Efforts to denude the South of Confederacy statues, memorials, flags, and other historical depictions have accelerated rapidly in the wake of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and Antifa counter-rally. A mob mentality has started to creep in, with wanton destruction taking the place of debate and sanctioned removal. While I understand the legitimate concerns with what many see as the glorification of an unjust and unfair social structure, I shudder at the absolutist mentality that is becoming dominant here, I fear this trend has already gotten out of hand, and I worry that it will take us down a very dangerous path.
I am not a child of the South, nor am I a deeply-informed student of the Civil War, the Reconstruction, or Southern culture in general. This doesn’t disqualify me from rendering an opinion based on what I do know, or of seeking to learn more as I try to formulate one, but it does behoove me to recognize that there is a whole lot more to this matter than the simplistic “slavery” narrative. So, when I come across thoughtful commentary from someone of that culture, such as this wonderful piece by Robert Peecher, I pay attention. Just as I cannot expect tenth-generation Southerners to understand why Greeks bear a deep resentment of the oppression their ancestors suffered under the Ottoman Turks, I cannot blithely claim understanding of all that the War Between The States means to them.
Unfortunately, we’re nearing a critical mass of people who have no interest whatsoever in considering another’s perspective before seeking to impose their own upon everyone. And, in true squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease style, the loudest and most absolute are getting the most attention and being paid the most heed. Yes, there are legitimate debates to be had about statues of Confederacy leaders, but each of these needs to be considered carefully, rationally and on merits. Furthermore it behooves all of us to stand against those who go hyperbolic in order to bully or cow others into submission.
Consider the term “Nazi.” It refers to a horrific political movement and a monstrous period of history. It reminds us of an ideology so steeped in virulent hatred that it spawned a World War, the Holocaust and other campaigns of extermination, and resulted in tens of millions of dead. Today, we have assholes who wave Nazi flags and purport to embrace Nazi beliefs, assholes who properly deserve every bad thing we can say about them. But, we also have people who bandy the term “Nazi” about as if it’s just another aspersion. Presidents Bush and Trump have been called Nazis, as has the entirety of the NRA, and American conservatives in general. We witness daily appearances of Godwin’s Law, which suggests that people think they have turn the volume to 11 in order to be heard. This not only dilutes the term “Nazi,” but it diminishes the horrors of that period of history, especially among younger people who are farther removed from it. And, indeed, “Nazi” is being used interchangeably with “racist,” even when the supposed racism is merely an accuser judging the accused’s skin color.
This is but one of many examples of the trend of abandoning dispassionate recollection in favor of relativism and convenience, a trend promulgated by our Best-and-Brightest, who seem to think that history is theirs to write and rewrite. While it is currently hip and cool to find racism under every rock, and even to presume that every white person is de facto and inalienably racist, the bits of history that are more unpleasant or don’t serve the current (and ever-changing) agenda are diminished or ignored entirely.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the most influential founders of the nation, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, and a key figure in the development of our system of government, is dismissed wholesale (along with his body of work) by some people because he owned slaves. Protestors are demanding the removal of Theodore Roosevelt’s statue from the American Museum of Natural History in New York because he was supposedly a racist. Protestor recently demanded that the name of Woodrow Wilson, who by many accounts was a racist, be removed from one of Princeton University’s schools. George Washington owned slaves, too, but he hasn’t been targeted for historical excision… yet. Yes, the current focus is on Confederate leaders, people who fought a war to (among other things) preserve the institution of slavery, but even our “great” Presidents are apparently not safe.
On the flip side, the reverence for FDR is, apparently, sufficient to justify the ignoring of his internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, many in truly squalid conditions. The wholesale atrocities of the USSR are and Red China, atrocities that fall under the “socialist” and “communist” labels, are ignored or shunted aside with “they had the right idea but did it wrong” excuses that are meant to protect the ideologies. Nazism and fascism are described as “far-right,” no matter that they has FAR more in common with socialism and communism than with American conservatism. Some embarrassing historical figures are deliberately forgotten about. This is history scrubbing in the other direction, where bad stuff is swept under the rug.
Consider, also, the cynical dishonesty of the narrative peddlers who care only about zero-sum political victories. If the South was the stronghold of the Democratic Party instead of reliably Republican, would we be seeing this anti-Confederate-statue movement erupt as quickly? Would the press cover it at all? Would the spin be substantially different? The contortions being exhibited by the usual suspects in absolution of Antifa thugs tell the tale, as does the synthetic outrage over Trump’s calling them out.
