Modern progressives are just as evil in their bloodlust against the South as were William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. Today’s leftists may not yet be waging the shock-and-awe total warfare that the Union generals inflicted upon Southern civilians (whites and blacks alike) and their dwellings, businesses, churches, infrastructure, and food supply, but their aim is still the same: to have the Southern tradition and her people “annihilated and destroyed.”
“The government of the U.S. has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their land, their everything,” Sherman wrote in 1864. “War is simply power unrestrained by the Constitution or compact … to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better.”
So far, progressives aren’t marching to the sea, raping and burning whole cities, but they are vandalizing, spreading Confederaphobia, and encouraging a kill-whitey message. These hubristic pillagers have been taught that Southerners aren’t a self-determined people with a unique identity and culture. They see Dixie as a scourge and the purging of it as their self-righteous calling. They’re godless puritans to the core.
Sherman said that his motive was the “extermination, not of soldiers alone … but of the people” of the South. “And [that] he wanted to ‘repopulate’ the state with fine New England stock such as himself, the son of a New England lawyer of Puritan descent,” explained Thomas DiLorenzo of Sherman’s Georgia campaign.
Similarly, Sheridan wrought total devastation on the Shenandoah Valley and all of her people, in what’s become known as “The Burning.” High casualties among civilians were of no worry to this unholy crusader, and his vicious military exploits were allowed to again play out during the Indian Wars of the West.
It’s Sheridan who notoriously remarked, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” and “If a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers, but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.” Such are the ways of the boys in blue.
“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” Daniel Webster famously said in 1830. Thank goodness for the unionists and their ceaseless push for central authority through subjugation. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Sheesh, divisibility never sounded so good.
Just like the puritanical progressives called the American Indians “savages,” they too demean the South, insisting it’s comprised of “seditious states” and “backwards-ass crackers,” who must be retaken and continually remade to fit their ever-malleable whims. They see themselves as perpetuating God’s will, yet they’re pagan totalitarians who worship idols like Mr. Lincoln.
“The cause of ‘human rights’ is precisely the critical argument by which, in retrospect, Abraham Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression against the South is justified and even glorified,” wrote economist Murray Rothbard. “The ‘humanitarian’ goes forth and rights the wrong of slavery, doing so through mass murder, the destruction of institutions and property, and the wreaking of havoc which has still not disappeared.”
In 2017, it’s indeed a policy of scorched-earth proportions, but one carried out in dribs and drabs. “One step forward, two steps back,” as Vladimir Lenin penned. Communists may be evil, but you’ve got to give ’em credit for their staunch dedication to strategy.
Today, it’s removing Confederate symbols in New Orleans, changing the name of Jefferson Davis Highway in Arlington, or attempting to relocate the remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park once named after the Confederate general. Rename the public spaces and streets. Begone with those “pillars of shame.” Let’s erase this “dark history,” cheer the Lincoln cultists.
And tomorrow, it’s what, banning “ma’am” and “sir”? Suppressing Dixieland jazz and bluegrass? Castigating collard greens and grits as racist? Burning the books of William Faulkner and Douglas Southall Freeman? Tearing down Monticello and Mount Vernon?
If there’s no resistance, maybe soon it’ll be carting off “neo-Confederates” to Southern Poverty Law Center camps. Trust us, they’ll say, it’s just a little light labor and a dabbling of forced re-education.
This “is no big deal and Southerners are emotional and deluded to resent it,” historian Clyde Wilson explained, referring to apologists for Sherman and his sacking of Columbia after the city had peacefully capitulated to Union forces. “This only works if you start with the assumption that Southerners are inferior beings and have no right to resent anything their betters do to them.”
As I said in my last blog, I firmly believe this Jacobin thuggery is a “cultural genocide.” Let me elucidate.
In 1944, lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” by combining the the Greek word “geno” (tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (killing). He also specified a distinct cultural component to the eradication of a people group. Hence, “cultural genocide” speaks to the elimination of the heritage and history of said tribe.
