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The Trump presidency is often billed as a phenomenon born from chaos.

It arrived in a flurry of tweets, online beefs and the sound of rules and norms bending and snapping like fragile floorboards under a listing democracy. But make no mistake: The strategy of this White House and the culture it has sought to embolden is anything but random.

Posting wild conspiracy theories one minute, racist phraseology the next and then acting as if Trumps initial choice of Juneteenth for his latest rally made the day that now commemorates the end of slavery famous rather than being a blatant swipe of disrespect is all part of a strategy that relies on obnoxious, overwhelming online bullying, and pulls from an insidious corner of the gaming world as much as it does the history books.

Every bit of language out of Trump and the White House can be parsed for not-so-hidden coded messages and disinformation designed to create an environment full of symbols, badges and allegiances that create an us-versus-them playing field.

The bulk of Trumps speech Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., relied heavily on fear-based rhetoric with violent underpinnings. It was delivered in broad strokes as if to define teams.

I know our people, Trump said, cheerleading his followers strength in battle after portraying the Democratic Party as anarchists and stoking fears of immigration, even trotting out the grotesque slur kung-flu to describe COVID-19. While many laughed at the low turnout at the BOK Center rally after excessive hype from the Trump team, the president succeeded in disseminating his toxic messaging to a global audience. Its a thread that has been ramping up in recent weeks.

It was present when Trump tweeted that last weeks Supreme Court decision against his planned repeal of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA for so-called Dreamers, was shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or conservatives. Such language in particular is designed to appeal to those on the right who feel their culture is under attack.

And it was more directly spelled out in a Wall Street Journal interview in which Trump said wearing a mask in the pandemic is a way to signal disapproval of him and that attempts to COVID-shame him wouldnt work. Thats not just bad health-advice, it turns a face mask into a uniform and citizens into adversaries.

The Trump world overflows with language and images that are stand-ins for symbols, all of which the campaign shrugs off when called out. On Thursday, it was reported that Facebook removed numerous Trump ads that featured an inverted red triangle, a figure once used by the Nazis to identify their political opposition. The Trump team claimed it was an antifa symbol, a far-left movement that Trump is trying to use as a scapegoat by branding adherents as some sort of mysterious, Darth Vader-like overlords controlling the American empire.

Its as if Trump is the orator of his own extremely dangerous alternate-reality game, a type of play that graphs itself onto the real world and utilizes key words as signals to an in-the-know audience. In a playful environment, its a cue to dig deeper into a singular universe. Here, its an endless tunnel that has followers view every living being and pop-culture item as a symbol of potential political opposition.

Its not just a deflection; its the construction of a whole other alternate story line. Its a fantastical conspiratorial plot Trump has spun since his birther days, one that will only get more intense in the lead-up to the November election.

Recent attention has zeroed in on the boogaloo movement, a far-right fringe subculture that has been tied to violence around the country. Its followers also celebrate provocative memes and tweets while wearing aloha shirts and believing broadly speaking that progressive ideas are bringing us to a bloody race war that they hope will lead to their goal of overthrowing the federal government.

Any moment that can lead to mass unpredictability, be it Trumps calls to liberate states from stay-at-home health orders or large protests, exist, in their mind, to be exploited, and yet Trump continues to scream the word antifa as a call to arms. The president is creating a quest to look for conspiracies that dont exist such as the false Pizzagate claim that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring in a restaurant basement all the way providing a narrative to an antagonistic way of life and using this moment of protest following the killing of George Floyd to create further divisions.

In these pursuits theres no elaborate puzzle or tidy solution, but it does provide followers constant fuel to hunt for the next conspiratorial breadcrumb until fiction turns into a much louder fiction or at least results on Facebook, which became a favorite landing spot for boogaloo supporters. Think of it as a Monopoly board, only instead of passing Go, the little square reads Fake News.

