I really don't get the antisemitism at these so-called Southern rallies either. Jews have been in the South since before George Washington spoke to the Hebrew Congregation in Savannah on his trip down here. Jewish gentlemen fought duels in the South with everyone else, proving that in the old days they were considered the equals of everyone else. This antisemitism isn't Southern heritage, it's a foreign import. We are well-off without it.
As a matter of fact there are certain aspects of Southern heritage we are well-off without, and it's been hard work overcoming them. I mean the racist aspects, of course. The last thing I want to see is anyone trying to bring that poison back into a culture that has labored for generations to sweat it out.
UPDATE:
This is what I'm talking about.
All my life I've heard advocates of flying the Confederate flag say that it's a matter of "Heritage, not Hate." I think most of them I've heard saying that believed it. I see the Confederate flag flying all the time in rural Georgia, most often alongside (and subordinate to) the American flag. I think most of those people would have an explosive reaction to somebody bringing a Nazi swastika into their neighborhoods.
How do you make the argument that the Confederate flag is not the equivalent of the swastika, though, with these Klansmen and neo-Nazis marching them side-by-side? They portray themselves as defenders of the South, but they are the living symbol of the argument critics of the South love to make. I have no use for them, and would be glad if they did not feel welcome to show their faces again.
How do you make the argument that the Confederate flag is not the equivalent of the swastika, though, with these Klansmen and neo-Nazis marching them side-by-side?
ReplyDeleteWe stop letting the Left define the terms of reference. It's the same dishonest bigotry by which the Left claims the alt-right are the same as Republicans and Conservatives. It'll be a hard slog; the Left has been at it for a long time with the Confederate flag. And some of the audience do see the Confederate flag as a symbol of another outcome, even if they don't see a connection with Nazi-ism.
Eric Hines
Soros? More Jewish tricks by the pupetmaster?
ReplyDeleteCar was completely tinted? Hmm...
Do we have a source to confirm the antifa ran themselves over?
Leftists….
Gentle and kind….
Kind of like abortionists.
A lot of frustration and rage beneath the surface. The PROGRESSIVE LIBERAL LEFT are about to REAP what they have SOWED under "OBOZO" for the last 8+ years.
I, for one, welcome the street battles to come.
Antifa thugs attack Trump supporters at Trump rallies.
Antifa thugs riot in Seatle
Antifa thugs shut down Milo and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars damage
Antifa thugs threaten to murder Ann Coulter
Antifa thugs riot on Inauguration day
Antifa thugs try to shut down protests against removal of statute of Robert E. Lee
I am sorry, but if the antifa thugs had left the demonstrators alone, nobody would have died.
But today, the left absolutely insists of silencing ALL opposition and they will use force to do it.
I blame the Democrats!
-Mississippi
Diversionary Tactics: Maybe Democrats are fighting so hard because of this.....
ReplyDeleteMore than 3.5 Million People in U.S. Registered to Vote than are American Adult Citizens
Ghost Voters Haunting America
http://www.unionleader.com/column/Deroy-Murdock-Ghost-voters-are-haunting-America-08112017
Remember What Dad29 brought to our attention not to long ago about the nature of Democrats and they are probably up to there usual dirty tricks in Virginia as its there nature.
.......I always wondered why the Democrats were such mollycoddlers of the criminal class, and then the obvious answer dawned on me: crooks, grifters, rapists, thieves, con men, welfare cheats, burglars, wife beaters, flim flam artists, antifa scum, homicidal maniacs, gang bangers, terrorists, and child molesters are all natural Democratic constituencies, so they're just pandering to their voter base......
http://dad29.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-d-constituency.html
-Mississippi
We stop letting the Left define the terms of reference.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the Left setting the terms of reference. It's those idiots marching with swastikas and Confederate battle flags. That's what's setting a very clear reference between these two things.
This isn't about the Left.
Soros? More Jewish tricks by the pupetmaster?
Unlikely in the extreme. Under the circumstances, raising that charge without evidence could hardly be more inappropriate. "The Jews" are even less the issue than the Left. They aren't the ones marching down Southern streets with swastikas, or talking about putting people in ovens.
If you can only see enemies when they're coming from one direction, you're sure to get flanked.
another take:
ReplyDeleteThe Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia and the Governor of Virginia both begged for and got a rampaging mob to attack a patriotic rally, and used their control over the Charlottesville PD and the Virginia State Police, respectively, to have them to stand down to let it happen. The mob got so out of control that they were violently swarming a car with Ohio plates that was trying to leave, and the driver, to save his life, rammed into the mob, killing one of the people in it.
