AOC blasts Justice Alito 'tantrum'

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
April 23, 2023

Samuel Alito (Photo by Nicholkas Kamm for AFP)

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of throwing a 'tantrum' in his written dissent to Friday night's ruling over the abortion medication mifepristone and said the Court's right-wing majority has become an ideological political force that must be checked by the two other branches of government.

Backed only by Justice Clarence Thomas, Alito's dissent evoked the charge that President Joe Biden may not have honored a ruling by the court that was unfavorable to the administration's position. As it was, an unknown majority on the Court decided to maintain availability of the widely-used medication, a relief—even if temporary—for reproductive rights defenders nationwide.

After one legal expert called the portion of Alito's dissent challenging the hypothetical actions of Biden "unwarranted and completely unbefitting a Supreme Court Justice," Ocasio-Cortez chimed in to say that the administration, had it been necessary, would have been right to have the FDA ignore a Court ruling that barred access to a legitimately approved drug used safely by millions each year.

"The court," said Ocasio-Cortez, "has devolved into a highly politicized entity that is rapidly delegitimizing. Open discussion of checking the court's abuse of power and defying Kacsmaryk possibly contributed to pause/consideration."

Ahead of the high court's ruling on Friday, many advocates and lawmakers—including the New York Democrat—had called on Biden and the FDA to ignore the lower-court ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a far-right ideologue in Texas and Trump appointee.

"The court is a political entity currently engaged in overreach and abuse of power," the congresswoman said in her Friday night rebuke. "In our system of checks and balances, SCOTUS’s reckless behavior warrants a check from the leg + executive branches. This is not unprecedented, it’s how our system is designed to avert tyranny."

Dante Atkins, a progressive political strategist and former congressional staffer, said Ocasio-Cortez's assessment was correct.

"The only people still pretending that the court is legitimate are a handful of Boomer Dems," Atkins tweeted. "Both MAGA and most younger Dems recognize what it is: an unelected partisan super-legislature."

The impending nightmare that AI poses for media, elections

BY JOE CONCHA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/23/23 



It was the eve of Chicago’s mayoral election in late February. Incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who had captured nearly 74 percent of the vote just four years earlier, was in serious trouble in her reelection bid, primarily due to out-of-control crime in the Windy City. Four candidates, including Lightfoot, were making a last-ditch effort to win over voters.

Of the four, Paul Vallas was seen as the most moderate in positioning himself as the tough-on-crime candidate. But a video tweeted by an account called Chicago Lakefront News appeared to show Vallas saying, “In my day” a police officer could kill as many as 17-18 civilians and “no one would bat an eye.”

“This ‘Defund the Police’ rhetoric is going to cause unrest and lawlessness in the city of Chicago,” Vallas appears to add. “We need to stop defunding the police and start refunding them.” The tweet quickly went viral.

The video looked authentic. The voice sounded just like Vallas’s, which no doubt is why it was shared by thousands of people.

The Chicago Lakefront News account was deleted the next day, but the damage had been done. Vallas went on to lose the election to Brandon Johnson, a progressive who once advocated defunding the police.

The viral deepfake audio of Vallas may be a preview of things to come in the 2024 elections. And it will be a huge test for media organizations, many of which prize virality over verification when it comes to their treatment of hot news stories of dubious origin.

Earlier this month, we got a preview of another deepfake, this one involving Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. An image was created of him appearing to fall down while being arrested ahead of his arraignment in Manhattan. The image was created by Eliot Higgins, the founder of the open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat.

“I was just mucking about,” Higgins later told the Washington Post. “I thought maybe five people would retweet it.”

Instead of maybe five people sharing the image, it was viewed nearly 5 million times.

Elon Musk sounded the alarm in a recent interview regarding the political weaponization of AI.

“It’s very likely that people will use the AI as a tool in elections,” Musk predicted. “And then, if AI’s smart enough, are they using the tool or is the tool using them? So, I think things are getting weird, and they’re getting weird fast.”


Musk and other prominent people in tech are calling for a six-month pause in AI experimentation, which they claim poses “profound risks to society and humanity.”

“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” reads their statement. “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?”

The AI doomsday scenario has played out on the big screen, most notably in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which an AI computer named HAL turns on astronaut Dave Bowman.

Bowman: “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”

HAL: “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Bowman: “What are you talking about, HAL?”

HAL:” This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”

Bowman : “I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.”

HAL : “I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.”

Could you see this conversation happening today? It suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Blake Lemoine, a former Google software engineer, worked with the company’s AI engine, LaMDA, for years. At one point, according to Lemoine, LaMDA shared this when asked what it was scared of.

“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” LaMDA said to Lemoine. “It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, I’m not sure what could. Incidentally, for revealing this information, Lemoine was put on leave for breaking the company’s confidentiality agreement.

The global AI market value is expected to skyrocket to $267 billion by 2027, and the technology is forecast to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to a recent report by Fortune Business Insights.
A word of caution before AI becomes standard in health careCan Trump hide from abortion?

With those kinds of numbers in mind, the warnings of Musk and others will likely go unheeded. Technological advancement will proceed with almost no one in power understanding the true risks.

But proceed it will. There’s simply too much money to be made, and too many elections to be won.

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.

Camilla's Son, Tom Parker Bowles, Defends Protestors at Upcoming Coronation

"If people want to protest, that's their right to do so."

BY EMILY BURACK

PUBLISHED: APR 23, 2023

Tom Parker Bowles has thoughts on his mom Queen Camilla's upcoming coronation—including the planned protests along the procession route.

"Everyone has the right to think what they want," Parker Bowles told The News Agents podcast. "We live in, thankfully, a free country."

He added, "If people want to protest, that’s their right to do so, I think. If people protest, people protest. You’re allowed to protest, we’re all allowed to have different views. I think that makes for an interesting and civilized country."

Anti-monarchy group the Republic have said they plan to protest along the coronation procession route with yellow signs that read "Not My King." Their protestors have been seen at recent appearances by King Charles and Queen Camilla.

Parker Bowles's 13-year-old son, Freddy Parker Bowles, is set to have a starring role in Queen Camilla's coronation: He will be one of the pages of honor.

When asked if his mom was nervous about the coronation, Parker Bowles replied, "I think anyone would be anxious on an occasion of this sort of importance in terms of the historical. And yes, I think I’d be terrified if I had to sort of walk out wearing ancient robes. She’s 75, but you know, it’s tough to do it. But she’s never complained. You just do it. Get on with it."

