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| Jim Crow CSA monument being toppled in Durham, NC, in the wake of the Nazi-led death of peaceful protester Heather Heyer |
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| The Funeral of Nazi victim Heather Heyer August 17, 2017 |
“This past election, the Democrats used every personal attack, including charges of racism, against President Trump,” Bannon wrote in an email to The Post’s Robert Costa last night. “He then won a landslide victory on a straightforward platform of economic nationalism. As long as the Democrats fail to understand this, they will continue to lose. But leftist elites do not value history, so why would they learn from history?”
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| John Brown's Confrontation Sparked the Civil War Movement and led to the Abolition of Slavery and the Progressive Movement |
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| Teddy Roosevelt, the founder of American Progressivism |
“I personally feel that we made a mistake in fighting over the Confederate flag here in Georgia. Or that that was an answer to the problem of the death of nine people – to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina.”-Andrew Young, August 16, 2017
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| Andrew Young, front and center |
The conflict over the civil war Monuments is often cast in terms of a discussion about the Civil War. Former civil rights leader and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young recently spoke against such "confrontation" after Gubanatorial candidate Stacy Abrams proposed the elimination of the Confederate carving monument at Stone Mountain.. He said, “I think it’s too costly to refight the Civil War. We have paid too great a price in trying to bring people together." In other words, "Confrontation doesn't change mind(s),Engagement does."
THE OLD CIVIL RIGHTS GUARD AND THE FAILURE TO CONFRONT KING'S ECONOMIC VISION
Ironic words coming from a leader whose acts of civil disobedience, certainly acts of confrontation, once led the way to striking down de Jure Jim Crow laws. He may be correct in that bit about confrontation not changing people's minds.
Overall Mayor/Ambassador Young's sentiment reflects the failure of some civil rights leaders to complete the vision of Martin Luther King vis a vis the vision for either full employment or economic relief for those whom employment isn't an option.
DOG WHISTLE RACISM FROM THE NEOLIBERAL CENTER AND IT'S OBVERSE, DOG WHISTLE CLASSISM
There is no doubt that leaders like Young earned their place as fierce fighters for equality at one point in the civil rights struggle. But over time, many in the former civil rights leadership abandoned the voice of urgency (or sometimes abandoned the call altogether) for economic struggle, and united themselves with the like of neoliberal white leaders like the Clintons, who themselves showed at best a flimsy commitment to economic justice, and at worse embraced various forms of dog whistle class-race baiting, i.e. Clinton's kickoff of a mounted "get tough on crime campaign" at Stone Mountain, Georgia, a symbol of Jim Crow populism if ever there were one.
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| Bill Clinton with fellow dog-whistle Democrats, Rebel Flag supporter Ben Jones, Zig-Zag Zell, and former Senator Sam Nunn Who Supported A GOP Senate candidate in 2016 |
Hillary Clinton played the opposite side of this coin of class discrimination when she coined the term "deplorables" for Trumps supporters, playing into Trump's wedge of keeping "rednecks" into his populist camp. If Bill Clinton brought the white working class into the center-left camp by dog-whistle racism, Hillary put them outside of it by dog-whistle classism, which cemented a the racist-class populism of Trump. Meanwhile, Clinton's moves alienated economic populists (the left wing of the party), and failed to mobilize the minority vote in key areas, relative to the Obama voters.
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| Stone Mountain was established as a monument for and by the KKK, in 1915, at the 2nd birth of the KKK in Jim Crow Georgia Both Democratic candidates for the Governorship,Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evanshave called for the altering of the memorial asa symbol of Jim Crow oppression. RACIAL-CLASS CONFRONTATION: THE KEY TO THE REVIVAL OF CENTER-LEFT ECONOMIC PROGRESSIVISM |
So how are these developments and attitudes relevant to the Monument issue? The key can be found when one examines the historical era which is actually being revisited now, and it isn't really a "refight of the civil war", as Mayor Young cast the issue, but rather, the beginning of the Progressive era, and a re-fight of the Jim Crow era in the South. In other words, it is a re-fight of the Reconstruction, which I would argue was the beginning of Progressivism, including Economic Progressivism, which was crystallized in the 2nd Progressive era in the economic philosophy of T. Roosevelt, and advanced further in the New Deal and the Great Society, only to be abandoned by neoliberal policies of the New Democrats, aka the Clintons and their followers. The Monument issue and it's renewal of the core issues of the Progressive era indicate a shift leftward in economic attitudes, a willingness to confront the past, and an opportunity for the left wing of the party to continue to press forward on King's economic visions.
