Way out in western North Carolina, just south of the Eastern Band’s Qualla Boundary and on the site of their Two Sparrows Town where a white university now rests, Neo-Confederates do battle with Progressives in
The Bleak and Violent Future of Jackson County
by J. B. Bost
“Like Mr. Huguelet… guys, I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things… And I’ve seen insurgency, and that’s what we’re dealing with right now – make absolutely no mistake about it. These people coming in here from [out of town]… they don’t live here, they just come here to protest; I consider them insurgents.”
– Chad Jones on racial justice protesters, Aug. 4, 2020, Jackson County Commissioners Meeting, Public Comments
Rogue’s Gallery
This was how one of Jackson County, North Carolina’s most noted purveyors of traditional conservative values and amateur professional wrestling referred to peaceful protestors on-record during a public meeting of County Commissioners. It was clear from Jones’s language that the decade-long Marine and Trump enthusiast had fallen into a Red Dawn fever-dream of right-wing talking points — regurgitated leftovers of two-bit demagoguery no doubt mama bird’d into his eager, open orifice from the esophagus of Rupert Murdoch, along with two of Chad’s equally cultish friends – first, sometimes-treasure hunter and slightly more notable of the two professional wrestlers: “Heavy Metal” Ric Savage (aka Frank Huguelet) — in association with Asheville’s very own dime-store Alex Jones, Chad Nesbitt – the latter whose journalistically-dubious outlet SKYline News had just spent the previous June and July of 2020 claiming photographic evidence that antifa supersoldiers were being bussed in to AVL on the dime of George Soros. Luckily for Daddy Soros, the protestors were local and drove themselves – no chartered deep-state busses required – but like an Onion article shared unironically by a conservative relative, people out here seemed to be eating that shit up. Across this Human Centipede phone-game, as targeted misinformation is gobbled from the ass of another to whom they are surgically attached, crypto- — nay — barely-disguised -nationalist and -fascist talking points interbreed with “sweaty preacher thumping a Bible while saying something vaguely racist” energy and as cameras watched a few fires burn and everywhere else people peacefully marched during that summer of 2020, some of that spillover would inevitably come to Jackson’s county seat, Silva, reawakening the Appalachian town’s struggle with its racist past by way of the town’s racist statue — a confederate soldier prominent above the mainstreets, affront the former county courthouse — a fight that had last been fought in the polis of the small mountain town only four years previous and one which most guessed would be fought again in another four.
It was in the shadow of these protests as they came to Asheville and kept heading west even as far as Maggie Valley, but specifically, to Sylva with a renewed campaign to remove the lazily named “Sylva Sam” and replace it with a statuary not honoring a war fought over owning people. Faced with the threat that they actually might do it this time, Jones and Huguelet conceived an organization charged to protect the Confederate statue of Sylva from those dastardly liberal arts majors and part-time socialists who would see Sam unseated from a post he had guarded on behalf of the white population for all those years. “Jackson County Unity Coalition” was born as a reaction against local racial justice group Reconcile Sylva who had surprisingly been garnering national attention multiple times with speeches, marches, and, eventually, a pair of billboards. Unity had gathered 20-some speakers to the Aug. 4, 2020 County Commissioner’s meeting — the one Chad Jones spoke at — hardly any wearing masks to suppress the inevitable choice hacks of SARS into the room before reading off some thinly- and some not-so-thinly-veiled threats against the County and the protesters listening by phone and stream — none of whom had spoken yet as the public comments section began with those who had physically shown up to the public meeting during a global pandemic and those on the side of racial justice, not wanting to spread a disease, had joined the meeting remotely.
