Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Nick Fredman via Marxism]

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On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Gary MacLennan via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> Mark wrote:
>
> 'Meanwhile, they were putting up statues to the idols of the master class
> that tried to destroy a nation when they couldn't rule it anywhere.
>
> It puts a whole new light on what "Reconstruction" meant and never meant.'
>
> Well said, Mark. Here in Oz, there is a campaign against the statues and
> monuments of some of the worst of the colonists.  There is a special focus
> on the statue of Captain Cook and the claim that he "discovered"
> Australia.  That is as claim which is deeply offensive to the First Nations
> people who have been here for around 60k years.
>


Very much related to campaigns against monuments to Cook and others is what
is probably the highest profile current battle against reactionary
tradition, the battle to de-recognise as "Australia Day" the date of Cook's
landing, January 26. Four local councils have now done something about
this, including not coincidentally the three where socialists have a seat <
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/moreland-council-drop-references-january-26-australia-day>.
The other council happens to be where I live. They've also pleasingly
agreed to rename a park named after the utter bastard John Batman, involved
in mass dispossession in Victoria and genocide in Tasmania:
<
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/batman-park-in-northcote-to-be-renamed-gumbri-park/news-story/5c8c6617e18cb26b97238246b8ed44ec
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Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Mark wrote:

'Meanwhile, they were putting up statues to the idols of the master class
that tried to destroy a nation when they couldn't rule it anywhere.

It puts a whole new light on what "Reconstruction" meant and never meant.'

Well said, Mark. Here in Oz, there is a campaign against the statues and
monuments of some of the worst of the colonists.  There is a special focus
on the statue of Captain Cook and the claim that he "discovered"
Australia.  That is as claim which is deeply offensive to the First Nations
people who have been here for around 60k years.

There are other statues that are controversial as well.  My good friend the
Indigenous activist and scholar Professor Gracelyn Smallwood, who is from
Townsville, has written about the role of the man the city was named after
Robert Towns  (1794-1873).  He was part of the slave trade in South Sea
Islanders, where Islanders were kidnapped to work in the Queensland sugar
cane fields.

There are other villains of course, who have been honored similarly.

comradely

Gary

On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Mark Lause via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> One of the most frustratingly neglected chapters of the Second American
> Revolution was the story of the Richmond Underground, the hundreds of
> active Unionists in the Confederate capital, black and white, who did
> everything they could to sabotage the war effort.  Before and after
> Fredericksburg, Lee's army was badly nobbled by not getting supplies on
> schedule.  The railroad operators and suppliers regularly misdirected that
> kind of freight.  Elizabeth Van Lew organized a circle of informants that
> reached into the War Department and Mary Bowser, a former slave in her
> parents household--all manumitted years before--came back to take a
> position working for Jefferson Davis in the Confederate White House.  She
> smuggled information out through the baker who made daily deliveries,
> Thomas McNiven.
>
> What's particularly significant about these people is that they were on the
> winning side and we know so little about them.  After the war, the
> government brought Van Lew (and surely others) to Washington to remove the
> documentation on their activities from the records, because of fear of
> reprisals.
>
> Meanwhile, they were putting up statues to the idols of the master class
> that tried to destroy a nation when they couldn't rule it anywhere.
>
> It puts a whole new light on what "Reconstruction" meant and never meant.
>
> ML
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Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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One of the most frustratingly neglected chapters of the Second American
Revolution was the story of the Richmond Underground, the hundreds of
active Unionists in the Confederate capital, black and white, who did
everything they could to sabotage the war effort.  Before and after
Fredericksburg, Lee's army was badly nobbled by not getting supplies on
schedule.  The railroad operators and suppliers regularly misdirected that
kind of freight.  Elizabeth Van Lew organized a circle of informants that
reached into the War Department and Mary Bowser, a former slave in her
parents household--all manumitted years before--came back to take a
position working for Jefferson Davis in the Confederate White House.  She
smuggled information out through the baker who made daily deliveries,
Thomas McNiven.

What's particularly significant about these people is that they were on the
winning side and we know so little about them.  After the war, the
government brought Van Lew (and surely others) to Washington to remove the
documentation on their activities from the records, because of fear of
reprisals.

Meanwhile, they were putting up statues to the idols of the master class
that tried to destroy a nation when they couldn't rule it anywhere.

It puts a whole new light on what "Reconstruction" meant and never meant.

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: America's amnesia - Mekong Review

[Brian McKenna via Marxism]

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All they need to show is De Antonio's In the Year of the Pig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz8H_oi1ck0

Even Hearts and Minds would do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGbC3gUlqz0

America is just a Vietnam Groundhog Day.