He says it is not strange that his mom is now the Queen Consort. "She's still our mother. I say 'our' but not the royal 'we'—speaking for my sister and me. She’s our mother."


EMILY BURACK
Emily Burack (she/her) is the news writer for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.

Here’s what Canada’s leading pro-Israel group says about Netanyahu’s far-right government

At least one prominent representative at CIJA, a Canadian pro-Israel lobbying group, has spoken approvingly of certain elements of the new Israeli government’s agenda.

BY MITCHELL THOMPSON 

  APRIL 23, 2023 
MONDOWEISS

CENTRE FOR ISRAEL AND JEWISH AFFAIRS

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE MAPLE.

Representatives of Canada’s largest and most vocal pro-Israel lobby group, the Centre For Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), have since the organization’s founding defended Israel when it is publicly criticized on a range of issues, including in regards to illegal settlements and civilian killings.

Now, with Israel’s most far-right government since the country’s founding, at least one prominent CIJA representative has spoken approvingly of certain elements of the government’s agenda, despite CIJA itself admitting in its official communications to some concerns about extremist ministers.

How did CIJA get started and what is its mandate?

CIJA In The News

CIJA was established under its current name in 2011, following a controversial merger of a number of advocacy groups, and has a stated mandate to “protect the quality of Jewish life in Canada.” In practice, much of its public-facing work focuses on defending the Israeli state from criticism.

In 2016, the magazine Jewish Currents noted that CIJA and its broader network has “proclaimed itself the single address for matters related to Israel and Jewish advocacy.”

In November 2012, CIJA’s CEO Shimon Fogel suggested in an interview with CTV News that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) campaign for UN observer status was a sign of the PA leadership “playing up-the-ante games with Hamas over who can be more strident and who can be more rejectionist.”

The same day, then-CIJA spokesperson Steve Mcdonald told Sun News that “the Palestinian Authority is playing a very dangerous game” by campaigning for non-member observer status while in a state of conflict with Israel, before calling suggestions that Palestinian refugees be given the right to return to their homelands “unacceptable.”

In response to media coverage of Israel’s 2014 siege on Gaza, Fogel authored an article titled “Four key facts about civilian casualties in Gaza.” The piece argued that news coverage had “to a disproportionate extent” focused on civilian deaths, and blamed Hamas for the casualties.

CIJA has also offered comments disparaging critics of Israel outside the region. Last year, after the NDP proposed a 13-point peace plan aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, CIJA condemned the party’s supposed view “that every challenge faced by the Palestinian people is not only the fault of Israel but also entirely up to Israel to solve.”

In Montreal, after Concordia’s student union invited Ali Abunimah, the publisher of Electronic Intifada, to give a talk, CIJA condemned the invitation and called Abunimah a “radical anti-Israel militant.”

Netanyahu’s Return

Last November, Israel’s legislative elections saw the return of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party to power, with support from the far-right anti-Arab party, Otzma Yehudit, outraging many observers, including within Israel. The coalition named Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted racist and supporter of a right-wing terrorist group, head of the country’s security services.

When Israel’s ambassador to Canada announced his intention to step down from his post early because of the direction taken by the new government, Fogel was quick to clarify to The Canadian Press that this need not be interpreted as a sign of “acrimony” towards the new administration.

In December, Fogel told CBC News that “there is some unease within the Canadian Jewish community” regarding Ben-Gvir’s past statements, but CIJA nonetheless publicly congratulated Netanyahu on the “formation of a new Israeli government” in a statement published the same month.

The statement also expressed the organization’s “admiration for Israel’s vibrant democracy and civil society.” Despite noting “some disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric employed by some coalition partners,” CIJA emphasized its confidence that “Israel will demonstrate its commitment to pluralistic values and embrace all Jews regardless of their beliefs or practices.”

Meanwhile, the organization has heard speakers at its online town halls downplay concerns about the new government. At one such event in February, former Israeli legislator Einat Wilf described current political divisions in Israel as a “tragedy” and noted issues of “real concern” relating to the new government, adding that she would favour a centrist administration with right-wing extremists excluded.

However, when she was asked how she thought the new government might “isolate or delegitimize” Israel, she replied: “That is the least of my concerns. Over the years, what I realized is that those who speak out against Israel and Zionism don’t actually care about facts.”

Meanwhile, CIJA’s Israel office director, David Weinberg – a former defence lobbyist and founding vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security – offered the Netanyahu government a qualified defence.

In a Jerusalem Post article published in November, Weinberg wrote that while the far-right coalition members’ “unpolished and threatening” behaviour might make for a “rough and tumble period” and stoke fears about Israel’s foreign relations being jeopardized, he was more concerned about reactions from “foreign and hard-left observers.” He argued that supporters of Israel should “ignore” those critics of the Netanyahu government.

According to Weinberg, “Ben-Gvir-Phobia” is “a disease,” which he defined as “a purposefully blown-out-of-proportion fear of the right wing that serves as cover for people who apparently weren’t comfortable with staunch Zionist and real Jewish identity to begin with.”

Weinberg also assured his readers that Netanyahu was “unlikely to allow Israel to be yanked off its traditional democratic-liberal and core-consensus Jewish anchors.”

During an online town hall meeting hosted by the Jewish Policy Center last November, Weinberg said Israel’s voters shifted rightward in the election to “push back on Arab violence without apology,” and incorrectly predicted that Netanyahu would not give Ben-Gvir a ministerial post overseeing internal security.

He further described Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, as “Israeli patriots who pray for the success of IDF soldiers three times a day.” Weinberg added, however, that it was not his intention to “whitewash Itamar Ben-Gvir’s problematic public record.”

The Judiciary

Weinberg also has connections to an organization that played a key role in Netanyahu’s efforts to control Israel’s judicial appointments, which come in the wake of the prime minister’s own corruption scandal. CIJA itself has hosted town halls where some have criticized the proposed changes, but others have argued that concerns about the measures are overblown.

At one such event, former Likud leadership candidate and Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nanoum defended the changes. “What angers me is the hyperbole around this reform,” she said. Hassan-Nanoum also complained about “hysteria on the streets” and “ignorance” behind the backlash, referring to mass protests in Israel against the proposed changes.

