Brief thoughts on Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, at Charlottesville and beyond
- Video of the events at Vice News, "Race and Terror."
- Friday night, August 11, 2017, 10 PM, at the University of Virginia. Chants: "Jews will not replace us." "Blood and Soil." March like Ku Klux Klan gathering, yet without hoods. No effort to hide identity.
- This does not give the impression of the last gasps of racism, but rather of something fresh, new, dynamic, and increasingly self-confiden
- What might motivate the participants in the Unite the Right events at Charlottesville? David Brooks in the New York Times (updated 8/15) wrote:
"Many people live within a bewildering freedom, without institutions to trust, unattached to compelling religions and sources of meaning, uncertain about their own lives. Anxiety is not so much a fear of a specific thing but a fear of everything, an unnamable dread about the future. People will do anything to escape it."
Our president
- Why the reluctance to call out white supremacists?
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"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." (Saturday, August 12) (Read at Vox)
- See also his comments of Tuesday, August 15 here.
- The president (whether he means to or not) effectively spreads distrust (consider his comments about the legislative branch, the judicial branch, the press, Mexicans). He seems to feel that goodness is not possible for people (America is no better than Russia, the opponents of new-Nazis are no better than new-Nazis, everyone and everything is rotten). Many of his comments, it seems to me, weaken the fabric of the body politic. The result could be a body politic that is drawn to power, since goodness is not available. This strikes me as the biggest threat. Ross Douthat describes Charlottesville in terms of a Weimar moment (August 16). This analogy scares me greatly. Richard J. Evans has written extensively about how, at the end of the Weimar Republic, faith in the republic had eroded in many, disparate parts of German society. Trump spreads despair, which erodes faith in our own republic.
Confederate Memorials
- The Civil War has been known officially (by the United States of America) as the "War of the Rebellion"
- The Confederacy and its generals threatened the Union and attacked it. A war was fought, which the Confederacy lost. Monuments to the Confederacy are monuments to rebellion. Why are they on public land--even in Union states?!
- A remarkable case, since removed: The Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument of Baltimore, MD. The inscription read--and still reads (!): SO GREAT IS MY CONFIDENCE IN/ GENERAL LEE THAT I AM WILLING TO/ FOLLOW HIM BLINDFOLDED / STRAIGHT AS THE NEEDLE TO THE POLE/ JACKSON ADVANCED TO THE EXECUTION/ OF MY PURPOSE. That monument was erected in 1948.
- What were the purposes of the hundreds of Confederate monuments around the country, including in the North? I suggest the following, among others:
- To legitimate the Confederacy
- To perpetuate the Civil War--warfare by statuary!
Trump's comments in support of Confederate monuments weakens the Union and perpetuates the Civil War--and the purposes for which it was fought. He has emboldened racists and weakened our republic.