The Dismantling of Confederate Remnants Continues

[Manfred Belheim]

Perhaps you could put their organisational symbol in your avatar to show how neutral and dedicated to free speech you are.

You're going to carry that to your grave aren't you

 

[EgonSpengler]

Does that imply that you think that is obfuscation? Why do you think it's obfuscation?

I think the others covered it. 'White nationalism' is a euphemism. It was Spencer who led chants of "Hail victory" after the election last fall. You've probably heard that phrase before, in its original German, "Seig Hiel." Spencer is only fooling the people who want to be fooled.

While this person (Spencer) is obviously nasty, and his view is dumb (there is no alliance between white people, there never was, and never will be; look at Europe), i still don't like how the Confederacy is argued to be just white supremacy and not at all about self-right to proclaim independence. It is just a maimed narrative. And i also doubt that any majority of people in favour of keeping some Conf monuments is trash like Spencer.

Well, we can read the Confederate states' own words. They weren't shy about stating their reasons in the declarations of secession. (I've pulled specific portions of each, for the sake of brevity. Some of them are pretty long.)

Georgia

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.

Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

South Carolina

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Virginia (It's unclear to me whether the italic text was in the original declaration or was added for emphasis by the website I copied it from, so I left it that way.)

The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.

Texas has my favorite passage. They didn't want anybody misunderstanding their position.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think the others covered it. 'White nationalism' is a euphemism. It was Spencer who led chants of "Hail victory" after the election last fall. You've probably heard that phrase before, in its original German, "Seig Hiel." Spencer is only fooling the people who want to be fooled.


Well, we can read the Confederate states' own words. They weren't shy about stating their reasons in the declarations of secession. (I've pulled specific portions of each, for the sake of brevity. Some of them are pretty long.)

Georgia


Mississippi


South Carolina


Virginia (It's unclear to me whether the italic text was in the original declaration or was added for emphasis by the website I copied it from, so I left it that way.)


Texas has my favorite passage. They didn't want anybody misunderstanding their position.

Ok, those do sound terrible

Yet regular soldiers tend to fight so as to defend their homeland and families. Anyway, i accept perfectly that some do favour Conf monuments because they are racist, but imo it is not clear that among current supporters the majority is said racists and idiots (or at least i'd like to think so...)

 

[Lexicus]

Yet regular soldiers tend to fight so as to defend their homeland and families.

Good on you for completely ignoring the statistics I posted demonstrating the significance of slavery here. You're missing the point that for the Confederates defending slavery was inextricably tied up in "defending their homeland and families".

 

[Senethro]

You're going to carry that to your grave aren't you

You only ever favour one side and seem to be in the habit of obfuscation yourself.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I think the others covered it. 'White nationalism' is a euphemism. It was Spencer who led chants of "Hail victory" after the election last fall. You've probably heard that phrase before, in its original German, "Seig Hiel." Spencer is only fooling the people who want to be fooled.

I don't know anything about Spencer other than he got punched once and it seemed to bring on a bout of mass hysteria, I just wondered why you were taking the default position that he was lying. Or are you saying that "white nationalism" isn't a thing at all and is always a euphemism? That seems strange to me.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

You only ever favour one side and seem to be in the habit of obfuscation yourself.

Just because I'm against "your side" doesn't mean I'm for the other side. And I'm always perfectly honest about what I think and believe. If you choose to think otherwise then that's on you.

 

[Lexicus]

Or are you saying that "white nationalism" isn't a thing at all and is always a euphemism?

Precisely what I was saying.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Precisely what I was saying.

Why is that though? They have different definitions, and my brain is able to comprehend them as separate concepts, so to me it seems rather presumptuous to unilaterally declare that no humans can possibly embrace one of them and must really secretly embrace the other. It also seems rather pointless to do so as surely you wouldn't find it particularly less objectionable even if he were "only" a white nationalist anyway.

 

[Kyriakos]

Good on you for completely ignoring the statistics I posted demonstrating the significance of slavery here. You're missing the point that for the Confederates defending slavery was inextricably tied up in "defending their homeland and families".

If you generalize and disenfranchise millions, you end up with the kind of messed up situation that allows for the current Potus. Personally i see no reason to believe that a majority of those US people wanting some of the conf monuments to stand are racists, cause usually racism isn't that popular, at least not by now.
That said, i may be wrong. It looks even bleaker if i am wrong, of course.

