I had another one of those conversations recently which made me think, "Wow, I can't believe I really need to explain this! Doesn't everybody know? What on earth are they teaching the kids in school these days?!" The conversation arose in the aftermath of the Charlottesville riot when one of my young friends on Facebook expressed support for the heavily armed neo-Nazis who marched down the street carrying citronella tiki torches from Home Depot as they chanted, "Blood and soil! Jews will not replace us!” allegedly to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
I hardly knew where to begin. In my friend's defense, he is not American (but very much wants to be!) and without the benefit of a U.S. education, probably has had limited exposure to American history. I was really shocked, though, that he would side with neo-Nazis, for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, my friend is from India, where having witnessed terrible misogyny in his own country, he has been a fierce advocate of women's rights, which would put him at odds with white supremacists both because of his ethnicity, as well as his ideology. Even more importantly, however, he is a devout student of the Torah and a convert to Judaism!
I've known this person, whom I affectionately call "little brother," for several years, and he is a good kid and absolutely loves the United States. His big dream is to move here and serve in the U.S. Marines but he has not yet been able to find a way to do so. His dream is even less likely to be realized under the current administration's immigration policies despite which, ironically, he is a big fan of President Trump. Meanwhile he has taken an online program at Hillsdale College on the U.S. Constitution from which he graduated with honors.
When I informed him that the statues were being removed because they represent the southern Confederate rebellion against the United States which resulted in a Civil War over the issue of ending slavery, he objected, "Our Founding Fathers did not own slaves! They were good men. They said 'all men are created equal'!"
I explained as gently as possible, "Well, yes they did have slaves, but it was normal back then. And they eventually ended slavery but it took some time and a civil war because the South didn't believe 'all men are equal.' The Confederates believed blacks were inferior and fought to keep their slaves." I told him that the guys in the statues like Robert E. Lee are not the Founding Fathers but rather, the southern generals who rebelled against the Founders and their Constitution. He continued to insist that the South opposed slavery and that southern patriots were champions of the Constitution.
Other than social media, I don't know what sources of information influenced my little brother's profound misunderstanding of current events in the context of U.S. history and politics, although I do have other young acquaintances who have expressed similar confusion. There are several extreme right-wing religious and political propaganda organizations who target youth not only here in America but abroad as well, who could be to blame, although I have no proof. Certainly these ideas did not come from Hillsdale College, whose history program, albeit somewhat rightward-slanted, appears to be excellent and factual in its content as far as I can tell.
In any event, this was all too complex to address in short comments on Facebook. So, inspired by our discussion, I decided to write this blog post for the benefit of my little brother and anybody else who might gain some insight from it.
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My Dear Little Brother,
Thank you so much for the lively conversation that inspired this blog post! I dedicate it to you, for your love of the United States of America, our freedom, and our Constitution which establishes the rule of law, civil liberties and equal rights for all our citizens regardless of race or gender. I hope that our current immigration restrictions will not hinder you from fulfilling your dream of becoming an American citizen and serving in our armed forces.
Re: The protest in Charlottesville, the statues, etc. You objected that the statues of our Founding Fathers ought not to be removed. As I explained, the statues in question are not in fact the Founders, but rather, the southern Confederate generals who fought against the ideals of the Founders, resulting in the Civil War. The northern Union, representing the United States government and its Constitution, was attempting to pass legislation to end the practice of slavery in the territories and ultimately, in the entire United States, based on the Founders' principle that "all men are created equal."
The South argued that all men are not created equal, that whites are superior and non-whites inferior, and therefore slavery was a "social good" because it was in the best interests of society that blacks would be taken care of and controlled by whites. They even used the Bible to support their claim. There were economic reasons for keeping slavery as well, because they believed that the plantations in the South could not prosper without slave labor. Furthermore, the Confederates accused those who opposed slavery of being "atheists, socialists and communists" and enemies of social order and freedom. Interestingly, this is the same accusation that the Alt-Right, neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists make against people on the Left who strive for social justice and equality today.
The South was so determined to keep their slaves that they tried to secede from the Union and start their own country, with their own laws and flag, and went to war against the North. The Union won the bloody war and the country was reunited at the great cost of many lives on both sides, and slavery was ended. However, the South put up monuments to their rebel generals including Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun and others, and kept the Confederate flag which still flies in many cities in the South and is carried by the Ku Klux Klan today. The KKK, a domestic terrorist group that arose after the Civil War and targets non-whites, Jews and Catholics, has a slogan, "The South shall rise again," meaning that they hope to have another chance to secede from the United States in the future and establish their own White Supremacist nation.
