By Paul Craig Roberts
Years of teaching blacks to have grievances against white people for things that happened centuries ago have come to fruition. Rioting and looting are not enough, the violent thugs and ignorant woke creatures are pulling down historic monuments in public parks and defacing public buildings while police and public authorities stand down.
In Richmond, Virginia, a statue eight feet tall of Christopher Columbus in a public park has just been pulled down and rolled into a lake by a group of thugs. Why? “Columbus represents genocide.” What the barbarians mean is that by discovering America, Columbus exposed the inhabitants to invasion from abroad, which is what the US has been undergoing since 1965.
Who hasn’t suffered invasions? Why of all the countless invasions in history is European entry into the new world so upsetting. Columbus wasn’t looking to invade any country. He was testing a theory and hoping to find a shorter route to the spice trade.
Any number of Confederate memorials are being pulled down. Not even Robert E. Lee will be spared. Are public authorities so stupid that they do not understand that their acquiescence to lawlessness and destruction of property lets the genie out of the bottle?
The new word for racist is white. By definition a white person is a racist. The two words are synonyms. Every stature of every white person is a statue of a racist and can be pulled down. The Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has amended the defense bill to require the US military to rename bases named after anyone who served under the Confederate flag. They don’t understand that as white is a synonym for racist, all whites, including Union officers, are racists. All US military bases will have to be named after blacks or it will be racist. Grant and Lee were both white and served together fighting for American empire in the war against people of color in Mexico. The only difference between Grant and Lee is that in addition to fighting for American empire against Mexico, Grant also fought for American empire against the South.
History is also being pulled down. Future historians will be perplexed to find no signs of the racism on which the NY Times says America was founded.
Ignorance is everywhere. RT describes Columbus as “another notorious figure in the history of slavery.” What!? The year 1492 was long before the black Kindgom of Dahomey created the black slave trade and long before there were any colonies needing a labor force. But facts no longer matter. Truth is whatever is emotionally satisfying.
America is said to be a superpower, but its inhabitants collapse in excruciating pain over a mere word. The pain felt by mental and emotional weaklings is so severe that it has caused universities to overthrow academic freedom. At UCLA, once a university and now a propaganda ministry, a faculty member is under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to the class he teaches. The letter (April 16, 1963) was King’s reply to black pastors who expressed their concern to him about his arrival as an outsider to their community to stir up confrontation when they were working to negotiate the achievement of the same goals peaceably. King’s answer was that confrontation sharpens the issue and will aid their negotiations. Creating a crisis, King told the pastors, fosters tension and forces a community to deal with the issue.
What did the professor do wrong by reading King’s own explanation of his strategy? The professor is in trouble because King in his letter used the word “nigger” and in reading King’s letter to the class, the professor read the word “nigger.” OhMyGod, a white man said “nigger.”
Oh, the hurt, the offense! University administrators have denounced the professor. To keep the controversy going students are urged to come forward with complaints. A town hall will be held to outline future next steps.
Think about this for a minute. According to reports “numerous students plead (sic ) with Professor Ajax Peris to not use the n word.” But it was King, not Peris, who used the n word. What is the message here? Does it mean that a white person cannot read out loud Martin Luther King’s letter? If the professor wanted students to be aware of the letter, would he have to bring in a black guest lecturer to read the letter? Would the professor still be accused of insensitivity if he gave Martin Luther King’s letter to the students as a reading assignment? Does it mean that King himself committed an offense by using the n word?
The professor also showed the class a documentary about lynching. The documentary had graphic descriptions that distressed and angered the students. Do we have here the plight of what sounds like a leftwing professor trying to rile up blacks against whites and finding that he cannot succeed because the necessary words and images cause them paroxysms of pain?
In our oh-so-sensitive-times, no one is concerned about giving offense to Southerners. White Republican senators are leading the charge to rename military bases. Not to be outdone, black members of the House want to remove what they call Confederate statues from the vicinity of the Capitol as part of the protest against police violence in Minneapolis. They are having a fit over Jefferson Davis, who for 3 or 4 years of his life was president of the Confederate States of America. Much more of Davis’ life was spent serving the United States of America as a military officer, a US Senator and as US Secretary of War (they were more honest in those days; today they call it “defense”). Davis was a West Point graduate. As an officer in the US Army he fought for the US empire in the Mexican-American war. It was Davis who led the sucessful charge on the La Teneria fort in the Battle of Monterrey. He was married to the daughter of US President Zachary Taylor. He argued against secession. These are the reasons that there is a statue of him.
