Confederate flag/statue banning thread

[Govi]

If Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s are to be given any credit for depicting the South's attitude towards Sherman, particularly in Georgia, mentioning that General's name would provoke a near-fighting rage. Of course, that effect was partly for humorous effect (I remember it most vividly from a Red Skelton feature movie). Mentioning the Republican Party in good terms had the same humorous effect, too. There were people alive then who had experienced the Civil War directly as young adults or children. I don't recall any similar reaction depicted in the Union states, except perhaps a James Thurber story "The Night the Bed Fell on Grandpa's Head," was the title, IIRC.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Ben Shapiro is what stupid people think smart people sound like.

YEP. He has a nerdy tone of voice, and usually speaks "well." Usually decent grammar and word usage but his reasoning is a total train wreck. If you translate a shit argument into flowery words, the result is still a shit argument.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Who can forget this epic interview with Andrew Neil?

(Andrew Neil is notoriously a very hard-right Conservative).


Full car crash here

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro admits he was 'destroyed' after cutting short TV debate

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has admitted he was "destroyed" in a TV interview with British broadcaster Andrew Neil after being widely mocked for storming out of the debate and telling Neil: "I'm popular, and no one has ever heard of you."

edition.cnn.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Who can forget this epic interview with Andrew Neil?

(Andrew Neil is notoriously a very hard-right Conservative).


Full car crash here

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro admits he was 'destroyed' after cutting short TV debate

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has admitted he was "destroyed" in a TV interview with British broadcaster Andrew Neil after being widely mocked for storming out of the debate and telling Neil: "I'm popular, and no one has ever heard of you."

edition.cnn.com

From the interview: "This is a giant waste of time, in the sense that the entire interview is designed for you to shout slogans or old things that I've said at me," he told Neil.

Yes, how DARE anyone think it's fair to hold Ben accountable for his own words! That interview was hilarious... it really showed how much of a child he is.

Speaking of "old things" that Shapiro has said, he's made a lot of very overtly racist things against Arabic people in particular that aren't so easy to get past just because he later retracted them... especially because he did it over and over again.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

From the interview: "This is a giant waste of time, in the sense that the entire interview is designed for you to shout slogans or old things that I've said at me," he told Neil.

Yes, how DARE anyone think it's fair to hold Ben accountable for his own words! That interview was hilarious... it really showed how much of a child he is.

Speaking of "old things" that Shapiro has said, he's made a lot of very overtly racist things against Arabic people in particular that aren't so easy to get past just because he later retracted them... especially because he did it over and over again.

I remember at the time someone on Twitter asking why the BBC were allowing Andrew Neil to be so cruel to a child on live TV and where on earth were his parents?

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

The long read: Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world

www.theguardian.com

Long and very interesting read.

 

[Soen Eber]

The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

The long read: Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world

www.theguardian.com

Long and very interesting read.

The article nails it. "White" is more than a social construct, it is a religion created to justify first enslavement and then priviledge, and has slowly expanded its scope from the protestant Angliphillic roots of the original colonialists to northern Europeans to all christianized Europeans and then to "honorary whites" in a desparate attempt to sustain its own dominance. It's not news to anyone in the forum, but it does help to define it.

It's time for the white religion to hopefully fade away. I can only hope that the troubling times we are seeing now is more an expression of it exiting with a bang rather than a whimper.

 

[Soen Eber]

...and once again, I hit post and Aribeth has already hit agree I WANT YOUR TIME TRAVELLING TECHNOLOGY ARIBETH!!

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

...and once again, I hit post and Aribeth has already hit agree I WANT YOUR TIME TRAVELLING TECHNOLOGY ARIBETH!!

So do I... it'd be useful.

 

[Romana]

The article nails it. "White" is more than a social construct, it is a religion created to justify first enslavement and then priviledge, and has slowly expanded its scope from the protestant Angliphillic roots of the original colonialists to northern Europeans to all christianized Europeans and then to "honorary whites" in a desparate attempt to sustain its own dominance. It's not news to anyone in the forum, but it does help to define it.

It's time for the white religion to hopefully fade away. I can only hope that the troubling times we are seeing now is more an expression of it exiting with a bang rather than a whimper.

