Confederate "Heritage" Month 2021, April 21: White surpemacists say, oh, white racism? That's all in the past!

The white supremacist 1776 Report provided a narrative framework for contemporary Trumpistas and white supremacists. Here is its template for the present to say that white racism is a thing of the past:

It would take a national movement composed of people from different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions to bring about an America fully committed to ending legal discrimination.

The Civil Rights Movement culminated in the 1960s with the passage of three major legislative reforms affecting segregation, voting, and housing rights. It presented itself, and was understood by the American people, as consistent with the principles of the founding. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech. “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It seemed, finally, that America’s nearly two-century effort to realize fully the principles of the Declaration had reached a culmination. But the heady spirit of the original Civil Rights Movement, whose leaders forcefully quoted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the rhetoric of the founders and of Lincoln, proved to be short-lived.

The Civil Rights Movement was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders. [my emphasis]

The key ideological claims involved there include:

• The US since the 1960s has been "fully committed to ending legal discrimination".
• The legal part is key; private discrimination is not a legitimate concern for government remedy.
• Actual racial discrimination even in areas like government employment is okay as long as it's not explicitly legally mandated.
• Legislation in the 1960s against formal legal segregation, voting rights, and housing means that all legitimate concerns about racism and racial discrimination ended sometime around 1970.
• Those goals of the civil rights movement were presented by that movement as consistent with major aspects of the American political tradition and were "understood" as such by the public.
• After that magic turning point, the demands of that "Civil Rights Movement" switched radically to things that opposed to the American tradition and so are today thoroughly un-American.

As important as it is to understand some of the details of how propaganda works, debunking even shabby pseudohistory like this risks suggesting to some people that it's more serious that it is. This is only serious in its malignant intent. (In an earlier post, I talked some about the "highbrow" arguments of the "West Coast Straussians" provide a background for The 1776 Report.)

How that gets translated into typical Republican language is well illustrated by this clip of Brit Hume at FOX News. (Brit Hume on Derek Chauvin verdict: America is not a racist country FOX News 04/22/2021)

In the video, Hume says just after 1:30 that there "is a nearly unanimous consensus in America against racism. Being called a racist, and being shown to be a racist is about the worst thing that can happen to you. But unfortunately, that's been weaponized now, so the term is flung about with abandon by politicians and, and, others." And Brit doesn't have to explain to FOX News viewers who The Others are.

That is an updated version of the argument circa 1965 in the South that if you used "Negro" or "colored people" but didn't use the n-word in polite company, you weren't any kind of a racist. The current version is that complaining about white racism or calling white racists what they are is completely unacceptable and the correct Republican response is, "Oh, the Mean Libruls are tryin' to cancel me just 'cause ah hate n*****s! Boo, hoo, hoo, hoo!"

The pore white Republicans have to face the "weapon" of being called a racist that is being sprayed all over the place at them by the Mean Libruls. African-American have to worry that any encounter with the police could suddenly turn to them being executed with an actual weapons that fires bullets. According to Brit, "about the worst thing that can happen" to nice Republican white folks is to be called a racist by a Mean Librul or one of The Others.

White people whining gets really tiresome really fast.

(A copy of The 1776 Report as issued by the Trump White House is available from The 1776 Project.)