The Civil War continues to plague us from a dark corner of our history. We’ve got to make sense of what happened in Charlottesville last week–the corporate media are doing a horrible job of it, largely because they are represented by elites who have no understanding of anything happening outside their servile echoes of capitalist propaganda at any cost to the public interest.
We have these protests regularly here in Virginia and they’ve gone on for decades. Usually it is a handful of local KKK members, their families and friends, a group of about twenty or thirty, who assemble, spew their racist crap, and fade back into the shadows. Nearly always a much larger group shows to oppose them.
Virginia has a particularly shameful racist past, but today a great many Virginians are trying to change that image. The protest in Charlottesville by the “united right,” resulting in 3 deaths, was made up mostly of right-wingers from out of state, and those who showed up to oppose it were mostly Virginians.
Corporate media “journalists” seem shocked that the president appears to side with the racists. If they paid attention they would see that President Trump has been a racist all of his life, from being charged by his own tenants of racist practices, to running a racist political campaign last year in which he attacked Mexicans and Muslims. Trump berates “both sides” in the Charlottesville tragedy.
Charlottesville was named for Queen Charlotte, wife of George III who presided over his Virginia colony where slavery was practiced. It was one of few towns in Virginia that largely stayed out of the Civil War, so it’s interesting that it has a statue of Robert E Lee at the center of this controversy. About half the population of Albemarle County, which includes Charlottesville, were slaves during the Civil War.
Lee himself came from the opposite side of Virginia, calling his troops the Army of Northern Virginia, and pledging his loyalty to his nation, which he said was Virginia (not the Confederacy).
Lee was offered command of the Union Army by President Lincoln, but turned it down. Had Lee accepted, he would have no doubt been called a hero and elected president, as was U.S. Grant, who famously took command of Lincoln’s armies. Grant himself owned at least one slave.
The whole retelling of what the war was about is a stretch. Had the ruling establishment cared a wit about the slaves, they’d have been freed much earlier. Virginian slave owner George Washington knew it was evil, he freed his slaves in his will, upon his death. Virginian slave owner Thomas Jefferson knew it was evil and said so, even suggesting at one point that the slaves be freed as part of the new Constitution (although he did not participate in its construction).
But more telling, President Lincoln said, two years before the Civil War ended, that he would keep slavery if he could hold the Union together. After all, his military force was not called the emancipation army, it was called the Union Army. That was what the war was really about—the union, not slavery. Late in the war posters were put up depicting slaves being whipped by evil masters to arouse the population of Northern states, because there really wasn’t a hell of a lot of interest by the masses in keeping Southern states in the fold. Desertion rates were very high in the Union Army.
It’s interesting to note at this point that the old Constitution of the USSR allowed member republics to leave the union, which they did when the Soviet Union collapsed, citing this provision. The American establishment press lauded the breakup of the USSR, hypocritically I would say, since they do not allow their own member states the same privilege. California and New York would certainly be better off financially to exist as separate republics, but no state has ever been allowed to leave the union.
Virginia is covered with monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders, culminating in Monument Avenue in Richmond, capitol of the Confederacy, where one finds statues of Robert E Lee, Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and others. It would take a long bloody fight to get rid of all of all of the Confederate statues in Virginia. I’m convinced the statues mean nothing to the overwhelming majority of Virginians, but the diehards have a right to carry guns in this state, as we saw in Charlottesville.
The largest concentration of Confederate statues I’ve ever seen is in none other than the US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The overwhelming majority of citizens would not miss them. But right-wing racists have seen them as a rallying point.
Reminders of the Civil War itself are everywhere in my city of Hampton. The first English slaves in North America came through Hampton, in 1619, at Point Comfort, later the location of Fort Monroe. At the start of the Civil War, Hampton was burned to the ground by Confederate troops to keep the Yankees from getting supplies. The Yankees themselves occupied Hampton’s Fort Monroe at the tip of the Peninsula, freeing some slaves and planning to march up the Peninsula to take Richmond and quickly end the war.
