Imagine if German politicians,
in
order to bolster their chances of being elected chancellor,
had to declare publicly that they could see nothing wrong
with flying
the swastika, Germany�s flag during the �War of British
Aggression�.
Imagine if U.S.-born Jihadists seized WMD
and killed 300,000 New Yorkers.� But instead of executing
the insurrection leaders after their capture, the government
dedicated highways
and holidays
in their honor.���
Welcome to the former states of the Confederacy,
where the sesquicentennial celebrations have begun.� Neo-Confederates
will assault
anyone who publicly
opposes
them, including that person�s family and employers.
In 2002, I criticized
a taxpayer-funded
statue of Nathan Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux
Klan, that neo-Confederates had recently erected in Tennessee.
The response?
�I hope you are killed in the most violent, bloody way possible....�
�I hope someone rapes and kills your White, race-traitor
wife and/or girlfriend as well.� �...it is the niggers that
should have been exterminated during the American Civil
War. had that occurred, this nation would be a far greater
and a nigger-Marxist free land.� A
few dozen love letters like that, and about 800 slightly
friendlier ones. Then it got bad.
I fled Tennessee, abandoning my job at Vanderbilt
University.
Even talking
about the tactics neo-Confederates employ, and their �thinly
veiled support for white supremacy,� can bring down
a hailstorm,
as Princeton University historian James McPherson discovered
when he made the above-quoted statement in 1999; after
receiving angry mail, McPherson backpedaled, saying
he should have �been thinking more carefully�.
In 2009 Arthur
Dowdell, an Auburn, Alabama city councilman, removed
four tiny, freshly planted Confederate flags littering a
graveyard, and received �hundreds, if not thousands, of
emails,� including �threats
to burn crosses in his yard and to kill him and his family�.
The city council threatened
Dowdell with censure, removal
and arrest.�
Dowdell apologized.
In 2002, Wallace Earl Cook threatened to
�cut [the] heart out� of Vanderbilt University�s
chancellor, Gordon Gee,
because Gee tried to remove the word �Confederate� from
the name of a dormitory.�
Henry Maston wrote that he hoped
Gee would be �killed by the same worthless [racial slur]
that kills Farley.� Gee eventually changed his tune
from �Yankee Doodle� to �Dixie,� abandoning
the attempt to change the dorm�s name, trying to placate
the people who attacked him by calling them �old friends,�
and having his spokesman, Michael
Schoenfeld, say that my criticism of the Klan founder
was �rightly
offensive to, and rejected by, most people.��
Terrorism works.
And don�t think African-American organizations
will protect you: Fears of rough rope and the lash�s sting
still paralyze them, although they won�t admit it.� NAACP
president Ben
Jealous explained that chairman
Julian Bond probably felt that I had �asked for� the
Klan-supporter attack and so deserved no help. Jealous�s
wife, Lia Epperson-Jealous, merely put me in touch with
a lawyer she knew from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who
did nothing. When I discussed how Tommie Morton-Young of
the Nashville NAACP had failed to help me, Morton-Young
libeled me.
The Vanderbilt Black Student Alliance did
�announce that we support everything that Dr. Jonathan Farley
wrote about the Confederacy,� but then someone wrote its
president, Nia
Toomer: �ignorant nigger whore. Go and see the movie
�Gangs of New York�. ....Niggers are lynched and burned.�
No black students, alumni,
or faculty
spoke up again.
Nor are liberals a match for neo-Confederates.
The Southern
Poverty Law Center�s Mark Potok wrote that my calling
Forrest a treasonous
war criminal �really was pretty harsh�.� �That�s a debate
I want no part of,� agreed Green Party
national media coordinator Scott McLarty, �and I�m angry
at Jonathan for potentially igniting it.� Ed
Sebesta, currently finishing a book about Vanderbilt�s
�Confederate� dorm, concluded,
�The abandonment of...Jonathan Farley to the Neo-Confederate
wolves...reveals the Green Party to be the white party after
all.�
Neo-Confederates, by contrast, wield, or influence those in, power.
Even
Obama cowers. When Brit Hume
mentioned
me on Fox News Television, I recall getting 200 hate messages.
Barrett Brown, in his new book, Hot,
Fat, and Clouded, details how Washington Times
editor Robert
Stacy McCain targeted me. Rachel
Maddow has called
McCain a �white supremacist�; far from being ostracized,
McCain recently interviewed
the husband of Sarah Palin.� Bill Clinton, as president,
honored
the United
Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that made KKK
postcards, that recommends
books praising the KKK, and that asked �whether emancipation...has
introduced evils...more terrible than slavery.� Paul Craig
Roberts, Reagan�s
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, accused me of committing
a �hate crime�. �As The
Nation reported in �Trent Lott�s Uptown Klan,� the
former Republican Senate Majority Leader was an �honorary
member� of the Council
of Conservative Citizens, even taking photos with its
head, Gordon
Baum, in Lott�s
office. The CCC urged
its members to �gather a mob� to get me, with Baum
vilifying me on national radio.
The way
to fight neo-Confederate Klan supporters is to return their
fire: Take anyone who publicly supports the Confederacy, create
websites with his contact information, conduct denial-of-service
attacks on his
sites, and barrage his employer and associates with emails, calls, and faxes.� A
Sons of Confederate Veterans newsletter
listing Lunelle Siegel as editor says that Forrest �helped
start the organization known as the KKK...to offset the
oppression of the Southern people.�
On the Sierra
Times website, Siegel said the �KKK was created
to protect women and children,� and provided contact information
for the chairman of my department at Vanderbilt University:
neo-Confederates were urging Vanderbilt to fire me. In letters
to the editor, someone responded, �[Farley�s] words
inflamed me such that I wanted to put a minie [bullet] down
the barrel of my Enfield [rifle], hunt him down, and shoot
him like the dog he is.� Yet Siegel
and the other terrorists feel safe, and have
jobs.
So let�s continue Sherman�s
march into cyberspace, till they don�t.� Only then can
we exorcise the ghosts of monsters
who raped
women, murdered
children, and executed prisoners
of war.
Cleanse America of the Confederate putrefaction.
The Confederacy must be destroyed.
Note:
Professor Farley unsuccessfully
petitioned America�s first black president not to honor
Confederate veterans.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Dr. Jonathan David Farley, is the 2004 Harvard Foundation
Distinguished Scientist of the Year. He is currently Teaching and Research
Fellow teaching mathematics at the Institut f�r Algebra Johannes Kepler Universit�t Linz, Linz �sterreich Click here to contact Dr. Farley.
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