When viewed as part of a larger, game-like strategy, such chaos starts to come into relative clarity. The Trump thesis for leadership and disarray, while speaking to dark corners of internet message boards or Discord servers, even reads as if lifted from the texts of Diplomacy, a complicated-yet-nerdy board game of yore that unwittingly outlined a Trump-era manifesto.

There are some people who need to win to be amused, reads a guide to a 1979 edition of Diplomacy, the game first sold in the late 1950s and popularized by Avalon Hill. But Diplomacy, the guide tells us, is not a game for such persons.

No, in fact the guide directly spells out an alternate win state: maintaining the illusion of a balance of power. This is a game, in essence, where a player can dominate by keeping the others fighting among themselves. The goal? He is concerned that no player, no alliance, will become strong enough to eliminate any of the others, particularly himself.

Winning, more or less, comes from creating a state in which no one else can win. And power is maintained by keeping others confused, frustrated and angry. This feels uncomfortably close to Trumps method of governing.

Of course, the playing board was set even before Trump took office with Gamergate, a 2014 movement that galvanized around a perceived loss of power among a segment of the gaming community made up largely of men who believe their worldview is threatened by the media and the introduction of diversity in games. This publication and others have cited Gamergate as a blueprint for Trumps vitriolic attacks and Twitter dragging.

Thats because it isnt all that different from the complaints of those today who are angry over toppled Confederate statues or even the retiring of the Aunt Jemima brand. Keep politics out of a games is essentially an alt-right rallying cry for maintaining a status quo games by, for and starring white men.

Its a so-called army the administration has sought to activate, to quote Stephen K. Bannon, who once oversaw Breitbart News and served as Trumps campaign chief executive, in an interview he gave with journalist/author Joshua Green.

Consider them activated.

Thus, the cultural war moves to its next battleground, be it whatever high-profile game, television show or tell-all memoir is released this week. All are mixed together into a melting pot of racism and fear to maintain a hold on the cultural conversation. Or, rather, to simply make it difficult for other voices to get the floor.

Like the game of Diplomacy, its not about winning so much as it as just not losing.

In March, when fears over the spread of the coronavirus seemed to be alternately gripping and splitting the nation, I dug out my copy of Diplomacy, which I inherited from my dad but have had a hard time since college finding anyone will to play. In the spring, unfounded theories that the virus had been manufactured in a Chinese lab were floated, as was the suggestion by Trump to try the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and even bleach to prevent COVID-19.

Such messages drowned out and clashed with very real health concerns. Feeling stressed and powerless, I thumbed through a number of recent books and articles, trying to make sense of our disregard of facts, even in the face of something that would appear to be nonpartisan, such as a virus.

None of them hit as direct and plainly as Rod Walkers eloquent The Gamers Guide to Diplomacy.

Players, wrote Walker of the board game, do not expect consistency, but they do expect rationality. Sometimes any excuse will do.

Walker then writes of someone who was once an in-game ally, wondering why Walker stabbed him in the back.

His answer? Because it was there.

We should brace for the same, and be prepared to not stop showing our spine.

Original post:
How game theory not chaos rules the Trump White House - Los Angeles Times

As the Trump administration spotlights the anti-fascist group Antifa as the source of chaos and anarchy engulfing the countrywide protests for equal rights and justice, little, if any, has been said about White nationalists who have infiltrated the protests with the objective of creating a popular pandemonium. Surely, Antifas looters and anarchists, among others, should face justice; nevertheless, underestimating or turning a blind eye to the premeditated actions of White nationalists is a recipe to promote violence on a national and global scale. In fact, White nationalism as a movement has become a transnational crusade as ideologically and operationally dangerous as the Salafi-Jihadi Islamic State.

Recently the social media giant Facebook removed multiple account networks connected with White nationalist Proud Boys and America Guard, designated as extremist hate groups bythe Southern Poverty Law Centerandthe Anti-Defamation League (ADL). These groups encouraged their members to bring guns to the Black Life Matters-led protests suffusing the United States. Among the many charges facing those arrested by federal authorities, the most serious charge involved three men in Nevada linked to a far-right extremist group Boogaloo advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. These individuals and groups, though loosely affiliated, are an integral part of the White nationalist ideology that has transcended national borders and is expressed in civilizational terms.

