Echoes of Reconstruction: How the Klan Was Taught to Kids Before the 1980s
Emerging Civil War is pleased to welcome back Patrick Young, author of The Reconstruction Era blog.
In the 1920s, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grandson, who had the same name, attracted quite a bit of attention when he announced that he was setting up a Klan Kollege in Georgia. The grandson had headed the Sons of Confederate Veterans and after that he became the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. According to ads for the school, it was founded by “laying unusual stress upon Chritstian principles, as the foundation of our civilization, and the ideals of pure Americanism.” According to Forrest, “most of our large universities are turning out socialists, cynics and atheists.” Forrest added that while it was operated under the auspices of the Ku Klux Klan, it was open to all “real Americans” who desire that their children “receive instruction in the true history of their country…”
The effort by the children and the grandchildren of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan to teach their children the lessons of the successful rout of Black rights by the Klan was so strong that they published books, lobbied for textbooks for their public schools, and organized tribute days to the old Klan. Strangely, most of this education was underground when the Reconstruction Era Klan was active. Elaine Parsons, one of the most prominent historians of the Klan, says that in the years immediately after the Civil War there were few references to the KKK in school textbooks. And this was not just a “Southern thing.” Interestingly, Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 1875 textbook did not mention the KKK at all. Higginson was a Radical anti-slavery man and a former Union officer who had commanded Black troops during the Civil War.
The first mention of the Klan appeared in an 1883 history book authored by Arthur Gilman, an amateur historian from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Between 1894 and 1913 two thirds of the school textbooks mentioned the Klan. Lawton B. Evans’s textbook The Essential Facts of American History published in 1909 gave an account of the Klan’s origins that was repeated in other books: “To protect themselves against these idle and lawless negroes, who were often led away by evil white men, a secret order known as the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ was formed. . . . When they appeared. . . the frightened blacks scurried to their cabins.”
Johns Hopkins PhDs Albert Woodburn and Thomas Francis Moran wrote in their textbook “American History and Government” (1906) on the origin of the KKK: “The idle darkies were waiting around, each one looking for his ‘forty acres and a mule’ and wondering ’when de land was goin’ gur to be devided.’ Former faithful slaves were becoming good-for-nothing loafers. The blacks were given the right to vote while capable white people, the natural leaders of the South, were left out. This was more than human nature could bear.”
The release of the Ku Klux Klan romantic film Birth of a Nation in 1915 spurred on writing in children’s textbooks about the Klan. As Elaine Parsons says, the Klan became the cowboys of the South. Clandestinely, at night, mounted on chargers in scary costumes, stories of the Klan held Southern boys’ attention in a way that few other historical phenomenon could.
During the period of Birth of a Nation and afterward until 1941, out of 86 textbooks, 78 covered the Klan. At the same time that Forrest was establishing the Klan Kollege, the Southern Publishing Company’s 1920 A History of the United States for the Grammar Grades explained KKK intimidation thusly: “To accomplish [this], it was necessary that the negro should lose his interest in politics. . . . Often a thorough fright would result in submission, but in the case of serious offenses the Ku-Klux sometimes took the law into their hands and punished the negroes severely.”
Mary Simms Oliphant was the granddaughter of William Simms and she was brought up on a plantation. Many South Carolinians called her “South Carolina’s First Lady of Letters.” Her standard history, which was revised in 1932 and went through nine editions, was adopted by the state board of education and used to teach 8th Grade South Carolina history. She and her daughter, Mary Simms Oliphant Furman, later wrote a history book on South Carolina for third graders. Although she died in 1988, her memory was kept up in the newspapers of the 21st century, as you can see in this article in The Greenville News from 2017.
Oliphant’s history textbooks were used until the 1980s in South Carolina, which means that many residents of the state over the age of fifty were educated using her textbooks. It is useful to look at how this book was used in the early 20th century and to understand how it influences people who are alive today.
Mary Simms Oliphant told how the Klan helped establish a “legitimate” government.” Mind you that most people in South Carolina were Black and had been slaves before Emancipation, but the “legitimate government” did not include them in the government. Instead, the textbook lionizes the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as the leading element in the “overthrow of Radical government.”
In looking at this period after 1868, the textbook claimed that the Klan used its disguises as a way of “terrifying” the “impressionable and superstitious” Black citizens. In spite of this claim of non-violent Klan action, it does point to the Klan using imprisonment and assassination to kill off Black opponents and intimidate the Black community.