The tendency of center left leaders like Bill Clinton to use dog whistle racism, and Hillary Clinton to use dog whistle classism, and the tendency of people of color to align themselves with such leaders and tactics, is a sign of a progressive train that has jumped off the tracks of the vision of a Martin Luther King, or even of a Teddy Roosevelt.
The failure to confront economic inequality and economic nationalism is the kind of wedge that Bannon and the Trumpies can exploit. The symbolism of confrontation of Jim Crow works against them in the opposite way and encourages economic equality by eliminating the political object of the race class wedge as a decisive political factor: the working class white voter. It also mobilizes all left wing activists on behalf of historical justice.
By pushing the democratic party away from passive dog-whistle support of patronizing the white working class with visions of class superiority (white power), the center left only leaves open two political routes for electoral victory: demonizing the working white voter , as Hillary did with her "deplorables" dog whistle classism, or moving towards economic justice (King's vision) as a way of an opening towards all working class voters, including the white working class.
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| Takyia Thompson, 22, arrested and charged with the destruction of the CSA Monument in Durham, August 16, 2017 |
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| Dog-whistle Classism, the flip side of dog-whistle racism |
ROOSEVELT'S ECONOMIC PROGRESSIVISM AS A CENTER LEFT LABOR PARTY APPROACH TO COUNTER BANNON'S FAR RIGHT ECONOMIC NATIONALISM
This was largely the approach at the beginning of the 2nd Progressivism, found in Roosevelt's "Square Deal" rhetoric in his "New Nationalism" Speech. The thrust of this progressivism was to fight with the confrontational spirit of a John Brown on behalf of economic justice, or inother words to support a kind of Labor party. He opened it by chastising the lack of vision of those who didn't connect the two:
I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest a half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do honor to the men who, in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the same time, these same good people nervously shrink from, or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln’s
He followed this by opening the way for a Labor party, that is a party that advocates for the cause of Laborers being superior to the cause of Capitalism, and that it was the just requirement of political leadership that they advocate on behalf of this progressivism. Quoting Lincoln's famous elevation of the cause of Labor over the cause of Capitol:
"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."
And again:
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
He then clarifies that he is not a Marxist, as he is not anti capitalist, but rather a Labor-Progressive, seeing the two ideas (Labor and Capital) as simultaneously in competition with each other as well as complimentary:
If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.
"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world."
And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like sentence:
"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights.
Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today.
He concluded this comparison with another urgent appeal for economic intervention, in the form of confrontation, in the form of a warning:
But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.
. Roosevelt's Progressivism stands in stark contrast to Democrat Wilson's revaunchist and reactionary racial policies, as well as his resistance to women's voting rights (he signed off on this after a long struggle against it). I cite this difference to frame the following point: having a "D" in front of a politician's name does not signify whether or not they support Progressivism as an ideology, especially not economic progressivism, or economic justice. The Clintons would be more in the camp of Taft and his voters, who used dog whistle racism or racial platitudes combined with a mostly neoliberal approach to economics, which led the way to a greater distance from the once Progressive economics which followed out of the support for interventionism in economics the GOP began to embrace after the Civil War. Trump, in this paradigm, is Woodrow Wilson, who managed to convince various groups, including African American voters, that he was friendly to their cause.
