Mastodawn

Why the Right Hates Juneteenth

Wrote this three years ago - but worth reiterating now, as America is ruled by a regime seeking to restore complete white male dominance in all spheres of life:

Today’s MAGA GOP stands in the political, ideological, and spiritual tradition of the (neo-) Confederacy.

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/d0ccb3a5-7dec-4a2f-ab33-0604f5ef9431

Why the Right Has a Problem with Juneteenth

Reactionaries who oppose Juneteenth are the political, ideological, and spiritual descendants of those who were defeated in 1865. They dominate today’s Republican Party.

Steady

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Many Republicans who voted for the Juneteenth bill in 2021 are now all in on demonizing anything that questions a white nationalist understanding of America’s past or present, and few people who identify as conservative are in favor of teaching Juneteenth in schools.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Rightwingers claim that “the Left” elevated Juneteenth to the status of a national holiday purely as an “anti-American humiliation ritual,” all part of a larger leftwing agenda to take complete control of the country.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Juneteenth was the result of the United States – the country conservatives claim to love! – *winning* the most destructive war in its history and defeating a traitorous rebellion. Yet the Right is acting like they are told to celebrate their own defeat by some evil occupying force.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

That’s because, in a profound way, they are indeed on the team that lost in 1865. Today’s Republicans are not the successors to the Confederacy in any legal sense. But the
movement dominating the GOP stands in the tradition of those who took up arms against their country in 1861.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Since the founding, two incompatible ideas of how to define the nation have shaped the American project. From the beginning, some believed that America ought to be a place devoted to a profoundly egalitarian aspiration, demanding true democracy as its political form.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

For much of the nation’s history, however, a very different conception of “America” dominated, an ethno-religious nationalism that envisioned a land where property-owning white Christian men had a right to be at the top and shape society and culture in their image.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

From these opposing forms of nationalism sprung two very different, fundamentally incompatible ideas of democracy and freedom. The egalitarian vision demanded, at least in theory, a truly democratic order that would balance the needs and demands of all people.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

The white nationalist vision, on the other hand, set narrow boundaries to how much democracy, and for whom, was permissible. It revolved around the principle of white male freedom: The freedom to impose a reactionary “natural” order on others.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

In terms of the political project of defending white freedom, there is a direct line from those who fought for their right to enslave human beings to today’s reactionaries who cling to the idea that the world works best if it is dominated by wealthy white men.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Conflicts over the past and how to commemorate it, over the stories we tell, the history we teach, have been at the center of the political conflict - part of a larger struggle over who gets to define national identity and thereby either stabilize or question the status quo.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Juneteenth stands in stark tension with the kind of purely celebratory reading of America’s past and present the Right demands and wants to mandate for the country. It doesn’t lend itself easily to a celebration of white heroism in ending slavery.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

It instead centers the celebration of Black freedom and the struggles to establish a Black voice and perspective in the collective imaginary of the nation, elevates the stories of those who have traditionally been marginalized in the dominant white mainstream tale of U.S. history.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Republicans are currently conducting a witch hunt against “unpatriotic” ideas and are using the power of the state to outlaw dissent, restrict critical debate, and punish anyone who dares to question the righteousness of past, present, or future white reactionary rule.

Thomas Zimmer Jun 19

Those who demand “patriotism” and define it as the glorification of a mythical past that serves as the basis and justification for white nationalist rule in the present stand in a long line of reactionaries and rightwing extremists who defined pluralistic democracy as the enemy of their “freedom” to dominate.

DavidM_yeg Jun 20

@tzimmer_history

It seems that two very different groups fought side by side in the Revolution:
- those who sought to end empire, who believed in personal freedom and self-determination for all
- those who loved empire, but wanted it to be theirs alone and not subject to outside rule
It also seems that through much of American history the second group has held the upper hand.

Michael Gemar Jun 19

@tzimmer_history The North won the Civil War, but lost Reconstruction.

WendiGoose 🇺🇦Jun 20

@tzimmer_history And then, a long time later, the objects of their cruel oppression finally learned of their freedom: this is Juneteenth, when the people knew.