March 30, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
The “SILENT SAM”
Confederate Monument, the Leftist Crazies’ “Long March,” and the Question for Our Political
Leaders: When Will You Begin Resisting Them?
Friends,
Most every Thursday I gather with a group of friends for lunch at
some restaurant in Raleigh. Among the group are three PhDs in history, and one
who holds two masters degrees in history. All of are former employees of the
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (now Natural and Cultural
Resources)…and we all share very similar points of view about politics and the
shape of this nation.
This past Thursday while enjoying some great home cooking at Pam’s
Farmhouse Restaurant with my friends I picked up a copy Raleigh’s Leftist weekly
newspaper, INDYweek (March 27, 2019).
I usually only read it for the entertainment reviews and ads. The political
content is abhorrent (note: about fifteen years ago the publication attacked me
as a reactionary and “racist” when the Sons of Confederate Veterans, in which
I’m active, was going through a controversy over its response to attacks on
Confederate heritage).
Under the section “IndyMusic” I happened across an article—an
interview with the young members of a Durham NC-based punk-rock band called
“The Muslims.” The color photograph accompanying the article indicated—if I may
do a little racial profiling—that one of them, the female vocalist, was black;
the other two appeared to be white and perhaps Hispanic.
The interview struck me—not because of the incessant and repeated
use of foul and filthy language, the utilization of which has become normative
in our modern American culture—but because
of how the members of the group encapsulated succinctly what so many militants
on the unhinged Left, the social justice warriors who demonstrate on our
campuses and in the streets of our major cities, actually think and what they
aspire to achieve, their objectives, both immediate and long range.
Here is what the band vocalist named QADR told the interviewer:
…we’re not going to respectfully put up with the fact that
you’ve [white people] been committing very intentional ethnic cleansing of
people of color worldwide…. You’re afraid that there’s this race war that’s
coming, and you’re out here shooting up Muslims in New Zealand, using horrible
acts of religious, ethnic, and political terrorism, because you think we’re out
here to attack you. All of those things that have happened, all of the racial
slurs, all of the very intentional laws put in place—what if we upped the ante
and threw that s--t right back at you? [“The Muslims Wage Punk-Rock War on
White Supremacy with Genuine Humor and Rage,” IndyWeek, March 27, 2019: https://indyweek.com/music/features/on-their-new-album-the-muslims-wage-punk-rock-war-on-white-supremacy/ ]
And then a little later in the interview:
That new future [we fight for] is one where [white] supremacy
has been thoroughly eradicated and destroyed, based on so many people taking
different types of effort. It will require organizing, it will require new
people in office, it’s going to require people reclaiming land, reclaiming
their indigenous or cultural practices. It’s going to require music and art
really helping to contribute to this narrative…. It looks like a world where
white supremacy is actually f--king named, and people are attacking it for
being the cultural and societal cancer that it is…. That’s what the f--k we’re
raging about with the beginning of a new future and narrative.
QADR’s
political praxis and goals could not be clearer, and it is a praxis and program
that is not limited to simply a few of the more extreme and unhinged elements
of the far Left.
Just
listen to the current crop of Democrat presidential candidates, including most
recently the supposedly “moderate” and probable candidate, Joe Biden, who spent one
recent public appearance apologizing for his “whiteness” and condemning “white man’s culture” and demanding that America “change the
culture” that “dates back centuries and allows pervasive violence against women….It’s
an English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.” [“Biden
condemns 'white man's culture' as he laments role in Anita Hill hearings,” The Guardian, March 26, 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/joe-biden-anita-hill-hearings-race-gender]
Or,
watch any of the pundits and program hosts nightly on CNN or MSNBC, and
increasingly NBC, ABC, and CBS; or, just read any issue of The New York Times (the supposed “newspaper of record”) or The Washington Post—any day. The message
is nearly identical.
This
present state of affairs did not happen overnight. It took years—decades—to
reach the boiling cauldron of ideological hysteria we now encounter. It required
the control of Hollywood and our entertainment industry, a process that
actually began in the 1930s and 1940s and became visible for the first time
during the “Red Scare” of the late 1940s and 1950s and the infamous “Hollywood
Ten” and “Blacklist” episodes, and the accusations of serious Communist
infiltration into our
film industry. Today Hollywood
celebrates those directors and actors, even producing recently a slick and
adulatory cinematic salute to Communist movie director Donald Trumbo [Trumbo,
2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumbo_(2015_film) ].
And it also took decades of educational indoctrination, some of it almost by stealth and
largely unnoticed by most citizens…but
there just the same.