Why do you think Terry McAuliffe sent out the “stay away” tweet well before the scheduled start of the event? Because he knew what he was up to.
If there’s any kind of paper trail, then I could easily see both McAuliffe and the Mayor being strung up on Federal charges of civil rights violations.
https://countenance.wordpress.com/2017/08/12/ill-tell-you-what-happened/
-Mississippi
Do we have photos or videos of the guys with swastikas and Confederate battle flags using baseball bats, or driving cars or fighting? They were peacefully protesting and had permits.
ReplyDeleteCould flag carriers have been local nutbars who get the rocks off agitating folks, or could they be plants? Your awful excited by flag carries. How is carrying a flag a crime? Is it not protected free speech? Given, the Nazi flag is out of place. But not the confederate flag.
The confederate flag is the culture & people of my deceased wife and she always flew the American flag but loved the confederate memorials as those were her people.
There are many more like her.
Remember, After the civil war defeat, they picked up the pieces, rebuilt, honored their dead family members and put up memorials to whom they believed were heros
For Example. Robert E Lee and others.
I love the southern culture and its intellectual heritage but to many of people I am just a Yankee. ( Only my one Grandfather was a Yankee, All the rest were over in Germany fighting amongst themselves when the civil war occurred and arrived here right after WW1.)
Want a war? Tearing down those memorials is spitting in their face and telling them they are a defeated people and will be forgotten and erased, thats the fast track to war. Thats why this is the Democrats war.
I would say, FUCK YOU too.
You hardly have to tell that to me of all people. I've been making a version of that argument in this space since 2003.
ReplyDeleteBut if you want it to stick, the people carrying Confederate flags have to be fighting the Nazis -- not marching beside them. There needs to be a split between the people who really mean "Heritage, not hate," and the ones who really mean "Hate."
It shouldn't be a stretch. The South had no trouble showing up to fight the original Nazis. Nor, I'll wager, would ninety-nine in a hundred Southerners today mind the chance to fight a Nazi. This isn't who we are, but it's who we look like after today, and if you don't want that to stay true you'd better stand up for what's right.
We stop letting the Left define the terms of reference.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the Left setting the terms of reference. It's those idiots marching with swastikas and Confederate battle flags.
Yes, it is. The idiots (your generous term) are just (useful) idiots. The Left sets the terms of reference by tying them to anything right of the Left. We emphasize the Left's mendacity by pointing out that it's the Left that incites violence with their rhetoric; their ad hominem attacks; their acts of violence, recent examples of which are their physical attacks at some of Trump's campaign rallies, their attacks on speakers and professors on campuses, the counter-demonstrators who did violence this afternoon.
We point out the racism and sexism inherent in the Left's affirmative action policies, done deliberately from LBJ on, the cynically disparate impact of Left welfare policies carefully designed to keep minorities trapped in the Left's welfare cage, complete with the welfare cliff designed in.
We point out the idiocy of PC, of free speech so long as it's the correct speech, of safe spaces, of microaggressions, of uncomfortable debate subjects being banned.
Broaden the argument; it can't be about just the Confederate flag; it needs about everything the Left does to trap minorities for the sake of the Left's political power.
Eric Hines
Grim, read this post by z-man, and especially watch the video by the
ReplyDelete"cloud people" filming the folks from "fly over country".
( Listen to the comment about the "Dreidel " in the video- Funny, that is such a jewish comment, not really an American comment. )
Interesting comment.
......It helps to understand the underlying motivation. The Antifa crowd are parasites utterly dependent upon a host for survival. For them, the pushback against endless government handouts is an existential threat. They truly believe that they will die if their government host is, in any way, diminished. Worse is that they somehow believe that they can fight. Parasites feed, they do not possess the skill to fight. But they can shriek loudly.....
Pull the plug on their funding is the key. Cry like the wicked witch of the west getting a bath they will.
Just detach them from the public tit.
The Motley Monk has a post on how to detach the parasites from the Gov't tit.
So good in fact, it brings tears of joy to my eyes. For your reading pleasure, read the tale of David Binkle at the following link. Its like picking ticks off your dog.
From the "School lunch" file: It's "all about the children"
http://richard-jacobs-blog.com/omnibus/august-12th-2017
.
oops here is the link to the z-man post - sorry about that
ReplyDeleteThe Coming Violence of the Left
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=11203
We must win these battles because of this
http://www.usdebtclock.org
-Mississippi
How does cutting Antifa's funding get rid of these Nazis? I'm clearly not understanding your argument, Mr. Hines & Mississippi. This conversation doesn't make any sense to me.