 

[Lexicus]

If you generalize and disenfranchise millions, you end up with the kind of messed up situation that allows for your current Potus.

Yes, clearly people like me correcting the historical misconceptions of Confederate apologists on the internet is what got us Trump.

Personally i see no reason to believe that a majority of those US people wanting some of the conf monuments to stand are racists, cause usually racism isn't that popular, at least not by now.
That said, i may be wrong. It looks even bleaker if i am wrong, of course.

Every single one? No. The vast majority? Certainly.

 

[Senethro]

Why is that though? They have different definitions, and my brain is able to comprehend them as separate concepts, so to me it seems rather presumptuous to unilaterally declare that no humans can possibly embrace one of them and must really secretly embrace the other. It also seems rather pointless to do so as surely you wouldn't find it particularly less objectionable even if he were "only" a white nationalist anyway.

I know you like your hypotheticals, but for everyone else it looks like pointless hairsplitting on behalf of an advocate for a necessarily violent ideology. We're already being fairer to him than he would be to us.

 

[demiurgenext]

^I doubt that a majority of those who fought and died for the South in the civil war did so cause they had the lust to keep slaves. I suppose mostly the very rich or just rich had slaves.

No, they fought in order to ensure the slave hierarchy would remain. The lowest white man was considered far, far above any black. There's numerous examples of this in the newspapers of the day, in the speeches of the secessionist commissioners, and in the letters of the soldiers themselves. The struggle was put into race terms, that freeing the blacks would lead to the annihilation of the white race, and the mongrelization of society as white women would be ravaged by the subhuman negro. It's the same stuff you see from the KKK (founded by Confederates) and Neo-Nazis. There's a large overlap between the white supremacist groups there, as the Confederacy and the Nazis had much in common with their racial narrative.

If you generalize and disenfranchise millions, you end up with the kind of messed up situation that allows for the current Potus. Personally i see no reason to believe that a majority of those US people wanting some of the conf monuments to stand are racists, cause usually racism isn't that popular, at least not by now.
That said, i may be wrong. It looks even bleaker if i am wrong, of course.

You haven't been listening to the US narrative then. We just finished with our first black president. White supremacist groups surged in popularity, as did gun sales. Outright lies about the legitimacy of his religion and whether he was a native born American became wide spread - and the lead purveyor of the 'birther' movement was just made President.

Racism is alive and well in the United States. I'm sure we aren't alone in that - look at Brexit and the rise of nativism in Europe.

IMO the Confederate monuments should be thinned out considerably. There's a huge amount of spamming of these monuments for propaganda sake over the 'Lost Cause' myth - that the war was only about states rights, these were noble men and that the issue of slavery was tertiary. Of course, that's erroneous - read Apostles of Disunion by Charles Dew (a native southerner) who analyzes the record of the speeches given by the commissioners of secession. They make it extraordinarily clear that fear mongering on what would happen to whites if the slaves were freed was the primary reason.

Kentucky is a good example of the propaganda war. It was a slave holding border state that remained neutral at the start of the war. It was invaded by the CSA when the US started winning the elections in 1861 and put pro-Union politicians in power. 100,000 Kentuckians fought for the Union, the slave holding area that was almost entirely at the southern border of Kentucky near Tennessee sent 30,000 to fight ofr the Confederacy. It's towns were raided by Confederate calvarymen dozens of times, with several atrocities taking place.

Today there's 37 confederate monuments in KY - and 3 Union monuments. The high society Daughters of Confederate Veterans spammed the state with pro-Confederate memorials. There's pro-confederate memorials in Washington state, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, even in other countries like Brazil.

There was another wave of confederate memorials during the Civil Rights era as the South opposed federally imposed desegregation.

There's definitely a right and wrong side on this one.

Moderator Action: I merged these two sequential posts together. Please use the + Quote function to construct a post with multiple quotes. Thank you. ~ Arakhor

 

[EgonSpengler]

I don't know anything about Spencer other than he got punched once and it seemed to bring on a bout of mass hysteria, I just wondered why you were taking the default position that he was lying. Or are you saying that "white nationalism" isn't a thing at all and is always a euphemism? That seems strange to me.

Yeah, I guess I feel that "white nationalism" is always a euphemism, but with the caveat that sometimes it could just be a poor choice of words. Sometimes (frequently?) people say things without realizing what they mean. "White pride" is similarly fraught, because it doesn't merely mean that you enjoy German composers and French food. If what you mean is that you enjoy European and European-American culture, you don't want to use that particular phrase. I don't get the feeling that Spencer is misrepresenting himself, though.