Now, again, this was a book used to educate 12-year-old children.
Section 434 of the book starts off recounting the founding of the Klan: “Shortly after the close of the war with its consequent emancipation of the negro, in almost all of the conquered States there sprang up secret organizations of the white men, who banded together, fearing the evil effect unrestricted freedom would have upon the ignorant, irresponsible slaves…The Ku-Klux Klan organized secretly…The Ku-Klux were always mounted on horses and wore caps and masks to conceal their identity, and long white coats which covered them and fell down over their horses. The sight of these ghostly riders galloping by in the night was a very terrifying one to the impressionable, superstitious negro. A visit from the Ku-Klux was sufficient in most cases to turn him away from his evil doing.”
Oliphant concludes by telling of the triumph of the Klan and its successor organization, the Red Shirts, in securing the governorship for former Confederate General Wade Hampton. She writes “After eight years of negro…supremacy…South Carolina had overthrown the usurpers and taken possession of the government.”
At that time, Blacks made up a majority of South Carolina’s population.
To read more about the Klan here are a few selections:
How a Law Professor Described His Activities With the Klan
Using the Media to Control the Klan
“I saw Death Coming” and “The Lynching” are two good books thread if you want to know about what the Klan did
I am curious why no mention that this was a Democrat party affiliated organization
Gustav, there’s no mention of a Klan affiliation with the Democratic Party because the two were not affiliated, although there was certainly a huge overlap in membership, particularly in the Deep South. That said, the Democratic Party of then was vastly different than the party of today–a well-documented shift triggered by the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and accelerated by Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” Try “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein as a good starting place.
I assume your comment came from honest ignorance of the facts.
I agree Chris. See my response forma. few days ago.
The history of the Klan is always a good teaching tool – especially if it’s kept in perspective. Rarely is it taught that the political abuses of Reconstruction was the biggest impetus to its growth once it began; that when the Klan was at its peak in the 1920s, of 8 million members Northerners made up 5 million and that there were even chapters in Canada; that 8 of the 10 worst race riots in American history took place in the North. As for murders, according to the FBI’s massive research and action against the KKK, in 150 years the Klan murdered 2,015 people. Terrible indeed…but compare it to Islam, which murdered 4,000 people in 150 minutes on 9/11. China and Latin American drug cartels have murdered 1 million Americans in 10 years. All things, good and bad, must be kept in perspective, because if they are exaggerated, they lose their value. Klan: Bad. Klan at the level of Hitler, Islam and Drug Cartels? Nope. Not even in the same ballpark.
The number of Klan murders is a bit off.
The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. BBC News estimates that the KKK lynched over 400 Black Americans during the 1920s alone.
Specific number for direct murders of Americans by cartels does not exist at all. The 1 million number you cite is made up.
From 2013 to 2023, more than 334,000 people in the U.S. died from overdoses involving synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Nice try though.
Your points are not valid. While I too have been puzzled by the numbers, it’s easy to see how they’ve been distorted. The FBI, the most reliable source, which made the KKK an obsession – whilst ignoring far more important criminals – gave the number of 2,015. A reliable source – which at the moment I cannot recall, says it was 3,500, but did not explain how it arrived at it. A young black female journalist who works for some online outfit, and has never read a book about slavery, the Civil War, the Klan or 19th Century America in her life (but it doesn’t matter, right?) says it was 2-6 million. So there you go. In your poor history work, you state there were “4,400 terror lynchings.” So what? It doesn’t mean the Klan committed any percentage of them. Bad try there.
Since Barack Obama became President, gleefully announcing he was going to “fundamentally transform America,” and beginning in the latter part of his administration, more than 1 million Americans have died as a result of fentanyl poisoning, heroin overdoses, drug turf wars, etc., all the murders sponsored/committed by the Chinese and Latin American Drug cartels. While you cite a doctored figure of 334,000, e.g. if someone has died of fentanyl poisoning and is lying in the street and a car runs over the body, the death is cited as “traffic accident,” my point is still entirely valid. Simply choosing figures from the mix, say the Klan murdered 3,000, the Sino-Latino cartels have murdered 334,000, it means the latter is 100 times worse than the Klan.