Anyway, I am no historian and the above is just a brief summary. You can find a much better description at this lecture from Hillsdale College which explains it all in depth. The point is that the statues being removed represent not the Founders, but their enemies who supported slavery. The Left, that is, liberals and/or progressives, want to take down the statues because they are an embarrassing reminder of injustice and inequality from our past. They feel that the statues go against everything our Founders stood for, the ideals of liberty, justice and equality that we are still trying to make a reality in our society today.
Now personally, I'm not sure removing the statues is a good idea. For one thing, as "art" they are beautiful, and I especially love the horses, even though from the standpoint of morality the statues are ugly, because they represent slavery and civil war. However, I believe that we must remember the past, even its ugliness, so that we do not repeat its mistakes! To me these statues are like the Holocaust memorials. They exist to remind us of a painful past that we must never forget. Maybe we could keep the statues but include a plaque with detailed explanation of their history and implications. We must never again allow racism to tear apart our democratic republic.
The guys leading the Charlottesville protest to save the Confederate statues, whom you referred to as "patriots," were neo-Nazis. But, you may well ask, wouldn't protecting Southern historical statues be the job of the KKK? Why would Nazis care about Southern Confederate statues?! After all, Nazism was a European movement that began in Hitler's Germany leading up to WWII, long after the Civil War had ended and far across the world.
The reason that modern neo-Nazis support the KKK and often even carry the Confederate flag, is because they share the same values and the same agenda for our country, namely, White Supremacy. This is the core philosophy which the various Alt-Right groups all have in common: That the Caucasian or "Aryan" race is superior to non-white races and must fight to preserve its pure European ethnic bloodline and heritage against contamination by non-whites and Jews.
And this brings us to antisemitism. One of the reasons I was shocked that you support the Alt-Right is their hatred of Jewish people. The KKK, Stormfront, neo-Nazis and other White Supremacist groups of today are not only racist against blacks and other people of brown skin tones, but also they carry on the antisemitism of their historical past as well! Their domestic terrorist activities include desecration of Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats against Jewish community centers.
Christopher Cantwell, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville "Unite The Right" rally, rudely criticized President Trump for allowing his daughter Ivanka to marry Jared Kushner and convert to Judaism, saying, "The President let a Jew steal his daughter... I don't think you could feel the way I do about race, and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl." And Cantwell's antisemitism is by no means unique to him; it is a common thread running through the Alt-Right, which is why the poster advertising the rally shows a chilling image of a man preparing to smash the Star of David with a hammer and says "to end Jewish influence in America."
And this, my dear little brother, means they are not your friends and you would not have been welcome among them at the rally. Had you shown up at the protest quietly standing by and minding your own business, or even trying to join the "patriots" in their efforts to save the statue, based solely on your non-white skin they probably would have beaten the shit out of you, and even more so, if they knew you were Jewish!
Another reason I was surprised to hear that you support the neo-Nazis is that you claim to oppose socialism. Maybe you were not aware that another name for the modern Nazis is "National Socialist Movement." The word Nazi is actually an abbreviation of the German word "Nationalsozialist," National Socialist. Of course, there are several different kinds of socialism.
The form of socialism that you have in India, which you hate so much, is called "Democratic Socialism" in the Indian Constitution, but is really a mixture of socialism and capitalism, where the democratically elected state controls some aspects of the economy but also allows private corporations to do business. I would not technically call that system "Democratic," because although the citizens do elect their representatives democratically, industry is managed by the State and corporate CEOs, while the employees themselves have no direct control over the policies of the companies where they work.
"Libertarian Socialism" is "democracy in the workplace," a system in which the employees, not the government, own and manage the companies, which was the original concept of "socialism." In the U.S. we have approximately 7000 employee-owned companies, e.g. Publix Supermarket, where all employees are stockholders and therefore have have some control over company policies including hours, pay and benefits, and when the company profits, the employees also profit. Employee ownership encourages responsibility and productivity and also is good for competition in the free market because businesses compete to attract the best workers. This is the type of socialism supported by most American liberals, including Jewish Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
In stark contrast to both modern India and America, National Socialism, or Nazism, is a totalitarian system in which the State controls everything including all aspects of the economy, supposedly for the benefit of society. Nazi party official Gregor Strasser said: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Hitler later added, "National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order."