Confederates would have none of an advance on Richmond and dug earthworks mile after mile up the Virginia Peninsula to stop the Yankees, and were successful under General Magruder. The earthworks remain in local parks and one can see them off Magruder Blvd. in Hampton. In any other part of the nation this would be made into a major historic battlefield and tourist attraction, but the path of the battle goes through Yorktown, where the British surrendered to General Washington, and Jamestown, the first major English settlement in the New World, historically overshadowing the more recent, and less significant, Civil War battle.
Walking over the earthworks I’ve often thought about the soldiers who dug them, pawns in a game of thrones, much as those of us who struggle against similar forces today. Because the North won, we can be mostly wage slaves serving international capitalists who don’t give a damn about the USA any more than the leaders of the Confederacy, even as they wave the Stars and Stripes.
On Facebook I’ve been wincing in recent days when seeing posts by progressives claiming that we have been bamboozled by a scam in this violent Charlottesville protest and should not let those in power manipulate us. I’ve seen this observation as ridiculous and shocking.
Progressives can do more than one thing at a time, and one of the things we must do is oppose the united right, or its component parts, the KKK, Nazis, or whatever the more recent versions call themselves, such as the alt-right.
What Virginians have known for a long time is that if you ignore the right wing, it grows. These right-wingers gather in protests such as the one in Charlottesville to draw attention to themselves for the purpose of recruiting our youth. Without opposition they begin to swell, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, having watched them all my life, that they will be burning crosses on the lawns of Black homeowners if we ignore them, followed by violence that scares hell out of me.
I can understand why true progressives do not wish to work with corporate liberal Democrats on many issues, their Dixiecrat history more vile than that of the new Republicans, but I would urge leftists of any stripe to form a coalition with them on this issue and stop the rise of a united right.
Jack Balkwill has been published from the little read Rectangle, magazine of the English Honor Society, to the (then) millions of readers USA Today and many progressive publications/web sites such as Z Magazine, In These Times, Counterpunch, This Can’t Be Happening, Intrepid Report, and Dissident Voice. He is author of “An Attack on the National Security State,” about peace activists in prison.
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Charlottesville
Posted on August 21, 2017 by Jack Balkwill
The Civil War continues to plague us from a dark corner of our history. We’ve got to make sense of what happened in Charlottesville last week–the corporate media are doing a horrible job of it, largely because they are represented by elites who have no understanding of anything happening outside their servile echoes of capitalist propaganda at any cost to the public interest.
We have these protests regularly here in Virginia and they’ve gone on for decades. Usually it is a handful of local KKK members, their families and friends, a group of about twenty or thirty, who assemble, spew their racist crap, and fade back into the shadows. Nearly always a much larger group shows to oppose them.
Virginia has a particularly shameful racist past, but today a great many Virginians are trying to change that image. The protest in Charlottesville by the “united right,” resulting in 3 deaths, was made up mostly of right-wingers from out of state, and those who showed up to oppose it were mostly Virginians.
Corporate media “journalists” seem shocked that the president appears to side with the racists. If they paid attention they would see that President Trump has been a racist all of his life, from being charged by his own tenants of racist practices, to running a racist political campaign last year in which he attacked Mexicans and Muslims. Trump berates “both sides” in the Charlottesville tragedy.
Charlottesville was named for Queen Charlotte, wife of George III who presided over his Virginia colony where slavery was practiced. It was one of few towns in Virginia that largely stayed out of the Civil War, so it’s interesting that it has a statue of Robert E Lee at the center of this controversy. About half the population of Albemarle County, which includes Charlottesville, were slaves during the Civil War.
Lee himself came from the opposite side of Virginia, calling his troops the Army of Northern Virginia, and pledging his loyalty to his nation, which he said was Virginia (not the Confederacy).
Lee was offered command of the Union Army by President Lincoln, but turned it down. Had Lee accepted, he would have no doubt been called a hero and elected president, as was U.S. Grant, who famously took command of Lincoln’s armies. Grant himself owned at least one slave.