My point now proven, it is time to teach Americans all the reasons the Klan started. Never forget – the scourge of the world – Socialism, National Socialism and Communism – all three Leftist ideologies took root as a result of World War I, with the National Socialists rising to power in Germany as a result of that country’s mistreatment at the hands of the victors of the war. Reconstruction was the major cause of the rise of the Klan.
“Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program.
David Duke, who never had any power to begin with, frightens you? He frightens you more than the possibility of a continuance of the devastation wrought upon America by Barack Obama and Joe Biden for 12 years? It bothers you that the irrelevant Duke told people they should vote for Trump…but it didn’t bother you that the very consequential Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping, and Kim Jung Un, and the leaders of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and every Sunni and Shi’ite terrorist group on Earth were all deliriously happy to have Obama and Biden as Presidents and Hillary and Kalamity as candidates? Sheesh!
Like I said in my post about the Klan, which is both dead on target statistically and theoretically: keep things in perspective. Impeccable FBI research on the Klan over five decades: The Klan murdered 2,015 people over 150 years; Islam murders at least one million people per year. David Duke: a mosquito. Putin, Xi, Kim and the others: Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Keep it in perspective, and remember: America was not founded on racism, hatred or slavery. America didn’t invent slavery. America ended British and Dutch-instigated slavery in 80 years – it took 300 years to end European-instigated slavery elsewhere in the New World. 80% of the Africans brought to the New World went to the Caribbean, Central America or South America – and no one every says a word about it. 20% went to British America, and the Americans ended it – and people go bonkers over it 160 years later, to the point of making up ridiculous lies about it, and using it to demand special political, employment, enrollment, law enforcement rights, and bogus demands for reparations, all of which are racist and violate the Constitution. Slaves did not build America, or the White House, or the American economy. Keep it in perspective…and accept that the fantasy is over.
The Klan was never an affiliated with the Democratic Party.The Democratic Party’s position on civil rights began to shift in the mid-20th century. This culminated in the 1960s when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson championed major civil rights legislation.
The passage of these laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, prompted a massive exodus of segregationist white voters from the Democratic Party. These voters, often called “Dixiecrats,” were courted by Republicans through the “Southern Strategy,” leading to a significant political realignment.
Some Democratic politicians, such as Senator Robert Byrd, remained in the party despite past ties to the KKK. Byrd later renounced his former association with the Klan, calling it a “mistake,” and eventually became a supporter of the civil rights agenda.
Today, the Klan is not affiliated with the modern Democratic Party. Its white supremacist, anti-immigrant, and nationalist ideologies are more aligned with elements of the far-right and attract members from other extremist groups, some of whom vote Republican.
It’s a little more complicated than that. The southern segregationists were major power players in the Democratic party congressional majorities into the 1980s. Democratic segregationist senators in the ’60s and ’70s included Russell, Ellender, Allen, Sparkman, Stennis, Ervin, Eastland, and Fulbright, and that’s just off the top of my head. Strom Thurmond became a Republican, but he was an exception to the rule. Segregationist politicians like Russell were New Dealers to the max. The southern strategy involved the southern suburbs and Nixon specifically warned against the “fool’s gold” of segregationists. In Virginia, for example, the Republican party began its rise by teaming strength in the expanding suburbs of Northern Virginia with the traditional stronghold of the Shenandoah Valley and the southwest’s “Fighting Ninth” district. Also remember that George Wallace was leading the delegate race for the Democratic party presidential nomination in 1972 until he got shot in Maryland.
As for Byrd, he wasn’t just in the Klan, he was a major player in it as a “grand kleagle” or whatever the hell they call their leaders. At one point he said that he would rather see the American flag dragged in the dirt than see an integrated army. He was a major force in the Senate and at one point, I believe in the early 2000s, was third in line to the presidency as president pro tem of the Senate. He had a lot of explaining to do and never really had to do it.
My point here is that political parties chase voters and voting categories are difficult to neatly assign.
Thanks for agreeing with me that the Klan was never affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Recall that the ‘Dixiecrats” like Strom Thurmond ran for President in 1948, dividing the Democrat vote and nearly costing Truman the election. The reason the Dixiecrats bolted was a plank in the Democratic Party platform endorsing Civil Rights. And recall that after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the South was split between Wallace and Nixon, and that Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in the 1968 presidential election was a deliberate effort to appeal to white, conservative Southern voters who felt alienated by the Democratic Party’s advancements in civil rights. The strategy used racially coded rhetoric and capitalized on the “law and order” theme to attract those who resented civil rights activism and social change.