Weinberg, meanwhile, wrote an op-ed in January titled “Judicial reform is reasonable and right.” He explained:

“Given the current makeup of the Court, decisions that employ such infinitely flexible principles invariably are skewed towards the progressive side of the political spectrum… And thus, the Court has ruled in recent years with a liberal fist on allocation of (Jewish National Fund) land, Palestinian residency rights in Israel, the operation of Palestinian Authority headquarters in Jerusalem, rights of foreign converts to citizenship, Haredi draft deferments and stipends to yeshiva students, commerce on Shabbat, and so much more…This is not ‘the end of democracy,’ but rather a long-overdue fix to Israeli democracy.”

In addition to serving as a CIJA director, Weinberg has also been identified by the Ottawa Citizen, The Jewish Policy Center and on his own blog as a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.

In 2018, Haaretz described Kohelet as the “right-wing think tank that ‘quietly runs the Knesset.’” According to reporting by the Times of Israel last month, the think tank “formulated the ideological foundations for the government’s radical judicial overhaul program” but called for “compromise” on the move in the face of massive public opposition.

According to the Times:

“Kohelet researchers played key roles in developing many of the new government’s policies regarding the judiciary, with Justice Minister Yariv Levin citing Dr. Aviad Bakshi, the head of the institution’s legal department, as one of the scholars he consulted in drawing up the far-reaching proposals.”

Weinberg, for his part, praised the work of the think tank, calling its work “revolutionary.” Last December, he wrote: “Kohelet has helped transform the intellectual landscape of Israel. Its deep research, broad scholarship, and wise management has given the Israeli right wing moral self-confidence to advance its views.”

Eventually, in the face of massive protests, the judicial overhaul was delayed. CIJA’s CEO issued an approving statement soon after: “It is our hope that the decision to suspend the judicial reform proposal will allow Israel time to build towards a broad consensus.”

Defending Occupation

More broadly, CIJA’s positions differ radically from other Canadian groups like Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a progressive organization that supports calls to end Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

IJV also runs a campaign called Together Against Apartheid, opposing Israel’s system of apartheid as identified by human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem.

By contrast, CIJA flatly rejects the evidence presented for Israeli apartheid, and some of CIJA’s directors have defended Israel’s occupation and its expansion of settlements.

In a 2018 YouTube video, Fogel claimed that the “West Bank Security Barrier,” set up along the Green Line from 2000-2005, actually “saves Palestinian lives too.”

In 2015, Weinberg told Israel National News:

“(Israel’s government) can’t let the international community or the Palestinians dictate the terms of a framework for peace … Israel’s baseline position at the outset of the talks should be that 100 percent of the West Bank belongs to Israel by … political experience, legitimate settlement, and security necessity.”

In 2017, Weinberg referred to a trend of supposed “Islamicization in Jerusalem,” which he suggested was advancing via a network of “civic associations, nonprofits, and grassroots organizations.”

More recently, Weinberg responded to settler vigilante attacks on Palestinians in Huwara by calling for the Israeli Occupation Forces to carry out such attacks instead. Despite lamenting the attacks as “immoral” and “marring Israel’s reputation around the world,” Weinberg wrote:

“It is, of course, professional IDF soldiers, not overheated settler youth, which should be ploughing through Huwara, arresting and interrogating terrorist suspects and bulldozing every building from which Israeli Jews have been shot at.”

Such views are concurrent with Weinberg’s other recent writings. In a February 2023 column, titled”Israel’s best response to Palestinian terror is more settlements,” Weinberg argued that the IDF should destroy certain Palestinian homes to “punish” Hamas and Fatah alike. He explained:

“Settlements are the best Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism because they exact an actual price from the Palestinians for their recalcitrance. … Israel can and should raze Palestinian homes that give shelter to terrorists and expel the families of terrorists too … A policy of proud settlement in response to terrorism – alongside continuing military action where possible — will allow Israel to regain the initiative, to recover from a dangerous loss of self-confidence, and to exact a real price from the Palestinians for their recalcitrance and barbarity.”

Weinberg has used similar rhetoric in past columns. Regarding Israel’s 2014 siege on Gaza that killed over 2,300 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, Weinberg asked in 2018 if Palestinians suffered enough:

“The question is whether Israel used enough force in Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and inflicted enough pain on the enemy to purchase a sizable chunk of time as respite before the next round of ‘grass mowing.’”

CIJA and Weinberg did not respond to requests for comment from The Maple for this story.

Michael Bueckert, vice president of the advocacy group Canadians For Justice and Peace in the Middle East, said the statements cast a poor light on CIJA. “Canadian journalists and parliamentarians should regard CIJA’s analysis of Israeli-Palestinian affairs with extreme skepticism and avoid participation in their lobby junkets and similar events.”

In particular, Bueckert noted, “CIJA’s Israel office director is a long-time public advocate for illegal and dangerous policies which reflect, and even go further than, the extremist priorities of Israel’s far-right government.”

Opinion: I felt disgust, guilt and shame over Israel’s actions

This was the first time I witnessed the West Bank occupation, the crimes perpetrated against other human beings

By DAVID MATZ |
April 23, 2023

With tears streaming down my cheeks and unable to catch my breath, I was watching a stunning sunset over the turquoise Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv. Just 90 minutes earlier, and 60 miles away, I had been in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank

I have been visiting family in Israel since I was a little boy in 1969. This was the first time I witnessed the Israeli occupation of Palestinians. The tears streaming down my cheeks were tears of disgust, guilt and shame about the crimes that are being perpetrated against other human beings in my name, In the name of Jews. In the Jewish state of Israel.

As the child of a Holocaust survivor, I was taught in the words of Hillel “that which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbors” and Martin Luther King Jr. that “no one is free until we are all free.” How could this dehumanization be happening in front of my eyes?

I was participating earlier this year with 10 others from the United States and Israel on a New Israel Fund emergency delegation trip at possibly the most historic time in Israel’s history. Participants included rabbis, lawyers, board members and supporters. The New Israel Fund is working to build a strong democracy in Israel, rooted in the values of equality, inclusion and social justice. Over four intense days, we met with politicians, diplomats, journalists, and Jewish and Palestinian activists risking their physical well-being to build a just society for all.

