Tag: history

Rachel Maddow’s Prequel Is a Deceptively Framed History of the Radical Right

“American democracy itself was under attack from enemies within and without,” Rachel Maddow writes in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. If you’re not sure whether she is speaking of the past or the present, that’s because she wants to conflate the two.

Prequel is a deeply flawed and deceptively framed history of right-wing radicalism in the United States on the eve of American entry into World War II. Maddow’s treatment of this well-worn topic draws principally from primary sources generated from the protagonists of her story, a collection of private spies and anti-fascist activists, as well as contemporary press reporting, sundry government documents, and a narrow base of secondary sources, one that noticeably omits prominent works in the field. Deficiencies in her sources, methods, and analyses make for a book that recapitulates past passions at the expense of sober reflection and reality.

Maddow opens with her strongest case study, covering the German-born Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck, who tried to push Americans toward neutrality by using personal connections with Congress to spread noninterventionist literature. She then switches focus to her weakest case study, that of populist Democratic governor and senator Huey “Kingfish” Long and his influence on the Nazi sympathizers Philip Johnson and Gerald L.K. Smith. Maddow does not clarify why Long, who died in 1935, is discussed here. But her tone and source selection imply that she agrees with the Kingfish’s contemporary critics that his populism and demagoguery made him a proto-fascist and a political gateway drug for more radical figures, like Johnson and Smith.

Maddow then abruptly changes focus to the dark history of American segregation and its influence on Nazi racial science, following the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger’s travels through the American South. Then she circles back to more-prominent characters, such as the American fascist Lawrence Dennis, the antisemitic preacher Charles Coughlin, and the abstruse spiritualist (and leader of the fascist Silver Shirts) William Dudley Pelley, among others.

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History Repeating: The War on the Kulaks

If you’ve read We’re All Dutch Farmers Now and We’re All Sri Lankan Farmers Now, then you’ll know all about the concerted war on farming that is taking place right now, not just in Holland or Sri Lanka but in Ireland and Argentina and Canada and Spain and seemingly every other country around the globe. And, if you have read those editorials, then you’ll also know all about the Malthusian Absolute Zero Sustainable Enslavement Great Food Reset agenda that is behind this push to villify farmers and to stigmatize the very act of farming itself.

But do you remember when recently ousted Dutch farm minister Henk Staghouwer declared that “we must smash the farmers, eliminate them as a class!”?

And do you recall when Canadian prime minister Justin Castreau asserted, “To launch an offensive against the farmers means that we must prepare for it and then strike at the farmers, strike so hard as to prevent them from rising to their feet again”?

And do you remember what beleaguered Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was heard to remark (shortly before fleeing the country)? “In order to oust the farmers as a class, the resistance of this class must be smashed in open battle and it must be deprived of the productive sources of its existence and development.”

Of course you don’t, because they didn’t say those things. Joseph Stalin did. And he wasn’t talking about farmers. He was talking about kulaks.

That’s right, if this 2020s war on farming sounds familiar, that’s because it’s another example of history repeating. A hundred years ago, Joseph Stalin was plotting how to destroy the kulaks and confiscate their land and property for the glory of the Soviet empire. Today, Gates and Schwab are plotting how to destroy small farmers and take over their land and resources for the glory of the 2030 Agenda.

Think I’m joking? Let’s take a look . . .

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RIP, Richard Bilkszto, a Toronto Educator Who Stood up to Woke Bullying—and Paid the Price

In late April, 2021, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) trainer named Kike Ojo-Thompson presented a lecture to senior Toronto public-school administrators, instructing them on the virulent racism that (Ojo-Thompson believes) afflicts Canadian society. Canada, she said, is a bastion of “white supremacy and colonialism,” in which the horrors unleashed by capitalism and sexism regularly lay waste to the lives of non-white and female Canadians.

Anyone who lives in Canada knows this to be a preposterous claim. But in the wake of the George Floyd protests, which opportunistic DEI entrepreneurs in Canada treated as a gold rush, such lies have been treated as unfalsifiable. The same is true of the (equally preposterous) claim that Canada’s experience with anti-black racism directly mirrors that of the United States. And so it was expected that Ojo-Thompson’s audience would simply nod politely and keep their mouths shut until her jeremiad had concluded.