Meanwhile, school kids seem to get nothing in the way of civics lessons any more. College kids think that the principles of free speech can and should take a back seat to the silencing of inappropriate or offensive (according to them, of course) speech. Everything in the public forum is subject to a purity test, and even the most dedicated of social justice types are one misstep away from excoriation. Even liberal professors cower in fear and install secret escape routes lest the students turn on them. Turn on them, that is, with violence. Violence they justify by asserting that certain forms of speech, and indeed even speech from pulpits, are themselves violence. What chance does the teaching of actual history stand in the face of all this? How can we expect students to learn anything but that which validates their biases, truth and reality notwithstanding?
How can we expect our society to function when violence as a form of censorship has become acceptable?
The world cried at the loss of irreplaceable history when ISIS started destroying statues and monuments. To ISIS, those statues and monuments stood for lies and heresy. To the rest of the world, they are history, and while we have modern technology to thank for the preservation of what they looked like, no one will ever be able to walk up to them again. Do Confederacy statues rise to this level? Obviously not, but that certainly doesn’t justify their destruction by a mob.
Many of the protests we are witnessing are “me, me, LOOK AT ME!” narcissism and ego-feeding, born of the safety of the mob. For some, it’s not enough to jump on a bandwagon. They need to lead their own bandwagon, and compete for attention/followers, so they have to out-do each other. As sure as sunshine, someone called for the removal of George Washington’s name from a Chicago park. Yes, Washington was a slaveowner, and yes, that was a terrible thing. But, the nation that he and his brethren fought to create has saved and bettered more lives than any other nation in history, and only a preening jackass would try to dishonor his name thus.
Thus, we bear witness to twin phenomena. One is the “scrubbing” of (some) history from the public square. The other is the dilution and corruption of historical narratives to serve partisan agendas. Any historical figure who isn’t a paragon of perfection (and none are) will inevitably be denounced by someone trying to make noise. History will be rewritten by applying a binary litmus test based on the social justice standards of today. Correction – some history. Under an even-handed application of social-justice outrage, FDR should be as reviled as Wilson suddenly became at Princeton, due to the aforementioned Japanese-American internment. Robert Byrd, who was a Klansman before he became a Senator, should be de-memorialized. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a race eugenicist and should be reviled. Rachel Carson, whose misbegotten book led to the deaths of millions of the world’s poorest, should be a demon, not a saint.
In such cases, the revisionism is to be quiet about it and hope that people forget it happened (FDR), trot out a moral scale and claim atonement (Byrd), rewrite the books to scrub away the bad parts (Sanger), or flat-out deny the facts. The same goes for the Southern Democrats who resisted the Civil Rights movement and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The standard rebuttal is that those Democrats have nothing in common with today’s Democrats. However, offering that rebuttal also means foregoing claims of historical connection to other historical Democrats. In other words, you don’t get to embrace FDR as a Democratic Party hero while pretending that the 21 Senators and 91 Congressmen who voted against the Civil Rights Act didn’t exist. Of course, the point is to know history, not to bend it to an agenda.
This wouldn’t be the first time that history has been scrubbed. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler had people literally excised from historical photographs and records. Not exactly role models, they (although there is a statue of Lenin in Seattle, confirming my earlier point about socialism getting better treatment than fascism). Unfortunately, it seems that there are many in America who would emulate their behavior, in this and other ways. We are on a very slippery slope, and at the bottom is totalitarianism that is, in essence, no different than the worst examples of history. The shame is, the closer we get there, the less history we’ll be permitted to learn from to warn us away.
What’s the answer to the confederate statues? Some, it seems to me, should probably be removed to museums, but that’s a decision that should be made at a local level. If that’s the right thing to do, then it should be done regardless of slippery slope concerns. But, and I emphasize BUT, we mustn’t allow the mob to take control of the debate. We mustn’t grant the loudest voices the heckler’s veto, and allow them to rewrite the history books to suit their agendas. George Santayana and George Orwell have warned us, and we’ve heard the warnings. The real danger to the Republic isn’t Trump in this case, despite his clumsy handling and bouts of moral equivalence. It’s the angry mob, the mob that stifles our voices and rewrites our history books. You’ve been warned. Again.
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