For the activists, there was nothing easy about August the 4th. It was unsettling, listening to the anger, aggression, and general ignorance of each person, and then finding the courage to dispel the shakiness that creates in one’s voice when it’s their turn to rattle off the micro-speech written a day before, back when times were braver. This rhetoric was, in every sense, a physical manifestation of the Christian white nationalism that has topped the Domestic Terrorism charts in the US for hundreds of years, and the idea of high-capacity, semi-automatic rifles and fertilizer bombs were never far from one’s mind when watching the degeneration of a human soul when, upon the podium, they inevitably begin to paternalize a giant hollow chunk of mass-produced statuary; it was a statue crafted essentially ambiguously between neither Northern nor Southern specificity — clearly just some generic soldier someone soldered the “CSA” logo to — ironically advertised on the same Yankee catalog page as an equally cheap and tasteless statue of Union hero General Grant. It was the loud proclamation of JC Unity that Sam would remain in its original spot overlooking downtown, unaltered, where it would continue to honor the memory of their ancestors who fought and died to keep Black Folx as property, and any opposition to this would be met violently – a fact many members of this group demonstrated was not a hollow threat when they showed up to town armed and surrounded Sam as what was the first of many actions in Sylva – this one a vigil in the days following the murder of George Floyd – took place on the streets below, good ol’ boys mocking the chants for justice as they float up to the flimsy metal soldier who famously sided with oppression.
If it wasn’t obvious in the beginning, it became more and more clear: they would kill for that statue.
The Early Battles of the Second Civil War
“If they kept their damn mouths shut and left our damn statue alone they would have been alright, but they run their goddamn mouth and pissed me off, and I’m ready to fight to the death,” said a man wearing a white T-shirt with the words White Lives Matter in black on the back. “And they’re fixing to stir up a damn civil war right here in the United States. And this time we’re going to win it.”
– “Take it down? Crowds turn out in Sylva to oppose, support Confederate statue,” Smoky Mountain News, July 15, 2020
If something nice could be said of Jones and Huguelet, they effectively operate what appears to be a grass-roots organization with a great deal more precision than the ever-tragic Nesbitt could possibly hope, but that’s an admittedly low bar to clear. Still, Unity finds itself in a position to be promoting candidates locally and statewide — candidates which, once again. more than resemble poor ole Nesbitt — who just can’t catch a break in this article — in terms of skill, experience, likeability, or otherwise possessing any redeemable trait beyond checking the “R” box beside their name. Such meaningless and counterproductive flag-waving is the hallmark of the two-party state and the illusion of freedom it peddles, and this is especially true of the NC-11 district — a place so terrible that they actually elected Madison Cawthorn their Representative, a moment in time when one could hear the echo of voices on the wind saying “yep, that cartoonish facsimile of Dr. Strangelove crossed with Ferguson Darling is a person who has my best interests in mind” in a droning monotone snaking across the Appalachians from still to methlab to Klavern.
And when Cawthorn inevitably won his campaign on a platform of 4chan Trumpism, it came as no surprise to anyone even vaguely aware of those country roads, secret hollers, and the so-called patriots they held. They loved to come to town in trucks and old sedans, slogans scribed across the paint, flags of countries, and countries that aren’t anymore, and of presidents photoshopped to look like Rambo. They’d holler out their windows, roll coal, run their engines too rich, and open-carry in the Walmart before retreating back in time for Tucker. In the shadow of the 2020 battle over stupid-ass Sam, Reconcile had been carrying out a protest campaign at the fountain below the statue – making signs, eliciting honks, jeers, and cigarette butts thrown out car windows – holding down the same spot rain or shine in the aftermath of the County voting not to remove the statue, but to “recontextualize it,” a stupid move that made everybody angry. As chance would have it, on one of those few weekdays when everyone in Reconcile had life obligations delaying the daily protest at the fountain, a group imaginatively titled “Armed Patriots” did an armed Second Amendment not-demonstration at the very same spot. For the law nerds in the audience, NC General Statute 14-277.2 makes it “Unlawful for any person participating in, affiliated with, or present as a spectator at any parade, funeral procession, picket line, or demonstration . . . upon any public place . . . to willfully or intentionally possess or have immediate access to any dangerous weapon. Violation of this subsection shall be a Class 1 misdemeanor”. In NC, that carries a maximum of 120 days in jail and includes the crimes of larceny and communicating threats. For the readers who have been paying close attention, you’ll recall the good ol’ boys from earlier – Minutemen who answered Freedom’s call at the first sight of peaceful protest and ran off armed to their local Civil War Participation Trophy in clear violation of GS 14-277.2. And indeed, no cop would ever charge them, or these people in Morganton, or this famous photo of a man carrying a rocket launcher at a Subway in Raleigh. Even Henderson County’s own homeschooled huxster of fascism, Madison Cawthorn, got in on the fun, whose flaunting of weapons in weapon-free zones was continually enabled by police refusing to charge the Congressperson. Time after time after bloody time, law enforcement agencies across North Carolina virtue-signal their membership to white supremacy, in conjunction with agencies even higher up the Executive branch. For any crime not a felony, cops have the “discretion” to not charge the offender. Whatever Andy Griffith thought process is behind this choice, it results in law enforcement, already infiltrated at all levels by white supremacists, extending their professional courtesy to their pals and distant relatives violently intent on making the south rise again.