CONFRONTATIONAL ECONOMIC PROGRESSIVISM VS. THE ZIG ZAG OF CLINTONIAN TRIANGULATION OR "RECONCILIATION"
And so re fighting the effects of Jim Crow has the potential effect of wedging the Democrats in the following way: it places the old lions of the civil rights era, like Andrew Young, who long ago gave up on the economic vision of King and replaced with an alliance with dog-whistle neoliberal Democrats, "mentored" (according to the Clintons)by old dog whistle racists like Fullbright and former Klansmen like Robert Byrd, into the policy of "triangulation" with right wing economic and class issues. The result of this embrace of old school Southern Strategy politics has devastated the democratic party at the poll booth. This is essentially the politics of "reconciliation" the same kind of tone that Obama sought with the GOP. It essentially was giving red meat to the far right wing of the GOP and wedging the working class white voter out of the Democratic party by patronizing them, and the applied demagoguery aimed at voters of color had a similar appeal: not much.
But Trump/Bannon's movement to the right has provided the center left in general, and the economic progressive left in specific a target of opportunity to unite the center left under the banner of class progressivism.
A SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS OF THE FAILURE OF BANNON'S WEDGE
Here's a symboicl-analysis of why Bannon is wrong about the Monument issue being a wedge. Summary-in short it is because RACE is used as an aspect of class warfare by the oligarchy.
Wedge effects vs. "diversion" effects. A. Wedge: I SHORT TERM EFFECTS: 1. It doesn't effect his core voters. That is, it doesn't increase them but it doesn't decrease them. 2. It doesn't effect non-Trump supporters, except to strengthen the resolve of non-Trump Republicans to avoid working with Trumpies. II. LONG TERM EFFECTS: The gradual elimination of racist appeals by Democrats and Republicans alike.
It is a historic shift, like the Dixiecrats leaving the Dem. party. Ultimately the effect will be economic. That is, the oligarchic leaders of the old south and their apologists elsewhere have long preyed upon class sensitivity of the working class euro male (and even some African Americans caught up in this kind of class division) by keeping a class of people at the bottom of the pyramid via the use of "race",a totally false construct.
As Trump and Bannon are forced to the right by their own wedge, they reduce the chances that oligarchs can successfully use this class wedge in the future. While the long term failure of this political wedge is far from certain, it doesn't matter in the short run, because it doesn't work on the left. On the left, those who are sympathetic to the monuments as "heritage" are highly unlikely to shift into the Trump camp over this.
B. DIVERSIONARY TACTIC; I think the unifying effect this issue has on the center left outweighs the temporary effect on the other issues. It has the potential of healing the center left by providing a lens for both centrists and leftists to see the political utility in working together.
It doesn't increase the chance that the moderates in the GOP will work effectively with the Tea Party GOP.
It doesn't increase the chance that Centrist democrats will be able to continue neoliberal policies begun in the 90s.
The shift among the Democrats is important: it eliminates dog whistle racism among the Democrats as well as a potential way the neoliberals might shift to the right. It brings back the historical memory that the Clintons, the main, most successful proponents of neoliberalism in the Dem party, have been complicit in dog whistle racism, and undermines the neoliberals in doing so. Fighting racism is fighting class warfare against the oligarchy, so winning this battle is an important economic objective.
CONCLUSION
In the final analysis, sometimes leaders wear out their welcome and place as leaders because they lose the vision which once made them vital. Andrew Young is an example of a one time lion whose desire for a peaceful retirement from politics has perhaps shielded him from the terror and ugliness which can accompany political battles which still need to be fought. King's legacy is still incomplete, as he sought economic change which has not yet come to pass.
Young said that change of minds doesn't come from confrontation, but at the end of the day the Progressive movement which Teddy Roosevelt began wasn't about changing minds, it was about changing the political landscape. It was about uniting the heretofore passive with the activists in the name of economic change and equality. It was about justice.
Roosevelt's anti Jim Crow Progressivism was rooted in a benign attitude, but not a passive one, as he said: "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."... in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.
Roosevelt's Progressivism, the answer to Jim Crow populism, was essentially about confrontation, and while confrontation may not necessarily lead to reconciliation in the minds of those on the side of injustice, it was a kind of conversation about the past, present, and future. The Monuments issue is a moment of unity connecting us though a moment of "fight or fail", and wedging out the failed leadership of the Democrats who no longer or long ago gave up the will to fight.
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