All GOP Presidential candidates from Nixon to Trump have played the ‘Southern strategy”.
The chase of the GOP was for the white vote.
The numbers that EP Schafer gives us cannot be validated. And they are made up.
1.The FBI does not track historical lynching statistics. And recall, the FBI did not come into existence until 1908, long after the Jim Crow Era was started..
2. According to the NAACP, 3,446 Black victims of lynching between 1882 and 1968.
3.Equal Justice Initiative (EJI): Has documented thousands more racial terror lynchings than previously reported. Its research has documented:4,084 racial terror lynchings of Black people in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. Over 2,000 lynchings of Black people during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). A total of 6,500 lynchings between 1865 and 1950. .
4.The FBI’s 2022 hate crime data revealed that anti-Black or African American incidents accounted for the largest percentage of reported hate crimes based on race, ethnicity, and ancestry.
You have absolutely no data on the number of opioid deaths. The number you mention is a fantasy. My numbers come from the CDC and are based on fact. Pesky thing those pesky facts.
Your knowledge of Socialism is off quite a bit. First of all, in Germany the Nazi Party was never socialist. If you ever read the trilogy by Richard Evans, you will learn that the Nazi Party was not socialist and was violently anti-socialist. The inclusion of the word “socialist” in the name “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” was a strategic propaganda move to attract working-class voters who were being pulled toward socialist and communist parties at the time.
The deliberate naming of the party served multiple purposes:
1. Co-opting populist appeal: By presenting itself as a “worker’s party,” it aimed to win over segments of the working class and other disaffected people without embracing genuine socialist principles.
2. Nationalist redefinition: The term “National Socialism” was a deliberate creation meant to offer a “nationalist” alternative to the “internationalist” Marxist socialism. It rejected the idea of class conflict, instead promoting a false sense of national unity (“Volksgemeinschaft”) built on ethnic and racial purity.
3. False advertising: As one historian noted, it is common for political movements to use misleading or false labels. Just as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not a democratic republic, the Nazi Party was not socialist despite its name.
Socialism took root way before World War I. Imperial Germany under Otto Bismarck as Chancellor realized that repression alone would not stop the appeal of socialism. He decided to undercut the socialists by addressing the workers’ grievances through social welfare reforms.
1. Motivations: By implementing a state-sponsored safety net, Bismarck hoped to gain the loyalty of the working class and make the state appear as a benevolent provider, rather than a foe. He famously remarked that workers with a pension would be “far more easy to handle”.
2. Key reforms: Between 1883 and 1889, Bismarck introduced a series of landmark social insurance laws that included:
Sickness Insurance (1883): Provided medical treatment and sick pay for up to 13 weeks.
Accident Insurance (1884): Offered pensions for workers injured on the job.
Old-Age and Disability Insurance (1889): Established pensions for elderly and disabled workers.
3. Legacy: These reforms established Germany as the first modern welfare state and set a precedent for other nations. Bismarck’s liberal opposition derisively called these policies “State Socialism,” a label he adopted without objection.
Realize that here in the United States, we have several socialist programs which you have to be aware of…Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. These programs help Americans. In fact, the Social Security Act raised elderly Americans out of poverty. The GI Bill of World War II which helped retiring GIs was pure socialism.
Do you ever drive a car on an Interstate Highway…that’s socialism.
Do you ever go to a library to take out a book?..That is socialism.
Does your community have a Fire Department or a Police Department…That’s socialism.
Nice try though.
Once more, please stop bloviating on things you know nothing about.
1. You had no idea that “Jim Crow” came from “The Black Codes” in the North. The South merely copied them.
2. It doesn’t matter that the FBI came into being in the 20th Century. They were committed to obliterating the Ku Klux Klan, and in doing so, they did extremely deep research into the KKK – something you clearly have not done.
3. As a result, the figures I cited are 100% accurate. Go the FBI website – it will tell you that, according to their decades of research, they concluded that the KKK committed 2,015 murders. Just because the figure makes you unhappy, you can’t just say it’s wrong and invent new ones, much less attack people who did the work to get the correct figure and cite it. That is, unless you’re applying for a job with CNN or MSNBC.
4. See my other post; it proves you completely incorrect about the origins of National Socialism/Fascists/Fasces/Nazis, etc. My statements are confirmed by reading any good book; yours apparently were derived from your intense reading of every issue of Sgt. Fury & his Howling Commandos.
