tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/charlottesville-attack-41864/articles
Charlottesville attack – La Conversation
2022-02-15T13:49:16Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173625
2022-02-15T13:49:16Z
2022-02-15T13:49:16Z
Old statues of Confederate generals are slowly disappearing – will monuments honoring people of color replace them?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445505/original/file-20220209-13-1pvibsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=751%2C60%2C3722%2C4412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The monument 'Rumors of War' depicts a young African American in urban streetwear sitting atop a horse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-monument-rumors-of-war-is-unveiled-in-times-square-on-news-photo/1177509058">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With most of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/11/23/charlottesville-verdict-live-updates/">legal challenges resolved</a> after the violent <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">Unite the Right rally</a>, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/us/charlottesville-confederate-monuments-lee.html">statue of Robert E. Lee removed</a> from its lofty pedestal in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, local lawmakers in December 2021 voted to do the unimaginable – donate the statue to the local <a href="https://jeffschoolheritagecenter.org/">Jefferson School African American Heritage Center</a>. </p>
<p>In turn, the nonprofit cultural group quickly announced its plan to <a href="https://www.cbs19news.com/story/45391966/jefferson-school-will-melt-lee-statue-by-february-2022">melt down the bronze statue</a> and use it as raw material for a new public artwork. What the group plans to build is still an open question, but it clearly will not be another statue honoring the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/#start_entry">Lost Cause</a> of the Confederacy, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just.</p>
<p>As part of America’s reckoning with its oppressive past, Charlottesville and the rest of the nation face the question of not just which statues and other images should be taken down, but what else – if anything – should be put up in their place.</p>
<p>Statues of Black Americans – and, more importantly, their absence – are an often overlooked barometer of racial progress, hidden in plain sight. Despite their silence, statues are active portraits that can reinforce the value and visibility of Black Americans. The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/global-race-usa-statues-idINKBN2601O5">lack of Black statues</a> sends a clear message of exclusion.</p>
<p>For its part, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center wants to be not only more inclusive in the decision-making involved in determining the future of the Lee statue, but also transformative. </p>
<p>“Our aim is not to destroy an object, it’s to transform it,” <a href="https://www.wvtf.org/2021-12-09/black-heritage-museum-reenvisions-charlottesvilles-statue-of-confederate-gen-robert-e-lee">Andrea Douglas</a>, the center’s executive director, explained. “It’s to use the very raw material of its original making and create something that is more representative of the alleged democratic values of this community, more inclusive of those voices that in 1920 had no ability to engage in the artistic process at all.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Construction workers use heavy-duty chains to remove a statue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee is lifted off its pedestal in Charlottesville, Va.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/statue-of-confederate-general-robert-e-lee-located-in-news-photo/1233936650?adppopup=true">John McDFor their partonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Most important, she said, the group wants to “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/us/charlottesville-lee-statue-melted-trnd/index.html">turn it into something that can cause our community to heal</a>.”</p>
<h2>History of exclusion</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://honors.tcu.edu/faculty/dr-frederick-w-gooding/">professor of pop culture history</a> who studies Black statues within mainstream society, I believe Charlottesville is not the only city in need of healing. With more questions being asked about today’s relevance of Confederate statues, Americans must also ask critical questions about the role of statues in reflecting present morals and future ideals. </p>
<p>While not uncommon to spot statues of accomplished Black athletes, such as <a href="https://www.baltimoreravens.com/video/ray-lewis-statue-unveiled-at-m-t-bank-stadium">Ray Lewis</a> in Baltimore, <a href="https://www.unitedcenter.com/venue/statues/">Michael Jordan</a> in Chicago or <a href="https://www.espn.com/boston/nba/story/_/id/9914066/statue-boston-celtics-great-bill-russell-unveiled-boston">Bill Russell</a> in Boston, it’s much more rare to find Black Americans memorialized outside of the sports and entertainment industries. </p>
<p>With few new exceptions, public and prominent statues of Blacks people are nonexistent. </p>
<p>The public art and history nonprofit group <a href="https://monumentlab.com/">Monument Lab</a> conducted a survey in 2021 of 48,178 statues, plaques, parks and obelisks across the United States. In its report, the group found that less than 1% were of people of color. </p>
<p>Of the top 50 most-represented individuals, the survey revealed that only five are Black or Indigenous people: civil rights leader <a href="https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm">Martin Luther King Jr.</a> in fourth place; abolitionist and Underground Railroad leader <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/harriet-tubman-statue-philadelphia-black-history-month-exhibit-20220111.html">Harriet Tubman</a> in 24th; Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who led Native American resistance to colonialism, in 25th; Lemhi Shoshone explorer <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/sacagawea-statue-in-portland-or.htm">Sacagawea</a> in 28th; and abolitionist and writer <a href="https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/central-park/monuments/2098">Frederick Douglass</a> in 29th. </p>
<p>More than likely, that percentage will remain the same for the foreseeable future – even with the recent wave of removing controversial statues in 2020 and 2021.</p>
<p>Since May 2020, the <a href="https://www.toppledmonumentsarchive.org/">Toppled Monuments Archive</a> has detailed <a href="https://www.toppledmonumentsarchive.org/the-collective">84 such removals</a> of “colonialist, imperialist, racist and sexist monuments” <a href="https://www.artpapers.org/monumental-collapse/">in North America</a>. In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">Whose Heritage? Project</a> says that if other Confederate symbols are included, such as institution names and publicly displayed plaques, a more accurate number is that <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/02/04/cost-remove-confederate-monument-south">168 were taken down in 2020</a>.</p>
<h2>A changing landscape</h2>
<p>Not a single statue was built to honor the legacy of a Black person until 1974, when the likeness of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/11/archives/20000-at-unveiling-of-statue-to-mary-bethune-in-capital-a-fine.html">famed educator Mary McCleod Bethune</a> became the first Black statue ever <a href="https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/emancipation-memorial-freedmans-memorial">erected on federal lands</a>. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm">Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial</a> on the National Mall was not installed until in 2011. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a Black woman giving a loaf of bread to two children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445496/original/file-20220209-27-1eohu7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of the Mary McLeod Bethune statue in Lincoln Park in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-in-lincoln-park-in-news-photo/474111719?adppopup=true">Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Bethune’s statue stands in stark contrast to a nearby statue in Washington’s Lincoln Park. The <a href="https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/emancipation-memorial-freedmans-memorial">Freedman’s Memorial</a>, erected in 1922, immortalizes Abraham Lincoln standing clothed and erect, while a bare-chested Black man with broken chains around his wrists kneels at Lincoln’s feet. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/protesters-demand-removal-of-statues-depicting-freed-black-american-kneeling-before-lincoln">Tensions over this controversial symbol</a> led to the removal of a similar statue in Boston <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/us/boston-abraham-lincoln-statue.html">on Dec. 29, 2020</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a man standing near another man on his knees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445499/original/file-20220209-13-ma85n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Freedmen’s Memorial depicts President Abraham Lincoln freeing an enslaved man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/conservative-african-american-leaders-rally-and-call-on-news-photo/1227127010?adppopup=true">Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Public statues represent significant expenditures of time, money and political capital, especially with more than US$2 million and four years of legal battles spent on the Robert E. Lee statue’s removal in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Public art is widely viewed as a tool to tell a more complete and honest narrative. As noted in the key findings of the Monuments Lab Audit: <a href="https://monumentlab.com/audit?section=key-finding-4">Monuments should be held accountable to history</a>. “Monuments that perpetuate harmful myths and that portray conquest and oppression as acts of valor require honest reckoning, conceptual dismantling, and active repair,” the audit concluded. </p>
<p>Part of the repair is occurring in Charlottesville and in Richmond, Virginia, where most notably <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/25/878822835/rumors-of-war-in-richmond-marks-a-monumentally-unequal-america">“Rumors of War”</a>, featuring a Black man in dreds and urban streetwear atop a powerful horse, stands near the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.</p>
<p>As with Charlottesville, Americans can reject the notion that our future, as now represented in public statues, is permanently fixed in stone. Perhaps when it comes to our existing statues, it is time to consider what we can melt down in other places and forge anew.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederick Gooding Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With a few notable exceptions, public monuments across the United States are overwhelmingly white and male. A movement is slowly growing to tell a more inclusive history of the American experience.
Frederick Gooding Jr., Dr. Ronald E. Moore Professor of Humanities and African American Studies, Texas Christian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154994
2021-03-04T22:26:25Z
2021-03-04T22:26:25Z
Why white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts are obsessed – but very wrong – about the Byzantine Empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387872/original/file-20210304-19-1nietwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=91%2C38%2C5020%2C3380&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inspiration for a mob of angry white men?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/detail-of-byzantine-mosaic-of-emperor-justinian-and-royalty-free-image/583742730?adppopup=true"> Richard T. Nowitz/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-hate-groups-are-hijacking-medieval-symbols-while-ignoring-the-facts-behind-them">Charlottesville</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-far-right-and-white-supremacists-have-embraced-the-middle-ages-and-their-symbols-152968">the Capitol</a>, medieval imagery has been repeatedly on show at far-right rallies and riots in recent years.</p>
<p>Displays of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26297928?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Crusader shields</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-capitol-riot-the-myths-behind-the-tattoos-worn-by-qanon-shaman-jake-angeli-152996">tattoos derived from Norse and Celtic symbols</a> are of little surprise to medieval historians <a href="https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=6060">like me</a> who have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/arts/the-battle-for-medieval-studies-white-supremacy.html">long documented the appropriation of the Middle Ages</a> by today’s far right.</p>
<p>But amid all the expected Viking imagery and nods to the Crusaders has been another dormant “medievalism” that has yet to be fully acknowledged in reporting on both the far right and conspiracy theorist movements: the <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Byzantine_Empire/">Byzantine Empire</a>.</p>
<p>Byzantium – or more properly, the medieval Roman Empire – controlled much of the Mediterranean at the height of its territorial rule in the mid-sixth century. Centered in modern-day Istanbul from A.D. 330 to 1453, its capital of Constantinople was a thriving intellectual, political and military power. One of its crowning achievements, the church of <a href="https://smarthistory.org/hagia-sophia-istanbul/">Hagia Sophia</a>, is a testament to the empire’s architectural and artistic prowess.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crescent moon above the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387875/original/file-20210304-21-6n5ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hagia Sofia stands as a testament to Byzantium’s achievements.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hagia-sophia-royalty-free-image/139196242?adppopup=true">Salvator Barki/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But in the Western world, the Byzantine Empire has been <a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2009/11/lost-to-the-west-the-forgotten-byzantine-empire-that-rescued-western-civilization/">largely overlooked and forgotten</a>. High school students in the United States are likely to know little about the empire. And nowadays, the word “byzantine” has simply <a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/byzantine_labyrinthine_bizarre.php">come to mean complicated, secret and bureaucratic</a>. This lowering of its status isn’t entirely a new process. As far back as 1776, English historian Edward Gibbon was <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674733695">disparagingly referring</a> to the empire’s inhabitants as “the servile and effeminate Greeks of Byzantium.” </p>
<h2>A ‘New Byzantium’</h2>
<p>Despite this modern disdain for Byzantium in the West, it has recently served as an inspiration to various factions of the far right.</p>
<p>In September 2017, Jason Kessler, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/inside-jason-kesslers-hate-fueled-rise/2018/08/11/335eaf42-999e-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html">an American neo-Nazi</a> who helped organize the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, inaugurated <a href="https://rvamag.com/news/virginia-news/charlottesville-white-supremacist-starts-new-organization.html">a new supremacist group called</a> “The New Byzantium” project.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200214155201/https://jasonkessler.us/2017/09/24/announcing-the-formation-new-byzantium/">Described by Kessler</a> as “a premier organization for pro-white advocacy in the 21st century,” The New Byzantium is based on the white supremacist leader’s misrepresentation of history.</p>
<p>His premise is that when Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire went on to preserve a white-European civilization. This isn’t true. In reality the empire was made up of diverse peoples who walked the streets of its capital, coming from as far away as Nubia, Ethiopia, Syria and North Africa. Contemporaneous sources noted – at times with disdain – <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/2667501">the racial and ethnic diversity</a> of both Constantinople and the empire’s emperors.</p>
<p>But Kessler’s “New Byzantium” is <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200214155201/https://jasonkessler.us/2017/09/24/announcing-the-formation-new-byzantium/">intended to preserve white dominance</a> after what he calls “the inevitable collapse of the American Empire.” The organization has been operating under the radar since 2017 with little online footprint. </p>
<h2>The original ‘deep state’</h2>
<p>Kessler isn’t alone in appropriating the empire. Through my research, I have monitored references of Byzantium in online forums. Mentions of Byzantium are scattered across message boards frequented by both white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts – who spout conspiracy theories about a deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking pedophiles running the world.</p>
<p>Across 8kun and other online platforms I have reviewed, the Byzantine Empire is discussed as either continuing the legacy of Rome after it was, in their understanding, “destroyed by the Jews” or being the only true empire, with Rome being merely a historical myth created to degrade Byzantium’s power and importance. </p>
<p>This latter story emerges in a QAnon thread on “Baking” – that is, the connecting and weaving together of drops (messages) by the enigmatic Q. One post states: “It all makes sense when you learn that the books of the bible are plagiarized copies of the chronology of Byzantium, and so is the mythical Roman Empire, that never existed in Italy but was in fact centered in Constantinople.” </p>
<p>Other QAnon commentators across message boards and Twitter speak of the “exiled throne of Byzantium,” noting, “the Empire never went away, it just went occult.” They exclaim “Long live Byzantium” and call for a “return to Byzantium” to save people from the satanists.</p>
<p>Oddly, while some hold up the Byzantine Empire as the vanguard of white supremacy, a smaller group of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists sees it as “the original Deep State.”</p>
<p>In some renditions, Byzantium is, by way of some hazy <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/5/19/8624675/what-is-illuminati-meaning-conspiracy-beyonce">illuminati</a> connections, the origins of the “deep state” – the myth of an underground cabal of elites who run the world in secret. It has persisted in secrecy since Constantinople’s fall, either trading in eunuchs on the clandestine market or preserving whiteness and Christianity, depending on the thread’s negative or positive outlook on the empire.</p>
<h2>Reconquest of Hagia Sophia</h2>
<p>For many on the far right, talk of Byzantium is cloaked in Islamophobia – both online and in tragic real-life events.</p>
<p>A white supremacist who <a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-mosque-shootings-must-end-new-zealands-innocence-about-right-wing-terrorism-113655">killed more than 50 worshippers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand</a>, in 2019 railed against the Turks and the conquest of Constantinople in a <a href="https://www.start.umd.edu/news/new-zealand-terrorists-manifesto-look-some-key-narratives-beliefs-and-tropes">74-page manifesto</a>.</p>
<p>“We are coming for Constantinople, and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city. The Hagia Sophia will be free of minarets and Constantinople will be rightfully Christian owned once more,” the shooter wrote. Throughout QAnon message boards, the <a href="https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/turkeyclashofcivs/">reconquest of Hagia Sophia</a> is emblematic of the destruction of Islam and the restoration of a mythic white Byzantium. One post stated: “When we free Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia, maybe we can talk.”</p>
<h2>‘Third Rome’</h2>
<p>This “reconquest” of Constantinople had even been tied in some online posts to the presidency of Donald Trump, with images circulated online seemingly prophesying that it would happen under his tenure. In one image, Trump is seen congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin “on the retaking of Constantinople” and shaking hands in front of what is presumably meant to be the Hagia Sophia, though is actually the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"806483883055255552"}"></div></p>
<p>Putin himself is not averse to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-byzantine-history-of-putins-russian-empire-90616">drawing on the symbolism of Byzantium</a>. The Russian state has <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2847182">long tried to position itself</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1886/12/the-dream-of-russia/522855/">as the rightful successor</a> to the Byzantine Empire, with Moscow as the “Third Rome.” This forms part of a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3532272/_Moscow_the_Third_Rome_as_Historical_Ghost">religious and political doctrine</a> tied to Russian territorial expansion that can be <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2847182">traced back as far as the late 15th century</a>.</p>
<p>The far-right appropriation of Byzantium in the U.S. appears to be influenced by this Russian interpretation. Indeed, Russian proponents of the “Third Rome” doctrine have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/16/why-far-right-nationalists-like-steve-bannon-have-embraced-russian-ideologue/">cited as influences by prominent figures on the American right</a>.</p>
<p>No matter the provenance of the recent interest in Byzantium from America’s white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, one thing is clear: It is based on a very warped idea of the Byzantine Empire that has emerged out of the empire’s fraught place in our histories, caught between ancient and medieval, spirituality and bureaucracy. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roland Betancourt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Long overlooked in the West, the Byzantine Empire has recently picked up interest among far-right and conspiracist circles. A historian of medieval culture explains what white supremacists get wrong.
Roland Betancourt, Professor, University of California, Irvine
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153145
2021-01-14T13:21:44Z
2021-01-14T13:21:44Z
Capitol siege raises questions over extent of white supremacist infiltration of US police
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378592/original/file-20210113-23-xvfvrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5982%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A U.S. Capitol police officer stands at a street corner near the Capitol.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/capitol-police-officer-stands-at-a-street-corner-near-the-u-news-photo/1230481038?adppopup=true">Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The apparent <a href="https://theappeal.org/the-cops-at-the-capitol/">participation of off-duty officers in the rally</a> that morphed into a siege on the U.S. Capitol building Jan. 6 has revived fears about <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/01/12/what-the-capitol-insurgency-reveals-about-white-supremacy-and-law-enforcement/">white supremacists within police departments</a>.</p>
<p>These concerns are not new. White supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to other races, has <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law">long tainted elements within law enforcement</a>. As <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO02/20200929/111003/HHRG-116-GO02-Wstate-JohnsonV-20200929.pdf">I testified before Congress just months before this assault</a>, there is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816">long history of racism in U.S. policing</a> – and this legacy may have contributed to the violence in the Capitol in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>Reports of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-police-investigation/off-duty-police-firefighters-under-investigation-in-connection-with-us-capitol-riot-idUSKBN29F0KH">officers involved</a> in an attack in which the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/decoding-hate-symbols-seen-at-capitol-insurrection/">symbols and language of white supremacy</a> were clearly on display are concerning. </p>
<p>But so too, I believe, is a policing culture that may have contributed to the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-security-insight/u-s-lawmakers-say-police-downplayed-threat-of-violence-before-capitol-siege-idUSKBN29D0N9">downplaying of the risk</a> of attack before it began and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/01/07/613802462/how-the-storming-of-the-capitol-was-and-wasnt-about-police">apparent sympathetic response to attackers</a> displayed by some police officers – they too hint at a wider problem.</p>
<p>As someone who has researched and <a href="https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/28080-lcb231article2johnsonpdf">written about the chilling problem of white supremacists in law enforcement</a>, I believe the failure to confront the problem has had deadly consequences.</p>
<h2>Blue, but white first?</h2>
<p>Racism and white supremacy are problems in society, not just the police. Just after the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, 9% of Americans responding to an <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/28-approve-trumps-response-charlottesville-poll/story?id=49334079">ABC News/Washington News poll</a> said that it was acceptable to hold neo-Nazi views. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-poll/majority-of-americans-want-trump-removed-immediately-after-u-s-capitol-violence-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN29D2VG">Reuters poll</a> after the insurrection at the Capitol found that 12% of Americans supported the actions of those who took part in the attack.</p>
<p>But the percentage of police officers who hold views in support of white identity extremism may be at least as high or higher – white people are overrepresented on police forces cross the country. And surveys have found that police officers – especially white ones – diverge from the wider public on issues of race. A <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/police-views-public-views/">2017 Pew poll</a> found that 92% of white officers believe that the U.S. had made the reforms necessary for equal rights for Black Americans. This compared with just 29% of Black officers and 48% of the general public, including 57% of white Americans. This leads some to wonder whether police are more sympathetic to the rhetoric of Trump and others.</p>
<p>With their enormous power, department-issued weapons and access to sensitive information, police departments must be rid of officers with racist views for America’s security. But for the same reasons, police departments have become attractive recruiting grounds for white supremacist groups.</p>
<p><a href="https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/White_Supremacist_Infiltration_of_Law_Enforcement.pdf">The FBI warned of the problem</a> in 2006, noting: “Having personnel within law enforcement agencies has historically been and
will continue to be a desired asset for white supremacist groups.”</p>
<p>Because of the secretive nature of such groups, it is hard to say how many officers are involved. But since 2009 police officers in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana have been <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law">identified as members of white supremacist groups</a>. Meanwhile, more than 100
police departments in 49 different states have <a href="https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/28080-lcb231article2johnsonpdf">had to deal with scandals</a> involving racist emails, texts or online comments sent or made by department staff. Just this week a high-ranking officer in the New York Police Department was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/nyregion/nypd-james-kobel-racist.html">found to be behind a string of racist posts</a> online.</p>
<h2>Misplaced sympathies</h2>
<p>When it comes to the events of Jan. 6, there appear to be three main areas of concern about the action – or inaction – of police. First, there appears little doubt that Capitol Police <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uncomfortable-questions-facing-capitol-police-over-the-security-breach-by-maga-mob-152857">did not prepare in a way to protect the Capitol</a> for the threat lawmakers and the vice president faced. The U.S. Capitol Police Department is one of the best-funded police forces in the country; <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/06/15/capitol-police-a-department-shrouded-in-secrecy/">with a budget of more than $500 million</a> and approximately 2,000 police officers, it is larger than the police force of the city of San Diego, yet the Capitol Police’s mission is to guard a few buildings and the members of Congress.</p>
<p>The rally and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-for-weeks-in-plain-sight-the-police-werent-ready">plan to attack the Capitol were discussed on public social media platforms</a> such as Twitter, Parler, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook for law enforcement who cared to be prepared. Enrique Tarrio, a member of the far-right Proud Boys, was arrested a few days before the attack for the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-enrique-tarrio-arrest/2021/01/04/8642a76a-4edf-11eb-b96e-0e54447b23a1_story.html">destruction of a Black Lives Matter flag belonging to a Black church in Washington, D.C</a>. Tarrio had traveled to the District of Columbia for the Jan. 6 rally and was <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article248458030.html">allegedly in possession of high-capacity magazines</a>. This should have been an indication that the protesters planned violence.</p>
<p>Both the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/fbi-nypd-told-capitol-police-about-possibility-violence-riot-senior-n1253646">NYPD and FBI warned the Capitol police</a> of the threats they were seeing online, with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/capitol-riot-fbi-intelligence/2021/01/12/30d12748-546b-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html">an FBI office in Virginia telling Capitol police that extremists were planning violence and “war” just one day before the attack</a>. </p>
<p>Yet there were no phalanxes of heavily armed police officers <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-01-12/the-us-capitol-riots-and-the-double-standard-of-protest-policing">as had been the case in protests in the capital against racism</a>, in which many more Black Americans were involved.</p>
<p>As such, many are legitimately asking: Was the threat posed by the rioters on Jan. 6 underestimated by police because of their race?</p>
<p>There are also questions to be asked over whether <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/capitol-riot-fbi-intelligence/2021/01/12/30d12748-546b-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html">Capitol police officers were more sympathetic to Trump supporters</a> during the attack itself. One officer tasked with protecting the Capitol <a href="https://www.king5.com/article/news/nation-world/capitol-police-officers-suspended-riot/507-0c454f7e-fed5-44f3-9b84-2a6d74239645">put on</a> a red Make America Great Again cap during the attack, <a href="https://www.king5.com/article/news/nation-world/capitol-police-officers-suspended-riot/507-0c454f7e-fed5-44f3-9b84-2a6d74239645">according to the Tim Ryan</a>, the Democratic chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees funding for Capitol police. Another Capitol police officer was seen being friendly and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/capitol-police-officers-suspended-tim-ryan/index.html">taking photographs with rioters</a>. Two Capitol police officers have been suspended and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/12/2-capitol-police-suspended-10-under-investigation-after-capitol-riot/6639735002/">at least 10 others are under investigation</a> for their behavior in the uprising.</p>
<h2>Off duty, in crowd</h2>
<p>Finally, there is concern that off-duty officers holding extreme views traveled from across the country to be part of the day’s events. Reports from Capitol police officers describe cops <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/black-capitol-police-racism-mob">flashing their badges while attempting to enter the Capitol</a>.</p>
<p>At least 28 sworn law enforcement officers attended the Jan. 6 rally, according to a <a href="https://theappeal.org/the-cops-at-the-capitol/">tally kept by the publication</a> The Appeal. They represent police departments from at least 12 different states. This number could grow.</p>
<p>Obviously there is a difference between merely attending the rally and taking part in the siege.</p>
<p>But domestic terrorism from far-right groups is a significant threat to America’s safety and security. And the actions of police on Jan. 6 – both as individuals and as a force – raise concerns. For all Americans to be truly safe, it is important to weed out far-right extremism, especially in the institution sworn to protect us all.</p>
<p>[_<a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-important">The Conversation’s most important election and politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vida Johnson is a registered Democrat. </span></em></p>
The FBI has long warned that white supremacist groups are seeking to infiltrate police, which makes the events of Jan. 6 all the more concerning.