Davis, like Robert E. Lee, and so many others from Southern states spent their life in service to the United States. They rallied to the Confederacy only because Lincoln invaded their states. People are so ignorant today, especially those who go around shouting “racist,” that they are unaware that in those days people regarded their home state as their country. The US Constitution gave governing power to the states, reserving to the states all powers not ennumerated to the federal government. All of this was changed by Lincoln’s war which consolidated power in Washington and eventually turned largely independent states into vassals of Washington.
Robert E. Lee, a West Point Graduate, spent his life in the US military fighting wars for the US empire. He served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He was so highly regarded that he was offered a Union command in Lincoln’s war. Lee’s response was that as a Virginian, he could not lead an army to invade his country. If the US was going to invade Virginia, he would have to resign his commission in the US Army.
An ignorant person once wrote in CounterPunch that Lee had 200 slaves. Lee had no plantation. He spent his life fighting against Indians and Mexicans for the American empire. It did not occur to the peabrain at CounterPunch what a person fighting Indians on the frontier and Mexicans in Mexico would do with 200 slaves. But as I have often observed, it you are out to demonize someone—Trump, Putin, or Lee—you say whatever does the job.
Lee had to take a leave from the US army for 2 years in order to settle his father-in-law’s estate, which had land holdings and slaves on one side of the ledger and massive debts on the other. The aim was to emancipate the slaves. Knowing that, some slaves pushed it before it could be done. They were punished, and ever since it has been used to blacken Lee who had fiduciary duties.
The current line is that Confederate memorials “pay tribute to white supremacy and slavery,” as the most ignorant Barbara Lee (D, CA) put it. So, according to a person regarded by people in California of sufficient intelligence and integrity to represent them in Washington, a Southerner who resists the invasion of his country is a white supremacist.
As has been proven so many times, the so-called “Civil War” was fought over economics, not slavery. Lincoln himself intended to send the blacks back to Africa, judging them unfit to live among white people. Lincoln said over and over that the war was fought to preserve the Union. He gave assurances to the South that they could have slaves as long as they stayed in the Union and paid the tariff. Historians have researched the letters and diaries of participants on both sides of the war and found that soldiers were not fighting for or against slavery. The North was fighting for the Union, and the South was fighting because the South was invaded. There is a famous book in which the contents of the wartime letters and diaries are recorded.
Yet the real documented history has been replaced with a false made-up history that serves the sole purpose of creating dissention and hatred in a vulnerable and fragile multicultural society.
As I recently wrote using Richard Weaver’s title, ideas have consequences. The stand downs of police and public authorities while criminals loot and destroy are consequences of the false history that has been created for the United States.
The United States is a Tower of Babel from which white people should flee. The state of collapse is advanced. With mayors and governors refusing to protect property from black looters, President Trump threatened to call out the US military. His own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and his own Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Mark Milley, quickly informed the US military that their duty was to the Constitution, not to the President. The two made a show of this to undercut President Trump and to present him as a tyrant for trying to fulfill his constitutional obligation to protect private property and the lives of citizens. Apparently, both Esper and Milley are too dumbshit to understand that it is a constitutional duty to protect property.
Trump is not Establishment, but his government is. Trump is a President surrounded by his enemies. Trump attempted to be a president of the people, but the Establishment will not permit it. Trump will be the last president who attempts to represent the American people. All future presidents will have learned the lesson in advance. An American president serves the ruling elite and no one else. The elite have worked long and hard to acquire a divided population that cannot unite against them. They have succeeded.
Required Disclaimer :
Permission to reprint Dr. Roberts’ columns does not imply that Dr. Roberts endorses the websites or media organizations that republish his columns or that he approves of the content of the websites, media outlets or books that republish his columns.