Brian


On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> Everything wrong with the new ten-part PBS documentary on the Vietnam War
> is apparent in the first five minutes. A voice from nowhere intones about a
> war “begun in good faith” that somehow ran off the rails and killed
> millions of people. We see a firefight and a dead soldier in a body bag
> being winched into a helicopter, as the rotor goes thump, thump, thump,
> like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Then we cut to a funeral on Main Street
> and a coffin covered in Stars and Stripes, which multiply, as the camera
> zooms out, into dozens and then hundreds of flags, waving like a hex
> against warmongers who might be inclined to think that this film is
> insufficiently patriotic.
>
> https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/
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-- 
Brian McKenna, Ph.D.
Anthropologist
Department of Behavioral Sciences
CASL 4025
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Dearborn, Michigan
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[Marxism] Fwd: America's amnesia - Mekong Review

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Everything wrong with the new ten-part PBS documentary on the Vietnam 
War is apparent in the first five minutes. A voice from nowhere intones 
about a war “begun in good faith” that somehow ran off the rails and 
killed millions of people. We see a firefight and a dead soldier in a 
body bag being winched into a helicopter, as the rotor goes thump, 
thump, thump, like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Then we cut to a funeral 
on Main Street and a coffin covered in Stars and Stripes, which 
multiply, as the camera zooms out, into dozens and then hundreds of 
flags, waving like a hex against warmongers who might be inclined to 
think that this film is insufficiently patriotic.


https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/
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[Marxism] NSA posture on Syria

[Ralph Johansen via Marxism]

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https://theintercept.com/document/2017/09/12/nsa-posture-on-syria/

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Jon Flanders via Marxism]

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And as I am wont to point out these days, fellow Virginian George Thomas
who fought for the North was virtually forgotten while Lee was sanctified

Jon Flanders

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/catching-up-with-old-slow-trot-148045684/
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[Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Sunday Book Review, Sept. 17 2017
The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee
By ERIC FONER

In the Band’s popular song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” an 
ex-Confederate soldier refers to Robert E. Lee as “the very best.” It is 
difficult to think of another song that mentions a general by name. But 
Lee has always occupied a unique place in the national imagination. The 
ups and downs of his reputation reflect changes in key elements of 
Americans’ historical consciousness — how we understand race relations, 
the causes and consequences of the Civil War and the nature of the good 
society.


Born in 1807, Lee was a product of the Virginia gentry — his father a 
Revolutionary War hero and governor of the state, his wife the daughter 
of George Washington’s adopted son. Lee always prided himself on 
following the strict moral code of a gentleman. He managed to graduate 
from West Point with no disciplinary demerits, an almost impossible feat 
considering the complex maze of rules that governed the conduct of cadets.


While opposed to disunion, when the Civil War broke out and Virginia 
seceded, Lee went with his state. He won military renown for defeating 
(until Gettysburg) a succession of larger Union forces. Eventually, he 
met his match in Ulysses S. Grant and was forced to surrender his army 
in April 1865. At Appomattox he urged his soldiers to accept the war’s 
outcome and return to their homes, rejecting talk of carrying on the 
struggle in guerrilla fashion. He died in 1870, at the height of 
Reconstruction, when biracial governments had come to power throughout 
the South.


But, of course, what interests people who debate Lee today is his 
connection with slavery and his views about race. During his lifetime, 
Lee owned a small number of slaves. He considered himself a 
paternalistic master but could also impose severe punishments, 
especially on those who attempted to run away. Lee said almost nothing 
in public about the institution. His most extended comment, quoted by 
all biographers, came in a letter to his wife in 1856. Here he described 
slavery as an evil, but one that had more deleterious effects on whites 
than blacks. He felt that the “painful discipline” to which they were 
subjected benefited blacks by elevating them from barbarism to 
civilization and introducing them to Christianity. The end of slavery 
would come in God’s good time, but this might take quite a while, since 
to God a thousand years was just a moment. Meanwhile, the greatest 
danger to the “liberty” of white Southerners was the “evil course” 
pursued by the abolitionists, who stirred up sectional hatred. In 1860, 
Lee voted for John C. Breckinridge, the extreme pro-slavery candidate. 
(A more moderate Southerner, John Bell, carried Virginia that year.)


Lee’s code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks. 
During the Gettysburg campaign, he did nothing to stop soldiers in his 
army from kidnapping free black farmers for sale into slavery. In 
Reconstruction, Lee made it clear that he opposed political rights for 
the former slaves. Referring to blacks (30 percent of Virginia’s 
population), he told a Congressional committee that he hoped the state 
could be “rid of them.” Urged to condemn the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorist 
violence, Lee remained silent.