ReplyDeleteGrim: "Look at the damage being done by these guys marching down a Southern street with a swastika while chanting Nazi slogans!"
Response: "We must punish their opponents!"
Their opponents may be awful, and certainly Antifa are a bunch of communists masquerading as anarchists. But they're not the ones making it plausible to argue, today, that the Confederate flag and the Nazi flag are equivalent. Standing up to the Left is not the answer to this particular problem, even if it's the answer to many other problems.
My whole life their has always been Nazis. Bogey Men
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly think all those folks marching in the video are Nazis?
A couple fools maybe.
I do not see it as that.
I do not think Americans will fall for the fake narative
They hate MSM Establishment Media
They are on guard against fake news.
To figure out the truth takes work.
Grim, great post. Spot on- if it's "heritage not hate" you shouldn't be walking next to the biggest hate symbol in the modern world.
ReplyDeleteGrim: "Look at the damage being done by these guys marching down a Southern street with a swastika while chanting Nazi slogans!"
ReplyDeleteResponse: "We must punish their opponents!"
Clearly, you don't understand my argument. I'm not aware of anyone who's arguing that we should punish the opponents of these guys marching down a Southern street. "These guys" should be allowed to march: free speech, and besides that, some messages, like these guys', get their and their message's foolishness fully exposed when the message is spoken out loud. If you're thinking "punish the Left" is punishing "these guys'" opponents, you're mistaken on two fronts.
One is that the Left are not their opponents; they're active users of "these guys" as tools. The other is that no one I know of in this thread is arguing to punish the Left, only to expose its mendacity and fundamental bigotry.
Do that, and the dishonest (or ignorant, depending on who's doing it) pairing of the Confederate flag with Nazism will largely disappear (only largely because we'll always have idiots and bigots), and the conversation can move to where it belongs: between those who legitimately see the flag as a matter of heritage (and of history, I add) and those who legitimately see it as a symbol of repression. Then that conflict can reach a resolution.
Eric Hines
Like it or not, the confederate flag is now commonly used by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers not only in the US, but in Europe also.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an anomaly or coincidence.
We are getting a lot of anonymous posters on this thread. House rules are that it's ok to post under a pen name, handle, or whatever. However, you do have to sign your posts and stick to the same one. It's on the honor system, except that I reserve the right to delete comments that refuse to obey this rule.
ReplyDeleteAlso, no insults may be directed at other commenters. Those rules have served us well going on a decadent and a half.
Mr. Hines,
ReplyDeleteI still think that the Nazis are a severable problem needing a separate solution. Defunding the left isn't going to solve the problem of the Klan flags down the road. The left doesn't have much play out here. This is our problem, no matter what the left is or isn't doing.
More recent anonymous poster: I don't think that we can stop Nazis from using symbols. What must be done, by the Heritage crowd if they are serious about rejecting hate, is to draw a clear line. If they can't show that Nazis are unwelcome among them, I don't see how they can continue to maintain their position. Serious people do: Jim Webb has written against what he calls the Nazification of the Confederacy. If that's to continue to be a serious position, a clear and public rejection of these Nazis is both necessary and proper.
ReplyDeleteRE: "Jim Webb has written against what he calls the Nazification of the Confederacy"
I think Eric Hines addressed that (preemptively) head-on with this line:
"The Left sets the terms of reference by tying them to anything right of the Left."
I believe the point is that nuts with swastika flags think they are at home in an environment with Confederate flags because the left has been so successful at depicting anything "right of themselves" as "nazis". I think that is a valid point.
This is not a result of homegrown southern neo-Nazis showing their strength, but idiots who mistakenly believe the Confederacy and the Nazis are similar because that is what the left has pounded into the popular culture.
Any attempt to rectify this gap in knowledge is akin to a whisper competing with a bullhorn for attention until the left is removed from dominating positions in entertainment, education, and civil service.
To follow up on my own comment:
ReplyDeleteAny attempt to rectify this gap in knowledge is akin to a whisper competing with a bullhorn for attention until the left is removed from dominating positions in entertainment, education, and civil service.
I don't think its worth the time and effort to be the whisper. Should you actually succeed in decoupling the Nazi == Confederacy lie, the left would simply move on to another topic with their bullhorn and reset the fight. Its whack-a-mole trying to negate their revisionist lies. Forget it. Remove their lips from the bullhorn and be done with it.