According to the ADL, White nationalism is a term that originated among White supremacists as a euphemism for White supremacy. Eventually, some White supremacists tried to distinguish it further by using it to refer to a form of White supremacy that emphasizes defining a country or region by White racial identity and that seeks to promote the interests of Whites exclusively, typically at the expense of people of other backgrounds.

The ADL adds that over time, White supremacists of whatever sort adhere to at least one of the following beliefs:1) Whites should be dominant over people of other backgrounds; 2) Whites should live by themselves in a Whites-only society; 3) White people have their own culture that is superior to other cultures; and 4) White people are genetically superior to other people.

Anti-Semitism is also paramount for White nationalists, most of whom believe that Jews constitute a distinctive race infused with parasitic and evil roots, bent on destroying Western civilization. These defining traits of White nationalists, who apprehensively operated on the margins of European and American societies, gradually developed into a transnational ideology congealing around their sacrosanct right of survival.

The central theme of their ideology can be traced to Renaud Camuss Le Grand Remplacement [The Great Replacement] in which he argues that the flood of black and brown immigrants into the European continent will eventually amount to an extinction-level event of White native Europeans. Witnessing the impact of rising immigration to France, the emergence of subcultures, and failure of multiculturalism as an integrationist policy, Camus believes that Western societies are variably subject to ethnic and civilizational substitution. The act of replacement, for him, is civilizational.

Although he denied any genetic conception of races, his literature has been appropriatedby far-right and White nationalist groups throughout Europe and the English-speaking world. However, these groups added to Camuss central theme of Great Replacement a variation of concepts meant not only to widen the popular base of White nationalism but also to infuse it with an actionable immediacy. For example, Richard Spencer, a public face of White nationalism, embraced Camuss arguments, though identifying himself as an Identitarian. Although the term has also French roots in the work of Alain de Benoist, Spencers ilks used the term in a utilitarian fashion to deflect racial superiority and underscore the differential right in diversity. In other words, Identitarians claim the exclusive right to their own culture and territories in the face of what they perceive the gradual act of civilizational replacement.

The intellectual defense against this existential identity threat had been expounded by French journalist Guillaume Fayes Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age (2010 in English); The Colonisation of Europe (2016); and Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance (2019). Faye lambasts Western liberalism and unrestrained immigration, which has taken a form of massive colonization settlement of the West by peoples from the Global South. He harshly criticizes European leaders for helping bring the demise of Europe and asserts that Islam is carrying out a hostile takeover both of France and Europe.

Fayes arguments, complementing those of Camus and Benoist, have become an infallible script of White nationalism. Spencer, along with Greg Johnson, has been promoting Fayes arguments and open about the influence of Faye on his thinking as an identitarian. References to Faye and Benoists appeared regularly in the alt-right andpro-Donald Trump forums on Redditand4chan. Steve Bannons alt-right Breitbart has promoted their work, too. According to Southern Poverty Law Center, there has been an observable shift at Breitbart.com to an outright embrace ofWhite-nationalist Identitarian movementsacross the continent. And that, in turn, has meant that propaganda from these movements has been transmitted whole to its readers across all its platforms, including the U.S. and elsewhere.

Thanks to this cross-pollination of ideas going back to the history of slavery White nationalism has transformed into a malleable global ideological crucible in which radical movements and slogans are churned out to stop this Great Replacement. Today the most referred slogan for White nationalists is the 14 Words. The slogan states: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children. The other widespread slogan that has become a rallying cry and a catchphrase on fliers is: You Will Not Replace Us.

During the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, organized by Richard Spencer, Mike Enoch, Jason Kessler, Augustus Invictus, Baked Alaska and others, demonstrators chanted Jews will not replace us. The event was ostensibly asserting the legitimacy of White culture and supremacy.