By the time the Civil War ended, with the Confederate president, 
Jefferson Davis, deeply unpopular, Lee had become the embodiment of the 
Southern cause. A generation later, he was a national hero. The 1890s 
and early 20th century witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy in 
the post-Reconstruction South and widespread acceptance in the North of 
Southern racial attitudes. A revised view of history accompanied these 
developments, including the triumph of what David Blight, in his 
influential book “Race and Reunion” (2001), calls a “reconciliationist” 
memory of the Civil War. The war came to be seen as a conflict in which 
both sides consisted of brave men fighting for noble principles — union 
in the case of the North, self-determination on the part of the South. 
This vision was reinforced by the “cult of Lincoln and Lee,” each 
representing the noblest features of his society, each a figure 
Americans of all regions could look back on with pride. The memory of 
Lee, this newspaper wrote in 1890, was “the possession of the American 
people.”


Reconciliation excised slavery from a central role in the story, and the 
struggle for emancipation was now seen as a minor feature of the war. 
The Lost Cause, a romanticized vision of the Old South and Confederacy, 
gained adherents throughout the 

[Marxism] The Case of Liberal [read: Leftist] Islamophobia

[Jeff via Marxism]

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https://muftah.org/case-liberal-islamophobia
Imogen Lambert
September 15th, 2017


.But, while these leftists have stood firmly by their “Western 
Muslim” co-nationalists, they have failed to be allies of Muslim victims 
of the War on Terror in countries like Egypt and Syria—especially those 
Muslims affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood or other conservative, 
political, or revolutionary Islamic movements. Arguably, this is the 
consequence of the left’s failure to understand that Islamophobia is not 
unique to the West or perpetrated only by those of European descent. 
Islamophobia also afflicts Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, it is the 
glue that binds together the ongoing counter-revolution in Syria, 
post-coup Egypt, and the limitless demonization of the Muslim 
Brotherhood in the United Arab Emirates, among other things.


Many liberals nonetheless support (or at least fail to meaningfully 
condemn) these counter-revolutionary, anti-Muslim Brotherhood, and 
Islamophobic policies in the Middle East. In this way, many so-called 
liberals and purported Muslim allies are themselves subtle practitioners 
of Islamophobia..


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[Marxism] Fwd: How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food - The New York Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Buried deep within this article is a reference to how Dilma Rousseff 
replaced the head of Anvisa, a Brazilian watchdog agency assigned the 
task of dealing with an epidemic of obesity, with a new chief in order 
to placate the powerful multinationals who are pouring cheap processed 
food high in calories and low in nutrients. The article makes you 
realize that the people who run Nestle are much more dangerous than 
Chapo Guzman since drugs kill far fewer people than sugar.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil-obesity-nestle.html
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[Marxism] Fwd: Out soon: Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power | STALIN'S MOUSTACHE

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Scott McLemee once wrote that Roland Boer was only (wink-wink) joking 
about Stalin. That must have been the attitude of the Isaac Deutscher 
Award Jury. Speaking for myself, the guy takes Stalin dead seriously and 
deserved the prize as much as Assad would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.


https://stalinsmoustache.org/2017/09/03/out-soon-stalin-from-theology-to-the-philosophy-of-socialism-in-power/
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[Marxism] India - Assassinating Dissent?

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/09/15/india-assassinating-dissent/?

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[Marxism] The History of White People (Nell Irvin Painter) - CBC Sunday Edition

[Craig Butosi via Marxism]

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There is no such thing as the 'white race' — or any other race, says
historian


http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-september-17-2017-1.4291332/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-white-race-or-any-other-race-says-historian-1.4291372

Listen (33 mins.)


http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1047616579814/



"At least, there's no scientific basis for race. Human DNA is about 99.9
percent the same across the full spectrum of skin colour and ethnicity.

Yet, race has been one of the most powerful narratives in the world for
hundreds of years, in enlightened Western democracies and despotic regimes
alike. Ideas about race have structured societies and politics, created
national myths, and led to enslavement, war and genocide.

And a belief in the supremacy of white people remains persistent and
pernicious in some quarters — an invention, just as race (including the
white race) was an invention.

Nell Irvin Painter is an eminent American historian who made the story of
the white race the subject of her landmark book The History of White
People. She's the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at
Princeton University."



Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons)
Library: library.craigbutosi.ca
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[Marxism] Fwd: New York Trotskyism in the 1930s | The Charnel-House

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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I stumbled across this article in the New Yorker Magazine and was going 
to post it on my blog but discovered that Ross Wolfe beat me to the 
punch. Fascinating stuff.


https://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/02/26/new-york-trotskyism-in-the-1930s/
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[Marxism] Harvard's warped sense of values

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/harvards-warped-set-of-values
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[Marxism] fascism American style

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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In the middle of this article about a Film Forum screening of several
depression era gangster films is mention of one about the Black Legion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/movies/film-forum-tough-guys-tough-dames.html?ref=todayspaper

See also the link within the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E0DB1638EF3ABC4052DFB766838C629EDE=3

... and the Wiki on the Black Legion.

I think this is more evidence for what Louis and others have said about
what fascism looks like.
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