Defunding the left....
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about defunding the Left, only about exposing its mendacity with our own bullhorns speaking facts and specific achievements, and logic.
And using their own words: quoting LBJ and his remark about CRA and voting Democratic, quoting Wilson and his claim that segregation deserves the gratitude of the segregatees, quoting Croly and his contempt for ordinary Americans; quoting TRoosevelt and his contempt for the American economy; quoting Clinton and Obama and their contempt for ordinary Americans, for law, for police; quoting BLM and their contempt for the lives of anyone other than their chosen group; quoting the campus Left and their demand for renewed segregation; quoting Holder and Weingarten, et al., on their contempt for educating minority children; and on and on and on.
Eric Hines
Ironically, a red flag, with yellow lettering, no symbol, just
ReplyDelete"National Socialist Workers Party", would get full support from the left.
This is not a political struggle- it is a religious war. Given enough latitude, AKA stand down orders, the same rules of combat and quarter will apply.
How does cutting Antifa's funding get rid of these Nazis?
ReplyDeleteI believe the argument, Grim, is that these Nazi or pseudo-Nazi fools are a reaction to Antifa and other left fascism.
- Before we starting seeing violent antifas attacking conservatives—including completely anodyne conservatives—we didn't see a lot of people marching around with these flags.
- The protest this weekend was specifically in response to an attempt by progressives to throw the South's history down the memory hole.
- As far as I can tell, all the recent "violent clashes" have begun with antifas determined—explicitly, they say this in so many words—to prevent conservatives, Trump supporters, and anyone else from assembling and expressing their opinions. This goes back at least to Trump campaign rallies last year, in places like Chicago and San Jose, but the tactics have been used against conservative speakers (and centrist speakers, for that matter) and ordinary people holding rallies (thinking of the one in San Diego).
The conclusion, therefore, is that if we have fewer violent antifas roaming around attacking people with practical impunity, we'll have fewer idiots (either trolling the antifas or deciding they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb) going around waving Nazi symbols. I find the argument compelling, although admittedly this is partly because I'm sick of seeing violent fascist groups attacking people on the streets of my city, with very little pushback from the authorities.
How do you make the argument that the Confederate flag is not the equivalent of the swastika, though, with these Klansmen and neo-Nazis marching them side-by-side?
ReplyDeleteSeems quite simple to me. Does one usually see them side by side, or is this a fairly rare occurrence?
To argue any other way is to embrace blaming all people in a group for the actions of a very few. And it assumes a fact very much NOT in evidence - that all people in the group think exactly alike. Common sense should tell us that has almost never been the case with any group of people.
One more thought: I have seen many, many homes and even cars displaying a Confederate flag in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteI have NEVER seen a swastika flag beside it until now.
Why would any sensible person elevate a rarity above the vast majority of cases.
I've never seen them flown side by side before either.
ReplyDeleteThe usual argument people make about the Confederate flag being like the swastika, though, doesn't depend on the being flown together. It goes like this:
'The Nazi state was evil because it was founded on evils: ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Confederate state, similarly, was founded on evil. It came to be for the express purpose of defending and preserving slavery. Furthermore, its founders harbored a vision of expanding their state throughout the slave-holding regions in the Caribbean and Latin America. Thus, like the Nazi state, it was an expansionist power founded on evil. Its symbols should be considered just as shameful as the swastika.'
The argument isn't wrong on the facts. Where it goes wrong is in not recognizing that the Confederate flag was itself the first step toward national reconciliation. In the first generation, people who survived the war flew it instead of the Confederacy's national flags, thus honoring the warriors and the war dead rather than the political cause they fought for. This was acceptable to the victors, as it allowed for some ground of healing instead of forcing people to accept a permanent posture of shame (which would have provoked an even bigger backlash, and thus an even bigger governance crisis, than was already the case).
That monument destroyed last night was built in the 1920s. In 1915, Gettysburg was 50 years old. By the 1920s, the Civil War generation was where we are with the WWII generation. Monuments were going up out of a kind of romanticized memory of the war, but also out of a heartfelt sense by those who had grown old but were remembering the boys who died alongside them.
None of that matters to the people destroying these monuments, of course. They're not worried about reopening old wounds. They're not thinking about the feelings of the people who put up the monuments (who are dead, anyway); they're only thinking of their own feelings, and the feelings of others on their side. Those feelings are valid, of course -- I understand that black Americans might be conflicted by seeing a statue to Confederate soldiers.
