Learning From the Germans: Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Neiman

Joshism

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Of course we know that even at the unnamed site someone will eventually wake up as to what's happening -- that is, the increased apologist moderating and enforcement there, but don't hold your breath.
It's tough to keep a clean house if you let Lost Causers and Confederate sympathizers on the moderation team.
 

byron ed

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It's tough to keep a clean house if you let Lost Causers and Confederate sympathizers on the moderation team.
Yet they have played it with a subtle hand and with much patience, and congratulations to them on that. Notice that it's not been until they perceived the tipping point have they begun unilaterally deleting posts and initiating campaigns of banishment (marginally effecting forum rules to do so) against anyone that seems to be gaining popular traction in apologist push-back (by comparison to certain apologists there regularly being allowed to post purile word bites and direct personal insults unabated).

But friends, notice now the exquisite timing of the moment. Generally in the Country, the sad little Confederate apologist world is literally crumbling as we speak.

I'm trusting that at some point sooner than later the the owners of the site will recognize the manipulation they've allowed themselves to fall into. It's hard to remain so blissfully naive not to notice the cadre of the more intelligent posters that are giving up on the site. Yet bless their hearts, its been a great site despite all that, let's admit it.
 
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Jim Klag

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The sad little Confederate apologist world is literally crumbling as we speak.
That will make the site which shall not be named more reactionary not less and the owners sympathize with the "manipulators" and are not naive. They want an all-rebel piss on you Yankees site. That has been clear for a long time.
 

Matt McKeon

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Anyway, Neiman then shifts her focus to the United States, heading for Oxford, Mississippi, and then Nesoba County, location of the infamous lynching of Emment Till.

She spends a lot of time with well meaning people who are trying to change things in Mississippi. Before this spring, I would have thought it was a fool's errand, but, not for the first time, maybe I'm wrong.

She focuses more on attempts to remember the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, rather than the Civil War. She spends some time at "Ole Miss" and their attempt to downplay the "Rebel" iconography. She meets with folks from the desperately poor hamlets of the Delta, whose ambitions seem unbelievably basic for 21st century American state: renovate the local school, modern equipment and wifi. The structures associated with Till's murder, some are being repurposed as museums.

Lately with the vandalism and destruction of some Confederate statues has been in the news. It has been greeted as the fall of western civilization. The
Emment Till monument has been vandalized for years, shot full of bullets, hammered, spray painted, knocked down and has had to be replaced multiple times. Western Civilization however wasn't threatened by all this violence directed towards the memorial of a murdered child.
 

Matt McKeon

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Neiman sums up with a very positive picture of Germany. By acknowledging its terrible past during the Third Reich, Germany has emerged stronger, more generous, more tolerant, more influential, more healthy than the years of "be silent and forget" under Chancellor Andenauer. She acknowledges the rise of white nationalist movements.

She urges a similar reckoning with America's own dark history, towards a new birth of freedom, a nation "at peace with itself, that can live with in conscience."
 

Joshism

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Lately with the vandalism and destruction of some Confederate statues has been in the news. It has been greeted as the fall of western civilization. The
Emment Till monument has been vandalized for years, shot full of bullets, hammered, spray painted, knocked down and has had to be replaced multiple times. Western Civilization however wasn't threatened by all this violence directed towards the memorial of a murdered child.
I think vandalism of any monument or marker is deeply troubling. Or of any object, not even one of historical significance, even done with zero political motive. That casual grafitti and vandalism has been long tolerated helped get us to the point where we are now.

Why was Emmett Till lynched? He (alleged) did something a portion of society considered wrong. Those offended felt authorities would not act, or they were impatient and didn't want to wait.

Why are statues being vandalized and torn down by mobs? They represent something portion of society considers wrong. Those offended feel authorities will not act, or they are tired of waiting for action.

The groups are of opposite beliefs. The lynching of a person is certainly worse than the lynching of an inanimate object. But they come from the same place: an angry mob taking the law into their own hands.
 

byron ed

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Throw into the mix that tearing down a statue is a kind of exciting activity, and imho this current spate of tear-downs is as much about that as anything. In ordinary times three knuckleheads hitting up a statue on some otherwise boring night is too risky, but with the cover of current public outrage and crowds the activity comes with no particular consequence -- i.e. "yeeha, I'll bring a sledgehammer and some beers and meet you there, dude!"

Same thing with looting. If it can be done under cover of "political outrage" then what the heck, "we can use my truck."

I've seen enough over the last five decades to to know that for some it takes nothing more than opportunity to do the bad deed. Their political motivation? Pffft. "Whatever the banner says dude, yeah I'm for that."