Where I come from, the ‘civil war’ is still regarded as ‘the war of northern aggression’ and the tiny cemetery from those times to at least as late as last time I was there less than a decade ago, those who gave their lives to defend that little town have cast iron markers on their graves designating them as veterans, installed by The Daughters of the Confederacy 140 years ago. Not all those graves so marked are for whites and some of the graves are for boys 10 and 12 years old who fought the Yankees when they came to that little village. The war had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with State’s Rights, in essence a disagreement as to what the powers of the federal government had as opposed to the powers of the state’s governments. The general concept was the Federal Government had everything to do with international relations, international commerce and national defense but little in regards as to what the States had powers to do.
Auslander
Paul Craig Roberts needs a refresher course in world history. The statues have to go Mr. Roberts. The robber barons were building statues for their own kind exploiter’s rapists and looters. Maybe we should have the Mafia build a statue in memory of Al Capone. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s not so much that we are turning history on its head it is acceptance of that history that remains in our schools, boardroom, and media. Nothing has changed since Smedley D. Butler wrote this so may years ago and your article excuses it all.
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
I don’t recall ever seeing you comment here, but you show up to criticize Paul Craig Roberts. It appears to me your critique is irrelevant. He wasn’t dealing with U.S. invasions of other countries as Smedley Butler is referring to. He was trying to show through several examples that U.S. history has been distorted. And this distortion is the pretext for all the division, rioting and destruction taking place. For example, the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. Condemning everything from the southern confederate states as racist is based on this distortion of history.
Those who forget history, as has been said, are bound to repeat it.
So, you have not seen my comments before and that in your opinion makes them irrelevant. Sorry I did not know that I needed your permission to post here.
The first three paragraphs in Mr. Roberts’s text deal with Columbus. They are inaccurate. Many in his time knew the world was spherical and Columbus was seeking a new way to the Orient because the Silk Road was closed by the Muslim armies and profits dried up in Europe.
In the four voyages that he made Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella who financed him wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe.
He did not come to civilize he came to plunder with the bible in one hand and the sword in the other. This was followed by the English north of the Rio Grande and the Spanish and Portuguese all the way to Cape Horn. The result was that in some 300 years less than a million out of some 70 million indigenous Americans survived disposed of their land, and enslaved. (Howard Zinn)
The church from the pulpit gave spiritual sanction [to racism], both overtly by the things that it preached and covertly by its silence to expose the discrimination. This was the Great Chain of Being at work.
The civil war had everything to do with slavery. Slaves (labour) were one component in production (land labour and Capital) of wealth. American industrial growth was built on the back of Slavery and cotton production just like European industrialization was built on the back of agriculture.
When England ended slavery, some slave owners were paid millions by the government for the loss of property (slaves). When slavery ended in Britain and US most emancipated slaves remained tied to former masters as they had nowhere to go.
American universities do not have academic freedom. There are many UCLA examples. My question to Mr. Roberts, “why are academic institutions and their professional organization silent in the defense of this professor’? Its called fear of losing your job because there is no academic freedom in American Universities. They cannot bite the hand that feeds them.
Academic freedom to publish is no different than the freedom, to tell the truth in Mainstream Media. Once you put a price on the information you get disinformation. How long did it take Mr. Roberts to get it right on Yugoslavia? How many NATO lies did it take before “eureka”?
I am not suggesting to you that I agree with looting. Not at all. This, in comparison to the looting that takes place on the macro level, is insignificant when we expose the real looters in white ties and shirts.
The micro looter may steal a pair of shoes but the real looters steal shoe factories. Of course, we call that job creation and good business.
I tend to agree on Mr. Roberts comments on Trump. The Democrats have destroyed, for the sake of their agenda, any ability of the present US government to deliver any meaningful change. The goal of the Democrats is to get elected so that they can rob the piggybank the same way that the Republicans are doing now.
When the media presents as news the variety of ice-cream that Nancy Pelosi keeps in her fridge, as an alternative to Trump, private property will be looted again. A theft of pair of Nikes will get you jail time while theft of billions of Enron Shares will get you a slap on the wrist. Please tell me who are the police paid to protect.
