Tag: KKK

Robert E. Lee was not a hero, white supremacists are not Americans

There is no need to be careful about this. Anyone who served in the armies of the Confederate States of America was a traitor to the United States; anyone who led those armies all the more so. They were part of an armed rebellion against the U.S., which is the definition of treason.

That in itself is enough. But the fact that Confederates were fighting to protect and advance slavery, to create a slave state, means their rebellion was not just political, against the political entity that was the United States, but ethical, moral, and philosophical. They specifically rebelled against the U.S. move to end slavery of black Americans, and just as American abolitionists and antislaveryites based their work to end slavery on moral principle enshrined in the Constitution—that “all men are created equal”–American proslaveryites based their work to continue and expand slavery on a rebellion against that American principle.

The Confederacy was explicitly founded to protect and promote slavery. Its leaders made absolutely no secret of that at the time (see Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion for all the evidence from primary sources that you need). As Confederate vice-president Alexander H. Stephens said in his famous “Cornerstone speech“,

…the new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Thomas] Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. …The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. …Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind — from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just — but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal. [our emphasis]

We quote Stephens at nauseating length to show that the Confederacy was explicitly dedicated to the anti-American principle that non-white people are biologically inferior to white people. The Confederates themselves expressed it this way, as a rejection of and rebellion against the Founders’ plan and hope that slavery would inevitably end the United States because it was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically”, and the United States would not tolerate this because the nation was founded on the principle of equality.

Why does this matter now, on August 16, 2017? Because Stephens still has followers in this country. The Confederacy still has supporters. There are still people living in this country who do not support our Constitution or our law, or any of our founding principles. They call themselves Americans, and most were born here, but they are not. Americans are dedicated to the founding principles of the United States of America, which include the premise that all men are created equal. Anyone who fights this is not American.

And the man currently holding the title of President of the United States is one of them. Donald Trump is no American. He is, clearly, a Confederate president, taking up the torch from Alexander Stephens. In his press conference after a white supremacist/KKK/Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA in which one woman was killed while protesting against the racist rally, Trump said that Americans protesting fascism were just as bad, and in some ways worse, than Nazis posing as Americans, and he took the fascist side:

What about the people of the alt-left, as they came charging at the alt-right, as you call them? [shouts] What about the fact that they came charging, they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.

As far as I’m concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day… wait a minute; I’m not finished. I’m not finished, fake news. That was a horrible day. …I will tell you, I watched this closely, more closely than any of you people, and you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. I think there’s blame on both sides and I don’t have any doubt about it and you don’t have any doubt either.

…there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. …the following day it looked they had had some rough, bad people–neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them, but you had a lot of people in that group who were there to innocently protest…

So this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

Our quotes for all but the last paragraph were taken from video on Fox News’ website. So far as we saw the Fox News coverage did not include the last statement. Their commentator did describe these statements by Trump as part of a “brave and honest press conference, he pulled no punches… brutally honest, maybe too honest.”

Honest. We can’t help thinking of Stephens gloating that the premise that all people are created equal had finally been debunked as a fantasy, as fanaticism. If it’s “honest” to say that American protesting fascism are the criminals, and the fascists are the true Americans, innocent Americans, then we have entered a second civil war—or a second Confederate States of America, brought into being without a shot fired in official war.

For over 150 years, the citizens of the United States perpetrated a dangerous wrong by allowing statues of traitors who fought against the U.S. politically and morally, traitors who were dedicated to the lie that all people are not created equal, to stand. “Oh, it’s not about slavery,” people would say; “it’s just their culture.” We once heard someone say there are no statues to Nazi leaders in Germany. Why are there memorials to Confederate leaders in the United States? Now we see the result of 150 years of dedicated fighting after Appomattox by people who will never be real Americans, and a concentrated effort over the last 50 years, since the Civil Rights movement, to revive the Confederate States of America.

Needless to say, we can’t give in. While Trump has basically invited and urged Nazis to show up when the statue of Jackson is taken down, and has given new hope and excitement to Nazis in America, we Americans have to fight. It’s much harder to fight a guerrilla war than it was to go into actual battle during the Civil War. Right now the best path is to meet the Nazis wherever they go, and not remain a silent majority.

Every nation has a fraction of its population that urges fascism and hatred. Sometimes they manage to monopolize the microphone and take up more space in the media than their numbers justify. Now is such a time in the U.S. Now is the time to muscle these people back into the shadows if we can’t drive them out of the country. That’s the “brutally honest” truth.

