April 2, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Latest Essay at ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE: UNC’s Silent Sam and the Leftist Long March
Friends,
Back on Saturday, March 30, I aired an installment in this
series, “The ‘Silent Sam’ Monument, the Leftist Crazies’ Long March, and the REAL
Question” https://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2019/03/march-30-2019-my-corner-by-boydcathey.html
]. In that essay I specifically
addressed the unending campaign by the far Left “social justice warriors” to
cleanse our country not just of monuments to Confederate veterans, but of all
symbols that in any way could be considered reflective of or tinged with “systemic
white supremacy.” And that includes historical figures like George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson—indeed, almost all of America’s founders and subsequent
leading historical figures.
There
are, in fact, no limits on where this campaign will lead, never any end in
sight to this multifaceted effort: the goal posts continue to advance as the
social justice fanatics continue to encompass and take aim at more targets, as
they continue to expand their reach and objectives…and as the nominal
establishment opposition gives way and refuses to engage in meaningful combat
against the madness.
My major
target in that essay was the University of North Carolina system Board of
Governors who have scheduled a decision in late May 2019 on the “Silent Sam” monument on the
UNC-Chapel Hill campus which was toppled by a radical Leftist mob back on
August 20, 2018. The Board has a major choice to make: they must follow the
2015 Monuments Protection Law and put the monument back as the law requires.
Or, they can violate the enacted law of this state and attempt to placate the
unquenchable mob…and that mob will not settle for anything less than surrender.
I recall what one of those
fanatics wrote in response to an essay I published 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.”
Those words bear constant
repeating…and they need to be understood
fully by the Board of Governors and other establishment political leaders
who believe, somehow, that they can avoid confrontation by ignoring and
disobeying the law.
That
essay has been slightly edited and was then picked up and published by The
Abbeville Institute on April 1, and I pass it along to you today. The Abbeville
title is: “The Leftist Long March, ‘Silent Sam,’ and the REAL Question.”
The Leftist Long March, “Silent
Sam,” and the REAL Question
Boyd Cathey on Apr
1, 2019
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 us 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 read it only for the entertainment reviews and ads. The political
content is abhorrent (note: about fifteen years ago the publication attacked me
as a right wing extremist 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].
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].
Or, watch any of the pundits
and program hosts nightly on CNN or MSNBC, and increasingly on 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 truly 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 leftist directors and actors,
even producing recently a slick and adulatory cinematic salute to Communist
movie director Donald Trumbo [Trumbo, 2015].
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 of that department. A few days ago I
searched the offerings in the Department of History 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
gender 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, for
the very probable indoctrination of students, not only at UNC, but at almost
all of 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 in 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 unwilling 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 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….”
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, futile efforts to avoid the inevitable. For the social
justice warriors have no intention of stopping with Confederate monuments.
Consider two very 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].
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]
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, they may yet try to do that 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 torn 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 which might endanger the public or major road construction are
exceptions, and, then, in those rare cases, the monument must be put back in
the same or closest location proximate 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.”
It could not be more clear or
the divisions more sharp than that. For the Board of Governors, then, as well
as for all the other temporizing establishment political leaders (who wish to
avoid addressing the issues involved), the question is this: will you make a
stand for what is left of our cultural inheritance and our civilization?
(A
version of this essay appeared at: https://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2019/03/march-30-2019-my-corner-by-boydcathey.html)
(NOTE: The North Carolina
Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans anticipates initiating legal
action regarding the illegal actions taken associated with “Silent Sam”
concurrent with the decision of the Board of Governors. Tax exempt
contributions to the Division’s heritage defense fund may be made by accessing
the North Carolina SCV Web page, and following the donation directions: http://www.ncscv.org/]
About
Boyd Cathey
Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European history from the Catholic
University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow,
and an MA in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a
Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the
late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as State Registrar of the
North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French,
Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as well as classical music and
opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical,
archival, and genealogical organizations.
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