“When cultural heritage is under attack, it is also the people and their fundamental human rights that are under attack,” explained Karima Bennoune, United Nations expert on international law. This includes “the destruction of heritage such as monuments, historic sites, and sacred places.”
The International Criminal Court agrees. In fact, according to its Rome Statute of 1998, “The destruction of cultural heritage can be prosecuted as a war crime.”
“Deliberate attacks on cultural property have become actual weapons of war,” said prosecutor Fatou Bensouda during the ICC’s first-ever proceedings against wreckage of artifacts by a Muslim who razed mausoleums and other historic structures in Timbuktu, Mali.
In 1994, a UN draft defined cultural genocide as “Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving [a people group] of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities.” The UN even used the word “ethnocide” in this draft.
“Genocide kills people,” stated human-rights attorney Bartolomé Clavero, “while ethnocide kills social cultures through the killing of individual souls.” Alas, the UN scrapped the terms “ethnocide” and “cultural genocide” from the final draft adopted by the General Assembly, but it retained some pertinent points from the previous drafts, such as addressing “the right [of natives] not to be subject to forced assimilation.”
Genocide is a constant unfolding, a concerted effort that is always testing and moving forward the goal posts for what is deemed acceptable for the day. Adolph Hitler, whose favorite U.S. president was Lincoln, didn’t call his plan to eradicate European Jewry “the final solution” for nothing; he understood it was a process.
Hitler looked at history to guide him. In Mein Kampf, he wrote of his desire to squash the “mischief of individual federated states” and to increase political centralization. It worked for Lincoln, so why not him?
Hitler also saw the tolerance for mass-killing atrocities and used it to gauge just how far he could push the genocidal envelope. In fact, Hitler didn’t think that anyone would be all that troubled about a cleansing of German Jews.
“Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?” he asked. He was sure that because of the deafening silence heard regarding the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, his efforts would barely furrow a brow. He saw that no one seemed to care, just as few seemed troubled by the ruination of the South, and the killing of her people and culture.
Unlike Hitler and his followers, today’s anti-Southern zealots don’t share a Germanic culture. They instead define themselves by their political community. But similar to the Nazis, they possess a cult-like belief that they’re fighting for “good, since its object is the betterment of all.” They are superior in purpose, so conquest by any means necessary.
They may have just-sounding names like Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the SPLC, or the NAACP, but what they really are is communists who want to force their ideology on the masses through a “general will” philosophy. Control the culture, control the people.
They’re the mob who seek to answer the “Southern question.” Under the guise of “racial reconciliation,” they silence speech, crush critical thinking, and rewrite history. They scream “social justice,” yet seek revenge through continued Reconstruction.
They screech about “healing wounds,” yet create lesions while incessantly pouring salt into the cuts. They are the “reactionaries” who are battling for the “lost cause” of collectivism, multiculturalism, and empire, but today they don black masks instead of brown shirts.
Now, I’m not a fan of global organizations like the UN or the ICC. But we should use all the tools at our disposal. Why should people be incensed when the Taliban or ISIS destroys statues thousands of miles away, but not be enraged (at all, equally, or more so) when it’s happening right here at home. Let’s call this attack on the South a cultural genocide and act accordingly.
We must call out the enemy and understand their motives and tactics. We Southern traditionalists must not be intimidated by being pegged a “racist.” After all, ignoring the erroneous and overused accusation takes power away from the true haters. Seriously, if you’re not being called a racist these days, you’re doing something wrong.
We must be dedicated in actively having an offensive posture against this Dixie-cide. Let’s no longer sit by idly and assimilate to the PC status quo.
“We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South,” Sherman told Grant, “but we can make war so terrible… [and] make them so sick of war that generations will pass away before they would again appeal to it.” I say we stop feeling defeated and appeal to it.
We mustn’t give an inch, not our monuments, our flags, our history, our dialect, our drawl, our food, our customs, our music, or our ancestry. And we sure as hell ain’t fixin’ to get on that train. Southern lives matter, y’all.