The whole retelling of what the war was about is a stretch. Had the ruling establishment cared a wit about the slaves, they’d have been freed much earlier. Virginian slave owner George Washington knew it was evil, he freed his slaves in his will, upon his death. Virginian slave owner Thomas Jefferson knew it was evil and said so, even suggesting at one point that the slaves be freed as part of the new Constitution (although he did not participate in its construction).
But more telling, President Lincoln said, two years before the Civil War ended, that he would keep slavery if he could hold the Union together. After all, his military force was not called the emancipation army, it was called the Union Army. That was what the war was really about—the union, not slavery. Late in the war posters were put up depicting slaves being whipped by evil masters to arouse the population of Northern states, because there really wasn’t a hell of a lot of interest by the masses in keeping Southern states in the fold. Desertion rates were very high in the Union Army.
It’s interesting to note at this point that the old Constitution of the USSR allowed member republics to leave the union, which they did when the Soviet Union collapsed, citing this provision. The American establishment press lauded the breakup of the USSR, hypocritically I would say, since they do not allow their own member states the same privilege. California and New York would certainly be better off financially to exist as separate republics, but no state has ever been allowed to leave the union.
Virginia is covered with monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders, culminating in Monument Avenue in Richmond, capitol of the Confederacy, where one finds statues of Robert E Lee, Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and others. It would take a long bloody fight to get rid of all of all of the Confederate statues in Virginia. I’m convinced the statues mean nothing to the overwhelming majority of Virginians, but the diehards have a right to carry guns in this state, as we saw in Charlottesville.
The largest concentration of Confederate statues I’ve ever seen is in none other than the US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The overwhelming majority of citizens would not miss them. But right-wing racists have seen them as a rallying point.
Reminders of the Civil War itself are everywhere in my city of Hampton. The first English slaves in North America came through Hampton, in 1619, at Point Comfort, later the location of Fort Monroe. At the start of the Civil War, Hampton was burned to the ground by Confederate troops to keep the Yankees from getting supplies. The Yankees themselves occupied Hampton’s Fort Monroe at the tip of the Peninsula, freeing some slaves and planning to march up the Peninsula to take Richmond and quickly end the war.
Confederates would have none of an advance on Richmond and dug earthworks mile after mile up the Virginia Peninsula to stop the Yankees, and were successful under General Magruder. The earthworks remain in local parks and one can see them off Magruder Blvd. in Hampton. In any other part of the nation this would be made into a major historic battlefield and tourist attraction, but the path of the battle goes through Yorktown, where the British surrendered to General Washington, and Jamestown, the first major English settlement in the New World, historically overshadowing the more recent, and less significant, Civil War battle.
Walking over the earthworks I’ve often thought about the soldiers who dug them, pawns in a game of thrones, much as those of us who struggle against similar forces today. Because the North won, we can be mostly wage slaves serving international capitalists who don’t give a damn about the USA any more than the leaders of the Confederacy, even as they wave the Stars and Stripes.
On Facebook I’ve been wincing in recent days when seeing posts by progressives claiming that we have been bamboozled by a scam in this violent Charlottesville protest and should not let those in power manipulate us. I’ve seen this observation as ridiculous and shocking.
Progressives can do more than one thing at a time, and one of the things we must do is oppose the united right, or its component parts, the KKK, Nazis, or whatever the more recent versions call themselves, such as the alt-right.
What Virginians have known for a long time is that if you ignore the right wing, it grows. These right-wingers gather in protests such as the one in Charlottesville to draw attention to themselves for the purpose of recruiting our youth. Without opposition they begin to swell, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, having watched them all my life, that they will be burning crosses on the lawns of Black homeowners if we ignore them, followed by violence that scares hell out of me.
I can understand why true progressives do not wish to work with corporate liberal Democrats on many issues, their Dixiecrat history more vile than that of the new Republicans, but I would urge leftists of any stripe to form a coalition with them on this issue and stop the rise of a united right.
Jack Balkwill has been published from the little read Rectangle, magazine of the English Honor Society, to the (then) millions of readers USA Today and many progressive publications/web sites such as Z Magazine, In These Times, Counterpunch, This Can’t Be Happening, Intrepid Report, and Dissident Voice. He is author of “An Attack on the National Security State,” about peace activists in prison.