Since I
studied history in graduate school at the University of Virginia four decades
ago, I’ve kept a copy of the course offerings in that department. A few days ago I searched the offerings in
the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The
comparison was both fascinating—and revealing. It seemed that of the several
hundred courses listed, every other one centered on race or feminism, and the
implicit “liberation from white privilege” of the
impressionable minds of college students, whose parents have to fork over tens
of thousands of dollars a year for what, in effect, is most assuredly indoctrination.
HIST 137. Muhammad to
Malcolm X: Islam, Politics, Race, and Gender. 3 Credits.
This
course provides an introduction to the history of the Islamic world from the
time of the Prophet Muhammad to the present day. It seeks to expose students to
key themes, individuals, and movements that have represented Islamic thought
and practice, and enable students to engage directly with intra-Islamic
debates.
HIST 202. Borders and Crossings.
3 Credits.
This
course will examine how collective identities have been created, codified, and
enforced; and will explore possibilities for building bridges between groups in
order to resolve conflicts.
HIST 259. Towards
Emancipation? Women in Modern Europe. 3 Credits.
This
course examines and compares the situation of women in politics, the work
force, society and family from the French Revolution to the new women's
movement in the 1970s with a focus on Britain, France and Germany. One major theme
is the history of the struggle for women's emancipation.
HIST 331. Sex, Religion,
and Violence: Revolutionary Thought in Modern South Asia. 3 Credits.
Which
of the following would you consider potentially political issues: celibacy;
semen retention; body-building; depiction of gods/goddesses; or bomb making?
Well, they all are. This course examines debates over sex, religion, and
violence that constituted a key part of revolutionary thought and anti-colonial
struggles in modern South Asia.
HIST 348. Population
Transfers, Migration, and Displacement in Europe from the 19th to the 21st
Century. 3 Credits.
By looking at
case studies from the 19th to the 21st century, this seminar will help
contribute to a better understanding of the current migrant crises in Europe.
This course will deal with factors for migration/forced migration, possible
motivations, migration experiences, as well as consequences for the migrants
and the communities where they have ended up.
HIST 361. Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgender Histories in the United States. 3 Credits.
This course
investigates the history of people who might today be defined as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) in the United States. Key themes will include
identity formation, culture, politics, medical knowledge, discrimination, and
community.
HIST 236. Sex and American History. 3 Credits.
Does sex have
a history? This course argues that it does. Exploring American history from the
earliest encounters of Indians, Europeans, and Africans through the aftermath
of the sexual revolution, we will consider diverse perspectives, important
dynamics of change, and surprising ways in which the past informs our
present--and ourselves.
HIST 475. Feminist
Movements in the United States since 1945. 3 Credits.
This course
will examine the unprecedented surge of feminist thought and activism in the
postwar United States. Course materials and discussions will trace feminists'
varied conceptions of empowered womanhood and their expectations of the state,
society at large, and each other. Honors version available.
HIST 514. Monuments and
Memory. 3 Credits.
Explores the
role of monuments in the formation of cultural memory and identity, both
nationally and globally. Topics include the construction of identities in and
through public spaces, commemoration of both singular individuals and ordinary
citizens, and the appearance of new types of post-traumatic monuments in the
20th century.
I could go on, but I think you
get the idea. Of course, this is not to say that the subject matter is not
worthy of study or should not be examined. But what impresses is the heavy
emphasis on race and gender studies, and the employment of “critical race” and
“feminist gender” theory as the media for the study of history…and, thus, the
very probable indoctrination of students, not only at UNC, but at almost all
our nation’s colleges and universities, certainly the public ones.
And what is evident in the UNC
Department of History is equally true in other faculties.
Should it be any wonder, then,
that presently in North Carolina (and most other Southern states) there is
an effort underway to remove monuments to Confederate veterans and historical
figures associated with the Confederacy—identified as “racist” and artifacts of
“white supremacy”--and that those efforts are centered on university campuses,
in academic departments, and in towns and cities with university presences, and that that influence is increasingly felt in all of
our society?
Also, note the course offering on “Monuments and Memory.”
But it is not only Confederate monuments; indeed, they are but a
first step. There is a deeper issue,
something that our political elites, especially establishment conservatives who
would very much like to see such controversy just go away, seem to fail to
recognize.