I've seen anti-war protests on Campus up close and personal. The politically-valid and responsible folks soon get pushed aside by those who make more noise, duping the crowd with far less noble motives. The police and prosecutors understand how this works, which is why the cry "Defund the Police" soon pops up at these marches and tear-down events. It's consequence insurance, and it does work because civic leaders have no choice but to address the issue lest they be labeled racist. It definitely works, I'm just sayin'
 
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Jim Klag

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After having their people killed or injured by the authorities in several incidents, people tired of being treated as second-class citizens are in the streets protesting, carrying provocative banners, tearing down monuments, committing acts of vandalism and destroying private and public property. They march and chant and take over parts of cities and towns and issue a manifesto to stick it to the establishment. And the people in the movement give themselves a name - The Sons Of Liberty and the time is the 1770's.
 

byron ed

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... A functioning society cannot tolerate mobs? But it can tolerate lynching, and did for a century.
Hold on there. If by "tolerating" you mean not being able to do much about it then ok, but don't slight that lynching has been opposed and actively criminalized in this country at least since Reconstruction and Grant.

Functioning society generally has not "tolerated" lynching. Functioning society operates with laws that prevent rounding up everyone suspected of lynching and locking them up forever. So let's focus: it's the disfunctional portion of society that's tolerated lynching, including those duly-elected politicians that have over time enabled the criminal activity called lynching, and those that have voted for them.

Society can't tolerate pulling down statues? It could tolerate Till's memorial being vandalized and knocked down for decades.
Functioning society didn't "tolerate" Till's memorial being vandalized and knocked down for decades. It was a criminal act every time it happened. Again you confuse tolerating with not being able to do much about it in a legal way. We're not North Korea, China or Russia. We require proof and due process. This is no longer the time of the Earp brothers.

Armed militias at Gettysburg, driving out legitimate visitors? It can tolerate that.
As long as those armed militias aren't breaking a law then of course functioning society tolerates it. You confuse your not liking it to mean it should not be tolerated. It should be tolerated, this is the U.S. The legitimate visitors felt they should leave in the face of all the unpleasantry, no actual injustice in that. They could have spined-up and stayed but didn't, and neither would I have. It's like leaving when a storm comes. You go back at a better time.

Choking people to death? Yeah, its okay, I guess. If the right people are doing the choking, and the right people are getting choked.
Of course you're being cynical. You absolutely know that such activity is not ok in functioning society generally. As is clear, that kind of activity has been deemed criminal and is being prosecuted. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. You and I and and functioning society generally do not tolerate choking. We are completely blameless and innocent of it ourselves. Again you confuse not being able to do much about it a legal way with "tolerating" those incidents.

Society is crumbling!
Not nearly. The disfunctional portion of society is on display at the moment.
 
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Matt McKeon

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Hold on there. If by "tolerating" you mean not being able to do much about it then ok, but don't slight that lynching has been opposed and actively criminalized in this country at least since Reconstruction and Grant.

Functioning society generally has not "tolerated" lynching. Functioning society operates with laws that prevent rounding up everyone suspected of lynching and locking them up forever. So let's focus: it's the disfunctional portion of society that's tolerated lynching, including those duly-elected politicians that have over time enabled the criminal activity called lynching, and those that have voted for them.



Functioning society didn't "tolerate" Till's memorial being vandalized and knocked down for decades. It was a criminal act every time it happened. Again you confuse tolerating with not being able to do much about it in a legal way. We're not North Korea, China or Russia. We require proof and due process. This is no longer the time of the Earp brothers.



As long as those armed militias aren't breaking a law then of course functioning society tolerates it. You confuse your not liking it to mean it should not be tolerated. It should be tolerated, this is the U.S. The legitimate visitors felt they should leave in the face of all the unpleasantry, no actual injustice in that. They could have spined-up and stayed but didn't, and neither would I have. It's like leaving when a storm comes. You go back at a better time.



Of course you're being cynical. You absolutely know that such activity is not ok in functioning society generally. As is clear, that kind of activity has been deemed criminal and is being prosecuted. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. You and I and and functioning society generally do not tolerate choking. We are completely blameless and innocent of it ourselves. Again you confuse not being able to do much about it a legal way with "tolerating" those incidents.



Not nearly. The disfunctional portion of society is on display at the moment.
I'm sorry but lynching people, thousands of them, was an utterly acceptable tolerated activity. It broke the law, and society was cool with these periodic public murders for one hundred years. Somebody knocks over a statue of Jefferson Davis, and its "what is the country coming to?"

People uses legal means to remove Confederate statues from New Orleans, and I had to sit through, "It's like ISIS!" Yahoos illegally vandalize to a memorial of Emmett Till, a child who didn't kill anyone or commit treason or fight for slavery, for decades, and its ho hum, its a day ending with y.

On the 4th of July, an associate pastor named Trent Somes from Hanover PA went to Gettysburg to visit the grave of an ancestor. He was wearing a BLM t shirt. He was surrounded by fifty or so white supremacists. The Park police removed Somes from the Park, because they "couldn't guarentee his safety." The KKK and wingnuts were there because they had been conned into thinking a wave of the mysterious antifa were going to descend on the park. Other communities have suffered a visitation of similar gangs of gullible weirdos. A similar con had duped these types to Gettysburg before, years ago. Stupid, racist and well armed. Is the nation going to fall? Nope, everything's cool.

As far as "not doing much about it in a legal way" No kidding. But now people are doing something about it.
 

O' Be Joyful

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The KKK and wingnuts were there because they had been conned into thinking a wave of the mysterious antifa were going to descend on the park. Other communities have suffered a visitation of similar gangs of gullible weirdos. A similar con had duped these types to Gettysburg before, years ago.