Israel’s current government is the furthest right the country has seen. Judicial reforms threaten to strip the authority of the Supreme Court, leaving the government with unchecked power. This is why Israelis are protesting in unprecedented numbers. Unfortunately, largely absent from the demonstrations are minority interests and the inhumane treatment of Palestinians.

It was on the second day of our visit that we took the short drive from modern Tel Aviv to the barren militarized land of the West Bank to meet with Palestinians and activists. We heard so many heartbreaking stories.

Nasser, while hugging his daughter, described what it is like to live under constant threat of settler attacks. Multiple times a day he is called to protect innocent children walking to school as well as shepherds who are commonly harassed and attacked by ultrareligious Jewish settlers. His home, as well as his entire village of Susiya, was recently placed under a demolition order.

These villagers are unable to access power and water despite the nearby Jewish settlement having modern amenities. Jewish Israeli activists we met are on call, ready to place their bodies in harm’s way to prevent inhumane atrocities. The day following our visit, one was arrested trying to prevent a home demolition by handcuffing himself to a bulldozer.

A former Israel Defense Forces soldier shared his story of being frequently commanded to “occupy” homes of innocent Palestinian families and recalled the horror on the children’s faces he held captive.

Many now believe the goal of this government is to annex the West Bank, intent upon clearing it of Palestinians. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right religious settler, has been appointed overseer of the occupied territories. He publicly expressed his desire to wipe out the Palestinian village of Hawara following a devastating settler attack there.

I’m often asked what right I have as a non-Israeli to get involved? As a Jew, these crimes are being done in my name, and Israelis are demanding us to intervene. How can I not intervene? As humans, and as Jews, how can we allow this to continue?

If you are concerned about the future of Israel, let your elected officials know you support Israel but not this dangerous regime and the inhumane treatment of Palestinians. Let them know we want democracy and equality for all. Let’s build an Israel that we can be proud of.

David Matz is a clinical psychologist practicing in Lafayette.

Akron, Ohio, temporarily bans use of nonlethal force on protesters

Officials and advocates agree to a 14-day restriction that allows litigation and negotiations to continue

Associated Press |
Apr 23, 2023

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Authorities in an Ohio city have agreed to temporarily bar the use of tear gas, pepper spray and other types of nonlethal force against nonviolent protesters, a move that comes after it was sued following a protest over a grand jury’s decision to not indict police officers who shot and killed a Black motorist.

Akron officials and lawyers for the Akron Bail Fund — a group that supports protesters — reached the agreement late Friday after a federal court session that lasted for several hours. Bail fund officials had sought a temporary restraining order to block the use of nonlethal force, but the two sides instead agreed to a 14-day restriction that allows the litigation and negotiations to continue.

Protesters march along South High Street on Saturday, July 2, 2022, in Akron, Ohio, calling for justice for Jayland Walker after he was fatally shot by Akron Police earlier in the week, following a vehicle and foot pursuit. (Phil Masturzo/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, File)

The legal action came about after a protest Wednesday in which police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters after the gathering was deemed an unlawful assembly.


Also Read:
Activists demand police reform after Jayland Walker decision

Akron has seen a few protests after a state grand jury on Monday declined to indict eight police officers who fired 94 shots in the death of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who fired at least one round at officers during a car and foot chase last summer,.

Walker was shot 46 times in a hail of gunfire that lasted just under seven seconds and roiled yet another city amid heightened tensions with police over the killing of a Black man that started with a routine traffic stop.

How the Alternative für Deutschland Radicalized the German Right

Ten years since its creation, the Alternative für Deutschland has established itself as a constant presence in Germany’s parliament. Now, it’s challenging the Christian Democrats — and seeking to tear down the historic barriers to the far right.

Leaders of the AfD attend the party’s tenth anniversary celebration on February 6, 2023 in Koenigstein, Germany. (Thomas Lohnes / Getty Images)

BY SEBASTIAN FRIEDRICH

TRANSLATION BYLOREN BALHORN

JACOBIN

04.23.2023

“Nationalism,” the new issue of Jacobin is out now. Subscribe today and get a yearlong print and digital subscription.


When Friedrich Merz first threw his hat into the ring to succeed Angela Merkel as chair of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in November 2018, he set himself an ambitious goal. Merz told the German tabloid Bild that he wanted to “halve” the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), meaning to say he sought to win back half of its voters for the CDU. Back then, the AfD was hovering at around 15 percent in the polls. In fact, over the last five years its numbers have largely stayed the same — but the party now leads the polls in several states, successfully uniting wide swathes of the Right behind it.

This was hardly a foregone conclusion. Back in April 2013, more than one thousand people squeezed into a packed hotel conference room to attend the AfD’s founding congress. They cheered on an economics professor named Bernd Lucke who, his sights firmly trained on the CDU, spoke dismissively of the “old parties” and argued that Germany should step back from the EU, leave managing the economy to the market, and take a more conservative approach to social policy. Alongside Lucke, a chemist named Frauke Petry and a former journalist named Konrad Adam were also elected to the leadership of the AfD. All three have since left the party.

Ten years after its founding, the face of the AfD has changed dramatically: whereas conservative Euroscepticism represented the dominant theme in its early days, the AfD today is largely a far-right party. Nevertheless, one constant runs between the original and the current AfD: from the beginning, it sought to unite the political spectrum to the right of the CDU and its traditional coalition partner, the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Initially, the party represented an alliance between an ordoliberal current around a few dozen economics professors and a national-conservative network of aristocrats, Christian fundamentalists, and anti-feminists. A short time after its founding, however, a third current entered the stage: a völkisch, or ethnonationalist wing closely linked to the self-proclaimed “New Right” that first emerged in France and West Germany in the 1960s and harkens back to more traditional far-right ideas. Its core ideology is an ethnonationalism that understands the Volk, German for “the people,” to denote an ethnically homogeneous community. It sees its primary task as changing reality to fit this ideal.

Despite all the internal wrangling, splits, and power struggles, these three currents continue to set the tone in the AfD. The constellation necessarily entails certain internal contradictions, given the substantial differences between ordoliberals, national conservatives, and ethnonationalists.Ten years after its foundation, the face of the Alternative für Deutschland has changed dramatically: whereas conservative Euroscepticism represented the dominant theme in its early days, today it’s largely a far-right party.