Vida Johnson, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142119
2020-07-17T12:16:55Z
2020-07-17T12:16:55Z
Confederate flags fly worldwide, igniting social tensions and inflaming historic traumas
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348002/original/file-20200716-27-1n0w6uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C10%2C3369%2C2010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brazil's 'Festa Confederada.' Organizers say the annual event celebrates their Southern American heritage, but some Black Brazilians disagree.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Brasher</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States isn’t the only country debating Confederate symbols. </p>
<p>The Confederate flag can be seen flying in Ireland, Germany, Brazil <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">and beyond</a>. Sometimes, the red-white-and-blue-crossed flag is seemingly displayed as kitsch, a kind of Americana. Other times, its display conveys a political meaning more reflective of the flag’s origins in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-fully-appreciate-black-history-the-us-must-let-go-of-lingering-confederate-nostalgia-90723">slave-holding, Southern American republic</a>. </p>
<p>Wherever the Confederacy crops up, controversy usually follows. My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aahQqKkAAAAJ">academic research</a> as a cultural geographer traces how Confederate iconography gets stitched into the cultural fabric of places thousands of miles from the United States. </p>
<h2>Irish ‘rebels’</h2>
<p>In the city of Cork, Ireland, fans of the local hurling and soccer teams have <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/news/confederate-flag-flew-proudly-at-a-major-irish-sporting-event">long flown</a> the Confederate flag, which is sometimes called the “rebel flag,” from the stands. Both teams are called “The Rebels,” and their team colors match those of the Confederate flag. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"896828827963469826"}"></div></p>
<p>After NASCAR banned Confederate flags at its racing courses in June 2020, a Gaelic Athletic Association administrator <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/12/ireland-is-addressing-its-own-issue-confederate-flags-being-displayed-by-sports-fans/">announced</a> that it would ban the flag at <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cork-gaa-to-confiscate-confederate-flags-from-fans-attending-matches-1.4277385">Cork soccer games</a>, too. Some Cork Rebels fans had already <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/calls-for-cork-fans-to-abstain-from-flying-the-confederate-flag-in-croke-park-amid-violent-protests-in-virginia-36027521.html">soured on the flag</a>. In 2017 a defender of Confederate statues <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-attack-shows-homegrown-terror-on-the-right-is-on-the-rise-78242">killed anti-racism activist Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, cementing for many the flag’s association with white supremacy.</p>
<p>But the Red Hand Defenders, a right-wing paramilitary organization in Ireland, still brandishes the Confederate flag because of its potent political symbolism.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<p>The Protestant hardliner group emerged in the Ulster region in 1998 to oppose Northern Ireland’s possible secession from the United Kingdom and reunification with Ireland. To thwart this “home rule” campaign, the Red Hand Defenders <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/red-hand-defender-claims-belfast-bombing-1.409422">executed a series of deadly bombings</a> and in 1999 killed the Catholic human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson. </p>
<p>Ireland’s connection with the Confederacy dates back to the Civil War. Many of the Confederate generals whose statues dot the U.S. South, including Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, were Scots-Irish. Their families came from Ulster, which includes parts of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>In a 2008 post called “War of Northern Aggression,” the Belfast-based photography website Extra Mural Activity featured some <a href="https://extramuralactivity.com/2008/06/04/the-war-of-northern-aggression/">murals in the Ulster region</a>, including <a href="https://extramuralactivity.com/2008/06/04/the-war-of-northern-aggression/#jp-carousel-19450">one celebrating the Ulster heritage of</a> Generals Lee and Jackson. </p>
<p>“The Confederate attempt to secede from the union is put in parallel with loyalist resistance to Home Rule,” it explains.</p>
<h2>Brazil’s Confederate roots</h2>
<p>Like Ireland, Brazil has an ancestral connection to the American Confederacy. </p>
<p>After the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, some <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12202">8,000 to 10,000</a> Confederate soldiers left the vanquished South and migrated to Brazil. There, farmland was cheap and slavery was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology">still legal</a>. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12202">Historical research</a> suggests that as many as 50 Confederate families purchased over 500 enslaved Black people in Brazil. </p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html">descendants of these “Confederados</a>,” as the Americans came to be known in Portuguese, hold an annual <a href="http://www.focusongeography.org/publications/articles/brazil_confederacy/index.html">festival in São Paulo state celebrating their heritage</a>. Dancers clad in antebellum and Civil War attire square dance to American country music on <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-115548">an enormous stage emblazoned with the Confederate flag</a> while visitors enjoy Southern fried chicken and biscuits and purchase Confederacy-themed souvenirs. </p>
<p>The festival, held in the <a href="https://www.sbnoticias.com.br/noticia/Festa-Confederada-acontece-neste-fim-de-semana-no-Cemiterio-do-Campo/167994">Protestant cemetery</a> where many original Confederate settlers were buried back when Brazil was predominantly Catholic, began in 1980. Since the 2017 killing in Charlottesville, the Confederados’ event has met <a href="http://www.focusongeography.org/publications/articles/brazil_confederacy/index.html">resistance from Black Brazilians</a>, who find its <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1768262">romanticization of the slaveholding South</a> and its Confederate iconography disturbing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confederate iconography sold on miniature flags, buttons and mousepads at the 2019 ‘Festa Confederada.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Brasher</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>White supremacy in Germany</h2>
<p>For Neo-Nazis in Germany, the white supremacy embedded in Confederate iconography is useful. It’s a stand-in for the Nazi swastika, which has <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/german-law-journal/article/ban-of-rightwing-extremist-symbols-according-to-section-86a-of-the-german-criminal-code/9C27FD4AFAC94347A3F04EE17C9E5DCD">been banned in Germany since the Holocaust</a>. And during <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/confederates-on-the-rhine/239724/">Civil War reenactments in Germany</a>, Germans who side with the South are often acting out “Nazi fantasies of racial superiority,” Wolfgang Hochbruck, professor of American Studies at the University of Freiburg, told The Atlantic in 2011. </p>
<p>In those situations, the Germans flying the Confederate flag clearly understand its historic origins and meaning. That’s not always the case. A Confederate flag spontaneously <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">appeared in the crowd at the fall of the Berlin Wall</a> in 1989, for example. </p>
<p>There, it may have been understood as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-us-military-came-embrace-confederate-flag/613027/">a symbol of anti-communism</a>. A recent <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">study</a> shows that German schools, like <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching-hard-history">many in the United States</a>, teach the Civil War as primarily a battle over Southern states’ desire to remain “free” from federal interference – not over their desire to preserve slavery. </p>
<p>Historians have debunked this “<a href="https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-war-was-not-about-states-rights/">states rights</a>” theory of the conflict. But many in Germany may still view the flag as a symbol of freedom or independence.</p>
<p>Sometimes, people in Germany and elsewhere seem to see the Confederate flag as simply part of American culture. The Confederate iconography spotted at a country music festival in <a href="http://ruthellengruber.com/blog/2015/06/23/confederate-flag-in-europes-wild-westcountry-scene/">Geiselwind</a> in 2007, for example, was probably seen as kitsch.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confederate flag among German flags as the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Culture wars</h2>
<p>Though Confederate iconography takes on different meanings in other countries, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aahQqKkAAAAJ">research shows</a> it often crops up along those countries’ own political fractures, religious conflicts and racial divides. Flying it tends to inflame simmering social tensions, reopen old wounds and spur debates about history like those underway in the United States. </p>
<p>For Americans, who are almost evenly split <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-floyd-protests.html">on whether the Confederacy represents racism</a>, the Confederate flag is today an unmistakable signal of a deeply divided society. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/confederate-statues-removal-robert-e-lee-jefferson/index.html">In a 2020 poll, 52% said they support</a> removing Confederate monuments from public space.</p>
<p>That’s <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3663">up 19 percentage points</a> since 2017, when modern blood was shed over the 19th-century Confederacy. Charlottesville has forced people everywhere to contend with both the historic reality of the American South and, increasingly, its surprisingly worldwide 21st-century legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Brasher has received funding from the National Security Education Program's David L. Boren Fellowship, The University of Tennessee’s Thomas-Penley-Allen Fellowship, the W.K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, and the Stewart K. McCroskey Memorial Fund. Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers and a Research Fellow with Tourism RESET, a collaborative research and outreach initiative dedicated to identifying, studying, and challenging patterns of social inequity in the tourism industry. </span></em></p>
Symbols of the Confederacy can be seen in Brazil, Ireland, Germany and beyond. While some people may not grasp their racist history, others clearly fly the ‘rebel flag’ to defend white supremacy.
Jordan Brasher, Assistant Professor of Geography, Columbus State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94463
2018-05-30T10:38:28Z
2018-05-30T10:38:28Z
Most CEOs aren’t abandoning neutrality on Trump – yet
<p>What would it take for the titans of corporate America to rise up against President Donald Trump?</p>
<p>That’s a question that’s been on our minds lately, as we ponder a growing list of reasons for U.S. CEOs to oppose the president or his policies. His <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dd2af6b0-4fc1-11e8-9471-a083af05aea7">willingness to risk a costly trade war with China</a> is only the latest. Some Trump ideas, like talk of <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/26/donald-trump-nafta-negotiations-217085">abandoning NAFTA</a> or creating a <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/02/27/border-tax-costs-investments/">border tax</a>, would be bad for business. Others are more about social controversies, such as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conference-charlottesville.html">president’s response</a> to the Charlottesville violence, which led to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/14/donald-trump-kevin-plank-under-armour-quits-advisory-council-charlottesville">limited CEO uprising</a> against Trump. </p>
<p>In case of a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-constitutional-crisis-over-mueller-michael-cohen-2018-4">constitutional standoff</a> or other crisis, we believe corporate CEOs are uniquely positioned to stand up to the president, in part because they have historically stayed above the political fray or even <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/reversal-of-fortune-500-gop-friendly-execs-choose-clinton-over-trump">leaned Republican</a>. Therefore, a concerted act by CEOs would be somewhat like the 1974 “<a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nixons-goldwater-moment-looms-over-trump-2017-08-09">Goldwater moment</a>,” when those in President Richard Nixon’s camp helped persuade him to resign. </p>
<p>To get a better sense of where American business leaders stand, we recently examined the positions of about 200 prominent U.S. CEOs. </p>
<h2>Stuck in neutral?</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-corporate-ceos-found-their-political-voice-83127">Political neutrality</a> has been an American corporate norm for decades. Until recently, it was relatively rare for corporations or CEOs to take public stances on divisive social issues. </p>
<p>While this has <a href="https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to-create-value-for-stakeholders/">changed</a> somewhat, with more <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-new-ceo-activists">CEO social activism</a>, CEOs generally still tend to shy away from overt partisan politics. In 2016, for example, only a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/06/03/why-we-dont-see-more-ceos-endorse-presidential-candidates/">handful</a> supported either major party candidate, with most favoring Hillary Clinton. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, we decided to examine whether there are indications that CEOs will stand up to Trump and perhaps act together as a group to oppose him or even call for his ouster if events warrant it. Trump’s divisiveness has deeply <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/04/06/feature/in-reaction-to-trump-millions-of-americans-are-joining-protests-and-getting-political/">politicized many Americans</a>, and we wanted to see how much it has infected CEOs as well. </p>
<h2>In the fray, a little</h2>
<p>In order to do that, we looked at the 197 CEOs in the <a href="https://www.businessroundtable.org">Business Roundtable</a>, who manage many of the most important companies in the U.S., including Apple, Pepsi and General Electric. Together these businesses employ 16 million people and boast US$7 trillion in revenues.<br>
Using public news, texts, tweets, and occasionally private utterances, we placed each of the CEOs into one of five camps: anti-Trump, soft anti-Trump, neutral, soft supporter of Trump and pro-Trump. </p>
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<p>What we found from our unpublished review surprised us: Fewer than a third of the CEOs we looked at have staked out consistently critical or supportive public positions on the president or his policies, while the vast majority have stayed in the middle – walking a tricky tightrope. In other words, most have been careful not to be unduly political in this polarized time. </p>
<p>Our analysis showed that 34 of them have been at least a little critical of the president. Of those, 29 were on the softer side, meaning they came out forcefully on one or more of Trump’s hallmark policies or actions but have been otherwise careful. </p>
<p>A typical case of this soft anti-Trump CEO is NRG Energy’s Mauricio Gutierrez, who opposes Trump on issues such as <a href="http://fortune.com/video/2016/12/14/nrg-energy-ceo-donald-trump/">climate change</a>, tax policy and immigration. For example, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that the president has tried to shut down, he <a href="https://tweettunnel.com/nrgmauricio">tweeted</a>: “Proud to join business leaders in support of a #DACA solution.” </p>
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<p>Another CEO in this camp is General Electric’s new CEO John Flannery, who offered rather mild criticism of Trump’s steel tariff proposal with <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnFlannery_GE/status/971520010052161536">this tweet</a>: “GE believes in open markets. … We are strong believers in free trade and know that protectionist policies create barriers to trade, innovation and investment.”</p>
<p>The five we deemed outwardly anti-Trump were marked by more consistent criticism. Examples include Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi, a strong supporter of Clinton who is also an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administrations-new-plan-to-punish-legal-immigrants/2018/05/05/6eb12522-4e51-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html">immigrant</a> and a <a href="https://www.axios.com/a-list-of-trumps-attacks-on-prominent-women-1513303964-8ef61562-4dcc-4cf0-aea6-0ec89457fbc1.html">woman</a>, two constituencies that have frequently found themselves at odds with the president. Another is Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini, who at <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/aetna-ceo-says-i-am-ashamed-of-president-trumps-behavior-and-comments.html">one point said</a> he was “ashamed” of the president’s behavior. </p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum, 23 CEOs have voiced support for Trump and his policies. </p>
<p>Some softer supporters of Trump, 16 in all, include David Seaton, CEO of Fluor, an engineering firm that would benefit from the kind of increased infrastructure spending the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/29/trump-promised-1-5-trillion-in-infrastructure-spending-hes-1-percent-of-the-way-there/">president has proposed</a>. Seaton shares at least some elements of Trump’s agenda, for example by complaining about needing to get rid of “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-01-30/fluor-ceo-says-regulatory-morass-is-impacting-infrastructure-video">regulatory morass</a>.” </p>
<p>Another is Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who at one point <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/17/news/companies/boeing-trump-dennis-muilenburg/index.html">received</a> a presidential scolding for the costs of building a new Air Force One. Eventually, Muilenburg managed to turn things around, gaining significant influence and meeting the president on <a href="https://twitter.com/search?l=&q=Trump%20OR%20tax%20OR%20infrastructure%20from%3ABoeingCEO&src=typd&lang=en">several occasions</a>.</p>
<p>Among the seven CEOs who have strongly backed Trump are one of his old friends and trusted advisers, Blackstone’s <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-steven-schwarzman-ceo-white-house-advisers-237168">Stephen Schwarzman</a>, and Oracle CEO’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-safra-catz-replace-hr-mcmaster-2018-3">Safra Catz</a>, who earlier joined his transition team as a part-time adviser and was recently discussed for the role of national security adviser. </p>
<h2>The ‘silent’ majority</h2>
<p>The remaining CEOs – 140 or more than two-thirds of the Roundtable membership – have been either silent about Trump or tend to make trite, careful, balanced statements. They cautiously mix supportive statements on things they like such as tax reform, with occasional light policy criticism in areas like climate change and trade. </p>
<p>Typical is a CEO like Steelcase’s Jim Keane, who supports Trump’s recent tax cut on his business but has been critical of the president on <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/21/steelcase-inc-weighs-the-ups-and-downs-of-trumps-p.aspx">tariffs</a>. </p>
<p>Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf’s convoluted words exemplify this group’s tightrope balancing. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/qualcomm-ceo-steve-mollenkopf-interview-2017-7">Answering</a> a reporter’s question about immigration policy, he said: “I think we’ve been pretty clear. The avenue through which we make these arguments is sort of directly to the policymakers, as opposed to through other methods. And it kind of makes sense.” </p>
<p>Finally, we placed in this neutral camp Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and the influential head of the Business Roundtable. Once a Democrat, Dimon is what we might call a swashbuckling pragmatist: He <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dimon-other-ceos-talk-jobs-and-economic-growth-at-private-white-house-dinner-with-trump.html">interacts with the president</a> but is also <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/13/investing/jamie-dimon-trump-trade-tariffs/index.html">critical</a> of his policies. </p>
<h2>The bully pulpit</h2>
<p>Another reason so many CEOs are staying neutral is that they fear standing on the wrong side of this president, who regularly uses the Oval Office as a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/many-ceos-scared-out-their-minds-won-t-speak-out-n714126">bully pulpit</a>.</p>
<p>Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos rediscovered this in April, when Trump <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/trump-tweets-fifth-amazon-attack-in-a-week-hits-washington-post.html">repeatedly attacked</a> him, his company and his newspaper, The Washington Post. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-personally-pushed-postmaster-general-to-double-rates-on-amazon-other-firms/2018/05/18/2b6438d2-5931-11e8-858f-12becb4d6067_story.html">Trump even deliberately tried to hurt Amazon</a> by asking the U.S. Postal Service to raise the company’s rates. </p>
<p>Others haven’t been so lucky. Mark Fields, who ran Ford until 2017, lost his job <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fords-outgoing-ceos-spat-with-trump-highlighted-troubles-1495465162">reportedly in part</a> because he was seen as having put the car company on Trump’s radar by announcing plans to outsource U.S. jobs to Mexico. </p>
<h2>A line he may cross?</h2>
<p>So to answer our original question, we believe our analysis shows two things. </p>
<p>One is that the vast majority are hewing to the neutral line that chief executives have historically taken. And there’s only tepid evidence that CEOs as a group are being more vocal than usual in criticism of the president.</p>
<p>There are two factors that could turn this prediction on its head: the long-term trend of growing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/opinion/dicks-guns-walmart.html">CEO activism</a> and a presidency that <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/trump-generates-crisis-and-chaos-former-cia-director-panetta-1209066051858?playlist=associated">generates crises</a>.</p>
<p>Is there a line that would trigger strong concerted CEO action? We believe there is. We just don’t know where it is. </p>
<p><em>Quentin Levin, a student at American University’s School of Public Affairs, contributed to the research underlying this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite a growing list of reasons why business leaders might oppose the president or his policies, more than two-thirds have remained steadfastly neutral.
