Tom Paine 1949
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- Mar 15, 2020
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I wrote this originally as a reply to a comment, seemingly now removed, which highlighted the following Federalist Papers article, which blames the Democratic Party for being the historical party of racism and the KKK:
The KKK was and always will represent the extreme racist fringe of U.S. politics. After the Civil War, along with soft core “Lost Cause” nostalgia for the slave Confederacy, it was the Klan that always most clearly symbolized the “original sin” of white supremacist thinking and reactionary terror. Of course in the North ethnic competition and racism had its own dynamic, which rarely dressed up in white robes or flew Confederate flags, since Klan regalia represented resistance and treason to the nation.
There were many other more modern forms of repression, embodied for instance in anti-labor industrial union busting and imperialist oppression overseas, that the Klan was not centrally involved in. The growing power in society of banks, industrialists, monopolies, imperialists, these did not at all depend on the Klan, and their interests were represented mostly by ... the Republican Party.
The Klan had a new rebirth after Woodrow Wilson brought a fake Southern-gilded Democratic liberal progressivism to D.C., and the KKK reached its greatest influence after WWI in Congress and the country as a whole. That was when union-busting, race riots against returning “uppity” black soldiers, the first anti-Bolshevik scare, and competition for jobs in the North followed black migration from the South. At the same time unresolved interimperialist and national rivalries put fascist movements in Europe on the march. The backward Jim Crow South was completely run by the Democratic Party in those days.
The stage for the Civil Rights Movement was set slowly and only possible after the fight and victory against fascism by a unique U.S. immigrant “melting pot” and New Deal “democratic culture.” It also required the economic progress of the post-WWII “American Century.” Even then, the victory over Jim Crow and legal racism was won only grudgingly, and it was partly due to U.S. competition with communism in Africa and the emerging colonial world.
Of course the economic and social effects of centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy could hardly be overcome in one or two generations. The fact that today the old Republican Party of Lincoln serves as Donald Trump’s party and attracts aggrieved and often openly racist whites, while the old party of the KKK and the New Deal wins most African-American support and elected our first “half black” President — all this shows that issues of race in society are still deeply entrenched and alive.
We should all work to see to it that the final struggles against racism and white supremacy are peaceful, but it is clear that there are elements in our society that want violence, that find encouraging division and even armed confrontations serve their interests. Opportunist politicians and demagogues, including our present President, have played a horrible role in enflaming these divisions.
Of course today such divisions are stirred up without resorting to wearing Klan regalia. It is easy for political opportunists to serve the powers that be and ignore desperate economic and social inequality. Men like Trump appeal to backwardness one moment and use inclusive rhetoric the next, demanding only “law and order,” and that everyone rally around supposedly traditional “American values.” But those traditional values are captured in part in the photos of the KKK marching down D.C. streets in 1924.
Backwardness is also captured in the cheering for an underage vigilante armed illegally with an AR-15 out after curfew in a neighborhood 22 miles from home, bringing anything but “peace” to the people he shot, to himself, and to our nation.
Liberals Aren’t Going To Like This Newly-Discovered Photo Of 1924 Dem Convention…
The TRUE history of the Democratic Party
thefederalistpapers.org
The KKK was and always will represent the extreme racist fringe of U.S. politics. After the Civil War, along with soft core “Lost Cause” nostalgia for the slave Confederacy, it was the Klan that always most clearly symbolized the “original sin” of white supremacist thinking and reactionary terror. Of course in the North ethnic competition and racism had its own dynamic, which rarely dressed up in white robes or flew Confederate flags, since Klan regalia represented resistance and treason to the nation.
There were many other more modern forms of repression, embodied for instance in anti-labor industrial union busting and imperialist oppression overseas, that the Klan was not centrally involved in. The growing power in society of banks, industrialists, monopolies, imperialists, these did not at all depend on the Klan, and their interests were represented mostly by ... the Republican Party.
The Klan had a new rebirth after Woodrow Wilson brought a fake Southern-gilded Democratic liberal progressivism to D.C., and the KKK reached its greatest influence after WWI in Congress and the country as a whole. That was when union-busting, race riots against returning “uppity” black soldiers, the first anti-Bolshevik scare, and competition for jobs in the North followed black migration from the South. At the same time unresolved interimperialist and national rivalries put fascist movements in Europe on the march. The backward Jim Crow South was completely run by the Democratic Party in those days.
The stage for the Civil Rights Movement was set slowly and only possible after the fight and victory against fascism by a unique U.S. immigrant “melting pot” and New Deal “democratic culture.” It also required the economic progress of the post-WWII “American Century.” Even then, the victory over Jim Crow and legal racism was won only grudgingly, and it was partly due to U.S. competition with communism in Africa and the emerging colonial world.
Of course the economic and social effects of centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy could hardly be overcome in one or two generations. The fact that today the old Republican Party of Lincoln serves as Donald Trump’s party and attracts aggrieved and often openly racist whites, while the old party of the KKK and the New Deal wins most African-American support and elected our first “half black” President — all this shows that issues of race in society are still deeply entrenched and alive.
We should all work to see to it that the final struggles against racism and white supremacy are peaceful, but it is clear that there are elements in our society that want violence, that find encouraging division and even armed confrontations serve their interests. Opportunist politicians and demagogues, including our present President, have played a horrible role in enflaming these divisions.
Of course today such divisions are stirred up without resorting to wearing Klan regalia. It is easy for political opportunists to serve the powers that be and ignore desperate economic and social inequality. Men like Trump appeal to backwardness one moment and use inclusive rhetoric the next, demanding only “law and order,” and that everyone rally around supposedly traditional “American values.” But those traditional values are captured in part in the photos of the KKK marching down D.C. streets in 1924.
Backwardness is also captured in the cheering for an underage vigilante armed illegally with an AR-15 out after curfew in a neighborhood 22 miles from home, bringing anything but “peace” to the people he shot, to himself, and to our nation.
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