One of the earliest violent manifestations of White nationalism was carried out by the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik who perpetrated Norways biggest massacre since World War II. Hours before the deadly attack in January 2017, Breivik e-mailed a 1,500-page manifesto to 5,700 people, titled2083A European Declaration of Independence. In the document, Breivik, proclaiming himself a savior of Christianity, attacks multiculturalism and the threat of Muslim immigration to Norway. In October 2018, Robert Bowers opened fire during Shabbat services, at Pittsburghs Tree of Life synagogue, killing eleven and wounding seven. This was the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in American history on a Synagogue known for helping immigrants.

Similarly, the March 2019 Islamophobic attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, amounted to the deadliest mass shooting in the countrys history. The perpetrator Brenton Tarrant was reportedly radicalized when he traveled to Europe. He felt taken aback by the omnipresence of immigrants, their crimes and the paralysis gripping the dispirited native populations, who, he considered, are dying out. He also issued a manifesto entitled The Great Replacement.

Steeped in anti-Islam, the manifesto refers to nonWhites as invaders who threaten to replace White people. Tarrant confessed to using guns so as to frighten people and create conflict, especially in the United States over gun laws, as well as balkanizing the United States into warring racial factions. Significantly, he argued in the manifesto that:

The radicalization of young Western men is not just unavoidable, but inevitable. It should come as no shock that European men, in every nation, and on every continent are turning to radical notions and methods to combat social and moral decay of their nations and the continued ethnic replacement of their people. Radical, explosive action is the only desired, and required, response to an attempted genocide.

Tarrants manifesto is unequivocally a testament to the transnational spread of White nationalisms ideology and the urgency to stop the act of civilizational replacement. This act of terror was followed by another attack on an American synagogue in Poway, California. On April 27, 2019, John Timothy Earnest entered theChabad of Powaysynagogueon the last day of the Jewish holiday ofPassover. Approximately one hundred people were inside the synagogue. Earnest shot and killed one person and wounded the Rabbi of the congregation before his rifle jammed. A massacre was avoided. Earnest issued a manifesto that blended historical anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and racism. Wrapping himself in the mantle of Christianity, Earnest faulted the Jews for their endless crimes against God and humanity and for committing a genocide against the European race. He wrote: It is unlawful and cowardly to stand on the sidelines as the European people are genocided around you. I did not want to have to kill Jews. But they have given us no other option.

No sooner, in August 2019, Patrick Crusius, twenty-one years old, entered the Cielo Vista Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire on shoppers at a packed Walmart store, killing and wounding scores of people. The El Paso shooting was one of the most brutal assaults on Hispanics in U.S. history. Crusius also issued a manifesto The Inconvenient Truth explaining his act of terror. Confessing his support of the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto, Crusius asserted that this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas . . . They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. . . . Actually the Hispanic community was not my target before I read the Great Replacement.

See the original post:
Domestic Threats in the Era of Nationalism - The National Interest

In its evening newsletter then, the White House blasted the service under the headline Amid a Pandemic, Voice of America Spends Your Money to Promote Foreign Propaganda. The crime, as described by Dan Scavino, Mr. Trumps social media director, was positive reports on how China had handled its coronavirus outbreak. Mr. Trump promptly picked up the chorus. If you heard whats coming out of the Voice of America, its disgusting, he told a White House news briefing on April 15. What things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and do a great job.

What evidently rankled the White House was a clip showing people celebrating the lifting of the lockdown in Wuhan, which accompanied a straightforward account by The Associated Press. V.O.A. officials were dumbfounded. It just came out of the blue, said Amanda Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran of Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and The Philadelphia Inquirer, who announced her resignation Monday as director of the V.O.A. The deputy director, Sandy Sugawara, formerly of The Washington Post and United Press International, also resigned.

Ms. Bennett and Ms. Sugawara did not link their departures to the long-delayed confirmation of Mr. Pack, who becomes head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent organization of the V.O.A., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and some regional foreign broadcasters. In her farewell message, Ms. Bennett assured V.O.A. staffers that Michael Pack swore before Congress to respect and honor the firewall that guarantees V.O.A.s independence, which in turn plays the single most important role in the stunning trust our audiences around the world have in us.