Election Day 2016: Vote for your life

We remember the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton ran against the incumbent George Bush, Sr. The election had been full of candidates duking it out throughout the primaries, which is how it used to be in America (unlike today when the winners in Iowa and New Hampshire and the first few southern primaries generally go on to win and the party conventions are pro-forma). Ultra-conservative Pat Buchanan, who had been a senior advisor to Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and Reagan’s head of White House communications, made a strong run based on urging Americans to turn away from ungodly Democratic social progressivism, and he had a special anti-gay focus. It was Buchanan who introduced the phrase “culture wars” to U.S. politics, claiming that gays and other sinners were trying to destroy wholesome white, Christian American culture. President Bush was losing support because the economy was not doing well, so his campaign took a page from Buchanan’s by deciding to focus on bashing Clinton’s character: he was a Vietnam draft-dodger, he had smoked marijuana, he had an affair.

Clinton went through it all promising Americans a better economy, and to bridge the gap between rich and poor. This promise of equity gave him a fairly solid lead until independent Ross Perot got back into the race (after dropping out for two months) and, in three-way debates between Perot, Bush, and Clinton, Perot eroded a surprising amount of Clinton’s support. As election day drew near, there was more uncertainty about who would win than had been expected over the summer when Clinton seemed sure to become president.

The week before election day 1992, one of the HP remembers a full-page ad that ran in the Village Voice, a New York newspaper well-known for its principled stand on gay rights. The headline was “Vote for Your Life”, and it urged gay voters to vote for Clinton, which would be a vote against the right-wing’s homophobic, racist agenda of the “culture wars”.

It was a very dramatic ad. You can imagine why we think of it today, the week before election day 2016. The culture wars have only intensified and become more high-stakes.

The backlash against equal rights for gay Americans is growing.

There are more Americans than we’d like to think—though clearly fewer than they would like us to believe—who want nothing more than to destroy our system of federal government and live under monarchic rule by one man.

White supremacists and white nationalists, always a feature of American political life, are coming more out of the woodwork to boldly claim they represent mainstream opinion, and endorse the man they think will destroy Washington and allow them to do whatever they want.The KKK openly endorses Trump, who refuses to say he renounces them (claiming he’s never heard of them and therefore can’t judge).

Evangelical Christians who helped destroy Gary Hart’s campaign in 1988 because he had an affair now support a man who boasts about sexually assaulting any woman he finds attractive, and trying to lure many women into sex while he and they were married, all because they believe Trump will stop the gays and Planned Parenthood and women’s libbers and whoever else is attacking traditional Christian marriage and family.

Principles and ideas have been overthrown in favor of blind party loyalty: the only principle for an outspoken segment of Republicans is to destroy the Democrats. Many prominent Republicans in federal government have dropped being “the party of opposition” to become agents of obstruction, committing treason by refusing to perform their duties as members of Congress (including vetting a Supreme Court nominee) until and unless they have the Republican president they want.

Prominent Republican leaders and average Americans alike have said how much they hate and disavow Trump—but they will still vote for him, because they simply cannot vote for a Democrat. When you actively choose to vote for someone whose principles are anathema to you, one of two things is happening: either you’re lying about how much you dislike their principles, or you are committing treason against your country by voting in someone you know will impair or destroy our government.

And while Trump promotes and enables people who hate immigrants, Muslims, blacks, gays, and anyone who isn’t them, there has been a constant refusal by other Americans to call them out on this desecration of our founding principles. We constantly hear people saying “Trump supporters aren’t bad people, they’re just angry.” Angry that they are poor when they should be rich, angry that black people want equal rights, angry that gay people want equal rights, angry that people from other countries (who aren’t their great-grandparents) come to America to live and work, angry that women can still (just barely) get abortions, angry that Democrats exist, angry that they think they are being marginalized.

We have to draw a line: if your anger leads you to support someone whose goal is to destroy our federal government, endorse institutional racism, stop immigration by “undesirables”, put women in their place, and rescind gay rights, you are not a good person. You forfeit that status by your actions. Good people don’t stand for those things.

Good people don’t abandon empathy, common good, and collaboration because they feel slighted.

Good people don’t demand white rights.

Good people don’t call for people in public office to be executed for their misjudgments.

Good people don’t insist that a black president must be a criminal imposter from Africa.

Good people don’t support a man who insists he never said things he is on camera saying.