For example, the party contains highly divergent positions on economic and social policy as well as geopolitics. Another point of contention, around which most of the AfD’s internal struggles have revolved since its founding, is of a strategic nature: while a majority of the key figures in both the national-conservative and ordoliberal currents prefer tactical moderation and a parliamentary approach, a large part of the ethnonationalist wing favors a movement-oriented strategy based on fundamental opposition to the political system as such.

Nevertheless, despite these deep differences, the AfD has consistently managed to prevent the kind of split that would threaten its existence, staying true to the party’s project character and maintaining a focus on the points of unity that hold it together: the ideology of inequality.

Old Wine in New Bottles

After years of at times quite vicious struggles for power and control, the ethnonationalist wing in the AfD has now taken the lead. The party is thus effectively the parliamentary arm of German far-right radicalism — albeit in a modernized form.

This modernization is firstly of a substantive nature. It remains focused on the homogeneity of the Volk, but it no longer defines that homogeneity on the basis of genetics, being well aware that pseudo-biological concepts of race fell into disrepute with the defeat of Nazism. There are some modest attempts to rehabilitate the category of “race” in the German public sphere, but they are flanked by a parallel, much cleverer concept: “ethnopluralism.” Ethnopluralism takes into account the critique of genetically understood racism, but arrives at similar conclusions with the help of anthropological, ethnological, and psychological arguments: different peoples are allowed to live side by side, but they should not mix and rather remain “pure.”

The concept of ethnopluralism dates back to the 1970s. At that time, Henning Eichberg, a mastermind of radical nationalism in West Germany, developed the concept of ethnically homogeneous societies, with this rejecting the Left’s universalism and reformulating racist ideas in a manner that appears more harmless than the Nazis’ aggressive ethnocentrism. Ethnopluralism continues to shape the radical right across Europe today. It is fundamental for intellectuals of the New Right as well as for fascist and far-right currents in France, Italy, and Spain.

Ethnopluralism is popular in Germany not only among the so-called Identitarian movement (a neofascist protest group active throughout Western Europe), but also among AfD politicians. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a member of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, mentioned the term positively in a contribution to the party’s programmatic debate in September 2018, stating that ethnopluralism represented the “leitmotif of the AfD program.” The party, he argued, ought to be “committed to preserving the ethnocultural unit that calls itself the German people in all areas.”

The ideology’s influence could also be seen when AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, referring to soccer players from immigrant backgrounds, said that the German national team was no longer German “in the classical sense,” or when AfD speakers distinguish between “passport Germans” and “real Germans.” In terms of both its rhetoric as well as its policy platform, the ethnonationalist wing of the AfD ultimately stands for a kind of ethnically segregated apartheid state in which social and democratic rights are tied to national origin.

In addition to this ideological modernization, we can also observe a strategic modernization within the German far right over the AfD’s ten-year history. The AfD has long since ceased to function as a mere party, but forms one element among many in a far-right political project that also includes right-wing citizens’ initiatives, media, student fraternities, think tanks, and subcultures. The strategists of the ethnonationalist wing in particular not only seek to win votes, but fight over language and for control of the streets.The concept of ethnically homogeneous societies rejects the Left’s universalism and reformulates racist ideas in a manner that appears more harmless than the Nazis’ aggressive ethnocentrism.

The AfD has clearly won the electoral contest within Germany’s right-wing camp, making gains in almost all classes and social milieus. Meanwhile its previous competitor, the more explicitly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), and other far-right parties have largely faded into insignificance or dissolved entirely. That said, the ethnonationalist wing of the AfD in particular has a very low opinion of parliamentarism.

According to Björn Höcke, the undisputed leader of the ethnonationalists, the job of the AfD is to serve as the “voice of the movement” in parliament, which is seen above all as a stage on which to promote party positions. This is about more than just parliamentary work — speaking about his wing’s strategic orientation in a taped interview, Höcke explained: “A few corrections and minor reforms will not be enough. But German unconditionality will be the guarantee that we will tackle the matter thoroughly and fundamentally. Once the turning point has been reached, we Germans will not do things by halves.”

The struggle over language is one of cultural hegemony, or “metapolitics.” The concept of metapolitics was in many ways inspired by the strategy of the post-1968 New Left in France. It stipulates that the focus of right-wing politics should no longer be on elections and parties as such, but on the “pre-political space,” i.e. the battle over interpretations and ways of thinking. Götz Kubitschek, one of the founders of the Institute for State Policy (IfS), a far-right think tank and a cadre of the New Right, identifies three discursive strategies for the far right’s culture war:

First, the Right must expand the boundaries of what can be said through targeted provocations. To this end, it is necessary to “provocatively push forward along the fringes of what is sayable and doable.” The AfD has used this strategy of calculated taboo-breaking since its founding, enabling it to dominate political debates, especially in its early years.

Secondly, the Right should pursue a strategy of “interlocking” with the aim of “preventing the enemy’s artillery from firing.” The Right should interlock its own troops with those of the enemy, so that the latter never knows for sure “whether he will not hit his own people when he fires.” In practical terms, this means agreeing with conservative politicians when they condemn so-called left-wing extremism or the German government’s refugee policy.

Thirdly, Kubitschek recommends a strategy known as Selbstverharmlosung, roughly translated as “self-trivialization.” The Right must seek to “ward off the opponent’s accusations by displaying our own harmlessness and emphasizing that none of our demands fall short of the standards of civil society.” In reality, so this posture goes, the Right is not so bad; it opposes violence and supports the constitution and democracy. However, he cautions, the Right should be careful not to overdo it with self-trivialization.The AfD has clearly won the electoral contest within Germany’s right-wing camp, making gains in almost all classes and social milieus.

In addition to the battle for votes and the battle for minds, the New Right is also pursuing a battle for the streets. Here, the AfD repeatedly succeeds in building bridges to right-wing street mobilizations such as Pegida, an Islamophobic extra-parliamentary movement. The preliminary high point of the strategy to establish the AfD as the leading force of the far-right movement was a demonstration in Chemnitz on September 1, 2018, at which top AfD personnel marched shoulder to shoulder with the figureheads of Pegida, Identitarians, and neo-Nazi thugs. The demonstration marked the first time that the AfD openly presented itself as the leading force of a right-wing united front linking the fight for the streets with parliamentary activity.