Wait until the African-Americans try and get monetary compensation for slavery which we now know didn’t exist or we would have statues, historical texts, Confederate memorials, military bases honoring those who served under the Confederate flag and signs of racism to bear witness.
Although I do seriously think knowing California African-Americans will probably be compensated. Maybe we should give California to the Mexicans who erroneously believe they were the first settlers here thus the State belongs to them and they can pay.
https://www.westernjournal.com/california-assembly-passes-reparations-bill-moves-state-one-step-closer-race-based-payments/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=newsletter-WJ&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=western-journal
California Assembly Passes Reparations Bill, Moves State One Step Closer to Race-Based Payments
California has taken a step closer to paying reparations for slavery.
On Thursday, the state assembly passed a bill that would create an eight-person task force “to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans.”
The legislation, which now goes to the state senate, passed 61-12.
Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, who introduced the bill, said the legislation was necessary, despite the fact that California entered the U.S. in 1850 as a state where slavery was illegal.
“The discriminatory practices of the past echo into the everyday lives of today’s Californians,” Weber, leader of the Legislative Black Caucus, told The Associated Press.
“This country has taught itself to hate African-Americans and to deny the history that has brought us here,” she said at a news conference last week while urging colleagues to support the bill, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Lisa Holder, an attorney who teaches civil rights at UCLA School of Law, said the issue of reparations should be linked to discrimination and not slavery.
“The response really has to be framed around the issue of continuing racial injustice that started back in 1619 when Africans were stolen from Africa and brought here as enslaved people,” Holder told the AP.
“Then you don’t get into this messy, unintelligible notion of who is directly linked to a slave,” she said.
The legislation seeks to delve into the past to fully expose the extent of slavery in the country, according to the bill’s text.
“This bill would establish the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, consisting of 8 members,” it reads. “The bill would require the Task Force to, among other things, identify, compile, and synthesize the relevant corpus of evidentiary documentation of the institution of slavery that existed within the United States and the colonies.”
The bill said the task force, which must be convened by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom no later than June 1, 2021, must have four members with a history of supporting reparations.
According to the legislation: “As a result of the historic and continued discrimination, African Americans continue to suffer debilitating economic, educational, and health hardships” which include “having nearly 1,000,000 black people incarcerated” and “an unemployment rate more than twice the current white unemployment rate.”
The committee will base its call for reparations on “the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the discrimination … on living African Americans and on society in California and the United States,” according to the bill.
The bill said the issue of reparations will also consider “The manner in which instructional resources and technologies are being used to deny the inhumanity of slavery and the crime against humanity of people of African descent in California and the United States.”
The task force will also asses how the State of California will offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of California for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants,” according to the bill, and “how California laws and policies that continue to disproportionately and negatively affect African Americans as a group and perpetuate the lingering material and psychosocial effects of slavery can be eliminated.”
The panel will be charged with determining how compensation is to be calculated and awarded.
Looting and destruction of public properties is not a solution to problems. Deep state would like to take advantage of any situation by hijacking it their way. However, who is responsible for the current situation, the Americans themselves. Did they raise their voice, when systematic racism was carried out?Did they try to stop it, when slave labourers were put to inhuman treatment? Didn’t most Americans accepted these to be normal. We reap what we sow. Do we think no punishment will come from above for the atrocities Americans did around the world. If not here, then for sure in hereafter unless they repent and correct their ways.
Thank you for putting the truth out there.
If a new social understanding, a new pactuated ‘social contract’ had been made possible – all this necessarily led by a public figure of a great credibility status (say a kinda JFk, or FDR) where the dominant groups had accepted for at least the biggest of their ancestors past errors…
If school books had a text saying: well not all of our past deeds were good
and good faith achievements…
If this delirant dream were at all possible and had been ‘imposed upon blacks and whites 40 years ago…
…then nothing of those acts of insanity or out of context exaggerations would be happening.
Oh, impossible! we re not made of such a human good smelling stuff?
So, stop charging one another, and make the best of what you have
He missed the slavocracy foundation of the United States. Several founding fathers owned slaves. There goes the Washington Monument?
FWIW,
L.