Good people don’t impatiently dismiss the fact that their candidate claims to have sexually assaulted many women and that those women love it.

Good people don’t support a man who urges them to vote multiple times because “that’s what Democrats do”, then whips people into a frenzy about the threat of voter fraud.

Good people don’t support someone who says he will not accept the results of a federal election if he doesn’t win, and will support his followers if they rebel against the federal government.

If you can support someone who does and claims and demands those things, you are no longer good. We can’t have it both ways. Having a complaint does not mean you are justified in spouting hate speech and attempting to destroy our election process and our government. Having a complaint does not mean you are justified in blaming racial minorities and immigrants and Muslims and women and gays for your problems. Having a complaint does not mean you are justified in voting for someone you say you cannot and do not support personally.

Americans who still support our founding principles of liberty and justice for all cannot call those who don’t “good people.” We just can’t. We undermine our own opposition to hate and lynch-mob mentality and anti-democracy when we do. We make it seem like they are still supporting democracy when they are not.

So fight the good fight. Call people out when they are not good people. Stand by the definition of “good people” as people who promote the common good, respect other people’s rights, support our representative democracy, and believe candidates for president should be subject to the rule of law. Stand up for democracy and representative government. And next week, vote for your life.

David Duke and the Klan and the NAAWP are deplorable

It’s not that hard to just say it. While Mike Pence feels that it crosses some line of civility to say that people who work for the destruction of black and Jewish Americans through terror and legal oppression are deplorable, we know that it doesn’t. It’s not “name-calling” when you accurately describe a hate group as hateful, and it’s only wrong to call a hate group “deplorable” if their actions are objectively recognized as nothing to deplore. Even in the midst of the racist backlash going on in the U.S. today, few people are willing to say out loud, on TV at least, that they don’t deplore hate and terror.

The two most important exceptions to this, of course, are Trump and Pence. Trump persistently uses hate speech against Mexicans, women, liberals, and anyone else he feels at odds with. And for someone who won’t stoop to “name-calling”, Mike Pence’s decision to run with Trump, who thrives on name-calling, is hard to understand.

David Duke’s life-work of fighting for the rights of white people is certainly nothing new in this country. There have always been white racists in America, and they have always found supporters. That’s why Duke can pursue his hate activism so glibly, describing the Republican Party as a “big tent” that welcomes all—including members what he describes as the “nonviolent Klan.” And that’s why Trump is afraid to denounce Duke; it would rob him of some votes.

But it’s not just fear. Trump just doesn’t see anything wrong with Duke. He sees him as a successful politician who leads a fairly large coalition of voters, and who has ties to a political organization that may once have been kind of a problem but is now just a kind of hard-core Republican base, along Tea-Party lines. If you don’t like the Klan or the National Association for the Advancement of White People (Duke’s new org), you’re just a knee-jerk liberal who doesn’t understand that the members of these groups are just good working-class Americans trying to get a fair deal by fighting big politics and the liberal oligarchy.

It is an insult to Republicans and even to some Tea Party members to make them equivalent to the Klan and white supremacists. And it’s an insult to all Americans to pretend that hate is a particularly American virtue. The Klan and all white supremacy groups are based on hate and they do nothing but advance hate and terror and death. There is no way to look at our nation’s history and deny this, and there’s no way to look at these groups’ present actions and deny it. There’s no grey area, or room for argument, or polite listening to “both sides of the story”. There’s one story to tell and it’s that the Klan and all white supremacy groups are repellent. That’s not a “liberal” stance. That is the truth, unaffected by political party.

It’s clear that “liberal” is becoming a code word on the right for “non-white”—for people, white or not, who fight for the civil rights of non-whites. The neoconservatives who use “liberal” as a shorthand for everything wrong with this country don’t have to call liberals deplorable because that meaning is built into their usage of the word. In a reversal of the pattern of oppressed groups taking hate words and turning them into badges of pride (“queer”), neoconservatives are trying to take a positive word and turn it into a badge of shame.

As historians we take the long view of things. Sometimes that’s reassuring. Other times it’s not. In this case, it’s depressing to see that the playbook for terrorizing black  Americans, and anyone else who supports them, that was written in the early 1800s still alive and well and having new life breathed into it. The only ground for optimism is that the civil rights movement in this country is as old as the hate it fights. So we keep fighting. As Eyes on the Prize puts it, “The one thing we did right/was the day we started to fight.”