Even in the liberal bastion of Asheville — or perhaps especially in Asheville — there was no hope of equal protection. On the night of Sept. 23, 2020, in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s murderers being acquitted, protestors gathered in Asheville’s Pack Square Park, showing solidarity against the injustice of a system that would allow an innocent woman to be gunned down without repercussion in her bedroom by law enforcement. After protestors provocatively left a coffin full of animal feces on the doorstep of the local precinct, the march took to the streets in the usual procession of chanters in the middle with their flanks protected by bike teams and roving bands of allies who surrounded and harassed citizen photographers, many of whom no doubt spies of Nesbitt’s. The closer the protest came to Asheville’s own Sylva Sam — a statuary memorializing Confederate Zebulon Vance’s penis or something — the more far-right provocateurs began to appear, waving their flags atop anything they could climb and shouting down the socialist devils that would dare speak out against the state-sanctioned execution of Black People. For most people, this night was memorable for this article’s very own Chad Nesbitt being attacked and suffering brain trauma — a whole fiasco that would lead to Nesbitt being taken to the hospital and said hospital quickly getting shutdown as his followers began to spread rumors of antifa supersoldiers — already bussed into place by George Soros – there to finish the job they started. The truth was that Nesbitt had been sent flying backwards after his security guard bumped into him, gravity taking care of the rest, but it should come as no surprise to those who know Nesbitt best that his grip on reality, brain trauma notwithstanding, is a fingernail grasp above a pongee pit of Tom Clancy and Dan Brown novels. Something else happened that night, however, something that didn’t make the papers or the frontpage of Skyline. As the protest held position in the shadow of Zebulon’s dong, the bike squads formed a line against traffic, biding time as the protest’s center debated whether to turn back from the police loudspeaker off in the distance declaring everyone unlawful or to continue on. The sound of a car’s engine revving could be heard in the downtime between chants. Time dilates as the headlights of the car come into view, barreling down the wrong side of the road, aiming directly at the protestors. There’s a thought — a single thought — that “they’re gonna stop last second” but then they didn’t, they kept going, closer and closer, and now everyone knows what is about to happen — but somehow, with no moment to spare, the intoxicated driver lost their courage and swerved away inches from an unflinching line of bikes ridden by people braver than any there had ever been. In that moment, the realization of what had happened slowly creeps in, settling perniciously as a trauma to be saved for later. Even in the aftermath of the joy of seeing Chad Nesbitt sprawled out on the ground, the adrenaline from before is still there, hands shaking as they fumble with the emergency joint hidden in a pack of Marlboros, nervous laughter as the lighter refuses to strike. An inhalation of THC and now the immensity of it all, of the cops shouting from across the tiny park, of the ambulance carting off Nesbitt, of what just happened back in that intersection, has replaced the expected high with a panic attack immobilizing everything but the boots who follow out of memory while the mind remains afk.
