Louisiana Lawmaker Forced to Clarify There Was No ‘Good’ in Slavery

[Alizia Tyler]

Oh shoot. Being against slavery and against defenses of slavery makes me "zealous."

Explaining the zealousness of modern Left-Progressive types, especially when Left-Progressivism encountered Critical Theory, is a bit of an endeavor. It can be done carefully and fairly.

You have of course missed the core point I brought out in Post # 7.

 

[pamak]

Oh but I have faced the essential problems that I outline. But you cannot see that and you do not desire to appreciate what I have done or what I do.

You see — that is the actual truth here. I am not deficient here, and I am not acting unethically. I am acting with a defined integrity . . . against numerous people who are, themselves, involved in intellectual coercion and other deviousness.

I always say: “Turn the lens of examination around”. This implies taking your eyes off your Favorite Enemies and focusing the lens of examination on yourself.

Again, my essential area of interest is The Culture Wars. So everything relates back to that, one way or the other.

Again, your area of interest is immaterial to me. I only care about your logic behind your attempt to support the lawmaker's original point about the good aspects of slavery.

Apparently, you are not interested in my counter points because you consistently choose to ignore the body of my post and focus on quoting a single sentence. Obviously, you are just using this thread as an excuse to write long posts about the culture wars in general without providing any reasonable support fo the specific things we debate here. And as I said before, the fact that the allies forced there narrative after WWII, and the fact that even anti-fascist intellectuals often challenge that narrative and even criticize the allies for getting away with war crimes (bombings in Dresden or atomic bomb) does not mean that the same critics are also arguing that the Holocaust has a "good aspect" or was less evil than what Nazi sympathizers want to admit.

​

 

[Tigerace117]

Over the last 5-6 years I have done a great deal of reading in order to get a handle on what is going on in the social and cultural world. My first areas of interest, to give it a label, was ‘the American culture wars’. The more that I researched and read, the more I understood the existence of cultural battles based out of opposing *worldviews*. That topic (worldview) is indeed a complex and difficult one because (as I often say) it involves metaphysics.

My view is that the more that one researches, and the wider one’s range of reading, the better one can see and visualize the essential nature of the conflicts. In my case when before (between the ages of 14-26 more or less) I read Left/Progressive-type materials — because I felt this was the righteous way to orient oneself — and this fit with a Latina identity. Well, this definitely changed when I began to research *the other side of the question*. So, researching that *other side* I felt no restriction in reading even the most difficult and *dangerous* thinkers of the Right. So my range of reading spans the Radical Left and includes the Radical Right. And this is why I think I can say that I have a fairly solid grasp of the dimension of the Culture Wars.

At this point, and knowing what I know (having read what I have read) it would be impossible for me to refer to the SPLC as a genuine source of arbitration, if you will, between the opposing poles of the Culture Wars. I could direct you to essays and articles that you could read which accurately reveal what the SPLC *really is* and why it cannot be relied on, but it sounds like you would not read them. It sounds as though your ideas are *fixed* and you have made up your mind.

I did my fair share of reading on the topic of the American Civil War. And the first thing that anyone would notice, and should notice, is that opinions and views of this conflict are fundamentally opposed. The way the War is seen, how it is justified or injustified, opens into a territory where the Culture Wars play out. (And this does touch on metaphysical categories which is a reference that many people won’t be able to understand, so I leave that there).

In the most simple terms, the Civil War is framed by the North through ’forced narratives’ that are political and ideological in nature and at there core. I do not think that you are capable of seeing this, based on what you often say. I do not think you want to entertain any view or idea that challenges your *preferred view*. But this is typical! And that is where *coerced ideology* and *intellectual coercion* enter into the picture. I try to reveal that this is a problematic area where truth and untruth are mixed, but here, among *zealots* it is veery difficult to communicate certain ideas.

It is the nature of zealotry to blind itself to all that contradicts that which produces zealousness. It is ‘the true-believer syndrome’ and, I have discovered, it is profoundly psychological because, as I say, a given person ‘weds’ themself to a specific structure-of-view and then integrates that view with their self. The two become blended and an attack on a given ‘belief’ is reacted against as an attack on their very self.