Erran Carmel, Professor of Business, American University Kogod School of Business
Chris Edelson, Assistant Professor of Government, American University School of Public Affairs
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85948
2017-10-18T23:38:11Z
2017-10-18T23:38:11Z
Are many hate crimes really examples of domestic terrorism?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190877/original/file-20171018-32367-tov0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mourners embrace at a vigil for Richard Collins III, who was stabbed to death in College Park, Maryland.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/College-Stabbing/66393a7e760f4219864c2a476c17f665/21/0">AP Photo/Brian Witte</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A Maryland grand jury has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/17/us/university-of-maryland-student-hate-crime-charge/index.html">indicted</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/22/richard_collins_iii_murder_being_investigated_as_hate_crime.html">Sean Urbanski</a> for allegedly murdering an African-American student in May.</p>
<p>Urbanski, a white former University of Maryland student who belonged to the racist <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/22/what-alt-reich-nation-facebook-group-fbi-investigating-possible-hate-crime-university-maryland/335961001/">Alt-Reich: Nation</a> Facebook group, is facing a hate crime charge in the death of Richard Collins III. The victim had recently been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and was days away from his graduation from another Maryland school. </p>
<p>While it makes sense to prosecute this murder as a hate crime, my 15 years experience of studying violent extremism in Western societies has taught me that dealing effectively with far-right violence requires something more: treating its manifestations as domestic terrorism. </p>
<h2>Domestic terrorism</h2>
<p>This growing domestic menace deserves more attention than it’s getting.</p>
<p>Terrorism is a form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-terrorism-what-do-terrorists-want-78228">psychological warfare</a>. Most terrorist groups lack the resources, expertise and manpower to defeat state actors. Instead, they promote their agenda through violence that shapes perceptions of political and social issues.</p>
<p>I believe that the Maryland murder, if it was motivated by racist sentiments, should be treated as an act of domestic terrorism – which I define as the use of violence in a political and social context that aims to send a message to a broader target audience.</p>
<p>Like lynching, cross-burning and vandalizing religious sites, incidents of this kind deliberately aim to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/04/10/cross-burnings-still-%E2%80%98tool-fear%E2%80%99-used-racists">terrorize people of color</a> and non-Christians. </p>
<p>I consider domestic terrorism a more significant threat than the foreign-masterminded variety in part because it is more common in terms of the number of attacks on U.S. soil. For example, my <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/CTC-ViolentFarRight.pdf">report</a> published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point identified hundreds of domestic terror incidents per year from 2008 to 2012. </p>
<p>Another report, initially published in 2014 by <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/">New America Foundation</a> on domestic incidents of extremist violence, shows that far-right affiliated perpetrators conducted 18 attacks that killed 48 people in the United States from 2002 to 2016 (excluding the <a href="https://theconversation.com/another-mass-shooting-what-the-experts-say-60983">Orlando nightclub massacre</a>). Over the same period, terrorists motivated by al-Qaida’s or the Islamic State’s ideology killed 45 people in nine attacks.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-violent-men-two-symptoms-of-the-same-sickness-60988">Orlando mass shooting</a>, given its mix of apparent motives, is hard to categorize. That attack killed 49 people.</p>
<h2>A spontaneous appearance</h2>
<p>In briefings with law enforcement and policymakers, I have sometimes encountered a tendency to see U.S. right-wing extremists as a monolith. But traditional Ku Klux Klan chapters <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/CTC-ViolentFarRight.pdf">operate differently</a> than skinhead groups, as do anti-government “patriot” and militia groups and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/us/anti-abortion-violence/">anti-abortion extremists</a>. <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/christian-identity">Christian Identity groups</a>, which believe Anglo-Saxons and other people of Northern European descent are a chosen people, are distinct too. </p>
<p>Certainly, there is some overlap. But these groups also differ significantly in terms of their methods of violence, recruitment styles and <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/CTC-ViolentFarRight.pdf">ideologies</a>. Across the board, undermining the threat they pose requires a more sophisticated approach than investigating their criminal acts as suspected hate crimes. </p>
<p>In an ongoing study I’m conducting at the University of Massachusetts Lowell with several students, we have determined that, as apparently occurred with Collins’ murder in Maryland, many attacks inspired by racist or xenophobic sentiments may appear spontaneous. That is, no one plans them in advance or targets the victim ahead of time. Instead, chance encounters that enrage the perpetrators trigger these incidents.</p>
<p>Sporadic attacks with high numbers of casualties that are plotted in advance, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/hate-violence-and-the-tragedy-of-the-charleston-shootings-43579">Dylann Roof’s murder</a> of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church, are always big news. More typical incidents of far-right violence tend to draw less attention.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171053/original/file-20170525-23279-132jhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The widow of Clementa Pinckney, a pastor and South Carolina lawmaker slain in the mass murder at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, hugs her daughter during a 2015 memorial service for victims of that attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obama-Charleston-Shooting/f1c7c62375e5491aa92aa563ebb46215/1/0">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fatal stabbing of <a href="http://katu.com/news/local/mother-identifies-23-year-old-son-as-max-stabbing-victim">Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Ricky John Best</a> aboard a train in Portland, Oregon in late May is one exception. The alleged killer of these two white men, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/05/police_responding_to_ne_portla.html">Jeremy Joseph Christian</a>, attacked them with a knife after they stood up to him for haranguing two young women who appeared to be Muslim, police said.</p>
<p>Much of the extensive media coverage focused on Christian’s <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/us/jeremy-joseph-christian-portland-stabbing/index.html">violent and racist</a> background.</p>
<p>Given the spontaneous nature of so much far-right violence, U.S. counterterrorism policies should, in my view, target the dissemination of white supremacist ideology, rather than just identifying planned attacks and monitoring established white supremacy groups.</p>
<h2>An iceberg theory</h2>
<p>The number of violent attacks on U.S. soil inspired by far-right ideology has spiked since the beginning of this century, rising from a yearly average of 70 attacks in the 1990s to a yearly average of more than <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/CTC-ViolentFarRight.pdf">300 since 2001</a>. These incidents have grown even more common since President Donald Trump’s election. </p>
<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that researches U.S. extremism, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-after-harassment-and-intimidation-aftermath-election">reported 900 bias-related incidents</a> against minorities in the first 10 days after Trump’s election – compared with several dozen in a normal week – and the group found that many of the harassers invoked the then-president-elect’s name. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that tracks anti-Semitism, recorded an <a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/us-anti-semitic-incidents-spike-86-percent-so-far-in-2017">86 percent rise</a> in anti-Semitic incidents in the first three months of 2017.</p>
<p>Beyond the terror that victimized communities are experiencing, I would argue that this trend reflects a deeper social change in American society.</p>
<p><a href="http://eagle.orgfree.com/alabasters_archive/iceberg_model.html">The iceberg model of political extremism</a>, initially developed by political scientist Ehud Shprinzak can illuminate these dynamics.</p>
<p>Murders and other violent attacks perpetrated by U.S. far-right extremists compose the visible tip of an iceberg. The rest of this iceberg is under water and out of sight. It includes hundreds of attacks every year that damage property and intimidate communities, such as the attempted burning of an <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/7dayarchive/article/Schodack-police-probe-garage-fire-graffiti-as-11147194.php">African-American family’s garage</a> in Schodack, New York. The garage was also defaced with racist graffiti.</p>
<p>Data my team collected at the <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/CTC-ViolentFarRight.pdf">Combating Terrorism Center at West Point</a> show that the significant growth in far-right violence in recent years is happening at the base of the iceberg. While the main reasons for that are still not clear, it is important to remember that changes in societal norms are usually reflected in behavioral changes.</p>
<p>Hence, it is more than reasonable to suspect that extremist individuals engage in such activities because they sense that their views are enjoying growing social legitimacy and acceptance, which is emboldening them to act on their bigotry. </p>
<h2>Budget cuts</h2>
<p>Despite an uptick in far-right violence and the Trump administration’s plan to increase the <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2018-APP/pdf/BUDGET-2018-APP-1-12.pdf">Department of Homeland Security budget</a> by 6.7 percent to <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/05/23/administrations-fiscal-year-2018-budget-request-advances-dhs-operations">US$44.1 billion in 2018</a>, the White House wants to cut spending for programs that fight non-Muslim domestic terrorism.</p>
<p>The federal government has also frozen $10 million in grants aimed at countering <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-extremism-idUSKBN18J2HJ">domestic violent extremism</a>. This approach is bound to weaken the authorities’ power to monitor far-right groups, undercutting public safety. </p>
<p>How many more innocent people like Richard Collins III have to die before the U.S. government starts taking the threat posed by violent white supremacists more seriously?</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 28, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arie Perliger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Like the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, the murder of Richard Collins III was a symptom of violent extremism that should be treated accordingly.
Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor, UMass Lowell
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84645
2017-09-27T00:54:26Z
2017-09-27T00:54:26Z
The surprising connection between ‘take a knee’ protests and Citizens United
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187646/original/file-20170926-17379-1nbcljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones joined his team in taking a knee before a game on Sept. 25.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Matt York</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that some fear <a href="http://time.com/4922542/democrats-citizen-united/">is destroying American democracy</a>, may also be showing us how to heal it. </p>
<p>The most recent example of this is the reaction to President Donald Trump’s comments suggesting that sports owners <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/sports/nfl-trump-anthem-protests.html">should fire players</a> who kneel during the national anthem. As the president does so often, he placed business leaders in the difficult position of deciding whether to speak out at the risk of alienating customers and courting further controversy. </p>
<p>In this case, many league officials and owners chose to do just that, <a href="https://twitter.com/NFLprguy/status/911580084141772801/photo/1">labeling</a> Trump’s words “divisive” and <a href="https://twitter.com/WarriorsPR/status/911671456928382976/photo/1">defending their players’ right</a> to “express themselves freely on matters important to them.” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/09/25/cowboys-players-take-a-knee-with-owner-jerry-jones-before-standing-for-anthem/?utm_term=.d00ae10138dc">Some owners</a> “took a knee” alongside their players. </p>
<p>While corporate speech is often assumed to favor only conservative causes, my research on attorney advertising reveals the extent to which free speech rights for companies <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2445771">also advances</a> causes important to liberals. </p>
<p>I would argue that Citizens United – a Supreme Court opinion that has produced bitterly partisan reactions – ironically offers a pluralistic vision of corporate speech as well as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6233137937069871624">full-throated defense</a> of the kind of political speech <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-corporate-ceos-found-their-political-voice-83127">we are now witnessing</a> from business leaders. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187671/original/file-20170926-10570-1sisnqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, center, resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council because of the president’s muted reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Va. The council soon disbanded after that.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Speaking out in the age of Trump</h2>
<p>Whether to speak out when Trump takes a position that is at odds with the rights of their employees or their own or company’s values has become a fundamental dilemma for many business leaders in the Trump era. </p>
<p>Many have done so on <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/ken-frazier-trump-charlottesville-response/">Charlottesville</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/01/elon-musk-quits-donald-trumps-advisory-councils-paris-accord/">climate change</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/890247543686397952">transgender service in the military</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/09/06/amazon-and-microsoft-are-supporting-a-15-state-lawsuit-to-protect-daca/?utm_term=.988cbc9f1414">Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals</a>. Others have <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/corporate-americas-awkward-embrace-of-trump-will-continue">stayed silent</a>, seeming to support the notion that inserting themselves into political controversies would be to step out of bounds. </p>
<p>In this view, business should be separate from politics, and corporations should leave political discourse to private citizens. But for better or worse, our system protects business leaders speaking up. And the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United describes why it’s so important. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187668/original/file-20170926-10570-6opbe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">They may not be people, but they’re made up of them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Toby Talbot</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Citizens United, the left’s bete noir</h2>
<p>In 2010, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6233137937069871624">Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</a> overturned a law that limited corporate finance of certain political ads on First Amendment grounds. The reaction from liberals and those who favor limits on campaign finance was <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/02/25/the-devastating-decision/">fierce</a>.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama famously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deGg41IiWwU">criticized</a> the opinion during a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/State_of_the_Union/state-of-the-union-2010-president-obama-speech-transcript/story?id=9678572">State of the Union address</a>, with the justices who issued the ruling sitting a few feet away:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to a Time magazine survey of law professors, the opinion ranks among <a href="http://time.com/4056051/worst-supreme-court-decisions/">the worst since 1960</a>.</p>
<p>And yet, like any political lightning rod, Citizens United is both less and more than it seems. </p>
<p>Constitutional scholar Justin Levitt <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41308528?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">characterized</a> the opinion as an incremental change from previous law, which offered corporations no shortage of options for political influence. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2012.01265.x">Another study</a> found that companies spent more on politics after Citizens United but it ultimately hurt shareholders – it was essentially a form of corporate waste. Spending additional corporate dollars on campaigns awash in advertising may not produce much of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjNg9CAssPWAhVBXWMKHVp8D_8QFggmMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeople.umass.edu%2Fschaffne%2Flaraja_schaffner_spendingbans.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGCK5ryfKuvJ9A-bvaLmbV7efoUyA">a return</a> on investment.</p>
<p>Beyond its legal impact, Citizens United offered a vision of democracy that embraces the unique and important role that business leaders play in political discourse. In other words, exactly what we’ve seen when business leaders stand up to Trump.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E2h8ujX6T0A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Business leaders bridging divides</h2>
<p>Citizens United stands in part for the idea that the First Amendment provides strong protection for political speech, even if it originates from a company. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A">Corporations may not be people</a>, but, to paraphrase the movie “Soylent Green,” they are <a href="https://vimeo.com/193955387">made of people</a>. </p>
<p>In this view, corporations are groups of people on par with labor unions or nonprofits, and their joint viewpoints are deserving of protection.</p>
<p>At a time of deep partisan division, business leaders may be the rare voice deemed credible across the political spectrum. Small businesses are among the <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/212840/americans-confidence-institutions-edges.aspx">few remaining institutions</a> that inspire a high level of confidence from both Republicans and Democrats. Tech companies also still enjoy <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/poll-little-confidence-major-american-institutions-n697931">high levels</a> of trust. Importantly, among those who are losing confidence in the “system,” business is seen as <a href="https://www.edelman.com/global-results/">the most trusted</a> institution.</p>
<p>To this, one might respond, why ruin a good thing? Perhaps business leaders should lie low and preserve their reputation. But it is a mistake to assume that any statements in opposition to Trump are themselves divisive. </p>
<p>In this regard, even diluted corporate rhetoric offers the comparative benefit of articulating a few things that Americans have in common. After Charlottesville, the CEO of Campbell Soup – a symbol of mainstream values if there ever was one – <a href="https://www.campbellsoupcompany.com/newsroom/press-releases/campbell-ceo-resigns-from-presidents-manufacturing-jobs-initiative/">issued a statement</a> that “racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible.” It may not be revolutionary, but at least it’s a point upon which virtually every American can agree. </p>
<p>Citizens United also argued that corporations have a unique viewpoint in the <a href="http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3484&context=caselrev">marketplace of ideas</a>. In this conception of speech, corporate voices are worth protecting because voters find them valuable or important. As the Supreme Court <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6233137937069871624">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“On certain topics corporations may possess valuable expertise, leaving them the best equipped to point out errors or fallacies in speech of all sorts, including the speech of candidates and elected officials.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this vein, corporations represent a credible source of information and context on policy matters.</p>
<p>The Trump administration’s decision to terminate DACA is often invoked as a moral issue. However, in a lawsuit against the administration, tech leaders explained that it was also a business issue, describing how its termination will affect their ability to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/09/06/amazon-and-microsoft-are-supporting-a-15-state-lawsuit-to-protect-daca/?utm_term=.fb7cf1118ac6">recruit and retain top talent</a>. Likewise, when NFL owners and coaches defend their players, it’s an opportunity to provide context for how the kneeling controversy relates to racial justice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187667/original/file-20170926-31238-c81frg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colin Kaepernick (7) began taking a knee during the national anthem last year to protest police brutality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Gluskoter/AP Images for Panini</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>For business leaders, it’s personal</h2>
<p>To be sure, Citizens United has had some of the negative impact liberals feared. In particular, <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/685691">one study</a> estimated that corporate spending following Citizens United measurably improved Republican prospects in state legislatures. </p>
<p>When corporations have the option to engage in unlimited spending, it gives them a <a href="http://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/gslr27&section=43">louder voice</a> than others in the electoral process.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the kind of statements we’ve heard from NFL and NBA team owners offers a counterpoint to the kind of corporate speech most feared by commentators following Citizens United – that of faceless corporations pouring money into elections in service of their “greedy ends.” Instead, these statements have an intensely personal character. They show leaders sharing their own personal experiences and how those experiences are reflected in the organizations they run.</p>
<p>When NFL team owner Shahid Khan <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/09/24/shahid-khan-the-jaguars-owner-who-stood-with-his-team-has-long-espoused-the-american-dream/?utm_term=.40c47b159691">linked arms</a> with his players during the national anthem before a game, it sent a symbolic message to his players – and to everyone watching – about his vision of an inclusive America that honors diversity “in many forms – race, faith, our views and our goals.” </p>
<p>It may not be the kind of corporate speech that we imagined. But it’s exactly what we need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth C. Tippett made a contribution to the Hillary Clinton campaign.</span></em></p>
Team owners’ defense of their players ‘taking a knee’ during the national anthem shows the vital role business leaders play in political discourse – one championed by Citizens United.
Elizabeth C. Tippett, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Oregon
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84023
2017-09-15T20:02:19Z
2017-09-15T20:02:19Z
Can taking down websites really stop terrorists and hate groups?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186054/original/file-20170914-8975-10ohbne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's very hard to cut extremists off from the internet.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/no-internet-disconnection-nippers-snack-twisted-625930508">ADragan/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of an explosion in London on September 15, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/908643633901039617">President Trump called for</a> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/opinions/trump-tweets-on-terror-internet-london-bergen/index.html">cutting off extremists’ access</a> to the internet.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"908643633901039617"}"></div></p>
<p>Racists and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/world/asia/philippines-isis-marawi-duterte.html">terrorists</a>, and many <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/08/04/boko-haram-internet-fake-news-influence-terrorism-osinbajo/">other extremists</a>, have used the internet for decades and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/extremist-groups-vkontakte/483426/">adapted as technology evolved</a>, shifting from text-only discussion forums to elaborate and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/17/el-daily-stormer-in-search-of-new-readers-leading-neo-nazi-site-starts-publishing-in-spanish/">interactive websites</a>, <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb7n4a/isis-messaging-apps">custom-built secure messaging systems</a> and even <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/11/05/inside-the-twitter-for-racists-gab-the-site-where-milo-yiannopoulos-goes-to-troll-now/">entire social media platforms</a>. </p>
<p>Our research has examined various online communities populated by radical and extremist groups. And two of us were on the team that created the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2012.713229">U.S. Extremist Crime Database</a>, an open-source database helping scholars better understand the criminal behaviors of jihadi, far-right and far-left extremists. Analysis of that data demonstrates that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.755912">having an online presence</a> appears to help hate groups stay active over time. (One of the oldest far-right group forums, Stormfront, has been online in some form <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-online-equivalent-of-a-burning-cross-83185">since the early 1990s</a>.) </p>
<p>But recent efforts to <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-online-equivalent-of-a-burning-cross-83185">deny these groups online platforms</a> will not kick hate groups, nor hate speech, off the web. In fact, some scholars theorize that attempts to shut down hate speech online may cause a backlash, worsening the problem and making hate groups more attractive to marginalized and stigmatized people, groups and movements.</p>
<h2>Fighting an impossible battle</h2>
<p>Like regular individuals and corporations, extremist groups use social media and the internet. But there have been few concerted efforts to eliminate their presence from online spaces. For years, Cloudflare, a company that provides technical services and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/cloudflare-daily-stormer-charlottesville.html">protection against online attacks</a>, has <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serve-up-hate-on-the-web">been a key provider</a> for far-right groups and jihadists, withstanding <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubbishes_anonymous_claims_of_terrorist_support/">harsh criticism</a>.</p>
<p>The company refused to act until a few days after the violence in Charlottesville. As outrage built around the events and groups involved, pressure mounted on companies providing internet services to the Daily Stormer, a major hate site whose members helped organize the demonstrations that turned fatal. As other service providers <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16150668/daily-stormer-alt-right-dark-web-site-godaddy-google-ban">stopped working with the site</a>, <a href="http://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295">Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince emailed his staff</a> that he “woke up … in a bad mood and decided to <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/">kick them off the internet</a>.” </p>
<p>It may seem like a good first step to limit hate groups’ online activity – thereby keeping potential supporters from learning about them and deciding to participate. And a company’s decision may demonstrate to other customers its willingness to take hard stances against hate speech.</p>
<p>But that decision can cause problems: Prince criticized his own role, saying, “<a href="https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295">No one should have that power</a>” to decide who should and shouldn’t be able to be online. And he made clear that the move was <a href="https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi-site-1797915295">not a signal of a new company policy</a>.</p>
<p>Further, as a sheer practical matter, the distributed global nature of the internet means no group can be kept offline entirely. All manner of extremist groups have online operations – and despite <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/01/facebook-twitter-extremism-meeting/">efforts by mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter</a>, they are still able to recruit people to far-right groups and the jihadist movement. Even the Daily Stormer itself has managed to remain online after being booted from the mainstream internet, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/unable-to-get-a-domain-racist-daily-stormer-retreats-to-the-dark-web/">finding new life as a site on the dark web</a>.</p>
<h2>Drawing attention</h2>
<p>Efforts to knock extremists offline may also have counterproductive results, helping the targeted groups recruit and radicalize new members. The fact that their websites have been taken down can become <a href="https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/ISIS%20in%20America%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf">a badge of honor</a> for those who are blocked or removed. For instance, Twitter users affiliated with IS who were blocked or banned at one point are often able to <a href="https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Berger_Occasional%20Paper.pdf">reactivate their accounts</a> and use their experience as a demonstration of their commitment.</p>
<p>When a particular site is under fire, people who hold similar beliefs may be drawn to support the group, finding themselves motivated by a perceived opportunity to express views that are opposed by socially powerful companies or organization. In fact, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/friction-9780199747436?cc=us&lang=en&">radicalization scholars</a> have found that some extremist groups actively seek out harsh penalties from criminal justice agencies and governments, in an effort to exploit perceived overreactions for a public relations advantage that also aids their recruitment efforts.</p>
<h2>Relations between tech companies and police</h2>
<p>Internet companies’ decisions about online expression also affect the difficult relationship between the technology industry and law enforcement. There are, for example, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-apple-facebook-other-tech-groups-are-combatting-online-exploitation-of-childen_us_564b8ee3e4b045bf3df1741a">many examples of cooperation</a> between web hosting providers and police investigating child pornography or other crimes. But policies and practices vary widely and can depend on the circumstances of the crime or the nature of the police request. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-fbi-versus-apple-government-strengthened-techs-hand-on-privacy-55353">Apple refused to help the FBI</a> retrieve information from an iPhone used by a man who shot 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in 2015. The company said it wanted to avoid setting a precedent that could put its customers at risk of intrusive or unfair investigations <a href="https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/">in the future</a>. And Apple has since <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/apples-ios-11-will-make-it-even-harder-for-cops-to-extract-your-data/">substantially increased its protections</a> for data stored on its devices.</p>
<p>All of this suggests the tech industry, law enforcement and policymakers must develop a more measured and coordinated approach to the removal of extremist and terrorist content online. Tech companies may intend to be creating a safer and more inclusive environment for users – but they may actually encourage radicalization and simultaneously create precedents for removing content in the face of public outcry, regardless of legal or moral obligations. </p>
<p>To date, these concerns have arisen suddenly and briefly only in the wake of specific events, like 9/11 or Charlottesville. And while opponents may shut down one or more hate sites, the site will likely pop back up elsewhere, maybe even stronger. The only way to really eliminate this kind of online content is to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/opinions/trump-tweets-on-terror-internet-london-bergen/index.html">decrease the number of people who support it</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Holt, Steve Chermak, and Joshua D. Freilich receive funding from the the National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua D. Freilich receives funding from the National Institute of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Chermak receives funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.</span></em></p>
Efforts to kick extremists off the internet can’t succeed and might even have the unintended side effect of bolstering support for radical groups.
