The Lies of White Supremacy
All white supremacist thinking, and actions, are linked and connected to American history. Confederate statues tell a story. The story these despicable symbols carry is one of trying to keep the walking-dead ideology of white supremacy alive—trying to keep racism alive even after slave owners lost a war that killed hundreds of thousands. It is no surprise that right after the Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, southern bigots and racist lunatics sought to keep their evilness alive by erecting statues at a time when they were trying to enforce Jim Crow laws or oppose the Civil Rights Movement. All of the lies generated by the former slave owners and their brainwashed ancestors were aimed at supporting segregation and white supremacy through their worn-out method of changing the subject. They changed the subject by claiming the Civil War was about “Northern Aggression” and all sorts of propaganda. However, they tangled themselves up by admitting that the Civil War was mostly about slavery; in their own words, as stated in their Texas Articles of Secession (read it). Confederate statues tell a story, but it is not the true story of racism and slavery.
Additionally, the spurious argument of “Presentism” falls into the same pattern of the denial of the existence of those who opposed the times. One thing that stuck out in reading about the Alamo battle, Todd Hansen points to reliable sources that say the battle only lasted about 20 to 30 minutes, and that a large number of Alamo defenders skedaddled. This was also extrapolated by Dr. Phillip Tucker in his mining of the primary source documents. There is no “presentism” in these conclusions as they were taken from the documents of that time. Hansen threw caution to the wind and told the story from Mexican records as well. Unfortunately, what most of the Alamo researchers pass over is the number of slaves that existed in the states from which many of the Alamo defenders came. They miss the elephant while looking at a small section of its skin! I would argue this is often done on purpose to gloss over true intentions. It creates a cowed analysis that seeks to avoid offending the white dominant renderings of history.
The bigoted men of fantasy have invented illogical arguments to deny the racism embedded in American thought and word by use of such debunked ideas as “Presentism.” As reported in the San Antonio Report of July 28, 2021, a conservative public policy group, using the old worn-out false argument, called the Forget the Alamo book a “fallacy of presentism.” Those that claim the “presentism argument” are the real fallacy makers. When one reviews the past and is doing the solid research it is always important to quote from people of the past of their opposition to slavery and racism. The argument of “Presentism” claims that these people did not exist—a typical white supremacist illogical argument. Simply put, “Presentism” claims we are looking at the past with our understanding of racism today. This fallacy tries to erase the historical record and pretend that there were no people fighting against racism during the timeframe in question. There were thousands! Presentism is a false argument, and according to one historical scholar, “We must fully comprehend the pastness of the past, there is no just way in which the past can be quarantined from the present. Past and present inform each other, each implies the other . . . each co-exists with the other.” Beware of the racist conservative liars and fallacy makers!