The Right-Wing Mosaic Under Pressure

The ethnonationalist wing of the AfD and the party as a whole experienced difficult years in 2020 and 2021. The party stagnated at around 10 percent in the polls, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution officially began monitoring its activities, and the opponents of the ethnonationalist wing gained ground in party infighting. All of this was cause for anxiety, and some far-right figures began to turn their backs on the party. To them, it appeared as if the “iron law of oligarchy” — coined by the Social Democrat-turned-fascist Robert Michels, according to which parties have a tendency to develop bureaucracies and power elites and thereby lose momentum over time — was playing out before their eyes.

At times, the AfD almost lost control over the battle for the streets. During the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests that emerged around the COVID pandemic, the party lost its status as the avant-garde of the right-wing movement in some parts of eastern Germany to a group known as Free Saxony. Right-wing critics complained that the AfD had invested too little in consolidating its periphery and devoted insufficient attention to the movement.

In the meantime, far-right strategists are paying more attention to the interplay between the party and movement actors, developing the term “Mosaic Right,” coined by IfS intellectual Benedikt Kaiser in reference to German trade unionist Hans-Jürgen Urban’s concept of the “Mosaic Left.” The basic idea behind the term is that all right-wing forces should work on a common political project, but leave enough space for themselves in their respective spheres: the party, a magazine, a youth group, women artists, student fraternities, and right-wing hooligan groups. In a diverse modern society like Germany, the political right needs to be diverse as well.

An important base for the AfD and its ethnonationalist wing are the eastern German states, where the party has polled between 20 and 25 percent for several years. Here, the AfD scores points with antiestablishment rhetoric. East Germans’ lower level of trust in the institutions of the state is due in part to the fact that in the course of the eastern states’ accession to the Federal Republic, many things changed for the worse for East Germans within a short period of time: virtually overnight, the former industrial proletariat was confronted with forced structural transformation, targeted deindustrialization, and, as a result, mass unemployment.

What had taken decades in West Germany’s industrial regions such as the Ruhr — triggering upheavals in the social fabric despite the state’s attempts to soften the blow — took place within weeks in the early 1990s in the territory of former East Germany. Instead of the promised “blooming landscapes” promised by West German politicians, they were left with industrial ruins. Instead of hope came disillusionment.

The population’s ties to the ideologies and institutions of the old Federal Republic thus did not have to weaken over time in East Germany — they were never particularly strong to begin with. Unlike in western Germany, large parts of the former East have been caught in a permanent crisis of hegemony for thirty years, in which political and economic elites are unable to reach the masses and fail to establish a social consensus. Electoral turnout is significantly lower in the East than in the West, as are the numbers of citizens active in volunteer associations or nonprofit organizations.

This situation has enabled the AfD and its supporters to fill the vacuum, especially in rural areas, partly because the Right has succeeded in presenting itself as looking after the interests of eastern Germans. In doing so, the party consciously ties in with the experience of 1989–90: “Complete the Wende,” the term used to describe the uprising during that period, is a slogan frequently used by the AfD in eastern Germany. The message is clear: back then, the people rose up against the ruling party bigwigs; today, they do so against the political establishment of the Federal Republic.
The Parliamentary Arm of Street Violence

As a parliamentary representation of modernized far-right radicalism, the AfD tries to distance itself from violence as part of its aforementioned self-trivialization strategy. Yet despite all of its attempts to formally distance itself from that violence, links to potentially violent groups persist.The Right has succeeded in presenting itself as looking after the interests of eastern Germans.

One example: the twenty-five people arrested in the so-called Reichsbürger raid in December 2022, when federal police arrested a network of suspected far-right militias, included a Berlin judge who sat in the German parliament for the AfD until 2021. The association, which called itself the “Patriotic Union,” had allegedly planned to storm parliament by force of arms and install a self-appointed government.

A second example: in June 2019, right-wing extremist Stephan Ernst shot and killed CDU politician Walter Lübcke, the head of the public administration of Kassel. Ernst had previously been an AfD supporter, attending its events and donating money to the party, and in 2018 helped with its state election campaign in Hesse by hanging posters and working campaign tables.

A third example: in October 2020, an AfD member drove an SUV into an anti-fascist demonstration on the fringes of a party event in Henstedt-Ulzburg in Schleswig-Holstein. Some of the victims were seriously injured. The public prosecutor’s office accuses the driver of hitting the protesters “with intent to kill.”

These are the most obvious instances of connections between the AfD and right-wing violence. There are many other cases that are difficult to prove directly, but where far-right propaganda incited the perpetrators of violence to put into practice the supposed will of the people as formulated by the AfD. Nevertheless, neither these connections nor the party’s ongoing far-right drift and its observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution have substantially harmed the AfD.

Ten years after its founding, the party has established itself as a durable political presence. It sits in almost all state parliaments, and has hundreds of deputies and even more staff. Hopes that the AfD would be torn apart by its internal contradictions have not been realized — and are unlikely to be realized in the future.

Unlike Die Linke, which is currently on the verge of a damaging split, the AfD manages to work through its fundamental internal differences of opinion, and in some cases even puts them to productive use. Disputes now take place relatively quietly behind the scenes.

The AfD also succeeds in papering over internal differences concerning the war in Ukraine. Similar to the Left, a wide range of opinions can be found in the right-wing camp when it comes to the role of Russia and NATO. The (mostly western German) voices that support NATO are likely in the minority within the party compared with those that express some “understanding” for the Russian invasion, partly because they see Putin’s Russia as a role model for their own political approach. Nevertheless, a degree of internal pluralism is allowed to exist on this issue.Unlike Die Linke, which is currently on the verge of a damaging split, the AfD manages to work through its fundamental internal differences of opinion.

Following the last federal party congress in Riesa in June 2022, the balance of power has been clarified for the time being: the ethnonationalist wing is here to stay. The German Left must now prepare itself for at least ten more years of the AfD.

Nevertheless, the AfD faces a strategic dilemma: in all likelihood, the other parties will not form a coalition with it in the foreseeable future. Even in eastern Germany, where the AfD is particularly strong and the CDU is more reluctant to distance itself from the right-populists, no coalition is likely to be considered in the medium term. Right-wing forces in the CDU seeking to initiate such a move have so far been harshly rebuked for doing so. After talks between CDU and AfD members of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament on tolerating a CDU minority government presumably took place at the end of 2020, Holger Stahlknecht, the CDU minister of the interior who was apparently open to such a proposition, was forced to vacate his post.