It may be that Mr. Pack will respect the firewall he is sworn to maintain. His past is patchy he hired Mr. Bannon, an icon of the alt-right, as a consultant on two documentaries, including one about Adm. Hyman Rickover. He is also under investigation by the District of Columbia attorney general for possibly channeling money from a nonprofit group he oversees to his for-profit film production company. And he was confirmed along party lines. Before that, he had worked at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Council on the Humanities and served as president of the conservative Claremont Institute.

None of that confirms that if left to his own judgment, Mr. Pack would do Mr. Trumps or Mr. Bannons bidding, especially if it meant flouting the V.O.A.s legally mandated independence. What is certain, given Mr. Trumps record and his statements about V.O.A., is that this is what the administration expects and will forcefully demand. Mr. Trump wants a bullhorn, not a diplomatic instrument, and he insists on loyalty.

Read more here:
New Boss May Test Voice of Americas Credibility - The New York Times

The AFI Docs Festival is an annual film festival put on by the American Film Institute, usually in June in and around Washington, D.C. This year, the festival took place virtually, but perhaps unsurprisingly, several of the most prominent films touched on politics, including some with similarities to current events.

This year's festival wrapped up Sunday night; here are reviews of five of the most prominent films:

White Noise

A-

There have been several documentaries made about the ideological conditions that laid the ground for the Trump era, but White Noise, directed by Daniel Lombroso, may be the most illuminating. The director spent four years embedded with the alt-right, granted extraordinary access to three main subjects: "Dapper Nazi" Richard Spencer, masculinity guru-turned-political troublemaker Mike Cernovich, and white nationalist YouTuber Lauren Southern.

Lombroso spends the film's 90 minutes traveling the world with these three people, who are constantly flying to conferences, rallies or, in Southern's case, a weird adventure trying to block migrants in theMediterranean Sea. There are a few key takeaways: Spencer and Cernovich seem to hate one another, Southern clearly stole her schtick from Ann Coulter, down to the last vocal mannerism, and Spencer is a singularly pathetic figure who, despite a massive amount of media coverage, never actually led a movement of any significant size.By the end, hes living with his mother in Montana.

A weakness of the long lead time is the none of the three subjects can really be considered major figures in the alt-right today, and all three talk at one point or another about their desire to get out of political commentary altogether. But the films notable for its lack of didacticismit just allows its subjects to speak, without the talking heads or spooky music that tends to derail this sort of documentary.

Women in Blue

B

The festival's most timely documentary isDeirdre Fishel's Women in Blue, a film covering the Minneapolis Police Department, and dealing with issues of race, as well as violence and misconduct in that department. Consider it a spiritual prequel to everything we've seen in the past four weeks.

Women in Blue focuses on Janee Harteau, who at the time was serving as Minneapolis' first female police chief. The documentary also depicts other women in the MPD, against the backdrop of multiple controversial police-involved shootings. It's a compelling look at modern-day policing from a perspective not often seen in modern-day popular culture, though 2016's Do Not Resist remains the definitive documentary on that subject.

I knew that Harteau resigned in 2017, following the police shooting ofJustine Damond, but I figured the documentary would lead up to her resignation. Instead, it happens about one third of the way through. In the meantime, we see some now-familiar faces, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Freyseen admonished, in a mayoral debate, about not being tough enough on police misconductand the controversial police union head Bob Kroll. Women in Blue gives us some early clues that there was something dreadfully wrong going on in the Minneapolis Police Department.

Boys State

B+

If you were hoping that when it comes to politics, the youth of today will save us, and institute a more enlightened era than the one bequeathed to them by their parents, Boys State may disabuse you of that notion.