German National Socialism opposed democracy, liberalism and capitalism, demanding strict obedience by the citizens under the dictatorial rule of Hitler. The citizens sacrificed their own economic and civil liberties for the sake of their nation. Another word for this is "fascism." In Italy, fascism also involved the collusion of the State and corporations, or "corporatism" under the dictator Mussolini.
At the risk of stating the obvious, for anybody who didn't get the memo, or in case the kids these days are no longer being taught history in school, [in the voice of Mr. Mackey from South Park]: Fascism is bad, umkay?!
In the same way that "Nazi" is short for "National Socialist" (Hitler's party), the name "AntiFa" is short for "anti-fascist." The Nazis were the enemies of America and our ideals of liberty, justice and equality. Some conservatives have accused liberal counter-protesters opposing the neo-Nazis, especially the group "AntiFa," of being anti-American. Commentator James Woods tweeted that liberals may destroy the WWII U.S. Marines Iwo Jima Memorial celebrating our victory over Japan. Well, probably not, since Japan was on the side of fascist Germany and Italy. Ironically, in WWII the United States and our allies were the "anti-fascists"! Many brave American soldiers gave their lives in that war, we won, and we don't want to give fascism a foothold in our country today.
That is why WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors are horrified to see neo-Nazis marching down our streets in cities like Charlottesville. Our troops did not risk life and limb so that fascism could take over here in America. It already somewhat threatens our democracy due to the huge influence of corporations on our elections and legislative process, reminiscent of Mussolini's Italy.
But, getting back to the reasons for my surprise at your support of the Alt-Right, this brings us to their treatment of women. Little brother, I have always known you to be extremely respectful of your mother and to treat all women as your sisters. You explained to me that in Judaism men respect and listen to their wives. Israeli women, just like their American sisters, have equal rights and participate alongside of men in education, business, science and technology. And it cannot be denied that the Israeli female soldiers are among the most formidable military officers in the world!
The Alt-Right views women as mentally inferior beings whose only real purpose in life is to service men's sexual desires, have babies, raise children, cook and do housework. They say that a woman's worth as a human being is determined solely by her "sexual market value," regarding us as prostitutes, broodmares and house slaves. They believe that women cannot be good scientists, engineers, computer programmers, college professors, doctors, lawyers, politicians, bankers, CEOs, accountants, architects, soldiers, or most other professions with the possible exception of nurses and elementary school teachers, and for the most part should not work outside of the home. The Alt-Right says women should never have been allowed to vote. They do not want white women to have access to birth control because the White Supremacist goals cannot be achieved if brown people are out-breeding the whites!
I first discovered the Alt-Right on Breitbart News (whose former editor Steve Bannon was a top advisor of President Trump) about a year ago when a friend shared with me articles by the flamboyant and very funny writer Milo Yiannopoulos. I found Milo quite offensive until I learned that he is, in fact, a comedian. However, I was frankly astonished to read Breitbart's serious articles proclaiming their blatantly racist, antisemitic and misogynist philosophy. After spending some time on Alt-Right discussion boards where I invited them to share their thoughts with me, I eventually became convinced that it was no exaggeration. These people really, sincerely, unapologetically do believe such things, as far as I can tell based on what they told me. They also informed me that I am worthless as a human being and might as well die because I am childless.
Which is how Alt-Right "Daily Stormer" website editor Andrew Anglin defended the killing of Heather Heyer, who was run over at the rally: "... she is the definition of uselessness. A 32-year-old woman without children is a burden on society and has no value.” She worked as a paralegal for a Charlottesville law firm, where she was dedicated to standing up for justice and helping the poor.
So no, my dear little brother, these Alt-Right guys are not "patriots" and they are not your allies. They are racist, sexist, antisemitic, National Socialist/fascists whose philosophy goes against all the values of our Founding Fathers. They don't believe in liberty and democracy, nor that all men are equal. In their opinion, you and I, an Indian Jew and a childless white woman, don't even deserve to live. If they get their way you will never be allowed to immigrate, serve in the U.S. military or become an American citizen. And I don't believe they cared about that statue in the first place. The rally was just an opportunity to promote their White Supremacist agenda. I pray they will not succeed in destroying our country.
And btw, the reason they are called "Alt-Right" is because the "normal old right" of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. was too liberal for them.
Wow. Just wow. Thank you Jamie. Brilliant.
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