James Fields, the person who drove his car into a crowd of left-wing rioters in Charlottesville, during the Unite the Right rally two summers ago, was convicted of all counts last week. The top count was first degree murder, which means the jury agreed with the state that he drove into the crowd intending to harm people. Technically, he could get the death penalty, but the guidelines recommend life without parole. The jury will make a recommendation this week and the judge will formally sentence him in the next month.

Everyone with an interest in the case has made their position clear. The Left, of course, loves the sight of blood, so they are thrilled with the result. The alt-right people, who followed the case, are obviously disgusted at the show trial and result. They are correct that this whole thing was a mockery of justice. While reasonable people can disagree about his culpability, sending him away for life is a vulgar act of vengeance. Regardless, it is an event that should provide some very clear lessons for the dissident right.

For starters, right-wing movements in America have always made the mistake of assuming the Left is amenable to humanitarian appeals. This case makes clear that to be on the Left is to have abandoned any shred of mercy or compassion. The kid should not have been there, and he certainly got mixed up with some bad people. Order requires he pay some penalty for what he did, but sending this young man to jail for life is vicious and cruel. There is no mercy on the Left. There never will be.

Another lesson is that we no longer live in a land of laws. What has gone on in Virginia since that rally is an abomination. This is just the most recent act of lawlessness. Over the last year or so, other men have been sent away for hard time over trivial things, simply because they are white and hold the wrong opinions. Meanwhile, the blacks involved were handed checks and allowed to promote themselves off their crimes. For white people, there is no justice in the court system, so make sure you stay out of it.

Of course, this rally did not spring from nothing. The organizers who put it together and promoted it have some culpability here. The thing that leaders must always accept is they are responsible for their people. That is part of leadership. When you lead your men into a fight, they expect that you are not leading them into a trap or into certain death. Leadership requires a sense of duty to those you are leading. The people who put this together failed in that regard and they should be judged accordingly.

That said, most involved were new to activism and can be forgiven for getting caught up in the spirit of the times. Mike Enoch, who has done everything he can to support the men being persecuted, has clearly learned a hard lesson from this. He is a guy who deserves credit for not only learning from the event but accepting some responsibility for blundering into a trap. Not everyone involved has covered themselves in glory, though, and that is a good lesson moving forward. Leadership is not just about being cheeky on YouTube.

That last point is salient, because that is another lesson of this affair. In fact, the best way to think about Charlottesville now is in the fuller context of the pogrom launched against dissidents this past year. The normal way of resolving disputes in a civil society is no longer available. The people in charge are slowly swinging the authoritarian door closed on us. They are corrupting every aspect of civil life to prevent any challenge to their authority. These show trials are just one aspect of their greater war on us.

There is no civil way forward and that means thinking different. The people who rule over us, whether you wish to use archaic terms like Marxist or socialist, or you like neologisms like cosmopolitan globalists, they do not see themselves as bound by the letter of the law, because they see themselves as the spirit of the law. Tim Cook is not ready to declare himself a god, but he has declared himself the high priest of the new faith of the ruling class. There is no mercy in the righteous and no reasoning with a fanatic.

Finally, the deafening silence of the people claiming to be in opposition to this growing tyranny, people like Ben Shapiro, is important. A lot of people on the dissident right think these anachronisms from a bygone age will wake up and begin to agitate on our behalf, but that will never happen. As has been explained many times, their real role is as defenders of the system. It is why they hate Tucker Carlson so much. He talks about some of these things, thus exposing the perfidy of the Ben Shapiros of the world.

Whatever comes next is not going to happen within the old system. It is too corrupt and too compromised. That is the great lesson of the last year. In a lawless age, one must let go of the law to avoid the law. A great Chinese curse is “May the authorities become aware of you.” For our age, the opposite is true. Never let the authorities become aware of you. If the current slide into darkness is to be arrested, it will happen because what comes out of the shadows is strong enough to stop it.