It nails it, but from my POV it's incomplete.
I'll have to read through it more carefully, but on first blush it seems to deal only with skin color and the ideas/religion about that. There are more people who the white supremacists consider not only as not being white, but not even being human. Like Jews. Other religions and nationalities also made it onto hate lists and signs in the Jim Crow era.
I do not consider myself white, because they would not, and always chafe when I am called so.
It would have been even more interesting, fur me, if the article had examined this aspect.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

...and once again, I hit post and Aribeth has already hit agree I WANT YOUR TIME TRAVELLING TECHNOLOGY ARIBETH!!

 

[Innula Zenovka]

It nails it, but from my POV it's incomplete.
I'll have to read through it more carefully, but on first blush it seems to deal only with skin color and the ideas/religion about that. There are more people who the white supremacists consider not only as not being white, but not even being human. Like Jews. Other religions and nationalities also made it onto hate lists and signs in the Jim Crow era.
I do not consider myself white, because they would not, and always chafe when I am called so.
It would have been even more interesting, fur me, if the article had examined this aspect.

You might be interested in this recent short book by the British comedian, David Baddiel.

Review: Let's hope that for progressive readers, this book counts - Jewish News

David Baddiel's book looking at the left's blind spot on Jews gets a thumbs up from Jeremy Havardi, despite the comedian 'ducking the challenge' on Zionism.

jewishnews.timesofisrael.com

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel is funny and furious - and it made me feel wretched

The comedian lays bare on the page what British liberal Jews have long known and offers a small glimpse at how frightening it is to live this experience

inews.co.uk

Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel, review — a furious look at antisemitism

David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count is one angry book. To make it spicier still, the anger is directed entirely at what the author sees as his own political home

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link because paywall

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

The British attitude towards Jews is really creepy and weird to this Australian living in the USA.

 

[Tirellia]

The British left's attitude towards Jews is really creepy and weird to this Briton living in Britain.

 

[Soen Eber]

The British attitude towards Jews is really creepy and weird to this Australian living in the USA.

Different cultures I guess? Any slights against Jews in the mainstream culture in the U.S. pretty much vanished shortly after WW II (except for the usual suspects). With half the white population being German maybe it just died out from shame.

Reading that as an American is just really weird.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I am currently reading Ty Seidule's "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause ". Seidule presents an honest perspective on growing up in Virginia and moving on to head the West Point History department. He rips the Lost Cause myth to shreds with historical facts and has probably made a great many enemies in the South.

""Seidule has written a vital account of the destructiveness of the Lost Cause ideology throughout American history. Perhaps the best attribute of this fine book is the author's honesty. It's difficult to imagine a more timely book than "Robert E. Lee and Me." At this pivotal moment, when we are debating some of the most painful aspects of our history, Seidule's unsparing assessment of the Lost Cause provides an indispensable contribution to the discussion." -The Washington Post

(Published January 2021, so it's pretty current)

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The British attitude towards Jews is really creepy and weird to this Australian living in the USA.

He makes it clear in the book that his argument applies to the the left in general, and certainly the left in the US, as well as to Britain.

But yes, as Antony Julius' Trials of the Diaspora makes clear, England (rather than Britain) has played a major role in the history of antisemitism, as the place where the canonical form of the blood libel first developed (the legend of little St Hugh of Norwich), as the first European country to expel the Jews (Edward I, in 1290), and the country two of whose national authors have also produced two of the great antisemitic stereotypes in literature.

 

[Romana]

Different cultures I guess? Any slights against Jews in the mainstream culture in the U.S. pretty much vanished shortly after WW II (except for the usual suspects). With half the white population being German maybe it just died out from shame.

Reading that as an American is just really weird.

I had an uncle who had to change his name to get a job, after WWII. Fast forward to the 90s, he & his wife will established and highly thought of in their town, and I used some minor Yiddishism on my visit, and they freaked out that anyone might have heard. They still couldn't let anyone know they were Jewish.
It didn't vanish. It just went underground.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

He makes it clear in the book that his argument applies to the the left in general, and certainly the left in the US, as well as to Britain.

I suppose it being so hard to find actual left in the US magnifies the difference.