So here I make allusions to my own areas of interest. I assume that you can recognize how some of these ideas, and their problems, bear on the present issues.

You are free to employ labels like Neo-Confederate and Lost Cause if these serve your purposes, as I notice that they do. You seek and you need conceptual tools to *absolutely condemn* those you define as your *enemy* because this makes hating them, and opposing them, infinitely easier. This is a *syndrome* of our present, and if you cannot see this I doubt I will be able to convince you.

Anyone who thinks the SPLC isn’t a reliable source—especially someone pushing the freaking Abbeville Institute—-has no room to talk.

No amount of wailing about “forced narratives” can change the fact that the South chose to go to war to try and protect slavery.

Lost Cause lies will never be anything more than lies.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

Anyone who thinks the SPLC isn’t a reliable source ...

The SPLC is a very questionable source. An activist *front* with a whole range of ideological commitments, prejudices and biases. Sided with Left-Progressivism and in many noted ways operating to stifle speech it does not like. In short an activist organization

Good Heavens TigerAce! This is not evident to you?!?

 

[Alizia Tyler]

Apparently, you are not interested in my counter points because you consistently choose to ignore the body of my post.

There is no *body*. Just one assertion you manage sophistically.

 

[Tigerace117]

The SPLC is a very questionable source. An activist *front* with a whole range of ideological commitments, prejudices and biases. Sided with Left-Progressivism and in many noted ways operating to stifle speech it does not like. In short an activist organization

Good Heavens TigerAce! This is not evident to you?!?

Only in the minds of those to whom anyone to the left of Pinochet is a “commie”.

The SPLC was on the frontlines in the fight against Jim Crow and the southerners who tossed bombs into churches to try to stop African Americans from voting, and has continued to work for civil rights ever since.

I’m sure to someone who admires slavers as much as you do that’s terrifying, but in the real world they are one of the groups most aware of who spews vile Neo Confederate lies.

 

[Ren]

"A Louisiana state rep said earlier this week that schools shouldn’t teach “divisive concepts” but rather give students “the good, the bad, and the ugly” on various topics such as… slavery. Unfortunately, that was the example that immediately sprang to his mind in a recent hearing, and he quickly had to confirm it had no “good” parts.

Rep. Ray Garofolo, the chair of the Louisiana House Education Committee, made the comments during a committee hearing on his own bill that would ban any K-12 school or college that receives public funding from teaching “divisive concepts” such as the United States or Louisiana being “fundamentally, institutionally, or systemically racist or sexist.”

...During the same hearing, Rep. Gary Carter Jr., a Democrat, asked Garofolo point-blank if Louisiana “ever was” systematically racist or sexist. “From my perspective, I’m not a history teacher, so you can’t ask me a history question that I may not have that fact to,” Garofolo said."

Louisiana Lawmaker Forced to Clarify There Was No ‘Good’ in Slavery

Rep. Ray Garofolo was trying to explain his education bill, which is part of a larger trend against “critical race theory.”

www.vice.com

the interesting thing about this is that a state legislator does not know if Louisiana was ever systematically racist. And that he doesn't know, he says, because he isn't a history teacher. Yet, he would pass a bill prohibiting teachers from teaching such a thing.

The only potential "good" I can see coming out of slavery almost 200 years ago, is for all those who decided to stay in this country for what they feel would've been a better life than what the country of their ancestors could give them.

 

[uptower]

It brought them to America.

Oh cut it out. Slavery is a universal evil and in the case of many sections of African American society it has created and perpetuated a permanent underclass. The ancestors of millions black people today would have been better off at the time if left alone in their homelands, despite where their descendants have wound up.

I find it deeply ironic that the quarters today decrying undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from 'shithole countries' would still cheer on the 'benefits' of slavery. Says all we need to hear about their views on race.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

The SPLC was on the frontlines in the fight against Jim Crow and the southerners who tossed bombs into churches to try to stop African Americans from voting, and has continued to work for civil rights ever since.

I’m sure to someone who admires slavers as much as you do that’s terrifying, but in the real world they are one of the groups most aware of who spews vile Neo Confederate lies.