5. Ditto. Right – they called themselves Socialists to disguise the fact that they weren’t Socialists! As I said, “Satan’s greatest trick…” No political party in history has ever named itself something it was not, for a hundred good reasons. You know nothing about the Socialist foundation of Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler. Another historical note I’m sure you’re unaware of – or would deny – before joining the German National Socialists, Hitler attempted to join the German Communists, who rejected him. So according to you, this rabid Conservative tried to join both Communist and Socialist parties. Riiiight…
6. Bismarck had zero to do with the National Socialists or what occurred in Germany following World War I…which obliterated anything Bismarck’s theories of 50 years previous had been instituted. Germany was wrecked, wide open, there was civil war, no valid currency, little food, and the allies were carving up her possessions. The Left saw that a major industrialized nation was ripe for the plucking and they went for it. The Communists and Socialists battled in the streets for control, a fake republic was propped up for a while by the occupiers, and in the end. the Socialists won. They did not control or won the means of production; instead they partnered with the means of production. See: the history of Krupp, and Hugo Porsche’s automobile companies.
7. No, highways, libraries, fire and police departments are NOT socialism…in your bid to get us to love the glories of socialism, communism or national socialism, the three evils of the Left. This is bullshit rationalization that Leftist liars always use, and credulous useful idiots fall for it. These things are what any free and open republic engages in because they see it as legitimate, their taxes pay for it, and all partake – and, in America for instance, the Constitution protects such things from the abuses of a corrupt, left wing out of control government, such as those presided over by Barrack Obama and Joe Biden. Everyone is free to share them. In Socialist countries, if the government doesn’t like you, you don’t get to drive on the highway; and the fire and police departments are tools of the state used to spy on, oppress, and control the populace – who doesn’t get to vote. And, there are no libraries and scarcely any book shops. I lived in Communist Vietnam for 15 years, working as a marketing consultant, and also continued my career as a journalist. All newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio stations were owned by the government. There were no libraries – they didn’t want people reading books. There were bookshops, but they contained no novels, philosophy, politics or political history books, no world history, etc. They didn’t want people reading things that gave them ideas. All you could get was computer and engineering books, photography and art books, children’s books, and literature only if it were written prior to the 20th century and did not concern politics or history. So, I’m going to hit the handle and flush your bullshit down the toilet.
Again, stop bloviating on things you know nothing about.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
1. Jim Crow came along when the Democrats came back to power in 1876 when the GOP made a deal to do away with Reconstruction to win the 1876 election. The SC then backed away from Civil Rights legislation. The 5 civil rights cases of 1883, consolidated into a single Supreme Court decision known as the Civil Rights Cases, were United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston R.R. Co.. These cases challenged the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which aimed to ensure equal access to public accommodations, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because Congress lacked the authority to regulate discrimination by private individuals, only state or local governments
.2. BS. During the height of lynchings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, federal involvement was nearly nonexistent. The FBI’s involvement in investigating the lynchings of Black men became consistent and sustained beginning in the late 1940s, a notable shift from its earlier reluctance to intervene…rlevant word is…reluctance.
3. As the FBI didn’t come into existence til way after lynchings occurred, how can their numbers be accurate? Please cite the source
4. You don’t even know anything about the origin of the Nazi Party in Germany. I told you
5. NO! No, Adolf Hitler did not try to join the Communist party. In fact, he was a staunch and brutal opponent of communism, portraying it as one of Germany’s greatest enemies. Please cite a source that says he did.
6. You really don’t know anything. Communists and Socialists were on the same side, against the Right wing Conservatives in Germany right after the war.
7. Look up socialism. Government-owned and operated infrastructure like roads, bridges, public schools, libraries, and the postal service are socialist in structure because they are socially owned and funded through taxation. The social safety net, including Social Security for retirees, Medicare for seniors, and unemployment insurance, are funded through a collective system and are thus considered socialist programs Other forms of government aid, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), housing subsidies, and Medicaid, also fit within a socialist framework. The government’s role in regulating the economy—from setting a minimum wage and limiting work hours to enforcing child labor laws—is viewed as using socialist tools to address the problems of pure capitalism.
Please continue to participate in this discussion as I am enjoying taking you to school and giving you an education.