Impressionante a tentativa da direita de fazer um bilionário defensor do povo, se for necessário passar por cima da constituição e suas forças armadas atacarem o povo mesmo assim querem fazer de conta que este bilionário está preocupado com seu povo, mas ele se trai ao dizer ser importante é defender a propriedade, eis o povo que a direita quer defender: os proprietários.
Translation via Google:
Impressive the attempt by the right to make a billionaire defender of the people, if it is necessary to go over the constitution and its armed forces attack the people, they still want to pretend that this billionaire is concerned for his people, but he betrays himself by saying he is it is important to defend property, these are the people the right wants to defend: the owners. (Mod)
Ironically, the opening shot, literally, of the Civili War/War Between the States occurred at Fort Sumter, when the State of South Carolina attempted to take over for as its own property a U.S. fort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter
Lincoln did what perhaps Trump is trhing to do: assert ownership of the fort, which had been ceded by South Carolina to the U.S. government and also constructed by the U.S. government decades prior. Lincoln also intended to re-supply the garrison in the fort. These were all military serving in the U.S. armed forces.
This was an act of insurrection on the part of South Carolina. SC followed actions with deeds when it was the first state to secede from the Union. Now if CHAZ announces its intention to secede from either Seattle, the state of Washington, or the United States, does PCR just reckon that the mayor of Seatlle, the gov of Washington, and the federal govt in DC should let them do it? I don’t think so. But he seems to apply a different standard to the South.
Like many or perhaps even most wars, the Civil War was “overdetermined”: there were multiple factors and forces driving the drift to war. It is impossible to isolate one, although I personaly go with Colin Woodard, who call the Civil War “the war for the West.”
Bet that as it may, many factions on both sides stood to win/lose, and they were not at all congruent. PCR does not seem to have a grasp of the international picture, and the interests of both France and Great Britain in the Ameican Civil War—in terms of both the lead-up and the eventual outcome. Lincoln wanted to keep Great Britain’s nose out of US business, for one thing.
All that said I agree with PCR regarding the current statue-tear-down and PC-language mania. I consider these absurd and counterproductive.
Since the C’ville tear-down I have maintained that we need MORE statues, not fewer. There is NO discussing this topic with my niece, who lives in C’ville. She immediately assumes an emotional, accusatory tone with which she communicates that the truth and rightness of tearing down statues is so obvious that anyone who questions it is beyond help.
Katherine
Lucid as he is, a man I used to read with great profit and respect almost always, PC Roberts’ contributions have gone downhill since he embraced the nonsense about an “endangered white population”, and his (Southern) roots racism is beginning to show embarrassingly. In this particular case, this article loses rational steam with the first paragraph, where PCR states something insupportable and silly ridiculous:
“Years of teaching blacks to have grievances against white people for things that happened centuries ago have come to fruition. Rioting and looting are not enough, the violent thugs and ignorant woke creatures are pulling down historic monuments in public parks and defacing public buildings while police and public authorities stand down…”
On what planet, may I ask, is PCR living?
The killing of George Floyd happened in broad daylight less than a month ago, not centuries ago, a murder accompanied by OTHERS in the same time span. Not to mention the documentable fact that over the years the US police has killed thousands of people, chiefly blacks and Latino. This is indisputable. So, pray tell, do blacks really need to be taught they are being oppressed and treated like second-class citizens?
This is redolent of the same type of hypocritical nonsense usually argued by most oppressive governments, and reactionaries of every stripe: the cynical myth that innocent people are living in idyllic circumstances, but their sudden explosions against the status quo are actually caused by the provocations and instigations of “outside agitators” or “foreigners”. Anyone who believes that is the way millions of people get motivated to go on the streets in a rage to protest a crime, is intellectually dishonest or an idiot undeserving of being taken seriously.
Incidentally, in case you forgot what I said at the outset: I used to read PCR with great pleasure when he was exposing the sheer sociopathy of the Western ruling class. And I despise liberals. But I also despise racism of any type as something that divides humanity instead of uniting it to fight the real enemies. Ironicaly, PCR’s and his fellow white supremacists are using here the same “identity politics” playbook advanced and still used by the Democratic Party hypocrites and liberals in general, something that I doubt they would admire let alone embrace when sober.