Some quotes. As with so many things the *real truth* tends to complicate our narratives:

From a book called Making Hate Pay:

Racial discrimination. Sexual harassment. Off-shore accounts. Inflated and biased attacks on “hate.” These are some of the many reasons Americans should mistrust the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Southern Poverty Law Center started with noble intentions and has done much good over the years, but a pernicious corruption has undermined the organization’s original mission and contributed to a climate of fear and hostility in America. Hotels, web platforms, and credit card companies have blacklisted law-abiding Americans because the SPLC disagrees with their political views. The SPLC’s false accusations have done concrete harm, costing the organization millions in lawsuits. A deranged man even attempted to commit mass murder, having been inspired by the SPLC’s rhetoric.

How did a civil rights group dedicated to saving the innocent from the death penalty become a pernicious threat to America’s free speech culture? How did an organization dedicated to fighting poverty wind up with millions in the Cayman Islands? How did a civil rights stalwart find itself accused of racism and sexism?

Making Hate Pay tells the inside story of how the SPLC yielded to many forms of corruption, and what it means for free speech in America today. It also explains why Corporate America, Big Tech, government, and the media are wrong to take the SPLC’s disingenuous tactics at face value, and the serious damage they cause by trusting this corrupt organization.

From the Lansing State Journal:

CHARLOTTE – The Southern Poverty Law Center named Charlotte's Christ the King Reformed Church as a white nationalist hate group in its annual hate and extremism report released Monday.

The report also noted the presence of the Proud Boys, a "general hate" group, in Lansing. Protestors with the yellow and black colors of the Proud Boys could be seen at multiple pro-Donald Trump rallies held at the Michigan Capitol.

In multiple posts on his blog, titled Iron Ink, McAtee frequently expresses racist, white nationalist, homophobic and transphobic views.

Note that when they use the term 'racist' they use it as many on this forum use it. Anyone with any sort of 'white identity'. Also note that the SPLC takes a posision that it is not proper or right to oppose homosexuality and transsexuality. It vilifies those who have these views and ideas and who express them and puts these people -- ideas and opinions it does not like -- on its Hate Watch List.

The SPLC is an activist organization with specific ideological positions it deems 'the right ones' and sullies those it does not like, those of its enemies.

Just like many people on this forum in fact of the zealous-activist sort.

“Basically, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a fraudulent operation,” said Stephen Bright, a Yale University law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which focuses on the death penalty, mass incarceration and other issues. “The mailings they send out make it seem like, ‘We need your help.’ And they have all these celebrities who sign off. Oh man, it’s sad. Because those people are being duped.”

Read more here: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article209568694.html#storylink=cpy

 

[Alizia Tyler]

From The City Journal:

A Demagogic Bully The Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes respectable political opponents as “hate groups”—and keeps its coffers bulging.

H.L. Mencken described the secret of successful demagoguery as “keep[ing] the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Mencken was referring to “practical politics,” but his insight is equally applicable to public relations and fundraising campaigns trafficking in extravagant claims. For the past 40 years, a self-styled watchdog group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has excelled in promoting such unwarranted alarm, with a politicized series of hobgoblins, in the process amassing a fortune from its credulous donors.

According to the SPLC, America is rife with dangerous “hate groups”: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, anti-government militia groups, radical-right terrorists, and many more. “We’re currently tracking more than 1,600 extremist groups operating across the country,” the SPLC’s website claims. Readers of SPLC’s press releases, reports, and—importantly—direct-mail solicitations would be justified in imagining an America teeming with smoldering churches and synagogues, cross burnings, storm troopers bearing swastikas, and even lynchings.

Reality is different. In fact, racial tolerance is at an all-time high, diversity is universally promoted as a civic virtue, and “hate crimes,” as defined and reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have declined over the past decade to fewer than 6,000 incidents a year, a modest number in a country with 326 million people. The principal threats of radical extremism in the United States today are jihadist attacks (radical Islam), militant anti-police rioters (such as Black Lives Matter), and masked Antifa (so-called “anti-fascist”) mobs shutting down free speech on college campuses and violently protesting the election of President Donald J. Trump, while the greatest perpetrators of violence in America are criminal street gangs—including the deadly MS-13—that have turned some of our inner cities into war zones.