The doc, a Sundance debut that will appear on Apple TV+ later this year, takes a look at Texas Boys State, an annual leadership conference in Austin in which teenaged Texans act out the legislative process. Directed byAmanda McBaine andJesse Moss, Boys State follows six participants, of various political persuasions that run the gamut from liberal to reactionary. The participants are well-chosen, as they navigate a process that resembles Lord of the Flies, had it been set in a state legislature. They also seem equally inspired by Karl Rove, and by WWE, as they re-create Daniel Bryan's "Yes" chant.

Boys State is exceptionally produced and edited, from what must have been a gargantuan amount of footage. But it shows that, whether it's extremism or cynicism, the politicians of tomorrow aren't likely to differ from those of today.

Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn

B-

There was already a documentary about Roy Cohn, called Where's My Roy Cohn? which came out less than a year ago. That film, directed byMatt Tyrnauer,both ran through Cohn's well-told life story, and examined his ties to Donald Trump, including the lessons that the President likely learned from his former mentor.

Now,Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, which does all of that as well. The twist is that this one was directed by Ivy Meeropol, the daughter of the Rosenbergs, whose conviction and execution was, in part, engineered by Cohn. The film showed at AFI Docs ahead of its premiere on HBO last week.

Taking its title from the inscription on Cohn's square of theAIDS Memorial Quilt, Meeropol's film features covers much of the same ground asTyrnauer's doc, including the Trump stuff, Cohn's regular appearances on talk shows, and his death from AIDS. The biggest difference is the testimony of the director's father and uncle, as well as some footage of Nathan Lane playing Cohn in the Broadway revival of Angels in America.

Meeropol already made a documentary in 2004, Heir to an Execution, about her family's story, which was notable in that it depicted them coming to terms with the revelations that Julius Rosenberg really did spy for the Soviets. While a worthwhile examination of Cohn's life, Bully. Coward. Victim is less compelling than either the earlier Cohn doc, or Heir to an Execution.

Jimmy Carter: Rock n Roll President

B

Here's one that's about exactly what its title says it's about. Directed byMary Wharton, the film explores the musical side of the 39th president, from the gospel music he grew up listening to in Georgia to his embrace by various rock and country stars once he became a national political figure. This would seem a thin reed to hang an entire documentary on, but the filmmakers have collected talking heads from Bob Dylan to Willie Nelson to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, in addition to Carter himself.There's also a lot of footage of Johnny Cash,although we learn that, despite years of insisting otherwise, Carter may not have really been June Carter Cash's cousin.

There are fun stories, likely to be enjoyed by anyone who's interested in the music or the politics of the late-1970s, although the movie omits that great but possibly apocryphal story, often told by Arlo Guthrie,about Chip Carter finding "Alice's Restaurant" in the White House record library, and noticing that the song, much like the gap in the Watergate tapes, was 18 and a half minutes.The film will air on CNN later this year.

Link:
Five Political Films at the 2020 AFI Docs Festival - Splice Today

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Aaron Barmer stands across the street from the Stonewall Jackson Hotel and Conference Center in Staunton for the seventh day in a row on Friday, June 19, 2020 in protest the hotel being named after a confederate general.(Photo: Monique Calello/The News Leader)

STAUNTON It's been a week since Aaron Barmer began standing outside the Stonewall Jackson Hotel and Conference Center in protest of the hotel being named after a confederate general.

He and a group of protestors come to the hotel during check-in time between 4 and 6 p.m. every day. While some of the protestors masked faces might change from day to day, Barmer is always there.

It's also been one week since he and Arrow Kilbourn, who also protests daily, sent an email to Staunton City Council asking them to make a public statement showing support for the hotel's owner decision to change the name. Three days went by and the only person to respond was Ophie Kier as an outgoing member of city council.

More: Stonewall Jackson Hotel owners pledge to change Confederate name

Outgoing city council member and Vice Mayor Ophie Kier spoke to a crowd in Staunton at a rally for George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes.(Photo: Patrick Hite/The News Leader)

"Much has happened in our nation, our state and city in recent weeks. To say this is an understatement. With the viewing of an American citizen being killed by several police officers on national TV, around the world there has been an awakening in those that have suffered at the hands of oppression for generations, even centuries.