 

Joshism

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To be clear, I condemn the lot of it. The hunters who use signs for target practice. The hooligans who grafitti the boxcars I see rolling down the railroad tracks. The idiots who spraypainted the Eternal Peace Light Memorial at Gettysburg before I visited.

I can condemn the hypocrisy of many of the people upset about mob destruction of statues while also condemning the mobs.

I'm sorry but lynching people, thousands of them, was an utterly acceptable tolerated activity. It broke the law, and society was cool with these periodic public murders for one hundred years. Somebody knocks over a statue of Jefferson Davis, and its "what is the country coming to?"
It became less "cool" when TV started making the rest of the country aware of it and other abuses.

I wouldn't consider the Jim Crow South a very functional society. Broken criminal justice system, segregation, one party rule, etc.

People uses legal means to remove Confederate statues from New Orleans, and I had to sit through, "It's like ISIS!" Yahoos illegally vandalize to a memorial of Emmett Till, a child who didn't kill anyone or commit treason or fight for slavery, for decades, and its ho hum, its a day ending with y.
Indeed, the "all statues are sacred crowd" is reminiscent of the "all gun control is tyranny" and "any restriction on slavery is tyranny" crowds. If you're not willing to compromise, you either have to hope the numbers are always on your side because once they're not you've lost control of the situation.

Or you can preempt the situation with a civil war, although that didn't go so well for the group that tried it.

On the 4th of July, an associate pastor named Trent Somes from Hanover PA went to Gettysburg to visit the grave of an ancestor. He was wearing a BLM t shirt. He was surrounded by fifty or so white supremacists. The Park police removed Somes from the Park, because they "couldn't guarentee his safety." The KKK and wingnuts were there because they had been conned into thinking a wave of the mysterious antifa were going to descend on the park. Other communities have suffered a visitation of similar gangs of gullible weirdos. A similar con had duped these types to Gettysburg before, years ago. Stupid, racist and well armed. Is the nation going to fall? Nope, everything's cool.
I agree the gentlemen should have been escorted from the cemetery for his own protection. Then federal authorities should have arrested the entire mob. Disturbing the peace being the bare minimum, but I would charge them with terrorism. Open carry of firearms by non-military non-police is intimidation and threatening violence, and doing so as part of a protest or to prevent a protest, especially in a group, shows clear political motive.
 

O' Be Joyful

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(Snip)

The irony is that these critics of Black Lives Matter call it divisive. Given that the campaign challenges Britain’s self-image, its understanding of its history, and structural discrimination against a minority, what is notable is how little division it has provoked – contrast the support for BLM in both the US and the UK to the widespread antipathy towards Martin Luther King in the United States of the 1960s. It makes angry people very angry, but they are in the minority.
Instead, it is supporters of the populist right who are desperate to stoke division by reducing issues of fundamental importance to ephemeral noise and fake news. Their careers, and their ideology, depend on it.

 

byron ed

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I'm sorry but lynching people, thousands of them, was an utterly acceptable tolerated activity. It broke the law, and society was cool with these periodic public murders for one hundred years...
That's quite the exaggeration. It was not an utterly acceptable tolerated activity. People wrote books and articles against it, people wrote songs against it i.e. "Strange Fruit", people made speeches against it (i.e Frederick Douglass). There were laws against murder and against mob murder - lynching. There were specific attempts to make more effective laws against it (i.e. beginning with Grant's administration), it was specifically called out in the 1930s and 1960s Civil Rights movement.

By your own statement you literally say "it broke the law." Do you not yourself believe it?

Feankly, exaggerating that lynching was an "utterly accepted tolerated activity" in our country is a selfish attempt to achieve public atonement for something that you yourself never did, and for soething you have no experience or culpability for. Again, you mistake the actions of a disfunctional subset of society with U.S. society in general. Please apologize.

...Yahoos illegally vandalize to a memorial of Emmett Till, a child who didn't kill anyone or commit treason or fight for slavery, for decades, and its ho hum, its a day ending with y...
Yet you found out about it through the media and social media, so obviously it's not just ho hum, a day ending in a small y. It made the news.

On the 4th of July, an associate pastor named Trent Somes from Hanover PA went to Gettysburg to visit the grave of an ancestor. He was wearing a BLM t shirt. He was surrounded by fifty or so white supremacists. The Park police removed Somes from the Park, because they "couldn't guarentee his safety." The KKK and wingnuts were there because they had been conned into thinking a wave of the mysterious antifa were going to descend on the park. Other communities have suffered a visitation of similar gangs of gullible weirdos. A similar con had duped these types to Gettysburg before, years ago. Stupid, racist and well armed. Is the nation going to fall? Nope, everything's cool.

...As far as "not doing much about it in a legal way" No kidding. But now people are doing something about it.
.

And some of them in an illegal way, which is not the thing to celebrate. The thing to celebrate is the accelerated awareness and public consensus that will sooner result in fairer treatment and representation of minorities. No need to exaggerate -- that only slows the process down.
 
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