I have to correct EPSchafer’s comment that “Never forget – the scourge of the world – Socialism, National Socialism and Communism – all three Leftist ideologies took root as a result of World War I, with the National Socialists rising to power in Germany as a result of that country’s mistreatment at the hands of the victors of the war. ”
That comment is a-historical.
1. The Nazi Party was NEVER socialist. See my above comment for the reason.
2. National Socialism was a Fascist ideology.
On the political spectrum, the extreme of liberalism is Communism, and the extreme of conservatism is fascism.
The Nazi Party in Germany came to power through the ballot box, though they never had a majority of votes to secure the Government. Recall that Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, he was NOT elected to that position, by German President Paul von Hindenburg. The elections after he was named were not an honest election.
The German federal elections of March 1933 were tainted by extreme voter intimidation, manipulation of the political process, and suppression of opposition parties. These actions, intensified following the Reichstag fire, allowed the Nazi party to seize and consolidate power.
1. Pre-election intimidation and propaganda
2. Targeting opponents: Shortly after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933, the Nazi regime began to persecute political opponents, especially communists and social democrats.
3. Stoking fear: Nazi propagandists, led by Joseph Goebbels, used state media to create widespread public fear of an impending “communist uprising”.
4. Political violence: The Nazi paramilitary forces, the SA (Storm Troopers) and SS, instigated violence, attacking and disrupting the meetings and rallies of other parties.
=====================================================================================================================
Sorry, but when I read something that is a-historical, I have to respond to set the history straight. We must always be on the guard of those who want to revise history for a certain political end. I apologize if I have hi-jacked this thread, but it is more important to know the real history.
I don’t know how you people learned history, but I took the exams and had to learn the facts.
Facts are facts.
No reason to apologize. Always glad to hear from someone with a command of the facts, sources, and reason.
Thanks sinjohn45.
Brrrnnnnttt! Wrong answer! Jeez, what is this, the Gong Show? Read a book for God’s sake.
1. Benito Mussolini’s father was an ardent Socialist. Benito was an ardent Socialist. He wanted to make Italy Socialist. During his time in the army in World War I, he realized – he was extremely intelligent – that with the extreme poverty, infrastructure and communications problems in Italy, its regionalism, its attention to small craftsman/artisanship, and its devotion to the Catholic Church, it would be very difficult to get the country to make the giant upheaval to “Workers of the World Unite! Down with Borders! A Worldwide Workers’ Paradise!”
2. He thus created National Socialism, “binding together as one the worker, the peasant, the farmer, the laborer, the artisan, the soldier, the priest” – his words, not mine – into a Socialist state that was focused on National lines, not International fantasies. This “binding together” – fastening – in Italian, “Fasces” – is Fascism, in which the National Socialists do not control the means of production as in Socialism, nor do they own it, as in Communism, but partner with it. Furthermore, they attempt, rather than to convert their neighbors to the joys of Socialism, but to seize their lands in empire-building, for the expansion of their own people. Hence, Mussolini’s adventures in Africa before and during World War II, in Greece, etc.
3. All of their other activities, though, were straight out of Marx: Totalitarian government, the suppression of free speech, the obliteration of other political parties, the creation of concentration camps for political prisoners, labor camps, re-education camps and, later death camps.
3. Who was watching? Why, a small group of German World War I veterans, who formed the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NASDAP, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, eventually using the German slang word, “Nazi,” meaning punk, layabout, worthless person, because it sounded like NASDAP and as a point of pride, just like the Vietnamese Communists took on the pejorative “Viet Cong.”
4. Oh, by the way, the Vietnamese Communists, who call themselves “Communists” and their country “The Peoples’ Socialist Republic of Viet Nam” really are Socialists and Communists…just like the Italian Socialists who called themselves Fasces, and the German Socialists who called themselves Nazis and Fascists.
5. The Right Wing, and Conservatives, do not, and have never, created Re-Education camps and Death Camps, and do not commit genocide. But who did? Stalin’s Socialists – 35 million murdered. Mao’s Communists – 100 million murdered. Kim’s Communists – 20 million murdered and a war that killed another 3 million. Ho Chi Minh’s Socialists – 3.5 million murdered, another million died fleeing the country. Mussolini’s National Socialists – 2 million murdered, wars that killed three times that number. Hitler’s National Socialists – 12 million murdered, and a war that killed 40 million more.
6. They say Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world he did not exist. The Left’s greatest trick must be convincing the world that the Italian and German Fascist National Socialists were not Socialists, an incredible feat because they even put it in their very name.