But one audience member refused to submit: Richard Bilkszto, a long-time principal at the Toronto District School Board who’d also once taught at an inner-city school in upstate New York. Having worked on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, he told Ojo-Thompson that her generalizations about the two countries seemed misguided; and that denouncing Canada in such a vicious manner would do “an incredible disservice to our learners.”

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3 Things Anti-America Agitator Angela Davis Can Learn From Her Pilgrim Ancestors 

Angela Davis is a poster girl for leftist radicals. She’s a communist, former Black Panther, critical theorist, and Israel-hater who has made a career out of sowing racial division. On Wednesday, however, the victimhood status she’s been carefully curating and profiting off for decades was severely undermined after it was revealed that Davis is a descendent of the earliest Europeans to begin settling North America, the Mayflower passengers.

On an episode of PBS’s “Finding Your Roots,” host Henry Louis Gates Jr. revealed to Davis that she is descended from William Brewster, one of the 101 colonists who voyaged to America in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.

“No, I can’t believe this. No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower,” Davis said in disbelief. “Your ancestors came on the Mayflower,” Gates reaffirmed. “Oof. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now,” Davis responded. 

Davis’s ancestor, William Brewster, wasn’t just any colonist, either. In the Plymouth Colony, Brewster was the senior elder, religious leader, and adviser to Gov. William Bradford. His memorial stone states he is “Patriarch of the Pilgrims.”

Ironically, America’s settlement—and therefore the legacy of Davis’s ancestors—has been brutally attacked by Davis and her progressive allies. Davis is a trained critical theorist who attended the infamous University of Frankfort, originator of the Frankfurt School of Marxist philosophers. She believes “Racism is embedded in the fabric of this country,” and she wants public school students to be taught critical race theory.   

Davis and her friends have spent decades curating the damaging notion of collective American guilt, especially “white guilt.” This radical cultural Marxist ideology has produced things like the damaging 1619 Project and the 2020 “summer of love” that resulted in the destruction of countless historical monuments. It is the brainwashed protégés of Davis and her friends who routinely vandalize Plymouth Rock and other monuments of Davis’s ancestors.

Predictably, Davis wasn’t too happy to learn that she can trace her lineage back to the heart of the American experiment, which is antithetical to everything she stands for. Davis decries capitalism and individualism. In her view, there is black and white, and oppressed and the oppressors. Everything is viewed through the prism of race and class.

If for a moment, though, she steps outside of her Marxist framework, she’d discover that there’s a lot she can learn from her Pilgrim ancestors.   

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The first legally recognized slaveholder in American History was a black man

When you hear or read the term ‘slavery’, the first thing that would readily pop into your mind is a black man being abused and used by white man. After all, this is the battle cry of the black community whenever they likened racism to slavery. While this may be true of most slave cases, do you know that the first legally recognized slaveholder in America was not a white but a black man?

A servant who became the master

Anthony Johnson was one of the first indentured servants who came to Virginia in 1619. The concept of ‘indentured servants’ was a concept introduced by the administrators of Virginia so that those without money can enter the New World by providing free labor to their benefactor who paid for their entry. Indentured servants will only work for a set period of time and they will be free afterward.

Anthony worked out his indenture period and together with his wife Mary, bought their way out of bondage. Anthony was fortunate enough to eventually acquire his own land. A former indentured servant having his own land was practically non-existent during that time. Since he and his wife were no strangers to hard work they were able to successfully grow their livestock and livelihood. By the 1650s their property had grown to 250 acres, a rare feat for an ex-servant.

Considering that Anthony owned his own plantation, he employed five Africans as indentured servants and one of them was John Casor. John completed his servant-period by laboring for seven years without pay. However, when John asked Anthony for his freedom, the ex-servant-turned-freeman (and then owner himself) refused.