Thomas Holt, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University
Joshua D. Freilich, Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Steven Chermak, Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83185
2017-08-31T00:06:43Z
2017-08-31T00:06:43Z
What is the online equivalent of a burning cross?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184062/original/file-20170830-927-1qf7sdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Online hate isn't always as easy to spot as it might appear.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/word-hate-written-red-keyboard-buttons-328962281">Lukasz Stefanski/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>White supremacy is woven into the tapestry of American culture, online and off – in both physical monuments and online domain names. A band of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html?mcubz=0">tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists</a> gathered first online, and then at the site of a Jim Crow-era Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia.</p>
<p>Addressing white supremacy is going to take much more than toppling a handful of <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/19/544678037/duke-university-removes-robert-e-lee-statue-from-chapel-entrance">Robert E. Lee statues</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/magazine/how-hate-groups-forced-online-platforms-to-reveal-their-true-nature.html">shutting down a few white nationalist websites</a>, as technology companies have started to do. We must wrestle with what freedom of speech really means, and what types of speech go too far, and what kinds of limitations on speech we can endorse.</p>
<p>The First Amendment right to free speech was never meant to protect the kind of hate-filled rhetoric that summoned the mass gathering in Charlottesville, during which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/woman-killed-at-white-supremacist-rally-in-charlottesville-named">anti-racist demonstrator Heather Heyer</a> was killed. In 2003, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-1107.ZS.html">the Supreme Court ruled</a>, in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Black">Virginia v. Black</a>, that “cross burning done with the intent to intimidate has a long and pernicious history as a signal of impending violence.” In other words, there’s no First Amendment protection because a burning cross is meant to intimidate, not start a dialogue. But what constitutes a burning cross in the digital era?</p>
<h2>Stormfront, the epicenter of hate online</h2>
<p>I’ve been researching white supremacists for more than 20 years, and that work has straddled either side of the digital revolution. In the 1990s, I explored their movement through printed newsletters culled from the Klanwatch archive at the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>. As the web grew, my research shifted to the way these groups and their ideas moved onto the internet. My studies have included two white supremacist websites, one decommissioned and the other still active – Stormfront and martinlutherking.org. One is widely viewed as having run afoul of free speech protections; the other, at least as disturbing, has not yet been seen that way.</p>
<p>The Stormfront website, the online progenitor of (as its tagline touted) “white pride worldwide,” launched in 1995. Over more than two decades, Stormfront amassed more than <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/08/28/stormfront-white-supremacist-site-down/">300,000 registered users</a> and offered a haven for hate online. Since 2009, there have been nearly <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/stormfront">100 homicides</a> attributable to registered members of the site, prompting the Southern Poverty Law Center to call it “the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20140401/white-homicide-worldwide">murder capital</a> of the internet.” </p>
<p>All that time it was largely ignored by the tech companies that effectively allowed it to exist, by selling server space and offering domain name registration.</p>
<p>Since July 2017, the <a href="https://lawyerscommittee.org/mission/">Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law</a>, a civil rights nonprofit founded at the <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zFtYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YPoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6608,1876816&dq=lawyers+committee+for+civil+rights+under+law&hl=en">suggestion of President John F. Kennedy</a>, had been trying to focus tech companies’ attention on the violent and hateful content on Stormfront. The argument the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and its allies made was that “Stormfront crossed the line of permissible speech and incited and promoted violence,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/29/stormfront-neo-nazi-hate-site-murder-internet-pulled-offline-web-com-civil-rights-action">the group’s executive director told the Guardian</a>. </p>
<p>In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, that effort gained significant traction, ultimately chasing Stormfront off the internet. First, there was a move to <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/racist-daily-stormer-goes-down-again-as-cloudflare-drops-support/">boot The Daily Stormer</a>, a different white supremacist site, offline. Then, Network Solutions responded to the Lawyers’ Committee’s requests and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/another-neo-nazi-site-stormfront-is-shut-down/">revoked Stormfront’s domain name</a>. Without an active domain name, ordinary web users can’t access the site, even though the content still remains on Stormfront’s servers. </p>
<p>(The sites have not been completely silenced: Some of their content is accessible to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/24/daily-stormer-has-officially-retreated-to-the-dark-web/">people using the Tor Network</a>, and some <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/what-happens-when-the-internet-tries-to-silence-white-supremacy-20170828">is being posted on the social networking site Gab</a>, which supporters are then distributing on larger social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.)</p>
<p>With its decades-long trail of destruction, Stormfront is certainly a digital-era version of a cross burning. That makes it a soft target for fighting white supremacy online: Of course we should hold its hosting companies accountable and demand that its advocacy of white supremacist terror and violence be taken offline.</p>
<p>But more foreboding in some ways, and more difficult to address, are what are called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809105345">cloaked sites</a>,” those that conceal their authorship to disguise a political agenda – a precursor to today’s “fake news” sites.</p>
<h2>Looking for Dr. King</h2>
<p>At first glance, the martinlutherking.org website appears to be a clumsy tribute to the civil rights leadership of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html">Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr</a>. “It looks, you know, just like an individual created it,” said one of the young people <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742561588/Cyber-Racism-White-Supremacy-Online-and-the-New-Attack-on-Civil-Rights">I interviewed</a> about their impressions of the site. Only at the very bottom of the page – where most people would never see it – does the page reveal its true source: “Hosted by Stormfront.” </p>
<p>Don Black, an <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/don-black">ideologically committed white supremacist</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/white-supremacist-site-ma_b_809755.html">launched this cloaked site in 1999</a>, a few years after he started Stormfront, and it has been online continuously since then. As of August 30, the site <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170830180836/http://martinlutherking.org/">remains online</a>.</p>
<p>The site’s invitation to “Join the MLK Discussion Forum” might seem innocuous, but the discussion is not only about King himself or racial justice in America. The topics in the forum read like excerpts from the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html">FBI’s efforts</a> to <a href="http://www.salon.com/2000/01/24/mlk/">defame King</a>, alleging communism, plagiarism and sexual infidelity. The site is an attempt to undermine hard-won legal, political, social and moral <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/initiatives/civil-rights-history-project">victories of the civil rights era</a>. </p>
<h2>The harm of white supremacy</h2>
<p>The fact that Stormfront is offline but martinlutherking.org isn’t suggests that we aren’t very sophisticated yet in our thinking about what kinds of risks white supremacy poses. While Stormfront is an obvious, overt threat to people’s lives, the cloaked site is a more subtle and insidious threat to the underlying moral argument for civil rights. Both are dangers to democracy. </p>
<p>White supremacy is corrosive. <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/02/i-dont-think-were-free-in-america-an-interview-with-bryan-stevenson/">Bryan Stevenson</a>, a legal scholar, activist and a leading critic of our failure to address racism in the U.S., <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/30545-bryan-stevenson-on-mass-incarceration-racial-injustice-we-all-need-mercy-we-all-need-justice">says</a> “the era of slavery created a lasting ideology of white supremacy; a doctrine of ‘otherness’ got assigned to people of color with dreadful consequences. That narrative has never seriously been confronted.” </p>
<p>What is at stake in both the fight over monuments and domain names is the same: our collective decision to perpetuate – or undo – the system of ideas that claims those in the category “white” are more deserving than everyone else of citizenship, voting, jobs, health, safety, of life itself.</p>
<p>If Americans are serious about wanting to dismantle white supremacy (and this remains an open question), then we are going to have to learn to see burning crosses in our midst, and seriously confront how this destructive set of ideas is part of the fabric of our culture. But if we want a society that respects human rights and rejects white supremacy, we can begin, in my view, by refusing to grant platforms for harmful ideas, on white nationalist websites and in monuments to the Confederacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessie Daniels has received funding from The MacArthur Foundation, Mellon Foundation and Ford Foundation. </span></em></p>
Two websites, one taken offline, the other still active, raise hard questions about how prepared Americans are to deal with free speech about white supremacy, in both monuments and domain names.
Jessie Daniels, Professor, City University of New York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83004
2017-08-30T08:06:55Z
2017-08-30T08:06:55Z
White supremacists are on the march, but the Ku Klux Klan is history
<p>When Donald Trump repeatedly equated the far-right activists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia with the anti-fascist counter-protesters, the media’s reaction was swift and clear. The next covers of both the New Yorker and The Economist featured cartoons of Trump and a Ku Klux Klan hood. In one, the president guides a ship of state with a sail shaped like a hood; in the other, he shouts into a megaphone designed to look like the infamous white headpiece. </p>
<p>To many commentators, the Klan costume is now the perfect visual sleight with which to decry Trump’s cack-handed false equivalence. After all, hoods and burning crosses are the most potent icons of American white supremacy, an easy shorthand for racism and bigotry. But despite the scenes of extrovert white supremacists on the march with burning torches in Charlottesville, something important has changed: today, there is essentially no such thing as “the Klan”. </p>
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<p>Its brand began to evaporate as long ago as 1944, when the Internal Revenue Service <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/us/29kennedy.html">turned up an unpayable debt</a> stemming from the organisation’s lucrative glory days in the 1920s. The debt was never repaid, meaning that those who would use the name today must settle it, which – thanks to compound interest – now stretches into the tens of millions.</p>
<p>The upshot is that today there are many different, equally horrible organisations designed to spread hate, all using the word “Klan”, but unable to call themselves simply the Ku Klux Klan. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks hate groups across the US, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan">currently counts 130 such groups</a>. They total some 5,000 to 8,000 members. Few have more than regional appeal; very few have statewide reach, and none are national. </p>
<p>Some groups share their anti-Semitic vitriol with neo-Nazi organisations, drawing on modern paganism, usually based around the <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/the-new-religion-of-choice-for-white-supremacists-8af2a69a3440/">neo-Norse</a> mythologies. Some are <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QCuaQSZkGkQC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22race+war%22+survivalists&source=bl&ots=kdLtaiecah&sig=2LHpJKzkSOEDz3URgPq-PZuWGnc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT2qfN3fzVAhWLC8AKHdajCyUQ6AEIRzAH#v=onepage&q=%22race%20war%22%20survivalists&f=false">militia-survivalists</a> preparing for the Wagnerian denouement of US civilisation in a “race war”. Still others focus on what they call the “White Holocaust” of abortion, which they claim disproportionately targets Caucasian babies, or adhere to “traditional” white supremacy grounded in extreme white Anglo-Saxon protestant ideals.</p>
<h2>The bad old days</h2>
<p>Frightening though this may sound, this is far from a return to the KKK’s 1920s heyday. Back then, it was a true mass movement, <a href="https://priceonomics.com/when-the-kkk-was-a-pyramid-scheme/">pyramid-selling membership</a> to millions of people in every state in the US and some of Canada; it even harboured ambitions of establishing “Klaverns” worldwide. Nor are we seeing a return to the Klans’ ultra-violent backlashes against civil rights in the 1870s or 1950s, when they commanded considerable, if localised, support.</p>
<p>The media should be careful about labelling far right groups or activists as “the Klan” just because they have associated views. This gives the oxygen of publicity to the ideological remnants of a group that hasn’t really existed for 70 years. </p>
<p>This was a different matter when the Klan was in full force. In 1921, the New York World famously ran 21 anti-Klan front-page articles, exposing the group’s awful activities day after day with large-point headlines – “Ku Klux Made Jews and Negroes Target for Racial Hatreds”, “Bitter Anti-Catholic Propaganda Peddled by Officials of Klan”. </p>
<p>These headlines spurred a full investigation by a House of Representatives committee, where the founder of the Klan, “Imperial Wizard” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40578787">William Joseph Simmons</a>, successfully defended the order against claims of corruption, violence and bigotry. In a widely reported and memorable phrase, he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7JrlCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT152&lpg=PT152&dq=%E2%80%9Cinnocent+as+the+breath+of+an+angel%E2%80%9D+klan&source=bl&ots=peEMdyXcSo&sig=W2Sncv-_Zey03ipXZ3cBeZymT3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0qbaryvzVAhXKLMAKHU4SDP8Q6AEIODAE#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cinnocent%20as%20the%20breath%20of%20an%20angel%E2%80%9D%20klan&f=false">argued</a> his Klan was as “innocent as the breath of an angel”.</p>
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<p>Thankfully, few if any believe such claptrap today. But that’s no reason for complacency. It should shock us that the Klans and their allies feel confident enough to take part in a public rally on the scale of Charlottesville, and that they feel others in the US might support them. Nevertheless, they almost certainly don’t have popular backing and there will not be a return to the dark days when the KKK enjoyed mass national membership, or regional sympathy. </p>
<p>Today, as always in the past, the Klans’ grab-bag ideology of hatreds and grievances contains the seeds of its own destruction. Publicity has the power to show “Klansmen” for what they really are: a collection of sad, dysfunctional, bigots who both celebrate their social exclusion and plot the downfall of those who exclude them. </p>
<p>History shows us they will never be able to unite under one banner, at least not for very long. But it would be a tragedy if a lack of historical context in the coverage of current events gives the wrong impression, helping Klansmen to achieve any form of unity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristofer Allerfeldt receives funding from ESRC </span></em></p>
Far from the millions-strong mass movement of years gone by, today’s ‘Klan’ is really just a smattering of assorted local hate groups.
Kristofer Allerfeldt, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82262
2017-08-27T20:06:47Z
2017-08-27T20:06:47Z
Digging for dirt in the digital age: the trouble with journalism and doxing
<p>Even before the march in <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-and-the-politics-of-fear-82443">Charlottesville turned violent</a>, images of white supremacist demonstrators were posted on social media <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-doxxing.html">along with requests</a> to identify them.</p>
<p>Many were named by Twitter and Facebook sleuths, complete with details of where they lived and worked. Some have reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/08/14/a-twitter-campaign-is-outing-people-who-marched-with-white-nationalists-in-charlottesville/">lost their jobs</a> or “<a href="http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/17/white-nationalist-cries-after-being-forced-into-hiding-over-charlottesville-march-6858695/">gone into hiding</a>”, while others have been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlottesville-neo-nazi-protest-disown-family-north-dakota-peter-tefft-a7893496.html">disowned by their families</a>.</p>
<p>Their public exposure is an example of doxing – the ferreting out of someone’s identity by following digital trails of documents, recorded appearances, images, social media posts, website visits and comments.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-regulate-doctors-to-protect-the-public-from-harm-why-not-journalists-80349">We regulate doctors to protect the public from harm - why not journalists?</a>
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<p>Doxing has <a href="https://theconversation.com/doxxing-swatting-and-the-new-trends-in-online-harassment-40234">a complicated history</a>, but the type of identity-seeking that occurred in the wake of Charlottesville was once mostly the work of the media.</p>
<p>Audiences used to rely on journalists’ skill and the editing processes to ensure that reported information was checked and verified. Mistakes were made, of course, but nowadays the process is increasingly outgunned and outpaced by the speed at which the crowd can work.</p>
<p>Doxing challenges traditional journalism. Its investigative role is circumvented, if not entirely usurped, by people disclosing information online quickly, if not always accurately. New hybrid journalism models, linking citizens and journalists, offer a way forward.</p>
<h2>Should journalists report doxing attempts?</h2>
<p>When it comes to emerging stories, there’s no contest between media organisations and the swarming power of people online. But in these events, journalists often assume a passive role. </p>
<p>When major news events break today, media organisations often rely on the public to provide information and material that would not otherwise be available. The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami was one of the first global news events. It showed it was possible to construct and report news by <a href="https://theconversation.com/boxing-day-tsunami-heralded-new-era-of-citizen-journalism-35730">aggregating and sharing crowdsourced material</a>. </p>
<p>These days, journalists are damned if they report information obtained by doxing, and damned if they don’t. Because of the crowd’s enthusiasm for it, contemporary journalism is faced with a choice between speed and accuracy. </p>
<p>Journalism can either run with the crowd as a story unfolds, or hold back to check and verify. The former risks inaccuracy, errors and misrepresentation; the latter risks loss of audience attention. </p>
<h2>Problems with doxing</h2>
<p>Doxing creates problems that traditional journalism needs to grapple with, both practically and ethically. </p>
<p>Without meticulous factchecking and verification, it is frighteningly easy to misrepresent or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-doxxing.html">falsely identify people</a>. </p>
<p>In the same week as Charlottesville protesters were “brought down” online, an American man was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/world/europe/london-jogger-bus.html">wrongly identified and arrested</a> for pushing a woman into the path of a London bus. He was forced to hire bodyguards after receiving death threats. Most people are unlikely to have similar resources.</p>
<p>There have also been disturbing incidences of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-016-0216-4">digital vigilantism</a>, including false identification that put people’s lives at risk following terrorism incidents. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, for example, requests for help to find the suspects lead to people being <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-22214511">incorrectly accused</a> as the public eagerly investigated on Reddit forums.</p>
<h2>What should we do?</h2>
<p>Ironically, the problems created by doxing, hacking and online vigilantism make competent data-driven journalism even more necessary. </p>
<p>In the contracting and fragmenting environment of contemporary media, however, even the largest organisations don’t employ enough staff to do intensive online investigative work.</p>
<p>A lack of investment in training, and even resistance to the need for digital competency, has created a <a href="https://www.poynter.org/2014/journalism-needs-the-right-skills-to-survive/246563/">skills gap</a>. Most journalists lack the IT skills to access data in the same way hackers do (not to mention the fact that they are required to abide by the law). </p>
<p>Crowdsourcing journalism offers a way forward between random doxing and organised information retrieval and analysis. </p>
<p>It’s a hybrid model that combines traditional journalism practices, including legal and ethical knowledge, with the swarming power of people online and forensic IT and data management. </p>
<p>The Pulitzer Prize-winning <a href="https://panamapapers.icij.org/">Panama Papers project</a>, run by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, is one example of data-driven journalism. </p>
<p>The exposure of an international network of financial dealing linked to criminal syndicates and corruption is an indication of what can be achieved. But the Panama Papers was more in the traditional mode of investigative journalism. It was a long, slow process that required painstaking analysis of <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/panama-papers-data-leak-how-analysed-amount">more than 11.5 million documents</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian has also been a pioneer in the development of crowdsourced and data-driven journalism, with projects like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings">The Counted</a>, which tracked people killed by the police in the US.</p>
<p>Less structured forms of journalism based on digital information-seeking include Wikileaks, and other less controversial ventures such as Grasswire, which <a href="https://www.grasswire.com/about-us/">describes itself</a> as an “open newsroom”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re a community of over 1,200 people from all over the world who care about honest, accurate news. We source, verify, write and edit unbiased news stories that matter. Most of us aren’t journalists or writers or editors. Few of us have ever met in person.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Online, everyone knows what breed of dog you are</h2>
<p>In 1993, The New Yorker <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/nobody-knows-youre-a-dog-as-iconic-internet-cartoon-turns-20-creator-peter-steiner-knows-the-joke-rings-as-relevant-as-ever/2013/07/31/73372600-f98d-11e2-8e84-c56731a202fb_blog.html?utm_term=.18546275fb1d">published a cartoon</a> featuring two dogs, one sitting at a computer saying to the other: “Online, no one knows you’re a dog.” It captured the innocent period when it was possible to be anonymous online, and became one of the earliest internet memes. </p>
<p>In 2017, not only is it possible for the internet to know that you’re a dog, but it can quickly find out what breed of dog you are, where you go for walks, and whether you’re registered. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/online-trolls-mustnt-be-allowed-to-intimidate-journalists-80531">Online trolls mustn't be allowed to intimidate journalists</a>
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<p>In this environment, we need the watchdog of journalism more than ever to ensure that digital vigilantism, and erroneous and false information, are quickly identified and replaced with accurate information. </p>
<p>The danger for journalism is that it loses sight of its own role and gets swept away by the audience’s desire for instant information, rather than taking a slower, methodical route to truth. Models of journalism that recognise the power of the internet, but preserve the best practices of traditional journalism, offer a solution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Collette Snowden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Doxing challenges traditional journalism. Its investigative role is circumvented by people disclosing information online quickly, and often inaccurately.
Collette Snowden, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83050
2017-08-27T09:56:33Z
2017-08-27T09:56:33Z
What Barack Obama’s record breaking Mandela tweet tells us about the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183444/original/file-20170825-1045-mehz1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Barack Obama on a 2013 visit to South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kim Ludbrook/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is it about former US President Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/obamas-charlottesville-response-could-be-the-most-popular-tweet-ever.html">record-setting</a> tweet – it has already surpassed 1.6 million retweets and 4.5 million “likes” – that has captured the imagination of the world? </p>
<p>In the tweet Obama quoted Nelson Mandela:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion … People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love … For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"896523232098078720"}"></div></p>
<p>Judging by the replies and comments, the tweet seems to have offered some respite to the rapid depletion in social morale in the US after the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Charlottesville">Charlottesville violence</a>. White supremacists <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/donald-trump-arizona-rally-phoenix">gathered</a> in the Virginia town for a “Unite the Right” <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/16/16155942/charlottesville-protests-nazis-vice">rally</a> on August 12 to protest against plans to remove the statue of the Confederacy general, Robert E Lee. The violent extremists chanted racist and pro-Nazi slogans.</p>
<p>One of them, James Fields (20), allegedly <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/12/16138900/charlottesville-va-car-crash">rammed</a> a car into anti-fascist demonstrators, killing activist, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-heather-heyer-profile/index.html">Heather Heyer</a> (32).</p>
<p>Then came the current US President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/12/16138896/trump-speech-charlottesville-many-sides">press statement</a> that effectively legitimised the racism as perpetuated by the rightwingers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why did the Mandela words resonate now?</p>
<h2>Obama’s stroke of genius</h2>
<p>Amid incredulous scenes of flagrant neo-Nazism – incredulous, that is, in an era of progressive human rights – and the inevitable and necessary protest against the rally, the words of Nelson Mandela resounded with a gentle wisdom and a kindly warning.</p>
<p>It was not so much a case of Obama simply not being able to find the correct words to respond to such a loathsome occurrence. After all it’s not uncommon to use someone else’s words or sentiment to make a statement on social media. I too have done this on occasion. </p>
<p>In this instance, however, the use of Mandela’s words was calculated. Strategically speaking, it was a stroke of genius.</p>
<p>Articulating the poignant message as a “direct quote” tweet enabled Obama to pass on a discreet message saturated with meaning because of its content and because it was attributed to its originator. </p>
<p>But, as we have seen on Obama’s timeline, the direct-quote tweet was given added meaning because of who had sent it, and its timing. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/">Nelson Mandela Foundation</a> sent out the same quote as a tweet on 29 July. But it enjoyed just over 1,100 “likes”, 18 replies and 737 retweets. While this is obviously related to the number of followers, the point is that the overwhelming global resonance with the quote via Obama’s twitter timeline, is not simply because of its content, as profound as it is.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"891307244209491968"}"></div></p>
<p>In this case, Obama may have chosen these words precisely because they offered some distance from the political space in America. Had he tweeted a strong and powerful message in his own name or using his own words – which he is clearly skilled at doing – the message may have been regarded as merely playing the opposition card, or indeed, more likely, the race card. Either of these two imaginary readings would inevitably have been shut down either by political loyalists or increasingly courageous racists. </p>
<p>By using Mandela’s quote as a response to Charlottesville, Obama maintained a sophisticated balancing act, while offering a few poignant messages of his own:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>America is at risk of legitimising racial hatred in much the same way as South Africa did during apartheid;</p></li>
<li><p>Far-right conservative politics erodes the natural inclination of the human condition towards compassion; and</p></li>
<li><p>Trump’s views represent irresponsible leadership, and are a veritable seedbed for social hostility.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Perhaps that is why the echoed words of Mandela caused such an outpouring of support and resonance among twitterati. It said what progressively-minded individuals wanted to say, but simply couldn’t find the words. </p>
<h2>Moral authority</h2>
<p>I think the tweet raises another interesting sociological point about moral authority. In a context in which there is such a deflation of morale – such as the violence in Charlottesville and the blatantly irresponsible <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/donald-trump-arizona-rally-phoenix">responses</a> from Trump – any sound-minded progressive individual might hope, or even pray, for some kind of voice of reason.</p>
<p>Under normal circumstances, and especially in a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90356">predominantly Christian society</a> such as the US, this voice of reason may be found in the Bible. But the right wing rally-goers had traded its life force for a narrative of exclusion that supported their bigotry. Invoking the words of the venerated icon Mandela, then, offered the necessary kind of gravitas or moral weight. </p>
<p>I can’t help but consider how Mandela’s legacy continues to offer respite to the world, though sometimes in quite different ways. In one case, it is Obama’s political wisdom that prompts him to use the words of Mandela to balance out rising social discontent, and to challenge racial hatred. </p>
<p>In another case, just under our noses, the African National Congress (ANC) with its increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-governing-anc-buys-itself-time-as-the-unravelling-begins-56627">dishonourable</a> political leadership, <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/129368/vote-anc-do-it-for-madiba-zuma/">invokes</a> Mandela’s legacy to balance out rising social discontent about its own moral bankruptcy. Perhaps Mandela too, is, tragically, a man for all seasons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83050/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caryn Abrahams is an academic based at Wits University - at the School of Governance - and is affiliated with the Anti-racism Network of South Africa (ARNSA). </span></em></p>
Barack Obama may have chosen Mandela’s words for his tweet precisely because they offered some distance from the political space in the US.
