The Secesh category archive

A letter-writer to the Raleigh News and Observer spots a false equivalence.

Solomon Jones finds it–let’s see–willfully blind that in the face of a lifetime of Donald Trump’s racist behavior some persons are only just now discovering Donald Trump’s racism. He suggests that those who do not speak out against the Trumpling are ipso facto complicit in it. A snippet:

In truth, Trump’s racism is profoundly American, because America is a racist country.

Racism built America’s wealth through brutal African enslavement. Racism supported the subjugation of black sharecroppers after the Civil War. Racism drove home the Jim Crow laws designed to create a permanent black underclass. Racism was enforced through state-sanctioned violence carried out by lynch mobs and police.

That is the true history of race in America, and in some ways, not much has changed. If we are ready to face that truth as a country united for justice, we can move forward. But if America continues to paint racism as a figment of black peoples’ fertile imaginations, our country will never change.

Another Southern myth, busted.

Tony Norman suggests that refusal of “Judge” Roy Moore to concede defeat in the Alabama Senatorial race is a fitting analogy to the Southern myth of the “Lost Cause.” A snippet:

Long after Roy Moore is dead and buried, he knows “serious” academic papers will be written about how he was cheated out of votes by a conspiracy of liberals and establishment Republicans. Seventy-five years from now, Roy Moore will be extolled as the embodiment of a Southern hero and noble jurist too upstanding to be allowed to enter the halls of the U.S. Senate.

With the passage of time and enough lies, even allegations that he tried to initiate romances with children will be brushed off by sympathetic historians as scurrilous propaganda the same way the atrocities of the antebellum aristocracy are considered lies spread by liberal historians. They’ll say he took countless lie detector tests and passed.

One more time, when next you hear someone bemoan the “Lost Cause,” ask him or her to explain precisely just what was the cause that was lost.

Charles Finn eviscerates the rationalizations of the secesh and their sycophants in a searing screed.

Field reports from the field. A snippet:

At a campaign event earlier this year, an audience member asked Moore for his opinion on when the last time America was “great.” Moore responded: “I think it was great at the time when families were united—even though we had slavery—they cared for one another…Our families were strong, our country had a direction.” The individual who asked the question was among the few African-Americans in attendance at the rally, according to the Los Angeles Times. In stating this, Moore seemingly implied he’d be able to overlook the enslavement of other human beings as long as families are “united,”* an interesting perspective from a man accused of repeatedly preying on young girls.

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*Moore made no mention, of course, that enslaved mothers, fathers, and children were routinely separated and sold off to different buyers, nor that enslaved women were not uncommonly used as brood mares to generate more “stock” for slave traders.

The attempt to prettify slavery and romanticize slaveholders continues apace.

Brian K. Fennessy looks up the history of Confederate statues. What he finds is no surprise: they were statues to racism. Here’s the nugget:

. . . I searched for dedication speeches that were given at Confederate soldier monuments across North Carolina. Most orations were given by veterans and state officials. I successfully tracked down 30, and they support two conclusions: 1) white nationalism was a fixture of Confederate monumentation, and 2) Confederate soldier monuments honored veterans for their postwar success in eroding black equality as much as for their failed wartime sacrifices.

Racist language pervades the dedication speeches. If one assumes that the speaker is excluding blacks from the term “southerners,” when its use clearly meant only white southerners, then white identity politics are present in every speech. But speakers were often more explicit. 14 speeches explicitly invoked “our Anglo-Saxon ancestors,” “love of race,” or “your own race and blood.”

Follow the link for examples.

Paul Krugman discusses how the legacy of slavery still taints the United States, using the Virginia gubernatorial race as a springboard. A snippet (emphasis added):

Here’s how that might happen: Ed Gillespie, the GOP candidate, is trying to pull off an upset by going full-on Trumpist, doing all he can — with assistance from the tweeter in chief — to mobilize the white nationalist vote. He’s accusing Ralph Northam, his Democratic opponent, of dishonoring the state’s Confederate heroes. (Funny how people who accuse their rivals of being unpatriotic worship men who engaged in armed rebellion against the United States.) He’s not only accused Northam of being soft on illegal immigration, but he’s insinuated that this somehow makes him an ally of a violent Central American gang.

Aside:

As a Virginian who is subjected to Gillespie’s campaign commercials, I can attest that they are truly vile and duplicitous.

In my local rag, Roger Chesley looks at the text books used in Virginia schools around the beginning of the Twentieth Century and at how they promoted the lie of the “Lost Cause.”

Read it.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., marvels at the kerfuffle over Jemele Hill’s tweets pointing out–nothing new here–that Donald Trump is a white supremacist. A snippet:

But ESPN’s response (ESPN reprimanded Hill–ed.) was mild compared to the White House’s rebuke. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders pronounced Hill’s tweets “a fireable offense.”

Really? Well, if Hill deserves firing for calling Trump a white supremacist, then what does he get for actually being one?

Follow the link for his answer to that question.