Trump, Confederate Monuments, and Overt Nazism

Two years ago, I wrote a post about the problem of Confederate monuments. I concluded the post this way:

What I would propose then, is that we begin the process of dismantling and replacing those Confederate memorials with memorials to the reality of slavery. That we replace statues celebrating confederate soldiers and generals with statues celebrating union soldiers and generals, and that, at long last, we construct a national memorial that confronts the reality of slavery, so that we can confront our national shame squarely, and be called to account for it. Indeed, I'd suggest a national slavery museum, much like the National Holocaust Museum, where Americans can confront the history of slavery, unvarnished by revisionist, pro-confederate propaganda, and recognize the genuine evil that the South fought on behalf of, and that remains unacknowledged to this day. It would be my hope that, within my lifetime, someone wearing a Confederate flag would be looked on with the same kind of disgust that we would currently reserve for someone wearing a swastika.

Of course, this was before the 2016 election. This was before the era of Donald Trump. This was before actual white supremacists were given positions in the White House. And this was before last weekend in Charlottesville, when neo-Nazis marched openly wearing the symbols of fascism. We've moved beyond the point where the general shame associated with overt racism is a sufficient disincentive to prevent the mass mobilization of actual, honest-to-goodness Nazis, marching unmasked in the streets.

 

It's rather remarkable to me that we've come to this point in the United States. I literally couldn't conceive of it two years ago, as the post above demonstrates. Hell, I couldn't conceive of it 10 months ago, before the last election. I thought we were better than this -- more stable, more sane. The fact that as a nation we are not is deeply troubling to me. The question for us all to contemplate is what we do now, given that this is the world in which we now dwell. As of this moment, I don't have anything resembling a detailed plan in place. All I do know is that whatever we do, it needs to be encapsulated by one key concept:

 

Resist.

What I would propose then, is that we begin the process of dismantling and replacing those Confederate memorials with memorials to the reality of slavery. That we replace statues celebrating confederate soldiers and generals with statues celebrating union soldiers and generals, and that, at long last, we construct a national memorial that confronts the reality of slavery, so that we can confront our national shame squarely, and be called to account for it. Indeed, I'd suggest a national slavery museum, much like the National Holocaust Museum, where Americans can confront the history of slavery, unvarnished by revisionist, pro-confederate propaganda, and recognize the genuine evil that the South fought on behalf of, and that remains unacknowledged to this day. It would be my hope that, within my lifetime, someone wearing a Confederate flag would be looked on with the same kind of disgust that we would currently reserve for someone wearing a swastika.