The
Charleston Massacre means many things.
Most importantly it means that the Doctrine of White Supremacy that
drove the Institution of Slavery, and drove what became the Confederate States
of America to secession from the Union, is still alive and quite well, in the
citizenry at large. (The seemingly
increasing succession of white cop/black victim murders of course has been
raising the poisonous topic in the public consciousness in the past year or
two; see my column “Ferguson Worked as Intended.”) But now here it is, writ
large, in the person of a violent, young, openly and proudly defiant, white
supremacist. Interestingly enough, Dylann Roof manifesto not only reflects the sentiments of the native US white supremacy movement, but of its international relatives as well. (The Southern Poverty
Law Center is a very important source of information of
right-wing hate/potential terror organizations in the United States.)
I have written previously on the topic of “how the South
won the Civil War” and the coming Second Civil War. This particular horror has been perpetrated,
not by a “lone gunman,” not by a “whack job,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would have us think, but by a self-conscious representative of the hate
groups to be found all over the United States. (Interestingly enough, when the Department of
Homeland Security, at the beginning of the Obama Administration, attempted to
start an investigation of potential, domestic, right-wing terrorism, it was shut down fairly quickly by the Republicans in
Congress.) The principal element in the
victory of the South in the Civil War has been the spreading throughout the
land of the Doctrine of White Supremacy (invented in the 17th
century to justify white-on-black slavery) from the South.
This
outrage was immediately responded to, as is by now well-know, by the Right’s
Propaganda Central as an “assault on Christians,” which would be funny if it
itself were not so outrageous. Much more
importantly, it has brought the conflict over the Doctrine openly back onto the
national agenda. In the current debate,
it is symbolized by the Confederate battle flag that flies on the grounds of
the State Capitol of the Home of the Confederacy, South Carolina. The most laudable, apparent removal of the flag from the
grounds of the South Carolina state capitol, as well as other governmental
removals of various types throughout the South, will not remove the Doctrine
from the minds of oh-too-many U.S.
That flag
it turns out, is indeed a most apt representation for the Doctrine that drove
slavery and the Confederate States of America, and has now, as I said, spread
across our land. In my previous columns
on the South, the Civil War, and what it really was about, I regularly quoted
the well-known “Cornerstone Speech” by the CSA
Vice-President Alexander Stephens, justifying slavery, on the basis of the
Doctrine. What has very recently come to
wide public attention is the statement by the designer of the aforementioned
CAS battle flag, which was created only in 1863. That designer, one William T. Thompson, said:
"As a people, we are fighting to maintain
the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored
race; .... we still think that a battle flag on a pure white field would be
more appropriate and handsome [than its predecessor]. Such a flag would be a suitable emblem of our
young confederacy, and sustained by the brave hearts and strong arms of the
south, it would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and
be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN'S FLAG."
Thompson
also noted that the flag’s white
border, unusual as flags go, was not placed there by accident. Many Southerners, in justifying its continued
use and display, refer to it as some kind of “historical reference,”
representing the “heritage of the South.”
Well, in the words of the flag’s designer himself, to the extent that
that “heritage” is the institution of slavery, secession, and White Supremacy,
it does.
And the
flag and what it stands for are central to the heritage of the modern
Republican Party. That heritage stems,
not from its beginnings, of course, but from the Compromise of 1877 that ended
Reconstruction and brought on the White Racist Southern “Reclamation” that
eventually led to Jim Crow and 100 years of the denial of civil rights of any
kind in the South. As it happens, that
process was led by the Southern Democrats until the mid-1960s, when the
national party seriously took up the cause of Civil Rights. And then the Doctrine found its modern home,
through Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and what has followed it. Which brings us once again to the topic of
the “Second Civil War,” which we shall continue to return to over time.
The First
Civil War, at its beginning was a clash between the two dominant branches of
the U.S. ruling class, Northern and Southern, over A) the expansion of the
institution of slavery into the Western territories and B) over the role of
government. The growing Northern
manufacturing sector did not want slavery in the territories. For one major reason, it is difficult to grow
industry without some modicum of education for the workers, while it is
difficult to maintain slavery if the slaves are educated.
Also,
they had already figured out that the doctrine of “free labor” which was well
under development at the time, meant that they needed to take little or no
responsibility for the living conditions of their wage-slaves,
whereas
if one owned real slaves one had to at least clothe, house, and feed
them. Also, the nascent manufacturing class loved
“big government,” especially in the arena of massive public works, like
the
construction of the trans-continental railway and the establishment of
public
“land-grant” colleges, both favorites, as it happened, of Abraham
Lincoln. The slaveholders did not. The Southern ruling class wanted to
maintain
and advance slavery, both to expand agriculture and to sell more slaves,
and
also wanted as little “government interference” in anything except such
matters
as catching and returning runaway slaves (sound familiar?)
And so
came the War, and then the originally unanticipated Abolition. But once the war was over, the Northern
ruling class realized that with the disappearance of formal slavery but with
the return of the South to a system similar to it in many ways, through “Reclamation,” it did not need to be concerned at all about
maintaining true freedom for the Freedmen.
They could just “get on with it,” with the two branches of the ruling
class for the most part eventually becoming one. In our time, the ruling class appears on the
surface to be represented by the Republican Party alone, but in fact its
overall interests are fully protected by the reigning political Duopoly.
As noted,
in our time the Republican branch of the Duopoly does make special use of the
Doctrine of White Supremacy. As a rising,
white, border state politician once said about the Republicans on the subject
of race and racism:
“For 12 years, Republicans have tried to divide
us - race against race - so we get mad at each other and not at them. They want
us to look at each other across a racial divide so we don't turn and look to
the White House and ask, why are all of our incomes going down, why are all of
us losing jobs? Why are we losing our future?
Where I come from we know about race-baiting. They've used it to divide
us for years. I know this tactic well and I'm not going to let them get away
with it.”
Yes, Bill Clinton actually said that when he announced for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in
1991 (and, knowing nothing at the time
about the Democratic Leadership Council of which he had been the head, and what
it really stood for, it was on the basis of that statement that I decided to
support him in his campaign). Of course,
we never heard that sort of statement from Clinton again, but that’s another
story.
The
Doctrine of White Supremacy remains a major factor in U.S. politics, courtesy
of the self-same Republican Party. Its
existence will once again be a major issue at the center of a Civil War in our
nation. But this time around, the ruling
class is generally united. And so while
the Second Civil War will be over, on the one hand, the Doctrine and its uses,
very much on the other it will also be about the authoritarian state which the
ruling class is having to develop as so many workers see their incomes dropping and so many U.S. are slipping into poverty or near-poverty. But more on the particulars of this subject
anon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony
Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-
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