Across the forested mountains, over land that once upon a time echoed with folksy cries of “Run, Rudolph, Run,” it is no surprise there is a culture of violence, racism, and bigotry. People tell hushed tales of survivalists and white separatists, and of people disappeared into the wilderness like it were God’s own CIA blacksite. Those born into this world without the good sense to leave tend towards the aggressively nativist, as illustrated by Chad Jones and his damn Yankee insurgency. And it is here where Trump Country is at its strongest, and where the second Civil War is most like to begin. Indeed, the first battles have perhaps been going on for generations, as mostly far-right extremists detonate fertilizer bombs, shoot up Walmarts and synagogues, and whatever else accelerationists accelerant upon. Obviously, the constancy of “disturbed people inevitably doing very disturbed things” is one which the atomic clock could be set to, as seen by countless mass-shootings stretching back to the invention of both the gun and the public place, yet such a tragedy ought not be inevitable, and here is where Jones, Huguelet, and Nesbitt could choose either to do the most good or just completely eff everything up and propagate more pointless fear and violence. Their powers are neither mystic nor arcane but simply the combination of demagoguery and a susceptible population failed by the education system. In this, Huguelet often wavers from extremely aggressive rhetoric to whatever he was doing in this Spectrum News interview, while Nesbitt… well, Nesbitt is… Nesbitt. But the biggest letdown of all is Chad Jones. This is a person with a decade of learning leadership roles in the Marines. Jones is fully aware of how to effectively moderate a crowd, build a community, and inspire people to greatness; yet he appears unwilling to, always seeking some existential threat to the collection of biases and bigotries he calls traditional conservatism.
The Existential Threat to Traditional Conservatism
“WCU needs to be told, shown and learn that Jackson County and her residents are not here to serve them and their needs or demands and that WCU is in fact here to serve the higher education needs Jackson County, her residents, the residents of the state of North Carolina and the residents of the United States as a whole.”
– Excerpt from Chad Jones on the biggest problems facing Jackson County, Dec. 12, 2021, posted to the Jackson County Unity Coalition Facebook group
Meanwhile, in Jackson, whose county seat is often dubbed the mini-Asheville, Western Carolina University chugs along for 8-10 months a year, creating graduates, student loan debt, band trophies, and losing football records until the Earth’s axis tilts one way or another, sending students and faculty off in a scurry from under the stove only to be replaced for a few weeks by retirees and motorcycle enthusiasts. Yet, to those on the far-right, this university is a continual source of outrage and fear, like the focal point of an infernal vortex that threatens to swallow up all the good Christians, leaving behind those godless liberals and their concepts of “equity” and “not being a dick.”
Enter the slimy tendrils of Rupert Murdoch, ever-present metaphor for those wealthy old white men propping up a racist system, whose network Fox News got a hot tip that gender non-binary people might exist in Jackson County and that is definitely against the Christian values of not having fun. One Fox and Friends segment later and Jackson adds another battle of the ongoing Culture War to its historical record. Like a can of hairspray thrown into a bonfire, it’s only a matter of time before the party is over. All this violent rhetoric — and most of it coming from people in positions of power — is not falling on deaf ears. And I wonder, if the shockwave from the pressure cooker will rupture my own ears before I see the floor fall beneath me; will I hear the gun blasts or find the bullets first; will those trucks who stalk and shout slurs nightly, on that day, become the tank whose treads I will crush beneath? But most of all, I wonder why. What crime did we commit to warrant this violent inevitability? Oh right, we told the truth.
“It’s not just about a statue it’s about controlling the narrative . . . in our schools we teach our children this narrative that backs white superiority . . . whoever controls the narrative controls the people . . . If you want to reconcile Sylva, you have to start telling the truth.”
– Rev. Tammy Logan, Sept. 18, 2020, speaking at a Sylva protest, quoted by Nate Hadley, The Western Carolinian