The point is that the SPLC is a peculiar organization, with peculiar activist tendencies. These can be located, described and seen -- fairly and reasonably.

What you do TigerAce is similar to what they do: You discern something in what I say which you do not like. It odes not matter to you if, in fact, what I say is not offensive, not hateful, but rather that it questions the ethics of your own too-rigid position.

But in your case all you need do is attach one of your all-purpose labels to me, or the the scholars of the Abbeville Insitutue, and really anyone, and the label does your work for you.

You have all sorts of self-applied techniques that keep you in a space of mind-closedness and you believe, sincerely, that this is the right way to be.

 

[Tigerace117]

Some quotes. As with so many things the *real truth* tends to complicate our narratives:

From a book called Making Hate Pay:

From the Lansing State Journal:

Note that when they use the term 'racist' they use it as many on this forum use it. Anyone with any sort of 'white identity'. Also note that the SPLC takes a posision that it is not proper or right to oppose homosexuality and transsexuality. It vilifies those who have these views and ideas and who express them and puts these people -- ideas and opinions it does not like -- on its Hate Watch List.

The SPLC is an activist organization with specific ideological positions it deems 'the right ones' and sullies those it does not like, those of its enemies.

Just like many people on this forum in fact of the zealous-activist sort.

The Proud Boys are literally a terrorist group in Canada. When you are bad enough that CANADA has had enough, then you know what kind of scum you are.

“Making Hate Pay” is written by Tyler O’Neil. O’Neil works for the conservative outlet PJ Media and was busted for claiming that a Muslim community group working with the NYPD was planning to “enforcing sharia law”. In other words, he’s a typical conservative fear monger. The source has a long history of making similarly “dubious”(read— lying) claims.

PJ Media - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And no, it isn’t right to “oppose” something that people have no control over, such as their sexual orientation. Nobody wakes up and goes, “gee, today I think I’ll be gay”.

So your attempt to smear them because you are upset they stand up for civil rights, as usual....is a flop.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

So your attempt to smear them because you are upset they stand up for civil rights, as usual....is a flop.

No, I am attempting to locate them and point to the fact that they are an activist organization with a specific ideological agenda. You embellish what you *hear* me saying. You take what I am saying in such a way that it is an affront to what looks to me to be *identity*. As I say you-plural wed yourselves to specific, activist views and make them a feature of the self. If I even minimally suggest that another view is a) possible, b) needed, or c) necessary . . .

. . . you as a group literally have freakouts. The cry goes out. It's war! The Enemy has appeared!

There is a range of opinions and views about the SPLC and these views reflect the American culture wars. I don't have reason or need to challenge your assertions about PJ Media because there are dozens of articles about the corruption identified in the SPLC. The point: there are opposing perspectives and opposing ways to accurately, not unfairly, assess what the SPLC has become and what it now does.

All of this fits into a picture of the sort of social and culture -- and idea -- war going on in the US.

But you will have none of it. You close your mind and your intellect to the possibility.

It does not matter how you have decided to assess those who oppose homosexuality, gay marraige or anything else. The point it that there is a group that sets itself up as the arbiter and assigns the label Hate Group -- and this has various levels of consequence.

 

[Tigerace117]

No, I am attempting to locate them and point to the fact that they are an activist organization with a specific ideological agenda. You embellish what you *hear* me saying. You take what I am saying in such a way that it is an affront to what looks to me to be *identity*. As I say you-plural wed yourselves to specific, activist views and make them a feature of the self. If I even minimally suggest that another view is a) possible, b) needed, or c) necessary . . .

. . . you as a group literally have freakouts. The cry goes out. It's war! The Enemy has appeared!

There is a range of opinions and views about the SPLC and these views reflect the American culture wars. I don't have reason or need to challenge your assertions about PJ Media because there are dozens of articles about the corruption identified in the SPLC. The point: there are opposing perspectives and opposing ways to accurately, not unfairly, assess what the SPLC has become and what it now does.

All of this fits into a picture of the sort of social and culture -- and idea -- war going on in the US.

But you will have none of it. You close your mind and your intellect to the possibility.