Personally i see no reason to believe that a majority of those US people wanting some of the conf monuments to stand are racists, cause usually racism isn't that popular, at least not by now.

In this case, trying to tease apart which of the individuals is racist may not be useful. The statue of Robert E. Lee is meant to honor a champion of a racist ideology and a dark period for our country, so defending that statue is a racist act. The person advocating for the statue doesn't have to be racist in any other way. It's also possible they simply doesn't realize what they're doing. Racism doesn't have to be deliberate.


A couple of addenda to my post above: First, I forgot the link to the site I was copying from. There are a bunch of others, of course. I think several universities put them online.

Second, I thought it was interesting that the "Northwest Territory" referenced in Mississippi's declaration wasn't what we think of today - Oregon, Idaho, and Washington state. In the late 18th Century, 'Northwest' meant Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. So the Confederate states - or, at least, Mississippi - were aggravated that slavery had been banned in what we think of today as Northern states. So they did not just want to keep what they had and mind their own business, they wanted to spread slavery far and wide and were angry (enough to kill) that anyone disagreed with them.

 

[Lexicus]

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737259

This is some good scholarship that demolishes the poor-little-slaveowners narrative.

 

[demiurgenext]

Agreed, that's why Sumter happened. It wasn't enough that the Confederates secede for their independence, they needed to be able to contest the US all along the western frontier.

That doesn't happen with peace.

Davis laid out his rationale at his address to the provisional congressional congress (CSA) on April 29th, 1861.

" As soon, how ever, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provision for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States."
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_m042961.asp


It was economic - the economy of slaves. At the time of the 1860 census, the slaves had a higher value than all of the factories and railroads of the North. They feared that money disappearing if they didn't have markets for their slaves, so they needed open territories. Hence the Missouri compromise, Bleeding Kansas, and what they considered the penultimate betrayal - California. Despite southern interests aligning behind Polk to wage a war of aggression against Mexico for the purpose of acquiring land, the abolitionists succeeded in stopping the expansion of slavery into the richest prize yet.

This concept goes back years. The filibuster was originally defined not as a senate procedural tactic but as a mercenary engaging in illegal warfare against a foreign country. The South sponosored many of these expeditions to Cuba, Spanish Texas, and Latin America in the attempt to overthrow governments to put in American interests that would open up the territory for American slaves. There's a letter from Sam Houston to his sister that talks about the price of independence, gained with the backing of New Orleans interests which provided 90% of all funding to the Texas revolution, was that slavery would have to be the law of the land, despite his dislike of it.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I know you like your hypotheticals, but for everyone else it looks like pointless hairsplitting on behalf of an advocate for a necessarily violent ideology.

I'm not asking on his behalf. I'm assuming he won't be reading any of this and it will have zero impact on his life.

If you think the two concepts are so similar that to argue about them is pointless hairsplitting... then why go to the trouble of insisting he is one of them and not the other in the first place? And why do you think he'd bother lying about it if you (and presumably most other people) find them so similar and equally objectionable?

We're already being fairer to him than he would be to us.

The day he starts posting on CFC, that will become relevant.

 

[Senethro]

I'm not asking on his behalf. I'm assuming he won't be reading any of this and it will have zero impact on his life.

If you think the two concepts are so similar that to argue about them is pointless hairsplitting... then why go to the trouble of insisting he is one of them and not the other in the first place? And why do you think he'd bother lying about it if you (and presumably most other people) find them so similar and equally objectionable?

For the same reason I point out anyone calling themselves a racialist is just a plain old racist. They shouldn't get to put a less grubby word on their nasty ideology. Functionally it is the same.

Its just making sure hazards are well signposted for other people.

 

[AlpsStranger]

The South was defeated. We should have done more sooner to dissolve their toxic culture, and I think I've seen nothing but evidence to support that throughout my entire life.

I'm not petty, you can keep twangy music and good pies and stuff of course. But there's little I can find in the values and morals that are uniquely Southern ( as opposed to American, Western or Human. )

( And before anyone calls me a liberal hypocrite, there are plenty of non-White cultures that I'd love to see dissipated as well. I believe in the equality of human worth but am, if anything, the precise opposite of a cultural relativist. )

 

[mrt144]

The confederate flag is a reminder of the time they tried to escape the union and failed.