"For far too long Black America has done what was necessary to keep peace everywhere we live. While we mourn the taking of George Floyds life there are far too many others that have not been mentioned and even more forgotten. Unless and until we come to the understanding that there would be no America as we know it without the strength, endurance, genius and will to survive of that enslaved human we will sadly not grow. We shall not survive.

"The contribution of those enslaved people are far too numerous to mention and the use of statues and naming of properties that was done to intimidate must come to an end.

I am one however that knows we cannot erase history and feel that the place for these are in museums so that I may teach my grandson what evil looks like.

"The names on buildings such as the Stonewall Jackson Hotel must be changed."

Ophie A. Kier

The Stonewall Jackson Hotel in downtown Staunton.(Photo: Mike Tripp/The News Leader)

On Friday, Barmer had a conversation with owner of Mill Street Grill and Staunton City CouncilmanTerry Holmes, who explained to him some of the many moving parts that are going to be involved in the process of changing the hotel's name.

"It seems like the company continues to be in motion in making this happen," Barmer said. "There may be a need for historic preservation to sign off on some things."

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Barmer urged Holmes to lead a statement and make sure city council puts out a statement that they acknowledge the name change andare working to expedite the process."

"And most of all that they support what we're trying to do."

On Juneteenth Day, the City of Staunton republished their statement on racial justice they posted the previous week.

"But absent from that was anything looking like a solution," said Barmer. "And to me, we're a solution for making good on that statement."

Staunton City Council full statement here.

Barmer said the name change is under city council review per his discussion with Holmes.Holmes told him that it's going to take some time to coordinate with the hotel owners and to figure out what the ramifications are for historic preservation certification and codes.

"I reiterated to himthat whatever the story is with that, it cannot be an excuse," said Barmer. "Historic preservation codes cannot have priority over the removal of a confederate general's name over the Staunton skyline."

The group of citizens protestingare looking to Holmes totake the lead in city councilissuing a public statement specific to the name change for the Stonewall Jackson Hotel.

"We need to see that the city, not just the company, is taking seriously their recent statement on supporting racial justice in Staunton," Barmer said. "This is an excellent opportunity for them to demonstrate that. Transparency is going to have to be the way of the walk here."

The statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee stands in the center of the renamed Emancipation Park on Aug. 22, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. A decision to remove the statue caused a violent protest by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and members of the 'alt-right'. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)

The protestors have been met with mixed reactions.

More: Area reacts to proposed name change of Stonewall Jackson Hotel

Barmer is paying attention to the traffic on social media to see how their stories and photos of them are being shared.

"I'm seeing numerous indications that confederate-minded people, whether here or further abroad connected through social media that there's a lot of complaints," said Barmer. "I did see one comment that the hotel should come out with guns and scare us off."

"They ought to take out a gun and tell them get the heck out," commented Laurie Gleason Roy in the Northern Confederates Facebook group.

"Tell these people to take a walk over a mine field," commented Karl Blake in the Confederate Keepers Facebook group.

"Had the South won the war, none of this nonsense would be happening today," commented Jason Ford.

While the protestors have been met with negative reactions from those in favor of keeping the name, they have also been met with support from those who want the name of the hotel changed and the red neon sign with the confederate general's name down.

As of June 19, Barmer has not received any direct threats, but did say he's seen himself named in a few groups.

As of Monday night, Council member Holmes hasn't gotten back to Barmer with an update.

More: Every Confederate monument taken down in Virginia in 2020

More: Confederate-named roads around Staunton. What would it take to change them?

More: As Richmond's Confederate statues go, so might the South's

More: 'We all know it's time': Northam directs removal of Robert E. Lee statue

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Reporter Monique Calello can be reached at mcalello@newsleader.com and on Twitter @moniquecalello.

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Stonewall Jackson Hotel: 'The use of statues and naming of properties that was done to intimidate must come to an end.' - The News Leader