Caryn Abrahams, Senior lecturer, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82665
2017-08-25T13:31:16Z
2017-08-25T13:31:16Z
Robert E Lee, George Washington and the trouble with the American pantheon
<p>When the US president, Donald Trump, was asked to clarify his position on the violence that unfolded in <a href="https://theconversation.com/global/topics/charlottesville-attack-41864">Charlottesville</a>, Virginia during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York, he poured gasoline on a raging fire. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/read-president-trumps-q-and-a-at-trump-tower/index.html">comment</a> about the historical monument to Confederate general Robert E Lee, which had become a flashpoint in the protests, Trump remarked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This week it’s Robert E Lee … I wonder is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For years, a debate about Confederate monuments has been growing in intensity, setting protesters and city counsellors around the country against activists who see the monuments to southern civil war heroes as a part of the region’s heritage – even though the majority of them were erected <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf">long after the war</a>. Indeed, most were put up around the beginning of the 20th century, as African-American disfranchisement began to well and truly bite across the country and in the 1950s and 1960s, largely in reaction to the civil rights movement and desegregation. Though they might hold a civil war figure aloft, monuments to the Confederacy commemorate white supremacy in marble. This is the message. The rest is historical window dressing.</p>
<p>A few of these statues make this fact plain. Most do not. All of them trade in a historical bait and switch. The statues memorialising the Confederacy gave segregationists the historical justification they needed to act, while at the same time allowing them to cast their efforts in a regional history of lost causes rather than white supremacy and the perpetuation of slavery.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ix3764QIBIc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But Trump’s stance also raise questions about not so much whether monuments ought to be taken down, but the company that Robert E Lee keeps in the pantheon of the republic’s most important civic icons. Here too there are problems, but not only the ones you might think.</p>
<p>On the surface, the president’s remarks make no sense to anyone who has read in any depth about American history. Thomas Jefferson wrote the document that set the American colonies down the road to independence. He was a president, as was George Washington. <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Lee</a> was a decorated soldier – but a founding father he was not. He renounced his citizenship, joined a cause to break up the Union and stood at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia which inflicted incredible damage on the United States and killed tens of thousands of American soldiers. Washington and Jefferson helped to build the republic. Lee was out to destroy it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183323/original/file-20170824-28045-1mi5ggc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/volvob12b/31098162420/in/photolist-Po3df9-dZx56C-94LU4W-c4WZeL-NpRea-dB2Jg-9zkUxC-KEtQE-a1yTcv-9xpBLq-azPTqV-4nokJ-qb4pWh-dgztGa-dWs5n1-dWs8Ko-7Q6kfL-WxhDtC-9p5HEC-5SxQyQ-5SxSoU-4k4xLN-4k4zMJ-7jj7yd-hPtQzM-5SxTCW-5SxQh9-8U4863-9p5J3W-KDrm8-2zbu49-5Stznv-2nddMo-5SxMS3-8MzdYq-4k4xhy-cxDdzW-8PKMg4-4k4yuG-bBycax-9A3qGD-5SxS5N-4k4sKh-bbV5ST-677ePw-4A8pAV-5CEZWw-bBycHF-fvrjXU-ff2NcP">Bernard Spragg</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, one of the odd and understudied by-products of the war is that, despite the all-consuming talk of treason and loyalty during and immediately following the conflict, by the later decades of the century former Confederate citizens could wrap themselves in the American flag and still erect monuments to their Confederate heroes, all without irony or sanction from the rest of the country.</p>
<p>For a good many Americans, Lee is held up as a national hero – even if he had a hand in almost tearing the republic to pieces. The historical narrative that wraps Lee, Washington and all the rest into one whole is a story of misdirection. It is a memory of the war that few who survived the conflict would have recognised. And it is certainly not how those who were slaves when the war began remembered it.</p>
<h2>An accidental challenge</h2>
<p>But there is more to think about here. By associating Lee, Washington and Jefferson, Trump made an unintended but instructive point about the problem of whiteness, slavery and power in American history more broadly.</p>
<p>For all of the plaudits historians and the broader public throw at the feet of the so-called founding fathers, there is something to the idea that by holding them up and casting aspersions on Lee, we are somehow scrubbing up the former, and heaping scorn on the latter. The fact remains that most of the most powerful Americans in the first century of the republic’s history traded in slaves or profited from their labour. Few institutions were untouched by slavery’s influence. Though white nationalists might deny it, it is difficult to point on a map to any part of the United States that was not settled, improved or made profitable through the labour of African Americans in chains.</p>
<p>Trump was by no means out to make this point, but in his profound desire to lash out at his enemies and expose their weaknesses, his words inadvertently ought to force historians and the broader public to think again – and think again a lot harder – at the historical assumptions we make. No monument erected or destroyed can obscure the reality that racism remains one of the most powerful markers in American society. A darker reckoning with the nation’s history is sorely needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erik Mathisen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In defending white nationalists in Charlottesville, Donald Trump took aim at the founding fathers.
Erik Mathisen, Teaching Fellow, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82934
2017-08-24T11:13:37Z
2017-08-24T11:13:37Z
A museum of Confederate statues could help end the American Civil War
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183145/original/file-20170823-13316-1pvsjhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fischerfotos/7826449982/in/photolist-cVAAUN-XyUyRr-XyV9xV-Wvhtg9-Xb5Pao-vRTfRz-RTDxee-dPMtyx-9i7wzt-XyUyoT-XH2zsE-XM6A34-UsA9Ek-XyUzNM-9iaivd-XyVc7n-XM7geF-Wvii17-UpJv8J-nuULzw-XyV6L2-UpGDNJ-CNfRwC-UsAbUk-XM7t6r-xJ3EMb-pwBXZk-Mddnme-UpGByo-U4TrKw-r4jQTR-xcsL6o-WviiJb-WvhPnG-KqLmcF-UAmcUC-XyULmR-U4TuE9-rLcpMf-DHESS7-wVigCU-UpHTbo-UAkyV7-wDqAZE-wVicBY-Lnh4PZ-8m3rnc-8m6AZW-8m3rti-SWuwh4">Mark Fischer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across America, bronze rebels are falling. Confederate monuments have come down in <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-new-orleans-comes-to-a-close">New Orleans</a>, Louisiana, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/baltimore-begins-taking-down-confederate-statues/2017/08/16/f32aa26e-8265-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.df604688ef9c">Baltimore</a>, Maryland, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/8-now-charged-in-toppling-of-durham-n-c-confederate-statue/">Durham</a>, North Carolina, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/us/ut-austin-confederate-statues-removed/index.html">Austin</a>, Texas and even <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-forever-monument-20170815-story.html">Hollywood</a>, California. And over the coming weeks, this list will almost certainly grow.</p>
<p>This campaign has prompted a fierce debate about the politics of history, from the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/trump-tweet-confederate-statues/index.html">babbling myopia</a> of Donald Trump to more serious proposals about what to do with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-to-do-with-confederate-statues-81736">statues</a>. To varying degrees of sophistication, most suggestions have circled around a crucial question: how can we learn from the past without celebrating its ugliest features?</p>
<p>I want to sketch out one possibility.</p>
<p>Rather than scrapping these monuments or packing them away, bring them back into the clear light of day – only this time, in a completely different setting. Collect these fallen Confederates in a vast, outdoor museum space, carefully presented and properly contextualised. If done thoughtfully, such a museum could transform objects of veneration into tools for edification, and move the US one step closer towards a fair reckoning with its past.</p>
<h2>Memories in context</h2>
<p>First and foremost, this museum would require contextualisation in the form of detailed histories for each monument. That would take the sheen off these statues by explaining who these men really were: slaveholders at the helm of a rebellion against the US government. Many of them were large landowners, who amassed fortunes on the backs of the human beings that they owned. In an effort to preserve and extend slavery, they shattered the Union in a war that claimed an estimated 750,000 lives – a higher death toll than all other American military conflicts put together.</p>
<p>But such a museum would need to move well beyond the Civil War and into the Jim Crow era. That’s in fact when the majority of these monuments were <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future">erected</a>. The high-tide of Confederate monument-making took place during the early 20th century. It was synchronous with a wave of legislation designed to disempower African Americans across the South. A second spike in Confederate memorialisation occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, when black people began rolling back some of those exclusions. These monuments represent the reactionary rebuttal to the civil rights movement. Or, to borrow a more recent slogan, it was a white supremacist effort to make the South great again.</p>
<p>With period photographs, audio recordings, and video footage, the museum could document how particular monuments became contested political sites, from the civil rights movement to the present day. Accompanying displays could spotlight prominent national figures, like the perennial presidential candidate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/14/us/george-wallace-segregation-symbol-dies-at-79.html?mcubz=0">George C. Wallace</a>, who incorporated Confederate iconography into a segregationist and white supremacist platform.</p>
<p>The museum could also bring together more recent objects, like the mangled bronze of Durham’s Confederate monument, famously <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/confederate-statue-pulled-down-north-carolina-trnd/index.html">torn down</a> by protesters following the events in Charlottesville. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Time/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
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<p>There should also be a recording of the powerful speech delivered by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jQTHis3f4">Mitch Landrieu</a>, mayor of New Orleans, on the removal of rebel statues from his city. These are reminders of how history informs our present moment.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mitch Landrieu/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This would not be a museum to dead Confederates so much as a tribute to the people who stood against their rebellion and its pernicious legacies. To this end, the museum could commission new monuments and memorials to place in conversation with these slaveholding rebels: from the former slaves who took up arms against their masters during the Civil War, to the black leaders of the post-emancipation period, to the champions of the civil rights movement, to the victims of the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. This, in effect, would be a museum to a century-and-a-half of civil rights struggle.</p>
<p>Confederate monuments and the history they represent were never confined to the South, however. The museum should therefore include a large interactive map to display the location of <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">over 700 Confederate monuments and statues</a>, and indicate which have been removed and which remain in place. </p>
<p>As monuments continue to fall, this annotated map would serve as an important catalogue of America’s evolving commemorative landscape. Visitors might be surprised to learn that, while most of these monuments are concentrated in the former Confederate states, quite a few were erected in the <a href="http://nypost.com/2017/08/18/bronx-community-college-removes-confederate-busts/">North</a> and the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-waite-socal-confederates-20170804-story.html">West</a> as well.</p>
<h2>Drawbacks</h2>
<p>There are, of course, substantial obstacles in the way of such a museum – above and beyond sheer expense. The Smithsonian’s exhibit of the <a href="http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/">Enola Gay</a> – the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – demonstrated how political firestorms can engulf public history. Some might also worry that any concentration of Confederate monuments could become a pilgrimage site for white supremacists.</p>
<p>But detailed explanations and a proper contextualisation of these statues would hopefully prevent such an outcome. Plus, admission fees (not to mention a strict <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/business/media/charlottesville-tiki-torch-company.html?mcubz=1&_r=0">no-tiki-torch</a> policy) are nice deterrents to large gatherings of racist agitators. To be sure, some white nationalists may still visit such a museum. But they would find little to celebrate in a place that exposes the treason of Confederate leaders and documents the heroism of black activists and their allies.</p>
<p>What to do with these monuments remains an immensely sensitive and often explosive question. A museum could, however, steer a middle path between those who worry about the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/27/why-we-need-confederate-monuments/?utm_term=.6696040299fb">erasure of history</a> and those who want relics to white supremacy removed from their literal and figurative pedestals.</p>
<p>The Confederacy surrendered over 150 years ago, but Americans are still fighting over the Civil War. Such a longstanding struggle over historical memory deserves a museum of its own, where relocated statues of Confederate generals can bear witness to the sins of the past and point towards a better future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Waite does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Displaying Confederate statues in a carefully curated museum would help end a toxic debate about the difference between remembering and venerating.
Kevin Waite, Assistant Professor of Modern American History, Durham University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82842
2017-08-23T12:26:05Z
2017-08-23T12:26:05Z
How the English far right co-opted Christianity – and why its ‘crusade’ shouldn’t be ignored
<p>The far-right group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_First">Britain First</a> went on the rampage again recently, <a href="https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/news/3683/one-arrest-britain-first-day-action-wolverhampton">this time in the West Midlands</a> of England. Earlier this month, the group held a <a href="https://www.expressandstar.com/news/local-hubs/wolverhampton/2017/08/12/britain-first-demonstration-man-charged-with-public-order-offence/">demonstration in Wolverhampton city centre</a>, where members carried white crosses through the city. The bearing of white crosses is now a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-first-stage-hapless-protest-outside-london-mosque-and-only-three-people-turn-up-a6905851.html">trademark</a> of Britain First’s self-styled “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/police-far-right-invasions-bradford-glasgow-mosques-britain-first">Christian Crusade</a>”.</p>
<p>The group <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/britain-first-far-right-anti-muslim-extremists-mosques">regularly co-opts Christian rhetoric and symbolism</a> in its white nationalist <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dog-whistle-politics-can-be-a-deadly-game-bf2jngl68">dog-whistle</a> campaign against the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/06/britain-first-supporter-calls-for-merkel-to-be-shot-for-refugee-policy">Islamisation</a>” of the UK. It conducts “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/01/25/britain-first-luton-march-condemned_n_9067474.html">Christian patrols</a>” in multicultural towns and cities – usually piggybacking on recent <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-first-christian-patrols-return-to-east-london-in-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-shootings-9988329.html">terrorist events</a> or <a href="http://www.southyorkshiretimes.co.uk/news/britain-first-march-through-rotherham-1-6877971">abuse scandals</a> – and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-activists-hand-out-bibles-outside-mosques-in-bradford-9352271.html">doles out bibles</a> during its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38326446">mosque “invasions”</a>. </p>
<p>The white crosses brandished by members of Britain First are seemingly chosen more for the sinister white supremacist imagery than they are for being emblems of Christianity – echoing the <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/kkk-leader-were-a-christian-organization-claims-the-klan-is-not-a-hate-group-116614/">Ku Klux Klan</a> insignia and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022009407071629">that organisation’s use of burning crosses</a> to signify intimidation and the threat of impending violence.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183141/original/file-20170823-20456-105eo2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ku Klux Klan at a cross burning in Tennessee. September 4, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ku-klux-klan-cross-burning-tennessee-251929858?src=ae3zjy9NgLbG-dyOQsWqiw-1-1">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Although Britain First adopts clearly confrontational, <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2017/07/11/britain-first-holds-security-training-day-to-teach-how-to-fight-with-knives-6770167/">aggressive</a> and hate-fuelled tactics such as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/av4jzg/say-hello-to-britains-new-far-right-street-team">pouring beer outside mosques</a>, threatening to <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/britain-first-extremists-plot-pig-burial-halt-controversial-dudley-mega-mosque-1474294">leave a dead pig on the site of a new mosque</a> in Dudley and <a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/06/19/britain-first-the-violent-new-face-of-british-fascism">wearing paramilitary-style uniforms</a>, its leader, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-27427023/britain-first-s-leader-paul-golding-on-bnp-breakaway">former British National Party councillor</a> Paul Golding, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/police-far-right-invasions-bradford-glasgow-mosques-britain-first">refuses to accept</a> that Britain First’s extremist provocations are intimidating and instead appeals to Christianity as a cover for the group’s white nationalism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We weren’t aggressive and we didn’t intimidate anyone … to suggest it’s intimidatory to give out bibles in a Christian country is nonsense. We live in a free country where you’re allowed to try to recruit other people to your religion. Muslims do it all the time … We just went into the mosques, gave out a few bibles and leaflets, talked to some elders and left.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite his claim to civility, Golding also alludes to the New Testament verse <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10%3A34&version=NRSV">Matthew 10:34</a> and the belligerence of <a href="https://feminismandreligion.com/2013/12/20/by-kelly-brown-douglas/">Jesus</a> to <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/rochester-by-election-britain-first-inspired-by-jesus-christ-claims-leader-paul-golding-1475814">justify his group’s terrorist actions</a>. Speaking to <a href="https://www.christiantoday.com/article/how.far.right.party.britain.first.is.gaining.traction.through.christian.ideology/43380.htm">Christian Today</a>, Golding commented:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jesus Christ did use physical violence according to the Gospels in the temple in Jerusalem, and he met a very violent end. He preached love and forgiveness etc, but he also said he didn’t come to bring peace; he came to bring division and a sword, he came to bring fire upon the world to sort the world out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Undoubtedly, Britain First is adept at appropriating Christianity, staging publicity stunts and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/britain-first-explainer_uk_5763addee4b01fb658634f42">attracting interest on social media</a>, but the group is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/britain-first-trounced_uk_572cace2e4b0ade291a1c7d7">far less successful</a> in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/21/britain-first-ukip-roches_n_6197160.html">achieving its political ambitions</a>. </p>
<p>It has failed to garner any sway with the electorate having been <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/britain-first-trounced_uk_572cace2e4b0ade291a1c7d7?edition=uk">trounced in the London mayoral elections</a>, its <a href="http://www.independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/people-were-struck-by-the-poor-turnout-at-the-britain-first-and-english-defence-league-march-but-police-were-taking-no-chances-35585162.html">“patrols” are poorly attended</a>, and its attempts to harass Muslim communities are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britain-first-high-court-bid-luton-mosque-islamophobia-racism-a7186446.html">hampered</a> by <a href="https://www.indy100.com/article/britain-first-just-admitted-they-are-near-humiliation-and-asked-members-for-20--WyeUBw0kMZb">expensive</a> <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/jayda-fransen-guilty-britain-first-deputy-leader-convicted-court-muslim-woman-hijab-a7395711.html">litigation</a>. </p>
<p>In a devastating blow, even Britain First founder, former BNP member Jim Dowson, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/britain-first-founder-james-dowson-quits-over-far-right-groups-mosque-invasions-1458614">left the group in 2014</a> <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-first-founder-jim-dowson-quits-over-mosque-invasions-and-racists-and-extremists-9632770.html">condemning them as “unchristian”</a>. Dowson lambasted Britain First and its leader in his public statement following the resignation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think he is fooling himself and lots of people that Britain First is a Christian group. Sadly, it has just become a violent front for people abusing the Bible.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Ignore the racists?</h2>
<p>Dowson isn’t the only one to condemn them. Rather awkwardly for a group marketed as a defender of “<a href="http://www.britainfirst.tv/">British and Christian morality</a>”, Britain First <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/01/29/britain-first-denounced-every-christian-group_n_9111138.html">has been</a> “denounced by every major Christian denomination in the UK”. Most recently, the Bishop of Wolverhampton, the Rt Revd Clive Gregory, criticised the group: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Britain First’s use of the cross and claim to support Christianity is actually a kind of blasphemy … Jesus’ way is always the path of peace and reconciliation, of self-sacrifice and costly love, and in our contemporary multicultural society that means particularly in our relationships with our neighbours of other faiths including Muslims.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given Britain First’s underwhelming credentials, then, it’s tempting to agree with William Morgan, who <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-went-undercover-at-the-britain-first-conference-and-trust-me-we-have-nothing-to-fear-a7014826.html">went undercover</a> at a Britain First conference last year and dismissed the group as “a small and nasty far-right group, who just so happen to have a strong social media presence including 1.3m Facebook likes … a racist drinking group, too old and overweight to do anything but intimidate members of the public and lose elections”.</p>
<p>Morgan’s final words of advice following his single experience with the group? “As I have learned, the best way to deal with Britain First is to completely ignore it, see it as a group project and an online message board for the angry and bitter, and move on. Trust me: we have very little to worry about.”</p>
<p>Morgan’s words may sound like a sensible approach to a small and seemingly ineffectual group of far-right extremists – until they’re considered in the context of the recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/22/charlottesville-confederate-statues-black-heather-heyer">white supremacist rally in Charlottesville</a>, Virginia. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/12/16138246/charlottesville-nazi-rally-right-uva">Unite the Right</a> demonstrated that white nationalist and supremacist groups are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40915356">emboldened</a> by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/13/america-white-supremacy-hooked-drug-charlottesville-virginia">current US political context</a>. President Donald Trump’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-charlottesville-condemn-white-supremacist-groups-white-house-not-dignify-them-neo-nazi-a7891941.html">refusal to condemn white supremacist groups</a> and his <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/15/16154028/trump-press-conference-transcript-charlottesville">insistence</a> that they shared a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/trump-neo-nazis-antifa-moral-equivalence-tweets-charlottesville">moral equivalency</a>” with anti-fascist protestors has only <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-charlottesville-nazis-confederate-monument/537195/">helped to reinvigorate white supremacist politics</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/28/brexit-europe-far-right-rightwing-extremists-politics-terrorism">ignoring small far-right groups doesn’t work</a> and, in fact, could well <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/06/who-will-take-responsibility-rise-far-right-terrorism">help them to thrive</a>. </p>
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<p>The response to Tina Fey’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/let-us-eat-cake/537294/">recent Saturday Night Live skit</a> on Charlottesville exposed the danger of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/18/16166836/tina-fey-snl-charlottesville-weekend-update">imperatives from well-meaning white people to “ignore the racists”</a>. Only those not touched by the realities of racial violence have the freedom to be able to ignore it.</p>
<p>As a society we must not become complicit in white supremacism because of white privilege. </p>
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<p>As Musa Okwonga <a href="https://twitter.com/Okwonga/status/897565895358160896">wrote on Twitter</a>: “White supremacy isn’t just white men with burning torches. It’s white people brushing off warnings from non-white people till it’s too late.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There’s talk of a new ‘Christian crusade’ – and it’s highly dangerous.
