Now, I've also seen people take issue with the phrase "alt right," as though it has anything to do with real conservatism. Some conservative media sources and politicians have pointed out that the KKK started out as a branch of the Democratic party, and that Nazi stands for National Socialism and is therefore left-wing. They are, technically, correct.
Putting racism in terms of liberal versus conservative or Democrat versus Republican is counterproductive. It is entirely used as a way for white people to deflect the burden or responsibility towards other white people with different political views. It totally misses the point. The fact remains that we live in a country that allows terrorist groups like the KKK and Nazis to march into a public square with semi-automatic weapons shouting "Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil" without very much response from the police. We would not allow anything of the kind from ISIS sympathizers, for all the obvious reasons. We have to look inwards to ask ourselves why that is.
So let's take a look at the claim that the KKK and Nazis are really leftist terrorist groups.
The Democrats are the party of the KKK.
Yes, in 1861, Abraham Lincoln became our first Republican president. Shortly after, the South - mostly Democrats devoted to a states' right to own slaves - chose to secede, and the Civil War followed. The Union won; the Confederacy lost; slavery was abolished.
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| Lamest cosplayers ever. |
In the 1870s, in response to what they felt was an unjust attack to their way of life, certain white Southerners started the Ku Klux Klan. These people were undoubtedly Democrat by party affiliation, and for the next several decades, most KKK members voted Democrat, while most African Americans (those who were eligible after all the Jim Crow laws were put in effect, anyway) voted Republican.
By 1936, however, 71% of African American voters voted Democrat. That's pretty crazy, considering there were people alive in 1936 who absolutely remembered the Civil War. So what happened? Did Democrats suddenly become not racist? Did Republicans suddenly become way more racist?
Nope. Democrats were still, as a whole, fairly racist in the 1930s, and Republicans weren't suddenly more racist in the 20th century than they were in the 19th. Dixiecrats were absolutely still a thing. So what gives?
In 1929, the Stock Market crashed, bringing on the Great Depression. But for African Americans, they had been suffering a Depression for years by that point. Under a hands-off, deregulatory approach to the economy during the Republican presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the poorest communities in this country didn't receive the assistance they needed. This overwhelmingly affected black neighborhoods as they did not have the same economic opportunities as white Americans. Democrats were more willing to raise taxes to assist lower-income neighborhoods - not because they cared about black people, but because they cared about poor white people in their base, and black people just so happened to benefit. So African Americans were faced with a decision. Do you choose the Republican party that will politely let you starve, or the Democratic party that gives you some help, even if many of these Democrats actively and loudly believe you to be inferior?
With FDR's New Deal, more African Americans were being put back to work. The New Deal did help white Americans more than black Americans, because FDR is not exactly a civil rights icon, but it was still more help than they were receiving in the 1920s.
In 1948, Harry Truman desegregated the military.
By the 1960s, realizing how much of their base was now made up of African Americans, LBJ and other prominent Democrats decided to work on civil rights legislation that would end Jim Crow. Was LBJ doing this out of the goodness of his own heart? Absolutely not. LBJ was a cold, calculating son of a bitch who figured this would shore up the African American vote for the Democrat party for years to come. But the end results were the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, so it's pretty hard to fault it.
The KKK, in the meantime, fluctuated in how many members were a part of their ranks, but they had absolutely no interest in voting for a party that gave civil rights to African Americans. As the Democrats embraced the black vote, the KKK shifted away.
So viewing the KKK in terms of liberal versus conservative or Democrat versus Republican is ridiculous. The KKK is interested in one thing and one thing only - white supremacy at the expense of people of color. If a party actively courts their vote, the KKK wants nothing to do with them.
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| Pictured: a bunch of goddamn hippies. |
Nazis are socialists and therefore leftists.
Okay. Um. Let's start with some very basic definitions for this one.
Socialism is an economic and political system whereby the means of production are owned by the working class. Historically speaking, the state is often used as a representative of the working class in socialist countries.
National Socialism is another name for Nazism. The two tenants of Nazism are a) the superiority of the Aryan race and the belief in the need for racial purity, and b) the leader of the country (i.e. Adolf Hitler) runs all means of production.
You can be socialist and not be a Nazi. Obviously. Obviously. The big reason Nazis are bad is not because they are socialist, but because they believe in genocide. The economic and political beliefs of Nazis - outside of genocidal tendencies - are about 0% relevant to why Nazis are evil.
Modern-day Nazis, you might notice, don't spend a lot of time talking about the benefits of socialism. They mostly focus on how terrible Jews and black people are.
Actually, I think we can end there too. This is an issue of not understanding basic definitions, and these basic definitions have been outlined above.
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