All the same, everybody has feelings. Feelings aren't rational. You go tearing down these monuments, you're going to provoke strong feelings in others. Some of that may be what's been on display in Virginia this last weekend. I wouldn't expect to see the last of it while people are vandalizing and destroying the monuments these people see as representative of their heritage and ancestry.
Those feelings are valid, of course
ReplyDeleteNow that strikes me as nonsense, if by "valid" you mean "understandable and honorable". There's nothing honorable about power-lust, or about the desire to crush the ordinary people of your country, or about the glee such people feel in destruction—both the physical destruction and the tearing up of social peace—or about the pleasure they feel in the helplessless of those around them to prevent them.
I am not sure why you're associating these people with "black Americans who might be conflicted". The conflicting feelings of black Southerners about the symbols of their region are reasonable. The feelings these people have are not.
There are times to bend over backwards to excuse the malice of others. This does not seem to be one of them, both because one needs to go beyond bending over backwards into outright fabulating to do it in this case, and because such forebearance, rather than calming them and bringing them to reason, has only served to inflame them to greater outrage and greater outrages.
At this point, I expect to see the Jefferson Memorial dynamited in my lifetime, by the authorities, while fascist mobs threaten anyone who fails to cheer. And the Declaration he wrote declared anathema. If this progression isn't stopped by someone, that's exactly what will happen.
Well, at least some of the people who pulled down the statue last night were black -- I was thinking of the photo I saw of several of them lounging around the fallen statue, giving the Black Power fist salute. I find their sentiments understandable, though I imagine they don't find mine to be so in return.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, I expect to see the Jefferson Memorial dynamited in my lifetime, by the authorities, while fascist mobs threaten anyone who fails to cheer. And the Declaration he wrote declared anathema.
We'll still have the Declaration of Arbroath, I suppose.
Trump was speaking about that this afternoon. He kept mentioning Washington and Jefferson. He's quite right about them both. Washington had slaves that fled to the British navy to escape his treatment of them; Jefferson had children via illicit sexual relationships (very arguably rape no matter how consensual they may have appeared to be, given that it was in conditions of slavery) that he then left in a condition of slavery. Both were great men, titans in human history, but there's no getting around the fact that -- like Lee -- they were slave owners. Like Lee, they were viewed as a traitor by the government to whom they had initially owed loyalty, and from which they sought to secede. Trump is completely right about all that.
So what do we do? Celebrate treason? Yes, I think, if it is good treason -- I have a whole page devoted to doing that which you can find by clicking on the flag at the top of the main page.
Excuse slavery? That's harder. If I were going to discuss it, I would begin by pointing out that most Americans don't own slaves today chiefly because of the industrial revolution -- not because we're really morally a better people than all of human history, but because we developed technologies that made slavery unnecessary. (Even in the High Middle Ages, when slavery was abolished in Christian Europe, unfree labor persisted in the form of serfdom. Someone had to be made to work the farms, or civilization fell apart.)
Automation is freeing us from exploiting labor in the same way. So are you better than the generation before you, that lived off exploitative labor relationships? Were they better than the ones who forced slaves to labor? Or is it the fact that, really, we mostly behave better because we have the luxury of an easier mode of production? I suspect that if the machines ever stop turning in a permanent way, some form of unfree labor will be right around the corner. Just as self-righteous Progressives wink at the harsh conditions in Chinese iPhone camps, or the actual slave labor being used to make batteries for their electric cars, I think it's the case that most people aren't any better than their ancestors at all. They're just luckier.
So this is the "heritage" to celebrate with monuments:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story-of-all-those-confederate-statues/
-bc
That argument doesn't fit the facts very well. I think the story has as much to do with the veterans of the war coming to the point of dying as anything else; we start putting up stone monuments when we are losing the living ones we've had with us.
ReplyDeleteIf you were 21 in 1860, you were 61 in 1900 and 81 in 1920. So that big bump tracks with the expected mortality of the warriors just fine.
If it were about racial tension, as Drum and Vox think, I'd expect to see the spike a few years later. It looks like the big spike ends in 1910; the second founding of the KKK wasn't until 1915, by which point it's fallen off sharply. The worst race riots of the period were in 1919, by which point we're off on the declining tail well past the spike.
So I think they're just wrong about that.
They're probably right about the smaller bump nearer in time to us, though. Confederate symbols were used heavily during desegregation.
ReplyDelete