THE DUOPOLY WATCH | Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
As I have previously noted in
this space, racism, set into the Doctrine of White Supremacy, has been part of
the basic fabric of life in that land which eventually became the United States
of America since some of the first European settlers imported the first slaves
from Africa to work their farms at the beginning of the 17th century. What
I used to call the First Civil War, as is well known erupted in part over the
issue of slavery in the middle of the 19th century. The
central element of the Southern ideology, which fueled that war and got many
non-slave holding poor whites to fight and die to uphold the property rights of
the slave-owners, is that same Doctrine of White Supremacy.
I have previously discussed how the
South actually won the First Civil War because all of
its principal aims were achieved, except for the maintenance, in name and
property relationships, of the institution of slavery. In essence,
the institution was maintained in the South for 100 years or so through the
political structure known as “Jim Crow.” Interestingly enough, the
first objective of the Ku Klux Klan and similar terror organizations
established in the South during Reconstruction was to deny the recently freed
slaves the vote. (Sound familiar?) More recently I have
come to the conclusion that actually the Civil War never ended in this
country. It has simply continued through means other than the use
of force.
Now, as it is well-known, since the end
of the First Civil War there has always been a U.S. political party running in
part on racism. Everyone reading this column knows that until the
mid-1960s and the passage of the Voting and Civil Rights Acts it was the
Southern wing of the Democratic Party, and that since Nixon developed the
“Southern Strategy” it has been the Republicans. It happens that
when the time came, racism and the Doctrine of White Supremacy easily found
homes in the Republican Party. One of its founding components in the
1850s was the “American Party” of the time, otherwise known as the
“Know-Nothings.” It was based on xenophobia, in that instance
against Irish immigration. In the DNA of the Republican Party was
subsequently the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1885, the Immigration Act of 1924
which virtually excluded Southern and Eastern Europeans, and Jews in general, and
the campaign to lock up Japanese-American citizens in the Western U.S. and
Hawaii during World War II (implemented by Franklin Roosevelt but started by
California Republicans led by the pre-Supreme Court Earl Warren).
“I have previously
discussed how the South actually won the First Civil War because all of its
principal aims were achieved, except for the maintenance, in name and property
relationships, of the institution of slavery…”
Racism has been part of modern
Republican Party doctrine since Barry Goldwater ran in part on his opposition
to the Civil Rights Act. That history is well-known. But
for the most part, they have used “dog-whistles,” employing racism in terms for
which they could invoke plausible deniability: “oh that’s not what we
meant.” What many in the Repub. Party didn’t like about Trump was
not that he is a racist, but that — being very open about it — he ripped the hood off the Party’s overall inherent racism. (In
the column just cited, I do have to immodestly say that last March I stated
that I thought that Trump could win, precisely because he openly runs on
racism. Furthermore, in a column just before that one, I
discussed the “Republican Genius” of being able
to enact policies that are unpopular with many voters — like encouraging the
export of capital — and then blaming the very predictable outcomes on the
Democrats. Trump did that to a fare-thee-well during the campaign.)
Click here for the full article.
Source:
The Greanville Post
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