In Reply to Robert Jensen: The Folly of the Nazi Comparison

“In fact, most Southerners did not own slaves; nor were Union soldiers, most of whom were drafted, fighting for the woke ideals of Jensen or the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

“As we come to know more about the morally repulsive aspects of our national history—and, more importantly, face those realities—removing symbols of our collective failure in the past is not an attempt to deny our history. Rather, it is a sign of growth, a willingness to face our history.”

Thus, we are instructed in a homily by Robert Jensen about the need to “retire” everything Confederate before we offend more Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) moralists. It seems that any tribute to the defeated Confederates in the American Civil War pays homage to “white supremacy ideology.” The last time I checked most Southern soldiers were not fighting for slavery; they were fighting because they had been invaded by Union soldiers, who were devastating their property and burning down their cities. In fact, most Southerners did not own slaves; nor were Union soldiers, most of whom were drafted, fighting for the woke ideals of Jensen or the SPLC.

The comparison Jensen draws between the Confederate side and the Nazis is shockingly obscene, especially for anyone who has seen the emaciated bodies of Nazi concentration camp victims. Confederate leaders did not set out to conquer the world or to exterminate entire races. They were fighting for independence for their own states from the federal union. Unlike the Nazis, the Confederates did not murder Jews. Their Secretary of State and at least one Confederate Senator were Sephardic Jews. Although the tolerance of human bondage in the antebellum South was deplorable and unjust, there have been many slave societies in history, including an abundance of them in Sub-Saharan Africa (from whence American slaves were brought). Were all slave societies ancient and modern, including non-white ones, equally Nazi? Or was this stigma reserved for the American South, in which slavery was somehow more shameful and Hitlerian than elsewhere? Were the ancient Jews or early Christians, both of whom owned slaves, precursors of Hitlerian “white supremacy ideology”? Presumably their slaves were ethnically different from themselves.