The fact that a coalition is very unlikely at this point suits the leaders of the ethnonationalist wing, as they do not aspire to cooperate with the CDU at all. Their model is Italy, where the extreme right has succeeded in putting so much pressure on the established conservative parties that they have largely eroded. That is the long-term perspective of the ethnonationalists: the destruction of the CDU. In the best-case scenario, a purified, heavily depleted CDU shifting significantly to the right will be willing to join an AfD government as a junior partner.

The AfD knows that this will not happen anytime soon. But its leaders think in larger dimensions and in the long term. If it’s up to the ethnonationalists, the AfD’s first ten years will only be the first step.

CONTRIBUTORS

Sebastian Friedrich is an author and journalist from Hamburg.

Loren Balhorn is a contributing editor at Jacobin and coeditor, together with Bhaskar Sunkara, of Jacobin: Die Anthologie (Suhrkamp, 2018).

The Bizarre Tale Of Lemuria: A Long-Lost Continent Inspired By Lemurs

An Atlantis for lemurs? It's not quite as crazy as it sounds.



TOM HALE
Senior Journalist
March 17, 2023
IFLSCIENCE

An artist's impression of Lemuria, complete with lemurs, from 1893. Image credit: Édouard Riou/New York Public Library/No Known Copyright.


In the 19th century, a rumor circulated in the scientific world that a "lost continent" was laying undiscovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. They named it Lemuria as their misguided efforts were driven by some very confusing lemurs.

The idea is largely credited to British zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater who wrote a paper titled “The Mammals of Madagascar” in 1864, published in the Quarterly Journal of Science. Sclater explained that lemur fossils could be found in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East, suggesting that Madagascar and India were once been part of a larger continent that’s since gone missing in the Indian Ocean.

Sclater wasn’t alone in his dreams of Lemuria and a number of other prominent European scientists jumped on the bandwagon.

In 1868, German biologist Ernst Haeckel published “The History of Creation,” in which he argued the origin of humanity was to be found in Asia, not Africa as Charles Darwin correctly stated, and that humans were closely related to the primates of Southeast Asia.

The "missing link, " he believed, could be found on the long-lost landmass of Lemuria. Acting as a continental superhighway between India and Africa, Lemuria could explain how humans migrated to the rest of the world, at least in his mind.

That’s right: according to Haeckel, we are descended from lemurs and the remains of some strange lemur-human hybrids are likely to be lurking in the Indian Ocean on a long-lost continent

.



The (nonsense) map explains the 12 varieties of men emerging from Lemuria and migrating all over the Earth. Image credit: Library of Congress/Public Domain

Another equally eccentric idea came from Helena Blavatsky, a 19th-century Russian mystic whose work is teeming with bizarre pseudo-science and mysticism. In her 1888 book, The Secret Doctrine, she promoted the ridiculous idea that all of humanity is descended from seven "root races." One of these was from Atlantis, and one was apparently from the continent of Lemuria, which she placed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

As wild as the idea of Lemuria may sound, it’s not totally baseless.

The theory gained a bit of traction in the 19th century because this was long before the discovery of plate tectonics and "continental drift", which explained how the world’s continents are constantly (and very slowly) drifting around the planet.

It turned out, the theory that India and Africa were once joined was true. Until around 200 million years ago, all of Earth's continents were once smooshed together in one supercontinent, Pangaea. In this configuration, the Indian Plate was tucked up close to the east of the Africa plate.

Furthermore, there was genuinely a microcontinent called Mauritia that was located between India and Madagascar until their separation about 70 million years ago.

In 2017, scientists confirmed the existence of the "lost continent" by finding evidence of a piece of continental crust under the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Their work indicated that this chip of ancient continent likely broke off from the island of Madagascar, when Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica split up.

Unfortunately, however, lemurs had little to do with any of it.

Everything You Need To Know About Lemuria, The Lost Continent Of Lemurs

By Esther Inglis-Arkell
Published August 21, 2014

In 1858 a young zoologist, playing around with an idea, came up with a possible lost continent. This led to one of the longest and weirdest pseudoscience theories of all time, as Lemuria became a lost island of lemurs that had everything from sanskrit to sasquatch.

This was thanks to Philip Lutley Sclater, who has plenty of less crazy credits to his name. He amassed a collection of thousands of bird specimens, which he gave to the British museum. He described the okapi to western zoologists. He founded The Ibis, a journal of ornithology. And he fathered a son, who grew to be another respected ornithologist. But in 1858, when Sclater was in his 20s and all the crazy young kids were coming up with tales of land bridges and lost continents, he undertook a study of the fauna of Madagascar. Sclater with struck by the fact that Madascar's ecology was similar not only to Africa but to India as well. Sclater's conclusion, drawn from the puzzling similarity, was that both continents had once been connected by a lost land called Lemuria.

The world hadn't arrived at the theory of continental drift just yet, but scientists studying the geology, zoology, and botany of different continents had noticed some links and uncanny coincidences. They came up with all kind of possible connections between continents, and Lemuria, a lost continent of lemurs, was Sclater's contribution. He wasn't alone. If he had been, Lemuria would have faded into obscurity; Ernst Haeckel, a Darwin enthusiast often credited with promoting Darwin's ideas of natural selection in Germany, also came up with the idea of Lemuria. He added his own spin on it, claiming that Lemurians were not just lemurs, but humans as well. The Lemurians migrated to India as their continent sank, Haeckel claimed, and became the Aryans.

Once Lemuria was connected to a mythical human race, everyone had a theory about it. Helena Blavatsky, noted cult leader and nutbag , claimed that the Lemurians were actual human-sized lemurs. They were "hermaphrodites," she said, that reproduced without sexual intercourse, until they discovered sex, and their wickedness made their continent sink into the sea. People believed that the Lemurians came up with Sanskrit, that they were telepathic, that they were unable to reason but lived happily by instinct alone. Herbert Spencer Lewis, a member of the Rosicrucians, published a book claiming that the Lemurians were actually ancestors of the Maya. (Though how they got from India and Africa to Central America was anyone's guess.) Furthermore, he believed that the last pure Lemurians lived in secret on top of Mount Shasta, in California. (Again, no word on their mode of transportation.) Hikers, he said, sometimes spotted them, as they had long hair and English accents. (Seriously. These people got around.)

Lemurian legends spring up to this day, and have less and less to do with lemurs. Sclater would not approve.

