arise over what the definition of “Catholic” is these days. The ones who tell you it is perfectly simple are also the ones who usually say Pope Francis is of course not Catholic at all. See the problem? Monarchists do not agree on the map, they do not agree what people deserve to have their own countries and for many of those who do, they cannot agree on who should be the monarch of those countries. The best example of this is the royalists of the various branches of the House of Bourbon. In France, Spain, Parma and the Two-Sicilies, in every case there is division over who should be the monarch now or who should be the monarch if there was to be one.

This is a source of tremendous frustration for me and if you want to know more about a particular example, illustrating what this leads to, I refer you back to my past article, ‘France: Republican By Default’. Monarchists probably get tired of my scolding but it is something that must be learned because the republicans have certainly learned it and used it to their advantage. President Adolphe Thiers referred to the republic as the form of government that “divides us least”, which was sadly true and should make every monarchist deeply ashamed. There were also more mocking comments comparing the Count of Chambord to George Washington as the “Founding Father” of the Third French Republic. Likewise, republicanism in Spain first reared its ugly head due to the inability of Spanish monarchists to unite behind one monarch. After fierce fights between the rival branches of the Bourbon dynasty, it was decided to start over from blank paper and bring in a monarch of the House of Savoy. Yet, the old divisions refused to be reconciled, ending in King Amadeus abdicating in disgust and going back to Italy at which time the First Spanish Republic came into being. Once again, two Bourbon rivals refusing to reconcile on who should take the throne ended up with there being no throne at all.

I could go even farther and say that many monarchists have become so entrenched in their partisan divisions that, were it up to them, the western world would be engulfed in near total anarchy since no agreement, no treaty, no decision by governments or crowned heads could ever have validity. This comes into play, for example, concerning those countries which, in my experience, many monarchists outside of those countries think should not exist at all. The Kingdom of Belgium, for example, should not exist according to many monarchists. Never mind that the crowned heads of Europe all agreed that it should, that doesn’t matter to them. The Kingdom of Italy, likewise, should not exist according to many (non-Italian) Catholic monarchists, never mind that it was finally endorsed by the Pope with the Lateran Treaty by which the Holy See recognized it and in return the Kingdom of Italy was made an officially Catholic monarchy. No, for many, the Lateran Treaty is worthless paper and even the disgraceful depths the Italian Republic has sunk to is not enough to make these people think maybe the Savoy monarchy wasn’t so bad after all and just maybe Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII knew what they were doing.

If you cannot agree on who is a monarch, who should be a monarch or which peoples are even deserving of a country, I find it hard to believe there could ever be any appreciable unity on actual matters of policy. Concerning the United States, I am not even sure what is being proposed. Again, I have seen plenty of diversity of opinion among monarchists as to whether the United States of America should even exist. For the record, though I would have opposed independence in 1776, I regard the United States as being valid ever since His Britannic Majesty King George III saw fit to recognize the independence of the 13 former colonies. I don’t have to be best pleased about it, but it happened and I accept such agreements as binding. American monarchists do not agree on the status of the country itself, is there agreement among American monarchists on any significant policy? The protesters of “Unite the Right” probably do not agree on all that much among themselves but they do agree that the majority White/European population of the United States is being displaced and they all oppose this. Could monarchists in this country agree or disagree with that position with any appreciable amount of consensus? Unfortunately, I tend to doubt it.

Mark Steyn (a Canadian United Empire Loyalist) once said something to the effect of, mainstream society will be debating trans-gender bathrooms when the mullahs nuke us. If monarchists do not shape up, we will be arguing over whether the Duke of Bavaria should be the King of England, whether the Duke of Calabria or the Duke of Castro should be King of the Two Sicilies whenever Italians stop wanting their own country, whether a Habsburg or a Hohenzollern should be German Emperor whenever Germans finally stop wanting to be a republic or whether the man in white in the Vatican is really the Pope or not when the last descendants of western civilization are killed off. By and large, proper western civilization has already collapsed, what remains to be seen is whether the people whose inheritance it is will have a future or not. I don’t want monarchists left out of that struggle but, as I said to all those who criticized the (very easily criticized) “Unite the Right” crowd; where were you? Where was your demonstration?

Believe it or not, there have been some, or at least something of the sort but, again, because we are so divided, they attract a mere handful and thus no one pays attention to them. Recently, I commented that the problem with many royalists is that they don’t want to join the fight unless they know and approve of what the result is going to be, which is rather like refusing to play a game unless you already know you’re going to win. I was told that the “traditionalists” (for lack of a better term, I know it’s tossed around a lot) simply don’t want to commit suicide in a hopeless fight. That may be true and it may be that I have too pessimistic of an outlook. I have heard that the younger generations are more traditional than the more current ones but, to me, that hardly seems a difficult record to achieve and the swiftness from which we have moved from class equality to racial equality to gender equality to ‘people are born gay’ and now ‘people are not born male or female’ must have blinded me to the underground surge of traditionalist values that are about to burst forth in the coming years. In any event, as I’ve said before, being a Texan, I favor fighting every battle like it’s the Alamo. Which is to say, fight every fight as if it is your last, never mind about whether you can win or not. Personally, the utter and absolute hatred I have of the enemy, makes any fight worth it no matter what the odds are.

The bottom line is, we need to shape up, we need to improve and we need to stop fighting among ourselves and start fighting the enemies of all we hold dear. Those enemies still want to see “the last king strangled with the entrails of the last priest” and they don’t care who that king or priest are or what their opinions or dynastic branch is. We really need to put our divisions aside, draw a line in the sand and say the enemy will go no farther. From there, we push on but, as I know I’ve said before (sorry for being repetitive), right now we should at least be able to agree on the need to stop the bleeding before the patient dies.