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The History of Slavery You Probably Weren’t Taught in School

In “Recognizing Hard Truths About America’s History With Slavery,” published by FEE on February 11, 2023, I urged an assessment of slavery that includes its full “historical and cultural contexts” and that does not neglect “uncomfortable facts that too often are swept under the rug.”

The central notion of both that previous essay and this follow-up is that slavery was a global norm for centuries, not a peculiar American institution. America is not exceptional because of slavery in our past; we may, however, be exceptional because of the lengths to which we went to get rid of it. In any event, it is an age-old tragedy abolished in most places only recently (in the past two centuries or so). As British historian Dan Jones notes in Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages,

Slavery was a fact of life throughout the ancient world. Slaves—people defined as property, forced to work, stripped of their rights, and socially ‘dead,’ could be found in every significant realm of the age. In China, the Qin, Han, and Xin dynasties enforced various forms of slavery; so too did ancient rulers of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and India.

Milton Meltzer’s Slavery: A World History is both comprehensive and riveting in its presentation. He too recognizes the ubiquity of human bondage:

The institution of slavery was universal throughout much of history. It was a tradition everyone grew up with. It seemed essential to the social and economic life of the community, and man’s conscience was seldom troubled by it. Both master and slave looked upon it as inevitable…A slave might be of any color—white, black, brown, yellow. The physical differences did not matter. Warriors, pirates, and slave dealers were not concerned with the color of a man’s skin or the shape of his nose.

The indigenous populations of both North and South America, pre-European settlement, also practiced slavery. Meltzer writes,

The Aztecs also made certain crimes punishable by enslavement. An offender against the state—a traitor, say—was auctioned off into slavery, with the proceeds going into the state treasury…Among the Mayans, a man could sell himself or his children into slavery…The comparatively rich Nootkas of Cape Flattery (in what is now northwestern Washington state) were notorious promoters of slaving. They spurred Vancouver tribes to attack one another so that they could buy the survivors.

Perhaps because it conflicts with race-based political agendas, slavery of Africans by fellow Africans is one of those uncomfortable truths that often flies under the radar. Likewise, industrial-scale slavery of Africans by nearby Arabs as well as Arab slavery of Europeans are historical facts that are frequently ignored. Both subjects are explored in The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam by Simon Webb and Slavery and Slaving in African History by Sean Stilwell.

Slavery cannot be justified or excused by enlightened people, but it can be studied, explained, put in context, and understood—if all the facts of it are in the equation. It’s a painful topic, to be sure, which is even more reason to leave nothing out and to prevent political agendas from getting in the way.

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University removes art history professor for showing class two ancient Prophet Muhammad depictions

‘One of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory’

Hamline University in Minnesota has reportedly declined to renew the contract of an art history professor because they showed two ancient art images depicting the Prophet Muhammad during an optional online class segment.

The College Fix reached out on Monday and Tuesday to campus spokesman Jeff Papas, the university’s public relations specialist Michael Strasburg, and a general communications contact, to ask for the name of the professor, confirmation his contract was not renewed, and the explanation for the non-renewal. No response has been received.

The professor has not been identified in various reports on the incident.

Many — but not all — Muslims object to visual representations of religious figures such as Muhammad, understanding them as form of idolatry, according to Britannica.

“An instructor who showed an Islamic painting during a visual analysis — a basic exercise for art history training — was publicly impugned for hate speech and dismissed thereafter, without access to due process,” Christiane Gruber, a professor of Islamic art at the University of Michigan, wrote in a December 22 essay for New Lines Magazine. 

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Cancel Culture’s War On History, Heritage, & The Freedom To Think For Yourself

“All the time – such is the tragi-comedy of our situation – we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable.

We are being shunted down the road to that dystopian future right now, propelled along by politically correct forces that, while they may have started out with the best of intentions, have fallen prey to the authoritarian siren song of the Nanny State, which has promised to save the populace from evils that only a select few are wise enough to recognize as such.

As a result, we are being infantilized ad nauseum, dictated to incessantly, and forcefully insulated from “dangerous” sights and sounds and ideas that we are supposedly too fragile, too vulnerable, too susceptible, or too ignorant to be exposed to without protection from the so-called elite.

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