Please stop bloviating about things of which you have zero grasp.
Sorry Ed, but you don’t know what you are talking about.
1. Mussolini’s father was a socialist, but by the end of 1918,Benito Mussolini’s political views had fully shifted to extreme nationalism. He believed a “ruthless and energetic” leader was necessary to unite and revive the Italian nation. In 1919, he capitalized on widespread discontent with postwar unemployment and political chaos by forming the Fascist movement. His paramilitary Blackshirt squads violently targeted socialists and communists, gaining the support of anti-communist landowners and industrialists
2. Wrong again!! After the 1922 March on Rome, Italy’s king, Victor Emmanuel III, appointed Mussolini as prime minister. By 1925, Mussolini had consolidated his power, dismantled Italy’s democratic institutions, and established a one-party dictatorship. Mussolini’s fascism differed fundamentally from socialism, particularly in its emphasis on nationalism over class, its embrace of private property, and its authoritarian rejection of democratic and pluralistic principles. While Mussolini began as a socialist, his fascist ideology was a direct and violent reaction against internationalist socialism and communism.
3. The German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP) was founded in Munich in January 1919 by Anton Drexler, a locksmith. On February 24, 1920, Hitler announced the party’s 25-point program at a meeting and officially changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP). The word “socialist” was added to attract working-class voters.
4. The issue with North Korea stands,…it is not a Republic. The official name of “Red China” is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Nice try though.
5. Nazi Germany was a conservative Government…so you are again WRONG!!!
6. Satan??????
Please continue to comment here, on event and history that you no knowledge of, as I am making you look like you really don’t know anything about History.
Open up a real history book and read.
How’s that book coming along?
In case anyone cares to read about Nazi Germany, the trilogy by Richard Evans , is a great place to start. These books go into depth regarding the Nazi Party and how it was formed, how they took power, and how they went to war.
EP…here is the real history of what occurred in Italy.
Italian fascism emerged in the economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s. It started with a string of violent clashes in the northern part of Italy beginning in 1920. There, tensions over pay and work conditions had put landowning farmers in conflict with Socialist-backed workers. The Fascists, led by Mussolini, formed a street-fighting group called the Blackshirts to support the landowners. When the government chose not to intervene in this conflict, the Fascists used the fighting to gain power in the region. On November 21, “squads” of Blackshirts launched an attack on the Socialists in Bologna. Six people died. The Fascists soon followed up with assaults throughout the region. After nearly two years of fighting and more than one-hundred deaths, the Fascists had defeated the Socialists.
The fighting in northern Italy had shaped the Fascist movement in four ways:
The fighting nourished the Fascists’ belief in violence as the true path to manhood.
It became clear that Socialism was one of Fascism’s main political enemies.
The Fascists saw that the liberal government was weak and vulnerable to challenge.
The Fascists learned that violence was an effective political tool.
Sources….
1.The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) by Mussolini
2. Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915–1945 by R.J.B. Bosworth:
3. The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton: T
4. Italian Fascism: Its Origins & Development by Alexander J. De Grand:
5. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 by Victoria de Grazia:
6. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi:
7.Khan Academy: The article “Fascism in Italy” provides an overview of the ideology and its rise, and includes a list of scholarly sources for further reading.
Let me know if you need help reading and understanding Fascism. My Dad defeated it.
EP is writing a book?….or reading a book?
EP Schafer’s comment about the Us and racism is completely wrong.
The economic foundation of the early United States, particularly in the South, was dependent on the labor of enslaved people. Many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, and the U.S. Constitution included compromises that protected the institution of slavery, such as the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved people as partial population for representation. The US was built upon racism.
The British ended slavery in Great Britain way before the uS ended it in the US.
EP, what detracts from anything you ever write, is trying to make all arguments about Liberalism and Conservatism.
Just to educate you EP…
Liberals ended slavery in the United States.
Liberals got African Americans the right to vote.
Liberals got women the right to vote.
Liberals created Social Security and Medicare and lifted millions of Americans out of poverty.
Liberals ended segregation.
Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Liberals passed the Clean Air Act and the Clear Water Act.
The Liberal Democracies defeated fascism.
Mic drop
I’m pretty sure some of the allied nations in WWII were not liberal democracies, if they were democracies of any kind. In any event, the Soviet Union was not.