That iconoclastic campaign is part and parcel of a far larger and all-encompassing,
multifaceted effort to destroy what folks like QADR—and most Democrat
candidates for president--claim is “white supremacy.” The attack on Confederate
monuments fits exactly into this template and into the campaign against Western
heritage and civilization—into the, as QADR calls it, “new future….where
[white] supremacy has been thoroughly eradicated and destroyed, based on so
many people taking different types of effort…. and people are attacking it for
being the cultural and societal cancer that it is…. That’s what the f--k we’re
raging about with the beginning of a new future and narrative.”
The effort to
remove those monuments, most notably the toppling of the “Silent Sam” monument
on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last August—the
monument memorializing the school’s volunteers who went off to war in the 1860s
to defend their state against invasion—cannot be separated from the much
broader war against the West. And the attempts by some pusillanimous
“conservatives” to do so are foolhardy, attempting to avoid the inevitable. For
the social justice warriors have no intention of stopping with Confederate
monuments.
Consider two recent
instances at two nationally-known universities.
First, at George Washington University in Washington DC,
students are demanding that the college mascot, the “Colonials,” be changed, “arguing the nickname may ‘discourage’ students, due to
not being ‘inclusive’. Students suggest changing the mascot to a ‘hippo’ or
‘riverhorse’ instead…. as the mascot might make them think about oppression and
the hatred of a different race.” [“Students Demand George Washington
University Change ‘Colonials’ Mascot,” February 14, 2019: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/02/14/students-demand-george-washington-university-change-colonials-mascot/
]
And
at Hofstra University in New York, radicalized students are,
“…calling for the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson from campus near New York City
because they say the third American president represents racism and slavery. Students participated
Friday in the second annual ‘Jefferson Has Gotta Go!’ event over the statue
that has been subject to protests and acts of vandalism in the past, with some
previously defacing it with ‘DECOLONIZE’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogans.A
petition last year was launched urging to move the Founding Father’s statue to
a museum with proper context rather than display it ‘on a college campus,
especially not in front of a hub of student life’.” [“Thomas Jefferson statue must go, some
Hofstra University students say,” March 30, 2019: https://www.foxnews.com/us/students-urge-hofstra-university-to-remove-thomas-jefferson-statue-over-racism
]
Sound familiar? That is exactly what the University of
North Carolina system Board of Governors originally proposed to do with the
“Silent Sam” monument--put it in a museum, and, indeed, may yet try to do later this May. They
postponed their original decision on the fate of the monument from March 15 to
the end of May 2019 (after most students will have left for summer break), just
perhaps to avoid the kind of mob action that was witnessed back on August 20,
2018, when the monument was brought down by demonstrators, composed both of students
and local social justice fanatics.
Of course, the administrators of Hofstra do not have a state law
that requires them to keep the Jefferson statue on campus; North Carolina does have such a law, the 2015 Monuments
Protection Law [G.S. 100-2.1. “Protection of monuments, memorials, and
works of art”], which demands that a monument on public property—which the
campus of the University of North Carolina certainly is—if taken down, must be
put back up. Only physical problems with the monument itself endangering the
public or major road construction are exceptions, and, then, in those cases,
the monument must be put back in the closest proximity to the original site and
“in the same jurisdiction.” Moreover, placement in a museum is strictly prohibited.
In
May the Board of Governors of UNC will have a major decision to make. As one
board member supposedly said recently, “we are in between a rock and a hard
place, between the anger of those students and faculty, and the 2015 law which
the Sons of Confederate Veterans threatens to use to sue us and the
university.”
No
sir: you are not between “the law and
the university.” We live in a society
of laws, laws enacted by the elected representatives of the citizens of this
state, and those laws apply to you and
the university. You have but one choice to make: follow the law and put the
“Silent Sam” monument back in its place. If you accede to the demands of the
revolutionary mob—just one step in what they call their “long march” through
our institutions and our history—you will have enabled them and made their
continued success possible.
Let
me repeat what a local social justice warrior wrote as a comment to an essay I
published on March 8 at Reckonin.com: “The removal of the monuments will continue, both thru legal and extra legal means.
The protests the other night against you are simply the continuation of the
long struggle and march forward against the forces of division and barbarism.
Expect more of them. Your time is over. Ours is just beginning.” [see the published essay, March 8: https://www.reckonin.com/boyd-cathey/what-happened-at-confederate-flag-day-2019
]
It could not be more clear, the divisions more sharp, than that.
For the Board of Governors, then, as well as for all the other temporizing establishment
conservatives (who wish to avoid addressing the issues involved), the question is: when
will you make a stand for what is left of our cultural inheritance and our
civilization? Will you?