Katie Edwards, Director SIIBS, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82551
2017-08-22T01:59:48Z
2017-08-22T01:59:48Z
African-Americans fighting fascism and racism, from WWII to Charlottesville
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182847/original/file-20170821-4964-17mud34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tuskegee Airmen and P-47.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/6550573735">San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In July 1943, one month after a race riot shook Detroit, Vice President Henry Wallace <a href="http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw20.htm">spoke</a> to a crowd of union workers and civic groups: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We cannot fight to crush Nazi brutality abroad and condone race riots at home. Those who fan the fires of racial clashes for the purpose of making political capital here at home are taking the first step toward Nazism.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading African-American newspaper at the time, praised Wallace for endorsing what they called the <a href="http://blackquotidian.com/anvc/black-quotidian/media/PC%207-31-43.pdf">“Double V” campaign</a>. The Double Victory campaign, launched by the Courier in 1942, became a rallying cry for black journalists, activists and citizens to secure both victory over fascism abroad during World War II and victory over racism at home.</p>
<p>There is a historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in the United States. Yet the recent resurgence of explicit racism, including the attack in Charlottesville, has been greeted by many with surprise. Just look at the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23thisisnotwhoweare&src=typd">#thisisnotwhoweare</a> hashtag. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="http://whybusingfailed.com/anvc/why-busing-failed/introduction?path=index">African-American history</a>, I am troubled by the collective amnesia in U.S. politics and media around racism. It permeates daily interactions in communities across the country. This ignorance has consequences. When Americans celebrate the country’s victory in WWII, but forget that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-american-gis-of-wwii-fighting-for-democracy-abroad-and-at-home-71780">U.S. armed forces</a> were segregated, that the Red Cross <a href="https://theconversation.com/desegregating-blood-a-civil-rights-struggle-to-remember-37480">segregated blood donors</a> or that many black WWII veterans returned to the country only to be denied jobs or housing, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.</p>
<h2>Nazis and Jim Crow</h2>
<p>As Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime rose to power in the 1930s, black-run newspapers quickly recognized that the Third Reich saw the American system of race law as a model. Describing a plan to segregate Jews on German railways, the New York Amsterdam News <a href="http://blackquotidian.com/anvc/black-quotidian/media/NYA%2012-31-38.pdf">wrote</a> that Nazis were “taking a leaf from United States Jim Crow practices.”</p>
<p>The Chicago Defender <a href="http://blackquotidian.com/anvc/black-quotidian/media/CD%201-7-39.pdf">noted</a> that “the practice of jim-crowism has already been adopted by the Nazis.” A quote from the official newspaper of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organization, on the origins of the railway ban stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In the freest country in the world, where even the president rages against racial discrimination, no citizen of dark color is permitted to travel next to a white person, even if the white is employed as a sewer digger and the Negro is a world boxing champion or otherwise a national hero…[this] example shows us all how we have to solve the problem of traveling foreign Jews.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In making connections between Germany and the United States, black journalists and activists cautioned that Nazi racial ideology was not solely a foreign problem. A New York Amsterdam News editorial <a href="http://blackquotidian.com/anvc/black-quotidian/media/NYA%207-27-35.pdf">argued</a> in 1935: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If the Swastika is an emblem of racial oppression, the Stars and Stripes are equally so. This country has consistently refused to recognize one-tenth of its population as an essential part of humanity…It has systematically encouraged the mass murder of these people through bestial mobs, through denial of economic opportunity, through terrorization.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Victory at home</h2>
<p>When the United States entered WWII, African-Americans joined the fight to defeat fascism abroad. Meanwhile, the decades-long fight on the home front for equal access to employment, housing, education and voting rights continued. </p>
<p>These concerns prompted James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, to write to the editors of the Pittsburgh Courier. His letter sparked the Double Victory campaign. Considering his service in the U.S. Army, which was racially segregated during WWII, Thompson <a href="http://blackquotidian.com/anvc/black-quotidian/media/PC%201-31-42%20-%20Thompson%20letter%20to%20Editor.pdf">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Being an American of dark complexion and some 26 years, these questions flash through my mind: ‘Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?’ ‘Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow?’…‘Is the kind of America I know worth defending?’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Thompson and other African-Americans, defeating Nazi Germany and the Axis powers was only half the battle. Winning the war would be only a partial victory if the United States did not also overturn racial discrimination at home.</p>
<p>These ideals seemed particularly far away in the summer of 1943, when racial violence raged across the country. In addition to the riot in Detroit, there were more than 240 reports of interracial battles in cities and at military bases, including in Harlem, Los Angeles, Mobile, Philadelphia and Beaumont, Texas. </p>
<p>These events inspired Langston Hughes’ poem, “<a href="https://www.mesaartscenter.com/download.php/engagement/jazz-a-to-z/resources/archive/2016-2017/teacher-resources/hughes-beaumont-to-detroit">Beaumont to Detroit: 1943</a>”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Looky here, America / What you done done / Let things drift / Until the riots come […] You tell me that hitler / Is a mighty bad man / I guess he took lessons from the ku klux klan […] I ask you this question / Cause I want to know / How long I got to fight / BOTH HITLER — AND JIM CROW.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The end of Hughes’ poem calls to mind the swastikas and Confederate flags that were prominently displayed in Charlottesville and at other white supremacist rallies. These symbols and ideologies have long and intertwined histories in the U.S. </p>
<p>Advocates of the Double Victory campaign understood that Nazism would not be completely vanquished until white supremacy was defeated everywhere. In linking fascism abroad and racism at home, the Double Victory campaign issued a challenge to America that remains unanswered.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Delmont receives funding from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.</span></em></p>
What WWII-era African-American protests reveal about the historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in the United States.
Matthew Delmont, Director and Professor of the School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82645
2017-08-22T01:57:11Z
2017-08-22T01:57:11Z
How should we protest neo-Nazis? Lessons from German history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182687/original/file-20170820-22783-12tnnxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A supporter of President Donald Trump, center, argues with a counterprotester at a rally in Boston on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Michael Dwyer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, many people are asking themselves what they should do if Nazis rally in their city. Should they put their bodies on the line in counterdemonstrations? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/opinion/why-the-nazis-came-to-charlottesville.html">Some say yes</a>.</p>
<p>History says no. Take it from me: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/994597123">I study the original Nazis</a>. </p>
<p>We have an ethical obligation to stand against fascism and racism. But we also have an ethical obligation to do so in a way that doesn’t help the fascists and racists more than it hurts them.</p>
<h2>History repeats itself</h2>
<p>Charlottesville was right out of the Nazi playbook. In the 1920s, the Nazi Party was just one political party among many in <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=12">a democratic system</a>, running for seats in Germany’s Parliament. For most of that time, it was a small, marginal group. In 1933, riding a wave of popular support, it seized power and set up a dictatorship. The rest is well-known. </p>
<p>It was in 1927, while still on the political fringes, that the Nazi Party scheduled a rally in a <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3916">decidedly hostile location</a> – the Berlin district of Wedding. Wedding was so left-of-center that the neighborhood had the nickname “Red Wedding,” red being the color of the Communist Party. The Nazis often held rallies right where their enemies lived, to provoke them. </p>
<p>The people of Wedding were determined to fight back against fascism in their neighborhood. On <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/903285667">the day of the rally</a>, hundreds of Nazis descended on Wedding. Hundreds of their opponents showed up too, organized by the local Communist Party. The antifascists tried to disrupt the rally, heckling the speakers. Nazi thugs retaliated. There was a massive brawl. Almost 100 people were injured. </p>
<p>I imagine the people of Wedding felt they had won that day. They had courageously sent a message: Fascism was not welcome.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/903285667">historians believe</a> events like the rally in Wedding helped the Nazis build a dictatorship. Yes, the brawl got them <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/212328295">media attention</a>. But what was far, far more important was how it fed an escalating spiral of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/444439029">street violence</a>. That violence helped the fascists enormously. </p>
<p>Violent confrontations with antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left. They <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/971262984">seized it</a>.</p>
<p>It worked. We know now that many Germans supported the fascists because they were terrified of leftist violence in the streets. Germans opened their morning newspapers and saw reports of clashes like the one in Wedding. It looked like a bloody tide of civil war was <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/828879721">rising in their cities</a>. Voters and opposition politicians alike came to believe the government needed special police powers to stop violent leftists. Dictatorship grew attractive. The fact that the Nazis themselves were fomenting the violence didn’t seem to matter. </p>
<p>One of Hitler’s biggest steps to dictatorial power was to gain <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2325">emergency police powers</a>, which he claimed he needed to suppress leftist violence. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182669/original/file-20170820-20193-1btibs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of Nazi storm troops demonstrate in a Communist neighborhood in Berlin on Jan. 22, 1933. Thirty-five Nazis, Communists and police were injured during clashes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The left takes the heat</h2>
<p>In the court of public opinion, accusations of mayhem and chaos in the streets will, as a rule, tend to stick against the left, not the right. </p>
<p>This was true in Germany in the 1920s. It was true even when opponents of fascism acted in self-defense or tried to use relatively mild tactics, such as heckling. It is true in the United States today, where even peaceful rallies against racist violence are branded <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/09/542468258/whose-streets-follows-unrest-in-ferguson-mo-after-michael-browns-death">riots in the making</a>.</p>
<p>Today, right extremists are going around the country staging rallies just like the one in 1927 in Wedding. According to the civil rights advocacy organization the Southern Poverty Law Center, they pick places where they know <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20170810/alt-right-campus-what-students-need-know">antifascists are present</a>, like university campuses. They come spoiling for physical confrontation. Then they and their allies spin it to their advantage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182854/original/file-20170821-4952-szjzc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstration on the University of Washington campus where far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was giving a speech on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I watched this very thing happen steps from my office on the University of Washington campus. Last year, a right extremist speaker came. He was met by a counterprotest. One of his supporters <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/couple-charged-with-assault-in-shooting-melee-during-uw-speech-by-milo-yiannopoulos/">shot a counterprotester</a>. On stage, in the moments after the shooting, the right extremist speaker claimed that his opponents had sought to stop him from speaking “<a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/how-the-shooting-at-the-uw-protest-of-milo-yiannopoulos-unfolded/">by killing people</a>.” The fact that it was one of the speaker’s supporters, a right extremist and Trump backer, who engaged in <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/couple-charged-with-assault-in-shooting-melee-during-uw-speech-by-milo-yiannopoulos/">what prosecutors now claim</a> was an unprovoked and premeditated act of violence, has never made national news. </p>
<p>We saw this play out after Charlottesville, too. President Donald Trump said there was violence “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conference-charlottesville.html?_r=0">on both sides</a>.” It was an <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-american-guernica-82567">incredible claim</a>. Heyer, a peaceful protester, and 19 other people were intentionally hit by a neo-Nazi driving a car. He seemed to portray Charlottesville as another example of what he has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/full-transcript-donald-trump-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-rnc-225974">referred to elsewhere</a> as “violence in our streets and chaos in our communities,” including, it seems, Black Lives Matter, which is a nonviolent movement against violence. He <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-and-the-politics-of-fear-82443">stirred up fear</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/trumps-speech-encouraging-police-to-be-rough-annotated/?utm_term=.2c5a86d63007">Trump recently said</a> that police are too constrained by existing law.</p>
<p>President Trump tried it again during the largely peaceful protests in Boston – he called the tens of thousands who gathered there to protest racism and Nazism “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-boston-march-20170819-story.html">anti-police agitators</a>,” though later, in a characteristic about-face, he <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-boston-march-20170819-story.html">praised them</a>. </p>
<p>President Trump’s claims are hitting their mark. A CBS News poll found that a majority of Republicans thought his description of who was to blame for the violence in Charlottesville was “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-divided-over-trumps-response-to-charlottesville-cbs-news-poll/">accurate</a>.” </p>
<p>This violence, and the rhetoric about it coming from the administration, are echoes – faint but nevertheless frightening echoes – of a well-documented pattern, a pathway by which democracies devolve into dictatorships. </p>
<h2>The Antifa</h2>
<p>There’s an additional wrinkle: the antifa. When Nazis and white supremacists rally, the antifa are likely to show up, too. </p>
<p>“Antifa” is short for antifascists, though the name by no means includes everyone who opposes fascism. The antifa is a relatively small movement of the far left, with ties to anarchism. It arose in Europe’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144215579354">punk scene in the 1980s</a> to fight neo-Nazism. </p>
<p>The antifa says that because Nazism and white supremacy are violent, we must use any means necessary to stop them. This includes physical means, like what they did on my campus: forming a crowd to block ticket-holders from entering a venue to hear a right extremist speak. </p>
<p>The antifa’s tactics often backfire, just like those of Germany’s communist opposition to Nazism did in the 1920s. Confrontations escalate. Public opinion often blames the left no matter the circumstances.</p>
<h2>What to do?</h2>
<p>One solution: Hold a counterevent that doesn’t involve physical proximity to the right extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center has published <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20170810/alt-right-campus-what-students-need-know">a helpful guide</a>. Among its recommendations: If the alt-right rallies, “organize a joyful protest” well away from them. Ask people they have targeted to speak. But “as hard as it may be to resist yelling at alt-right speakers, do not confront them.” </p>
<p>This does not mean ignoring Nazis. It means standing up to them in a way that denies them a chance for bloodshed. </p>
<p>The cause Heather Heyer died for is best defended by avoiding the physical confrontation that the people who are responsible for her death want.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer receives funding from the German Academic Exchange Service and the University of Washington. </span></em></p>
We have an ethical obligation to stand against fascists and racists in a way that doesn’t help them.
Laurie Marhoefer, Assistant Professor of History, University of Washington
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82787
2017-08-21T15:32:32Z
2017-08-21T15:32:32Z
With Bannon back at Breitbart, what will #WAR mean for the White House?
<p>Did Steve Bannon jump or was he pushed? Bannon’s opponents spoke of a firing, while his allies – and Bannon himself – said he had planned to resign for weeks. Turns out both sides were right. But that is only the start of a tale in which the final chapters are not yet written.</p>
<p>Within hours of leaving his post, Bannon was back as executive chairman of Breitbart. Staff at the right-wing publication, including senior editor Joel Pollak, had already declared “#WAR” on the White House as soon as their boss’s departure was announced. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"898595085247324161"}"></div></p>
<p>A Bannon friend <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/bannon-reportedly-thinks-the-trump-administration-is-a-sinking-ship-and-he-now-plans-to-go-nuclear-2017-8?r=US&IR=T">said</a>: “Steve’s unchained. Fully unchained.” Another said: “It’s now a Democrat White House”.</p>
<p>At a staff meeting, Bannon refined the blunt declarations. The line that Trump himself would not be attacked was repackaged as a “war for Trump”. That war would be against Trump’s enemies – but not the counter-protesters at Charlottesville or even the “fake media”. The war would be waged on those considered the president’s foes within the White House.</p>
<p>Breitbart has already lined up its first target: national security adviser H R McMaster. The hard right had been set against McMaster since the spring, when he pushed Bannon off a key committee of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/05/steve-bannon-national-security-council-role-trump-shakeup">National Security Council</a>. Then, with leverage from the appointment of Kelly as chief of staff, McMaster removed four of Bannon’s allies from the council. This tussle led Bannon’s camp to counter-attack on social media, calling for “McMasterOut”.</p>
<p>On the Sunday immediately following Bannon’s departure from the White House, Breitbart led with an <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/08/20/h-r-mcmaster-endorsed-book-advocates-quran-kissing-apology-ceremonies/">article</a>: “HR McMaster Endorsed Book That Advocates Quran-Kissing Apology Ceremonies.” The next day the site was <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/20/source-mcmaster-fails-to-brief-trump-before-thats-too-bad-error">blaming</a> McMaster for Trump’s response to the deaths of ten sailors aboard the USS John McCain in a collision near Singapore. According to the article, McMaster failed to brief the president properly, which is why the commander in chief initially reacted to the news by saying <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-thats-too-bad-after-crash-uss-john-mccain-652584">“that’s too bad”</a>. </p>
<p>Bannon and his allies had been whipping up an electronic and social media campaign against McMaster for some time. They tried to rally opposition to a review of Afghanistan policy, with Bannon pushing for a privatisation of the US intervention.</p>
<p>The prelude to the war came after Charlottesville when Bannon supported Trump in his message that both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville — thereby tacitly supporting the white supremacists, even while other advisers warned him against such statements. </p>
<p>Kelly hit back. His allies spread stories that Trump disliked Bannon’s leaking, especially about White House in-fighting, and the books and articles portraying the chief strategist as the power in the executive. Bannon also helped design his own demise – unwittingly or deliberately – by committing “suicide by journalist”. Piqued by a story in The American Prospect about North Korea, he called up the journalist to complain about the government’s approach – which he blamed on generals like McMaster. The enemy, he said, was China in an economic war. He also boasted about his influence, claiming he could have people fired in the government.</p>
<p>The article was quickly presented to Trump. On Friday morning, in a staff meeting, the president said his right-hand ideologue would be leaving that day.</p>
<h2>The beginning of the end</h2>
<p>The Bannon-Breitbart campaign to vanquish McMaster, and then maybe National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and then maybe Kelly, and then maybe even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump will get the publicity accorded to a dramatic story.</p>
<p>Framed as a valiant fight against the “deep state”, it will have its vocal partners. We’ll hear from alt-right polemicist Mike Cernovich, who accused McMaster of manipulating intelligence reports to Trump. We’ll also get insight from “<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2016/12/pizzagate-how-4chan-conspiracy-went-mainstream">Pizzagate</a>” agitator Jack Posobiec, InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (“McMaster’s sold out”), and even ex-KKK grand wizard David Duke.</p>
<p>It is unlikely to succeed. The retired generals in the White House have succeeded in containing the machinery around Trump, even if the president cannot be restrained on Twitter. They will have the power of executive agencies behind them. Most of the media will have no desire to aid and abet Bannon. Posobiec may appeal to the wonders of social media and InfoWars but, as Charlottesville showed, the alt-right is discovering that it may not even have a <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-are-outing-charlottesville-protesters-n792501">secure position</a> on that battleground.</p>
<p>Still, the campaign will be a most unwelcome flank attack as Trump finds himself surrounded on all sides: the Russia investigation, the failure to pass a single major piece of legislation since January, the questions over ethics and conflicts of interests, the looming deadline for adoption of the federal government’s budget, and the white supremacy spectre. </p>
<p>Once upon a time – even last week – the mantra “Trump still has his base” was being invoked to minimise the threat to the president. Now even that base is fragmenting.</p>
<p>For the occupant of the White House, it is now Total #WAR.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Trump’s former chief strategist has returned to his media roots. And he has more than a few grudges.
Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82546
2017-08-21T10:52:53Z
2017-08-21T10:52:53Z
Warning signs of mass violence – in the US?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182691/original/file-20170820-7952-1f9a6p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters with opposing views face off at a 'Free Speech' rally in Boston.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Michael Dwyer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-reynosa/why-comparing-donald-trum_b_11097020.html">those who say</a> that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/25/the-theory-of-political-leadership-that-donald-trump-shares-with-adolf-hitler">Adolf Hitler</a> is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive. </p>
<p>And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons since the 2016 presidential election. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct of Trump supporters and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-right-hand-salute_us_56db50d8e4b03a405678e27a">Holocaust-era Nazis</a>.</p>
<p>The comparisons continue today, and Trump’s comments in the wake of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html">Charlottesville</a> attack show why. The president’s reference to violence on “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-on-charlottesville-i-think-theres-blame-on-both-sides/">both sides</a>” implies moral equivalence, which is a familiar <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/09/10/moral-equivalence-and-donald-trump/?utm_term=.3c94a721693a">rhetorical strategy</a> for signaling support to violent groups. His comments give white supremacists and neo-Nazis the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neo-nazi-daily-stormer-trump-charlottesville_us_59905c7ee4b08a2472750701">implied approval</a> of the president of the United States.</p>
<p>Many of these groups explicitly <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/national-socialist-movement">seek to eliminate from the U.S.</a> African-Americans, Jews, immigrants and other groups, and are willing to do so through violence. As co-directors of Binghamton University’s <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/i-gmap/">Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention</a>, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and responding to early warning signs of genocide and atrocity crimes. Usually, government officials, scholars and nongovernmental organizations look for these warning signs in <a href="http://genocidewatch.net/alerts-2/new-alerts/">other parts of the world</a> – Syria, Sudan or Burma. </p>
<p>Has the time come to watch for these warning signs in the United States?</p>
<h2>Is it possible in the US?</h2>
<p>The term “genocide” invokes images of <a href="http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschwitzgaschambers.html">gas chambers</a> the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during World War II, the Khmer Rouge <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/07/why-the-world-should-not-forget-khmer-rouge-and-the-killing-fields-of-cambodia/?utm_term=.afd11df0ea84">killing fields</a> of Cambodia and thousands of Tutsi bodies in the <a href="http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/052194rwanda-genocide.html">Kagera River</a> in Rwanda. On that scale and in that manner, genocide is highly unlikely in the United States.</p>
<p>But genocidal violence can happen in the U.S. It has happened. Organized policies passed by elected U.S. lawmakers have targeted both <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties">Native Americans</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/interactive/slavery-united-states/">African-Americans</a>. The threat of <a href="https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf">genocide</a> is present wherever a country’s political leadership tolerates or even encourages acts with an intent to destroy a racial, ethnic, national or religious group, whether in whole or in part.</p>
<p>The Holocaust took the international community by surprise. In hindsight, there were many signs. In fact, scholars have learned <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/how-to-prevent-genocide/early-warning-project">a great deal</a> about the danger signals for the risk of large-scale violence against vulnerable groups.</p>
<p>In 1996, the founder and first president of the U.S.-based advocacy group <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/">Genocide Watch</a>, <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutus/bydrgregorystanton.html">Gregory H. Stanton</a>, introduced a model that identified <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/8stagesofgenocide.html">eight stages</a> – <a href="http://genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html">later increased to 10</a> – that societies frequently pass through on the way to genocidal violence. Stanton’s model has its <a href="https://africacheck.org/2016/09/15/analysis-genocide-watch-thin-transparency-methodology/">critics</a>. Like any such model, it can’t be applied in all cases and can’t predict the future. But it has been influential in our understanding of the sources of mass violence in <a href="http://makuruki.rw/en/spip.php?article1344">Rwanda</a>, <a href="http://time.com/4089276/burma-rohingya-genocide-report-documentary/">Burma</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/03/15/the-u-s-house-just-voted-unanimously-that-the-islamic-state-commits-genocide-now-what/">Syria</a> and other nations.</p>
<h2>The 10 stages of genocide</h2>
<p>The early stages of Stanton’s model include “classification” and “symbolization.” These are processes in which groups of people are saddled with labels or imagined characteristics that encourage active discrimination. These stages emphasize “us versus them” thinking, and define a group as “the other.”</p>
<p><iframe id="oTlDh" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/oTlDh/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As Stanton makes clear, these processes are universally human. They do not necessarily result in a progression toward mass violence. But they prepare the ground for the next stages: active “discrimination,” “dehumanization,” “organization” and “polarization.” These middle stages may be <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dn8nH-TFEyYC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=dehumanization+as+predictor+of+genocide&source=bl&ots=1NcxXXnKTO&sig=65w1626sw7v2hAC5NjhZg8Eatco&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6_7fd4d7VAhVMxCYKHYTVDFA4ChDoAQglMAA#v=onepage&q=dehumanization%20as%20predictor%20of%20genocide&f=false">warning signs</a> of an increasing risk of large-scale violence.</p>
<h2>Where are we now?</h2>
<p>Trump’s political rhetoric helped propel him into office by playing on the fears and resentments of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-and-the-rise-of-white-identity-in-politics-67037">electorate</a>. He <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">labeled out-groups</a>, hinted at <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/politics/trump-conspiracy-theories/index.html">dark conspiracies</a>, winked at <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#4xz9X6b1Tiqp">violence</a> and appealed to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20170427/100-days-trumps-america">nativist and nationalist sentiments</a>. He has demanded discriminatory policies including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html?_r=0">travel restrictions</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/26/trump-just-eviscerated-his-claim-to-being-an-lgbt-ally/">gender-based exclusions</a>. </p>
<p>Classification, symbolization, discrimination and <a href="https://humanrightspolicy.org/2017/05/07/president-trumps-dehumanizing-rhetoric-represents-a-lingering-american-problem/">dehumanization</a> of Muslims, Mexicans, African-Americans, the media and even the political opposition may be leading to polarization, stage six of Stanton’s model. </p>
<p>Stanton <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf">writes</a> that polarization further drives wedges between social groups through extremism. Hate groups find an opening to send messages that further dehumanize and demonize targeted groups. Political moderates are edged out of the political arena, and extremist groups attempt to move from the former political fringes into mainstream politics.</p>
<p>Do Trump’s implied claims of a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and counterprotesters in Charlottesville move us closer to the stage of polarization? </p>
<p>Certainly, there are reasons for deep concern. Moral equivalence – the claim that when both “sides” in a conflict use similar tactics, then one “side” must be as morally good or bad as the other – is what logicians call an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Informal-Logical-Fallacies-Brief-Guide/dp/0761854339">informal fallacy</a>. Philosophers take their red pens to student essays that commit it. But when a president is called on to address his nation in times of political turmoil, the claim of moral equivalence is a lot more than an undergraduate mistake. We suggest this is a deliberate effort to polarize, and an invitation to what comes after polarization. </p>
<h2>Responding and preventing</h2>
<p>Polarization is a warning of the increased risk of violence, not a guarantee. Stanton’s model also argues that every stage offers opportunities for prevention. Extremist groups can have their financial assets frozen. Hate crimes and hate atrocities can be more consistently investigated and prosecuted. Moderate politicians, human rights activists, representatives of threatened groups and members of the independent media can be provided increased security. </p>
<p>Encouraging responses have come from the electorate, business leaders, government officials and the international community. Individuals and groups are following the recommendations for action presented in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_ten_ways_to_fight_hate_2017_web.pdf">guide to combating hate</a> in supporting victims, speaking up, pressuring leaders and staying engaged. Business leaders have also <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/ken-frazier-trump-charlottesville-response/">expressed their discontent</a> with Trump’s polarizing statements. </p>
<p>Local governments are declaring themselves <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/judge-blocks-trump-sanctuary-cities.html">sanctuary cities</a> or <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/10/aclus-people-power-project-launch-cities-resistance-effort">cities of resistance</a>. At the national level, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/joint-chiefs-charlottesville-racism/index.html">strong statements</a> have been made by leaders of all of the military branches. </p>
<p>Several international leaders have also spoken up. German Chancellor Angela Merkel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/europe/charlottesville-far-right-trump-merkel.html">condemned the racist and far-right violence</a> displayed in Charlottesville, and U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/theresa-may-joins-cross-party-criticism-donald-trump-charlottesville-speech">harshly criticized</a> Trump’s use of moral equivalence. </p>
<p>In our assessment, these actions represent essential forms of resistance to the movement toward polarization, and they reduce the risks of genocide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Two genocide and mass atrocity prevention scholars argue Trump’s response to the Charlottesville attack is a red flag.
Max Pensky, Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Nadia Rubaii, Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82348
2017-08-18T10:24:08Z
2017-08-18T10:24:08Z
Confederate and Black America: why clashes at Charlottesville show Civil War alt-histories are more than just fantasy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182252/original/file-20170816-32661-1oy64fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closeup-grunge-silky-confederate-flag-693885511?src=m9iObqFGJ3NgwjVgcfBqQA-1-24">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The clash between far right protesters and anti-fascist counter-groups <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-donald-trump-and-the-dark-side-of-american-populism-82459">in Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, over the removal of a statue of Confederate general, Robert E Lee, is the latest incident to reflect ongoing tension in American race relations. From the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> campaign that emerged after repeated police shootings of black people to the ongoing battles over the continued reverence of notable southern <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Civil War figures</a>, such events show the legacy of slavery is still very much a live issue in modern America.</p>
<p>It is within this current political atmosphere that the reaction to the announcement of two seemingly rival alt-history shows must be seen. In July, HBO approved <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/07/19/game_of_thrones_creators_announce_confederate_an_hbo_series_about_the_third.html">the production of Confederate</a>, an original series by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D B Weiss in which the American Civil War leads not to peace and unity, but to stalemate and the secession of the southern states. </p>
<p>Fast forward to an alternate present, and slavery has evolved into a modern institution in the south and a Third Civil War looms (a second civil war having also taken place). The ensuing outpouring of criticism then seemingly forced Amazon to announce early that they were also working on an alt-history show <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/08/01/amazon_announces_black_america_an_alt_civil_war_history_series_from_will.html">called Black America</a>, another that imagines a racially-divided America coming out of the Civil War. But this time it will instead tell the story of free African-Americans who form their own sovereign nation, New Colonia.</p>
<p>In the present, New Colonia prospers while the US declines. To be produced by Will Packer (Straight Outta Compton) and Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks), the show will consider an America where <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">reparations for slavery</a> could have been paid.</p>
<p>The history of film has many examples of similar stories competing at the same time at the box office, but the timing of these two seemingly opposing narratives as America still battles over simmering issues as seen at Charlottesville is especially poignant. Comparisons between the two proposed shows were made immediately. Black America drew support from the likes of #NoConfederate campaign founder, April Reign, while <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/amazon-black-america-show">Vanity Fair</a> called it the “anti-Confederate”.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182256/original/file-20170816-32632-14m1jfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black America producer, Will Packer, left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/miami-beach-florida-january-6-2016-359395658?src=kh7-Y-jJjVXjTQZsGu3xjQ-1-5">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many the idea of Confederate cuts too close to the bone. Packer summed this up when he <a href="http://deadline.com/2017/08/black-america-amazon-alt-history-drama-will-packer-aaron-mcgruder-envisions-post-reparations-america-1202139504/">told Deadline</a> that on a personal level “the fact that there is the contemplation of contemporary slavery makes it something that I would not be a part of producing nor consuming … Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”</p>
<p>The fear that the show could exploit the history of black oppression that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/09/black-lives-matter-movement-taught-black-oppression-borderless-michael-brown">many argue</a> did not end with the emancipation of African slaves in the 19th century led to calls for a boycott, with #NoConfederate going viral on Twitter. </p>
<p>But while the public take sides, we’ve yet to know how either show will pan out – they haven’t yet been written. Indeed, the television network drew attention to two other members of the writing and production team, African Americans Nichelle Spellman (The Good Wife) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire), <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/hbo-casey-bloys-1202507718/">and promise</a> that the show would not be “Gone With the Wind 2017.”</p>
<h2>Alt-history: why the controversy?</h2>
<p>Alt-history has been a popular literary genre for decades, and is currently enjoying something of a boom, thanks to Amazon’s recent adaptation of Philip K Dick’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740299/">The Man in the High Castle</a>. Two of the most common alt-history themes are – no surprise – the Axis powers <a href="https://theconversation.com/ss-gb-why-the-renewed-obsession-with-alternative-nazi-histories-73157">winning World War II</a> (or indeed <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/">plotting their return</a>) and the Confederacy winning the Civil War or seceding from the Union, such as MacKinlay Kantor’s influential early alt-history, <a href="https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/if-the-south-had-won-the-civil-war/">If the South Had Won the Civil War</a> and even a mockumentary film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/">CSA</a>. These counter-histories each depend on the reader or viewer knowing the “real” history before it was re-written, to appreciate the difference between “what was” and “what if”. Herein may lie the problem.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157303/original/image-20170217-10228-1q5qtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SS-GB: a Nazified London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sid Gentle Films Ltd/Screen Grab</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The emergence of previously “unheard” histories from the mid-20th century onwards, such as Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, which exposed <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/arts/dee-brown-94-author-who-revised-image-of-west.html">the horrific treatment of Native Americans</a>, means that there is no longer a single, objective history that can be called “the truth”. Instead there are many histories seen from different perspectives. However, not all of these histories will be heard, meaning that certain dominant views of the past may stubbornly remain or may fail to recognise how it might offend others. As a consequence, we may “know”, for example, that slavery in America came to an end in the 1860s, and strictly speaking that is true. But perspectives on this topic differ – plenty of Americans see slavery as a story that has not ended. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"896216665477664768"}"></div></p>
<p>“What if” history may offer a space for silenced voices to write counter-histories, and Black America promises to tell a story where slavery comes to an end and black liberation and prosperity are real. However, alt-history also assumes that we already know and are agreed on what the real history was. In this understanding, history is fixed, which enables the writer to conceive of a history that is different or opposite to the one that is undisputedly fact. And if the known history is disputed, its fictional alternative may be also. </p>
<p>The reason that a show like The Man in the High Castle hasn’t attracted such controversy is that it is not so obviously rooted in disputed histories. The Nazis lost. The Holocaust happened. Holocaust denial flounders in the face of undeniable evidence. But from the perspective of the #NoConfederate campaign, HBO is rubber-stamping a history which regards slavery as a thing of the past. Just as the campaigners have made assumptions about the content of an as-yet-unwritten TV show, Benioff and Weiss have made an assumption about perceptions of American history. </p>
<p>For more than 8m black Americans, slavery is the root of a current reality of inequality and oppression. HBO and Amazon lending their name to a version of history – whether factual or counter-factual – is an inherent endorsement of its content, assumed or otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Barrett has received funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Board (now council) for research into American Civil War cinema (2000-2002) and from the British Academy to research DW Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (2012).</span></em></p>
To pitch an alternative timeline, you first have to believe a particular narrative of real history. That’s where things can go wrong.
Jenny Barrett, Reader in Film and Popular Culture, Edge Hill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82567
2017-08-18T02:17:36Z
2017-08-18T02:17:36Z
Is Ryan Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph an American ‘Guernica’?
<p>On Aug. 12, 2017, Charlottesville Daily Progress photographer <a href="http://www.newsjs.com/url.php?p=https://www.cjr.org/first_person/charlottesville-protest-photographer-photo.php">Ryan M. Kelly captured the moment</a> that Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters, injuring 19 and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. It’s probably the most enduring image to emerge from the weekend of “Unite the Right” rallies in Charlottesville, Va.</p>
<p>Eight months later, Kelly’s iconic photograph from that tragic day has earned him <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/image-of-tragic-moment-in-charlottesville-leads-to-pulitzer/">the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography</a>.</p>
<p>At first glance, the photograph is nearly impossible to make sense of visually or politically. Cars are not supposed to drive into pedestrians; fellow citizens are not supposed to kill each other over political differences. And there’s so much in the frame of the image – so many figures and forms crowded together, most only partially visible – that you can’t take it in all at once. </p>
<p>Pablo Picasso’s 1937 iconic mural “Guernica” might teach us how to interpret this image more closely, and why it is important to do so. Like Kelly’s photograph, “Guernica” conveys a moment of terror through a jumble of forms and fragments that seem to make no sense.</p>
<p>In April 1937, a different sort of “Unite the Right” moment took place in fascist Europe during the destruction of Guernica. At the request of General Franco, the leader of nationalist insurgents in the Spanish Civil War, German and Italian warplanes bombarded the Basque town in northern Spain. Terror rained from the sky: Hundreds of civilians were killed, while military targets were left unscathed. </p>
<p>Days later, as May Day protesters filled the streets of Paris, Pablo Picasso began what would become an anti-war masterpiece.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, ‘Guernica’ (1937).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reina Sofia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are uncanny echoes of Picasso’s “<a href="http://www.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/salas/informacion/206_6_eng.pdf">Guernica</a>” in Kelly’s photograph. Picasso used the Cubist techniques of fragmentation and collage to create a visual cry of anguish at the destruction wrought by men at the controls of war machines. </p>
<p>To make sense of the painting, you must do the work of reassembling what has been rendered apart. Yet you will never make sense of such destruction. You cannot merely glance at this massive painting or take it in all at once; you must stand and look and witness. There is nothing beautiful about it. It refuses to console. However, in the painting’s abstraction – its matte shades of gray, its distorted figures that stand in for the wounded and the dead – there is a kind of mercy toward its viewers and these victims. </p>
<p>If there is any mercy of abstraction in Kelly’s photograph, it is that of time. The image captures the moment in medias res – when the bodies of the men near its center still evoke the beauty of the human form in its wholeness.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet we know the victims are not whole; that is why it hurts to look. The contorted positions of the man in red and white sneakers and the man somersaulting above him make sense only in the realm of sports photography. But this is not a game. </p>
<p>Elsewhere the photograph captures only fragments: arms and hands, legs and feet, heads and faces. Empty shoes on the ground. Sunglasses. A cellphone in midair. </p>
<p>You will never make sense of this image because it makes no sense. (Or, rather, it makes as much sense as racism itself.) Yet to look away risks turning away from the truths it tells. A heavy aspect of our national tragedy is that we seem to lack a president – such as Abraham Lincoln – whose heart might break to see such carnage. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/glevel_1/gtimeline.html">As he kept reworking</a> “Guernica,” Picasso painted over a raised fist he had initially drawn near the center of the canvas. Then – as now – the raised fist is a symbol of solidarity against fascism. It makes an eerie reappearance on two posters in the top third of Kelly’s photograph. </p>
<p>“Guernica” includes small lines resembling newsprint. The Charlottesville photojournalist’s image is also crowded with text; some of it implicates the driver, while other words are a call to action.</p>
<p>Clear as day, there’s the incriminating license plate. No one can deny that this car drove into this crowd, as the colluding European fascists did when they <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F05E3DC103AE23ABC4051DFB266838C629EDE">claimed</a> that Guernica had been bombed by Spanish Republican forces. </p>
<p>Then there’s the collage of protest signs and street signs that the neo-Nazi at the wheel didn’t heed: Peace/Black Lives Matter. Solidarity. STOP. LOVE. BLACK LIVES. STOP.</p>
<p>Kelly’s photograph redirects these injunctions to the viewer, who’s left to wonder whether this is what our democracy – or the state of our union – looks like.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Aug. 17, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Wenzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ryan Kelly’s iconic photograph from Charlottesville evokes a ‘Unite the Right’ moment from 1937 – and the anti-war masterpiece by Picasso that emerged from it.
Jennifer Wenzel, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82507
2017-08-17T23:03:10Z
2017-08-17T23:03:10Z
Remembering Gord Downie through his lyrics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190869/original/file-20171018-32382-un510r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gord Downie, the poetic lead singer of the Tragically Hip whose determined fight with brain cancer inspired a nation, has died. He was 53.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Canada has lost one of its greatest artists — a person who consolidated us, who pushed us, who excited us, who taught us and who inspired us.</p>
<p>We have known for more than a year that Gord Downie was going to leave us soon. But <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/gord-downie-obit-1.4359906">the news of his death today</a> doesn’t soften the blow. </p>
<p>Downie and the Tragically Hip played their last gig in the summer of 2016. The band’s farewell tour came shortly after Downie announced he had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Shows from those exhilarating and emotional performances on the farewell tour were turned into a documentary, <a href="http://www.tiff.net/tiff/long-time-running/?v=long-time-running">Long Time Running</a>, and the last show was televised live across the country. </p>
<p>Downie’s death is a chance to re-examine the lyrics of the Hip’s songs. Good poetry is explosive. It makes us reconsider what we thought we knew, and in some instances it urges us to start again with a different, usually broader, viewpoint. Good songs — as Bob Dylan’s Nobel Laureate reminds us — have a similar impact.</p>
<p>I watched the final show on the big screen in Kingston’s Market Square. I wanted the Hip to play several songs, but none more so than “Ahead by a Century.” It is, I think, their greatest hit, and it was wonderful to hear them perform it as the last song of the show.</p>
<p>Why was it such a fitting way to finish? What about it is explosive? What does it mean to be “ahead by a century?” The song is so rich that there are a variety of good interpretations, but here is one way of thinking about it.</p>
<p>At its most basic level, “Ahead by a Century” is a song with a broad sweep, as it weaves together past, present and future. It is about time, memory, loss, disappointment and desire. But it is also about Canada’s identity and the politics of hope. It is a song in which the Hip asks us to shed what holds us back, and to imagine a future that sets us free. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182440/original/file-20170817-28138-1fvj187.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from the documentary, Long Time Running, captures frontman of the Tragically Hip, Gord Downie, as he leads the band through a concert in Vancouver last summer. The writer attended the Tragically Hip’s final tour stop in Kingston, Ont.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Courtesy of TIFF)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Childhood’s golden years</h2>
<p>The opening verse recalls childhood. It begins with the words “First thing,” which immediately captures the excitement children feel when they recount their day. The singer and his friend have played together many times: “First thing we’d climb a tree / And maybe then we’d talk / Or sit silently / And listen to our thoughts.” </p>
<p>Among other things, the two discuss what they will do when they get older, or what they think their future will be like. They have “illusions of someday” that as children cast “a golden light.” But as the rest of the song reveals, their ideas of the future are “illusions.” It will not be as they planned or hoped. Having been back to childhood, and then forward to “someday,” the verse closes with the present and an insistence on living as fully and genuinely as possible: “No dress rehearsal / This is our life.”</p>
<p>In the bridge, the “illusions” of childhood are inevitably and almost accidentally punctured. The voice of the child is again captured when he explains — perhaps to a parent — “that’s where the hornet stung me.” This unexpected and unpleasant experience marks the end of childhood’s “golden light,” and brings on the “feverish dream” of adulthood, where we are all addled by emotions such as “revenge and doubt.” </p>
<p>The final line of the bridge — like the final line of the verse — returns us to the present: “Tonight we smoke them out.” Literally, of course, the “them” in this line refers to the hornets, but it also refers to “revenge and doubt.” The singer plans to use smoke to drive the hornets from their nest, in the same way that he hopes to drive revenge and doubt from himself, in an attempt to return to an earlier time when he lived free of these emotions.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BI_WxGDAO-q/?taken-by=thetragicallyhip","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Political agitators were ahead by a century</h2>
<p>The chorus is six words — “You are ahead by a century” — repeated three times. The singer is addressing his partner, who is perhaps the same person he climbed trees with as a child. Yet the two are now far apart. He is thinking of the past and struggling in the present. She is living one hundred years into the future. She has broken free of at least some of what thwarts and binds us now. </p>
<p>She is already thinking and behaving in ways that will eventually gain broad political and cultural acceptance, but that are currently deemed unacceptable.</p>
<p>For example, in Britain in the 1810s, tens of thousands of women and men gathered in open-air protests to demand the right to vote, but it was 1918 before there was universal male suffrage and 1928 before there was universal female suffrage. </p>
<p>Those early 19th century demonstrators were ahead by a century (and more). They recognized a blatant social injustice and started campaigning against it, but it took one hundred years for the rest of society to catch up. </p>
<p>In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. — another Nobel Laureate — <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/28/newsid_2656000/2656805.stm">spoke powerfully</a> of his “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”</p>
<p>Since then, 53 years have passed, and we are nowhere near living up to these words, as the recent bigotry in Charlottesville, Va., makes shatteringly clear. Will we live up to them by 2064, or will we discover — sadly and shamefully — that King was ahead by much more than a century?</p>
<h2>A vision of Canada beset with tragedy and injustice</h2>
<p>In the second verse, the singer continues to draw together the despair of adulthood (“Stare in the morning shroud”) with the exuberance of childhood (“I tilted your cloud”), before anchoring himself in the present (“Rain falls in real time”), and insisting again on the importance of using our time meaningfully: “No dress rehearsal / This is our life.” </p>
<p>The second bridge runs revealing variations on the first, and deepens the themes already in place: This time it is not “where” but “when the hornet stung me,” and the dream is not “feverish” but “serious.” Then, as the band and the singer build toward the close, the chorus is repeated twice, emphasizing with more and more urgency the distance between the singer and his partner.</p>
<p>The song might have ended with the repetition of the chorus, but the singer has one final thing to say: “And disappointing you is getting me down.” It is his acknowledgement that he wishes he was as far ahead as she is, and perhaps too it hints at her disappointment that he is unable to close the ground between them. </p>
<p>But thinking and feeling as he does, regarding the past as he does, misspending his time as he does, seeing a “morning shroud” instead of a morning sun as he does, he seems trapped while she moves into a far more expansive future. </p>
<p>More broadly, the Hip themselves in many ways invoke the dynamics that are at work within this song. They write about Canadian history, language, peoples, landscapes, and towns, and their sense of who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and where we need to go is at the crux of their music. </p>
<p>Their vision of Canada is beset by tragedy and injustice, but also lifted by beauty, humour, and courage. Most of all, at their finest, they urge us to rethink the present, and to imagine a more generous and accepting future that should not be ahead of us by a century.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H6-Vn0kxUFA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Video for Ahead by a Century.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ahead by a Century lyrics</h2>
<p>First we’d climb a tree and maybe then we’d talk</p>
<p>Or sit silently and listen to our thoughts</p>
<p>With illusions of someday casting a golden light</p>
<p>No dress rehearsal, this is our life</p>
<p>That’s when the hornet stung me and I had a feverish dream</p>
<p>With revenge and doubt, tonight we smoke them out</p>
<p>You are ahead by a century</p>
<p>Stare in the morning shroud and then the day began</p>
<p>I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand</p>
<p>Rain falls in real time and rain fell through the night</p>
<p>No dress rehearsal, this is our life</p>
<p>That’s when the hornet stung me and I had a serious dream</p>
<p>With revenge and doubt tonight, we smoked them out</p>
<p>You are ahead by a century</p>
<p>But this is our life and disappointing you getting me down</p>
<p><em><strong>Songwriters:</strong> Gordon Downie / Johnny Fay / Joseph Paul Langlois / Robert Baker / Robert Gordon Sinclair</em></p>
<p><em>Ahead by a Century lyrics © Peermusic Publishing</em></p>
<p><em>(Editor’s Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared Aug. 17, 2017)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Morrison works for Queen's University, which recently awarded honorary degrees to the five members of the Tragically Hip. He receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>
Good songs are like good poetry. Literature professor Robert Morrison reflects on The Tragically Hip’s best song, “Ahead by a Century,” and explains the politics of hope within the tune.
