"The white supremacist insurrectionists of the 1870s focused on just one region — the South — while the Trumpian insurrectionists have no geographic restrictions. This explains why, in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, the FBI found it necessary to warn of potential attacks and insurrectionist activity on state capitols and federal buildings across the country. And the Trumpian insurrectionists, at least thus far, don’t yet come with the full-throated, unequivocal support of a major political party (though that may change if non-Trumpian Republicans continue to lose ground).
But if you squint, it’s not too difficult to see how the insurrections of the 1870s and of the 2020s share a clear lineage. In many ways, the “Lost Cause” has now metamorphosed into the “Trump Lost Cause.”
“As I heard someone say, what we saw was that the Red Shirts of South Carolina have been replaced with the Red Hats of MAGA,” Janney said. Both are clearly aimed at upending the outcomes of democratic elections, willing to use violence to cow legislators — or worse. And both aim at thwarting multi-racial coalitions in the pursuit of ethnonationalist rule, a through-line of attempting to restore white rule that connects 1861 and 1876 to 2016 and 2020. As such, Grant’s experience in battling white insurrectionists presents a pair of primary lessons for the new Biden administration.
The first lesson, experts say, is relatively clear. As Trumpian insurrectionists continue popping up across the country — propelled by “the Big Lie” that Trump’s re-election was stolen—and as Republican legislators saber-rattle about potential violence if they don’t get their way, the administration has to use the full range of tools at its disposal. “There are so many more federal laws that can be used now,” Pitcavage said. “Conspiracy laws that didn’t exist [in the 1870s], laws about federal property that didn’t exist back then, laws about paramilitary training designed to foment civil disorder—there are any number of laws on the books now that theoretically could be used.”" msn.com
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The Left is now speaking clearly about what it, as a collective, has in mind for you Conservatives.
Pelosi, AOC, Jake Tapper, the Washington Post, the academy generally, etc., etc., ad nauseam are resolved to project a vision of white supremacist insurrection that they believe will convince enough citizens and most importantly the military that Conservative Organizations and Conservative Opinion must be suppressed and proscribed.
They forget that the excesses of the Grant run occupation of the South led directly to a "Bourbon" restoration that ruled the South for a hundred years and which was focused on African-Americans as the supposed cause of the economic and demographic misery of the South's condition. Do they think that a new Occupation Regime can be imposed on 75 million people? If so, they are massively and probably irredeemably deluded.
As I have written here before, the US military is a badly flawed instrument for the imposition of a leftist occupation of the US. Careerist generals and admirals in the Regular forces may be be willing to swear allegiance to wokism but their people, both officers and enlisted, in the main are of the despised Smelly and Deplorable classes. Would the flag grandees not understand that they probably cannot simply order Regular Amy and USMC units to fight and oppress their own people?
And then there is the National Guard. These are citizen-soldiers. Good luck on using them to suppress the citizens of their states.
The FBI, the ATF, federal marshals? A few hundred policemen. Good luck to the left. pl
Great comment Steve G
Always nice to have reality included in discussions.
Attended Kent state a few years after that incident.
Best description was nervous kids firing on angry kids.
Posted by: sbin | 01 February 2021 at 04:33 PM
English,
By all means we should destroy our civilization rather than risk living as free people.
Posted by: Fred | 01 February 2021 at 05:05 PM
When you have to suppress dissenting voices, that is pretty much an admission that you have lost the argument. At a very minimum, that is a sure sign that the establishment is not feeling very confident these days.
Anyway, the goodthink types calling for even more overt censorship had better plan on never challenging established authority, because if they do, they will surely be found to be "dangerous" and therefore in need of suppression.
Posted by: Feral Finster | 01 February 2021 at 05:28 PM
Colonel,
I appreciate your explanation of how National Guard troops ended up guarding the Capitol through the second impeachment trial.
There a broad similarity between the Reconstruction and now; 1) lots of denial and rationalization, 2) a failed government response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and an economic depression (not a civil war yet), 3) shell shocked Democrats, and 4) the occupation of America by global Robber Barons has just started. It will fail because the top 10% can never reign over 90% of Americans. There are still too many with memories of what the USA was like when work was readily available and supported raising families. To keep what remains of the Empire together, there will have to be a new Grand Compromise to restore government by and for the people, provide jobs for the able, and truth in media. If not, the 50-state Union is finished.
Posted by: VietnamVet | 01 February 2021 at 11:00 PM
Grant was not a good President. However I suspect you are looking at the wrong perpetrtor. The Reconstruction Acts were passed by Congress two years before Grant became Prez.
Posted by: Leith | 02 February 2021 at 10:15 AM
Leith
The Radicals in Congress were not going to impeach Grant. They would not have dared to do that. He was a GREAT NATIONAL HERO! The manner of his execution of re-construction and occupation was pretty much up to him.
Posted by: turcopolier | 02 February 2021 at 11:17 AM
elaine
You still don't get it. The students who were shot made the mistake of thinking that these panicky Ohio National Guardsmen would not fire on them. The students who were shot were not among the SDS and Weathermen but they WERE dummies who thought that they were immune from becoming the targets of a lot of frightened and angry draft dodgers in uniform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Posted by: turcopolier | 02 February 2021 at 11:23 AM
Of course they were not going to impeach Grant. They did however impeach his Secretary of War. Belknap was the guy who executed and implemented reconstruction and occupation along with AG Ackerman.
Posted by: Leith | 02 February 2021 at 11:39 AM
There is evidence a student police informant at KS fired four shots 70 seconds before the NS fired their guns. It's circumstantial and debatable whether true or not, but the fact is he had a .38 at the protest which he handed over to the police right after the shooting.
https://www.cleveland.com/science/2010/12/kent_state_shootings_does_form.html
Posted by: optimax | 02 February 2021 at 11:53 AM
Well who could forget that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song?
Those "flower children" were protesting by trying to stick the stem of a flower in the gun. It was that the nerves of the entire country were tense becaue of the Viet Nam protests.
"tin soldiers and Nixon coming. Four dead in Ohio."
Somehow, in my opinion, the turmoil in the country at this time is much more contentious and nasty, no flowers at all.
Then don't forget what came later--largely with the hep of Obama's friend Bill Ayers00The Weathermen and their hatred of the police and their stated desire to institute "re-education camps for the young people.
Posted by: Diana Croissant | 02 February 2021 at 01:15 PM