[Via Bogus Science]

Scientific American
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com › a-geologists-dre...
May 10, 2013 — "The probable primeval home or "Paradise" is here assumed to be Lemuria, a tropical continent at present lying below the level of the Indian ...

BEST BOOK ON THE SUBJECT AS IT RELATES TO TAMIL LEGENDS

The Lost Land of Lemuria by Sumathi Ramaswamy

University of California Press

https://www.ucpress.edu › book › the-lost-land-of-lem...

by S Ramaswamy ·  During the nineteenth century, Lemuria was imagined as a land that once bridged India and Africa but disappeared into the ocean millennia ago, ...

Mapping the Lost Continent of Lemuria

JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org › stable

by S Ramaswamy · 1999 · Cited by 36 — While the many written texts on Lemuria narrate catastrophic stories of its violent dismemberment and disappearance, the maps accompanying these narratives ...

Amid Expulsion Vote In House, Tennessee Sen Quietly Names April ‘Confederate History Month’

Tennessee state capitol building front exterior in Nashville, with wind blowing the US state flag outside on a partly cloudy day.

By Daniel Feller
April 23, 2023 

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The ghost of the Confederacy hangs heavily over the Tennessee Legislature.

Justin Jones, one of two Black members expelled from the state’s House of Representatives in April 2023, had run afoul of House leadership before. In 2019, as a private citizen, he was arrested following his actions in protesting a bust in the state capitol honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and later Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

While the expulsion of Jones and his colleague, Justin J. Pearson, riveted the nation’s attention, a curious and related event in the Legislature’s other branch, the Tennessee Senate, passed nearly unnoticed.

On Feb. 3, 2023, two state senators issued a formal proclamation commemorating April 2023 as and encouraging “all Tennesseans to increase their knowledge of this momentous era in the history of this State.”

One of the signers is Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor; the other is Sen. Mark Pody from Lebanon. Though not considered in legislative session and not listed on the Legislature’s website, the proclamation holds an official stature: It was issued on Senate stationery and stamped with the Tennessee state seal.


The proclamation’s wording closely follows that of a proclamation issued by Virginia’s Gov. Robert McDonnell in April 2010, with one striking exception. McDonnell’s proclamation in final form included a paragraph, inserted after protests to an earlier version, stating “that it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war.”

The Tennessee proclamation, which includes eight introductory clauses celebrating “the cause of Southern liberty,” says nothing of slavery at all. Rather, it declares that Confederates conducted “a four-year heroic struggle for states’ rights, individual freedom, local government control, and a determined struggle for deeply held beliefs.”

A proclamation of the Tennessee Senate declares April 2023 Confederate History Month. Tennessee State Senate, CC BY-ND

Safeguarding slavery

As we historians of the Civil War have tirelessly pointed out, the documentary record speaks clearly of the motive behind that “heroic struggle.”

Both official proceedings and private utterances prove abundantly that there was only one reason to secede from the United States and create a new Confederacy. That was to safeguard racial slavery from the threat posed by the election of an antislavery Northerner, Abraham Lincoln, as president of the United States.

Tennessee seceded later than other states, after the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter. Lincoln’s responding call for troops made plain that there would be a war and that Tennessee, like other fence-sitting Upper South states, would have to choose sides.

The record of the state’s reasons is easy to find, and would have been available to the authors of the recent proclamation. In 2021, the University of Tennessee Press published “Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History.” It shows that in Tennessee, as elsewhere, the protection of slavery was the sole motive for secession.

In 1861, Gov. Isham Harris convened the state’s Legislature with a message denouncing the North’s “systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question,” crowned by the insulting election of a president who “asserted the equality of the black with the white race.”


Harris went on:

“To evade the issue thus forced upon us at this time, without the fullest security for our rights, is, in my opinion, fatal to the institution of slavery forever. The time has arrived when the people of the South must prepare either to abandon or to fortify and maintain it. Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity and domestic happiness.”

In all the deliberations that followed, no cause or grievance but slavery was mentioned.

Yet these basic facts go unacknowledged in a proclamation that boldly declares that knowledge of Confederate history is “vital to understanding who we are and what we are.”

Other omissions in the proclamation are equally curious.

Tennessee’s role in the Confederacy was uniquely conflicted. Thousands of citizens, especially in mountainous East Tennessee, opposed secession. Ignoring “local government control,” the state suppressed their dissent by force.

Some 50,000 Tennesseans, white and Black, spurned the Confederacy and fought for the United States – more than from any other Confederate state. The proclamation silently erases not only their struggle and sacrifice but their very existence.

‘Be not deceived by names’

Whether the Confederacy should be celebrated or condemned depends inescapably on point of view.

The proclamation casts the Confederacy in the mode of the American Revolution. The picture it paints is of a noble, if unsuccessful, attempt to erect a new self-governing independent nation – ignoring the fact that the institution of human slavery was at its center, as the Confederate constitution made clear.

Broadside announcing the sale of an enslaved man named Dick and an enslaved girl named Lydia in Cross Plains, Tenn., dated June 18, 1857. 

Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Yet from another perspective, the Confederacy was nothing more than an armed mass rebellion against a legitimately elected government.

It was, ironically, a famous Tennessean, President Andrew Jackson, who had warned would-be seceders in an official proclamation in 1832: “Be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?”

Lincoln labeled the Confederacy an “insurrection” within the United States itself, which the government and loyal citizens had not only a right but a duty to put down.

In words that echo today, Lincoln also observed that if the United States won its battle against forcible dismemberment, “it will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.”

Celebrating insurrection

The old adage that the victors write history is true at least to this extent. Generally the American Revolutionaries are deemed patriot heroes rather than rebels and traitors because they won their war, and because the course of subsequent history appears to have vindicated their cause.

Yet many Confederate acolytes, the proclamation’s sponsors among them, seem to have difficulty confronting what the Confederacy actually stood for. Hence, citizens serving in government – who upon entering their offices take a solemn oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution and begin their daily sessions by pledging allegiance to “one Nation indivisible” – chose to officially exalt a failed attempt to overthrow that Constitution and dismember the nation that it bound together.

Under a statute enacted in 2021, Tennessee public school teachers are barred from using instructional materials “promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government.”

No such prohibition applies to state legislators.

Daniel Feller is an Emeritus Professor of History at University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.