Robert Morrison, Professor of English Language and Literature, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82443
2017-08-17T22:56:56Z
2017-08-17T22:56:56Z
Charlottesville and the politics of fear
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182157/original/file-20170815-26751-1scgwed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did Trump's rhetoric played a part in radicalizing the far-right protesters in Charlottesville?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Helber</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I have spent nearly 16 years studying how the risk of violence grows in societies around the world and running programs designed to stem the tide. I have seen toxic rhetoric from political leaders result in violence in countries like Iraq and Kenya. </p>
<p>On August 12, the same thing happened in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html">Charlottesville</a>, Virginia. The violent clash there came about in part because of a resonance between President Donald Trump’s language and domestic extremist groups who see a doorway open to their goals – goals most Americans have long thought buried for good. </p>
<p>This homegrown horror represents a potentially greater threat than any we face from foreign terrorist groups. Foreign groups can certainly kill, but they have no power to divide our society. That deeper threat belongs to us alone – but the solution is also in our hands. </p>
<h2>Fear and anger make for strong motivation</h2>
<p>Let’s consider how the president’s words have encouraged violence.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-russia-probe-demeaning-to-our-constitution/article/2630600">quote from Trump</a>, speaking at a rally in West Virginia, predates the angry clash in Charlottesville by just nine days:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They can’t beat us at the voting booths, so they’re trying to cheat you out of the future and the future that you want. They’re trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story that is demeaning to all of us, and most importantly, demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The counterprotesters in Charlottesville – <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/13/543175919/violence-in-charlottesville-claims-3-victims">one of whom was killed</a> – are implicitly among the “they” in this speech. </p>
<p>Fear and anger defined Trump’s candidacy and continue to define his presidency, as in other <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/watch-live-trump-speaks-campaign-rally-huntington-west-virginia/">recent</a> speeches condemning the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html?_r=0">media</a>, the president’s political <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/politics/trump-mueller-political-argument/index.html">opponents</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/20/i-think-islam-hates-us-a-timeline-of-trumps-comments-about-islam-and-muslims/?utm_term=.2ecfdee2fdcb">immigrants</a> and the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/23/killing-trump-lefts-violent-assault-on-american-president.html">left</a>. </p>
<p>The language Trump uses resembles <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Maduro-Blasts-CIA-Plot-Demands-Response-from-Colombia-Mexico--20170724-0031.html">the language</a> Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is currently using to galvanize anti-protest violence, declaring his willingness to take up arms in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/lawmakers-injured-in-violent-attack-on-venezuelan-assembly/532749/">patriotic terms</a>: “If Venezuela was plunged into chaos and violence and the Bolivarian Revolution destroyed, we would go to combat… We would never give up, and what couldn’t be done with votes, we would do with weapons.” Trump’s language also echoes language right-wing extremist and white supremacist groups use to define the conditions under which violence – toward the government or towards other citizens they see as enemies – becomes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYGUfWC84wg">legitimate</a> in <a href="https://www.oathkeepers.org/critical-warning-to-u-s-military-and-federal-leo-do-not-follow-orders-to-waco-ammon-bundy-occupation-in-oregon-or-you-risk-starting-a-civil-war/">their worldview</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t come out of nowhere. Going back at least to the “southern strategy” in the 1960s, the GOP has spent decades <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/130039/southern-strategy-made-donald-trump-possible">mobilizing</a> fear and anger. As candidates, Republican presidents like <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/jeb-bush-willie-horton-118061">George H.W. Bush</a> leveraged fear to secure votes from the white, Christian, male and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/02/this-astonishing-chart-shows-how-republicans-are-an-endangered-species/">ideologically extreme</a> demographic to offset the party’s growing distance from an increasingly diverse and progressive American society. Trump’s use of the same tropes is not an aberration, but the culmination of this tactic. </p>
<p>By mirroring extremists’ language, Trump encourages groups already primed for violence by suggesting that the enemy and the situation they have prepared for are present here and now. By refusing to clearly denounce <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/video/david-duke-says-he-was-at-charlottesville-rally-to-fulfill-promise-of-trump-1023420483642">the extremists</a> – and suggesting a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-defends-organizers-of-white-supremacist-rally-in-charlottesville/2017/08/15/de01ff66-81f9-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">moral equivalency</a> between right-wing violence and counterprotesters – he further excuses and reinforces the idea that the right’s violence is defensible, honorable and legitimate.</p>
<h2>The patriot paradox</h2>
<p>We’ve heard this language from within the “<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/timeline-history-militias-america/">patriot movement</a>” for a long time. </p>
<p>Consider <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh">the following words</a>, spoken by Timothy McVeigh in an interview explaining why he bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and wounding nearly 700 more.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every extremist group in history describes its own violence as the legitimate response to a threat that was forced on them. In a South African white supremacist paramilitary training camp, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3038508/Preparing-race-war-South-African-white-supremacist-bootcamps-training-thousands-youths-fight-blacks-create-apartheid-state.html">recruits are told</a> “South Africa is bleeding… And this is why we have to train our people to be prepared. There’s millions and millions of blacks around you, smothering you… and killing you… So you have to implement certain systems to survive…” This is the same sentiment reflected in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/dylann-roof-rhodesian-flag_n_7616752.html">Rhodesian flag</a> worn by the white supremacist Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine at an African-American church in South Carolina. </p>
<p>When right-wing extremists and white supremacists view Trump critics, “liberals” and progressive protesters as enemies of the state – and therefore legitimate targets – they feel emboldened to demonstrate more overtly. Indeed, Trump’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-elites-20170725-story.html">anti-elite</a> accusations and claims that the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html">lying media</a>” is the enemy of the American people hold significantly the same meaning as McVeigh’s words. </p>
<p>American extremist websites exhort the belief that they are <a href="http://www.govtslaves.info/leaked-military-bulletin-labels-patriot-groups-militia-domestic-terrorists/">defending</a> the Constitution, stopping the theft of the political process from the people and resisting takeover by <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-klayman">hostile powers</a>. They draw on <a href="http://www.originalintent.org/edu/patriotmovement.php">the narrative</a> that true Americans are not only able but expected to throw off such oppression. </p>
<p>Even before 20-year-old James Alex Fields <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/james-alex-fields-charlottesville-driver-.html">drove his car</a> into the crowd on August 12, individual <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html?_r=0">acts of violence</a> linked to racism and extremist American politics were on the increase. In Trump’s presidency, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/hate-crime-america-muslims-trump-638000">a pattern</a> of increasing hate crimes has continued to grow. </p>
<p>In Charlottesville, white supremacists shouted “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-far-right-crowd-with-torches-encircles-counter-protest-group">Jews will not replace us</a>.” Meanwhile, Eric Trump denounces his father’s critics as “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-eric-trump-calls-father-s-critics-not-1496849988-htmlstory.html">not even people</a>.” They’re the same dehumanizing echoes used to justify levels of violence from <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human">cruelty to genocide</a>.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>As criticism for Trump’s Charlottesville stance grows, his popularity wanes. The president is becoming increasingly reliant on campaign-style speeches to connect with those who still support him. We must be on guard for the rhetoric of theft and threat, and the implicit call to violence, to intensify. </p>
<p>Many years of experience in dealing with extremism has taught me the threat can be reduced – first and foremost through consistent political involvement by the greatest possible number of people; a strong, united stand against fear and anger; and communication between communities and security providers. </p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security’s focus on analyzing and countering domestic terrorism, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO">dismantled</a> under Trump, should be rebuilt. The October 2016 <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/16_1028_S1_CVE_strategy.pdf">strategy</a> for countering violent extremism, which stresses community policing and inclusive governance, should be expanded and improved as a model for cities and states as well as the nation. </p>
<p>Political radicalism isn’t inherently bad. Indeed, the American Revolution wouldn’t have happened without it. The violence perpetrated by domestic radicals, however, cannot be condoned. A former IRA soldier in Northern Ireland once told me of the peace process there, “just because a wave breaks on the beach doesn’t mean the tide isn’t going out.” For Americans horrified at this violence, it’s important to remember that there is no endpoint in politics – only process. What’s wrong now can be changed.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-america-domestic-extremists-are-a-bigger-risk-than-foreign-terrorism-58841">an article</a> originally published on May 31, 2016.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Alpher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Trump is a master of using anger to motivate his base. An anti-terrorism researcher explains how to stem the tide.
David Alpher, Adjunct Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82621
2017-08-17T12:38:54Z
2017-08-17T12:38:54Z
How Charlottesville has exposed competing narratives in America’s cultural memory
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182405/original/file-20170817-13480-1kfts5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christopher Penler via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent deadly events in Charlottesville expose – if further evidence were needed – the increasingly sectarian nature of American politics. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/woman-killed-at-white-supremacist-rally-in-charlottesville-named">Heather Heyer</a>, the 32-year-old anti-fascist demonstrator killed during the protest, is the latest casualty of America’s long history of racial violence. </p>
<p>For those campaigning against the removal of Confederate general Robert E Lee’s statue from the town, the memory of the American Civil War is a heroic narrative of white military and political power. For those marching in opposition to this viewpoint, the continued presence of Confederate monuments signifies the historical marginalisation of African Americans and the daily vulnerability of black lives.</p>
<p>From slavery to Black Lives Matter, the story of race in America is a divisive narrative, rooted in contested cultures of memory. The recent revival of white supremacism, and the opposition it has engendered, is the latest chapter in this turbulent history. But the emergence of neo-Nazi organisations such as <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/vanguard-america">Vanguard America</a> – and the repurposing of fascist symbols and slogans – also threatens to unsettle a different culture of memory that, until now, has gone largely uncontested: the story of World War II and the United States’ historic opposition to fascism.</p>
<p>Erected in 2004 on the Mall in Washington DC, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wwii/index.htm">the National World War II Memorial</a> reflects the accepted narrative of the war against fascism. The monument commemorates the victory of freedom over tyranny, espousing national unity and democracy. For the past 70 years, in popular and political culture alike, this good-versus-evil dichotomy has routinely represented “Americanness” as the ultimate opposition – indeed, the only antidote – to fascism in any guise. </p>
<p>Since 1945, successive administrations on both sides of the political divide have drawn on this equation (sometimes dubiously) to justify American foreign policy. It was used to claim an unequivocal mandate to intervene in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan (among others) on the grounds of historical precedent.</p>
<h2>Through the looking-glass</h2>
<p>But contemporary white supremacist movements have reversed the moral framework in which memories of World War II have been been understood. In a recent <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/neo-nazis-white-supremacists-celebrate-trump-response-virginia-charlottesville-a7890786.html">post</a> for the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/shunned-by-godaddy-and-google-racist-daily-stormer-moves-to-russian-domain/">Daily Stormer</a> (a notorious neo-Nazi website that continues to proliferate on the dark web), editor <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-daily-stormer-editor-death-threats-heather-heyer-blog-viral-andrew-anglin-a7895611.html">Andrew Anglin</a> describes the current unrest as a “war” in which far right defenders of liberty rail against “Jew media lies” and what the alt-right refers to as “<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/what-antifa-anti-fascism-protesters-and-white-power-groups-explained-650232">antifa terrorists</a>”. </p>
<p>Reversing the orthodox designations of victims and perpetrators, Anglin positions the alt-right as martyrs battling an imagined Zionist elite. Such claims are not new – neo-fascist movements often couch their ideology in anti-Semitic terms and draw upon Nazi symbols and rhetoric. However, these groups typically operate as marginal organisations, with little political capital and no mainstream support.</p>
<p>What is unusual about Charlottesville, by contrast, is Trump’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/15/donald-trump-press-conference-far-right-defends-charlottesville">refusal to resoundingly condemn</a> the far right protesters. </p>
<p>This equivocal response has led neo-Nazi publications to claim a huge victory. A Daily Stormer <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/neo-nazis-donald-trump-charlottesville-press-conference-comments-both-sides-helpful-anti-fascist-a7895761.html">editorial</a> asserts that “the Trump condemnation is one of the first times when there is mainstream debate about who might be the ‘good guys’, between the Communists and the Nazis”. Leaving aside the bizarre characterisation of antifascists as communists, it is significant how the editorial mobilises Trump’s equivocation as a means of reversing the binaries of good and evil.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"898064223950995456"}"></div></p>
<p>While it would be unwise to assume that Trump would be sympathetic to such an approach, it does not seem too much of a stretch to suggest that such claims may have been helped by the administration’s prior ambivalence towards the accepted memory of World War II. </p>
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<p>From Trump’s marginalisation of Jewish victimhood in his <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-note-holocaust-memorial-yad-vashem-israel-so-amazing-never-forget-a7751841.html">remarks on Holocaust Memorial Day</a> to Sean Spicer’s baffling assertion that Hitler’s regime <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/apr/11/sean-spicer-hitler-chemical-weapons-syria-assad-video">did not use chemical weapons</a>, the administration’s representation of World War II has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/11/sean-spicers-hitler-holocaust-speak-volumes">repeatedly transgressed the norms</a> of American political memory.</p>
<h2>Fellow traveller</h2>
<p>There are some notes of caution to raise here. First, the so-called “<a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-americanization-of-the-holocaust/">Americanisation of the Holocaust</a>”, which has seen the genocide acquire sacrosanct status in American political culture, is not itself without issue. The elevation of Jewish victimhood above other historical losses has arguably served to mask instances of suffering more troubling to the American narrative – foremost among them, slavery and its legacies. </p>
<p>Second, Trump’s appointment of alt-right staffers (most notably, chief strategist Steve Bannon), his borderline racist remarks and his prejudicial policies, have raised enormous concern. But against the tendencies of social media, it would be rash simplistically to label the president himself a white supremacist. </p>
<p>Finally, the term “neo-Nazi” needs to be applied with some caution, for while it is accepted as a badge of honour by those who ascribe to it, for members of the alt-right less eager to identify directly with fascist politics, it can also provide an easy means of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/08/jelani_cobb_on_the_charlottesville_white_supremacists_trump_s_response_and.html">avoiding self-scrutiny</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, America is <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2017/03/rise-nationalists-guide-europe-s-far-right-parties">not the only nation</a> to be confronted with the rise of neo-Nazism, but it is clear that the Trump administration has created an environment in which racist organisations can thrive with apparent impunity.</p>
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<p>There is a certain irony to the fact that, as state and city officials across the American South seek to address the divisive legacies of their region’s past, the inhabitants of the White House continue to prop-up a revisionist politics of memory that sympathises with the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of violence – and celebrates, rather than mourns, aggressors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Bond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The alt-right is trying to subvert America’s history of opposition to fascism.
Lucy Bond, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Westminster
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82643
2017-08-17T05:14:58Z
2017-08-17T05:14:58Z
From Charlottesville to Nazi Germany, sometimes monuments have to fall
<p>The recent turmoil over the removal of Confederate statues in the United States invites us to think about the importance of monuments and historical memory worldwide. It also invites us to ask, should statues that represent dark episodes in a country’s history be removed? Or should they be kept as reminders of trauma? </p>
<p>The taking down of a statue of <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Confederate icon</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/robert-e-lee-confederate-hero-heart-charlottesville-unrest-statues/">General Robert E. Lee</a> in Charlottesville, Virginia, encouraged groups of neo-Nazis and white nationalists to protest. These extremist groups claimed the decision was a direct attack on their cultural identity and an effort to rewrite history. As we now know, this led to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/charlottesville-attack-170813081045115.html">violent clashes</a> between these groups and counter-protestors, and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/charlottesville-heather-heyer-mum-says-legacy-just-beginning/8815520">death of one young woman</a>. It has also led to an unprecedented presidential crisis due to President Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-race-decades-of-fueling-divisions/2017/08/16/5fb3cd7c-8296-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumprace-936pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.14139997ec7c">ambiguous statements</a> on the matter.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">Charlottesville, Virginia: the history of the statue at the centre of violent unrest</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>Following the Charlottesville violence, the far right (or <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-seeds-of-the-alt-right-americas-emergent-right-wing-populist-movement-69036">alt-right</a>, as it is also known), has planned <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/us/white-nationalists-protests-tally-trnd/index.html">as many as nine more rallies</a> in the coming days. In Baltimore, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html?mcubz=0">remove Confederate statues overnight</a>, with no publicity, in an effort to ward off political and racial violence in her city, which has witnessed <a href="https://theconversation.com/baltimores-toxic-slum-housing-and-its-part-in-the-violent-death-of-freddie-gray-40990">riots</a> in the past. Other Confederate monuments are being removed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&mtrref=www.nytimes.com">across the country</a>. </p>
<p>Removing Confederate statues in the US is not unprecedented, nor is it an effort to rewrite history. Rather, it demonstrates a deeper understanding of the nation’s troubled history. For decades, the productive capacity of the southern US depended on the forced migration of people from Africa and their slave labour. The void left by the Confederate monuments speaks even louder than the statues themselves, as the issue of race has gained currency there today. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182361/original/file-20170817-16209-114cal5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Confederate statue removed overnight in Baltimore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/JIM LO SCALZO</span></span>
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<h2>The making of meaning</h2>
<p>A monument, like the one to General Lee, is a material acknowledgement of a person’s virtue and contribution to the common good. Once history books are written and the voices of victims of dark episodes such as slavery have been heard, it is pertinent to reconsider the moral standing of figures who might have once been considered heroes and are depicted in statues. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182358/original/file-20170817-16200-3kvy30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Saddam Hussein’s statue falls in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/world/europe/franco-statue-barcelona-spain.html">In Spain</a>, after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, many towns with statues of Franco decided to remove them. The last Franco monument was removed from the mainland in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/18/franco-statue-spain">2008</a>. The removal of these monuments <a href="https://www.expatica.com/es/news/Hundreds-protest-against-Franco-statue-removal_127657.html">was also met with the ire of conservative groups</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous example of a monument’s removal for political reasons was the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd-M3Y-IprU">spectacular toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue</a> in Firdos Square in Baghdad in 2003. Symbolically, it marked the end of Iraq’s Baath dictatorship. This event, staged by the US Army and watched in real-time worldwide, represented the end of the regime even more than Saddam’s actual death by hanging in <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/30/hussein/index.html">2006</a>.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>We keep the things that we love the most, but sometimes we also keep the things that reminds us about the horror of the past. Monuments can echo the traumatic events that have shaped our culture, history and civilisation. </p>
<p>A famous example is <a href="http://www.mementopark.hu/">Memento Park</a> in the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary, where a number of removed statues from the Communist period are kept for visitors to see them and learn about the horrors of the Soviet years. Some also appreciate them as aesthetic objects or a tourist attraction. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tourists-go-to-sites-associated-with-death-and-suffering-81015">Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering</a>
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<p>According to the Gregorian dictum, written 1400 years ago by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I">Pope Gregory the Great</a>: images should not be destroyed because they are the books of the illiterate. We learn the mistakes of our past from the images that we make, in the present, of that troublesome past. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182359/original/file-20170817-16211-19q0zw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Memento Park in Hungary which preserves monuments from the country’s communist period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Szoborpark</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>When the past becomes poisonous</h2>
<p>But some statues have to be removed as a cathartic event, as in the <a href="https://twitter.com/rhodesmustfall?lang=en">#RhodesMustFall</a> movement in South Africa. At first, it demanded the removal of some statues of Cecil Rhodes, a notorious white supremacist and British imperialist, but the movement became so powerful that it eventually sparked <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-students-toppled-rhodes-but-they-cant-get-rid-of-zuma-53996">demands for the fall of South African head of state, Jacob Zuma</a>. Removing the statues relieved the accumulated social tensions. </p>
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<p>Some statues need to be removed because of their embodiment of venomous ideologies, such as Nazism. For this reason, many symbols of Nazism <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTodK24KG6E">such as the big swastika in the Zepellinfeld in Nuremberg</a> were completely destroyed after the second world war in Germany. After all, images can work as didactic devices.</p>
<p>Perhaps Charlottesville is the first of many cases in which societies will reevaluate past atrocities. Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear that monuments and statues will sometimes help determine the course of history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The violence sparked by the removal of Confederate statues in the US shows the ideas that collect around historical monuments. Sometimes it’s better to remove them; yet they can be an important way of remembering trauma.
Jose Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, Associate Research Fellow, Heritage Destruction Specialist, Deakin University
César Albarrán-Torres, Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.