It does not matter how you have decided to assess those who oppose homosexuality, gay marraige or anything else. The point it that there is a group that sets itself up as the arbiter and assigns the label Hate Group -- and this has various levels of consequence.

You are attempting to smear them because you are upset they continue to fight for civil rights and humiliated your heroes by helping bring Jim Crow crashing down. Unfortunately for you, the “sources” you used turned out to be a bad joke.

Yawn. Yet more sobbing from you over people calling you out for having vile views. I hate to break it to you but most Americans don’t see “dozens or hundreds” of benefits to slavery or think that it was a “tremendous evil” that the slavers’ revolt was crushed.

There are many conservatives, like you, who seek to smear those fighting for civil rights. Everyone knows that.

Perhaps if groups don’t want to be designated hate groups they should try, you know, not spewing vile hatred at Americans over things they can’t control.

 

[jpn]

Explaining the zealousness of modern Left-Progressive types, especially when Left-Progressivism encountered Critical Theory, is a bit of an endeavor. It can be done carefully and fairly.

You have of course missed the core point I brought out in Post # 7.

You didn't respond to my post #511, which responded to your post #504.

 

[jpn]

Explaining the zealousness of modern Left-Progressive types, especially when Left-Progressivism encountered Critical Theory, is a bit of an endeavor. It can be done carefully and fairly.

You have of course missed the core point I brought out in Post # 7.

Here, let me jog your memory. You wrote:

Alizia Tyler said:
Start by telling me (if you wish to that is) what is ethically and morally wrong with what I asserted in (now nationally famous and rapidly gaining international notoriety) in Post Number 7 on this thread.

I responded:

​

Okay.​

​

Some things are ethically/morally wrong. Like killing someone. Stealing from someone. Enslaving someone.​

​

It follows that defending these actions is also wrong. It aids and abets the immoral behavior.​

​

Claiming that you're merely exercising your intellectual freedom is just a copout.​

​

(On a personal note, you write like an early college student, eager to impress your professor with verbosity in leu of cogent arguments. It may have worked in high school; it's less likely to work in college. My advice is to use fewer words, and make your arguments more clear.)​

Waiting...

 

[Alizia Tyler]

Some things are ethically/morally wrong. Like killing someone. Stealing from someone. Enslaving someone.

It follows that defending these actions is also wrong. It aids and abets the immoral behavior.

Claiming that you're merely exercising your intellectual freedom is just a copout.

Your post got by me. So many hot-heads to respond to . . .

I did not and am not *defending* either murder, theft or slavery. The reason you choose to think this is because you wish to employ underhanded tactics to inhibit intellectual freedom.

I say that 'good things' resulted from it, and here I am only using the conventional terms that were used in the OP. I would not use the word 'good' myself because it is too binary.

I further developed the more important idea (in Post 7) about intellectual coercion and the way it is used today.

I am definitely exercising 'intellectual freedom' and I will use it freely and where needed. So should you and everyone.

(Y no me importa un culo de rata lo que piensas de mi manera de escribir.)

 

[jpn]

Your post got by me. So many hot-heads to respond to . . .

I did not and am not *defending* either murder, theft or slavery. The reason you choose to think this is because you wish to employ underhanded tactics to inhibit intellectual freedom.

I say that 'good things' resulted from it, and here I am only using the conventional terms that were used in the OP. I would not use the word 'good' myself because it is too binary.

I further developed the more important idea (in Post 7) about intellectual coercion and the way it is used today.

I am definitely exercising 'intellectual freedom' and I will use it freely and where needed. So should you and everyone.

(Y no me importa un culo de rata lo que piensas de mi manera de escribir.)

So is denouncing the Holocaust "intellectual coercion"?

Votre écriture craint de toute façon.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

So is denouncing the Holocaust "intellectual coercion"?

The act of *Denouncing the Holocaust* has become an absurdly strange ritual -- or what would you call it? It has replaced some sort of abjuration of the devil, don't you think?

I got this phrase from Jonathan Bowden: ontological malevolence as a way to describe what you are abjuring and demanding that I abjure with you, and to grasp the function of these Holocaust Memorial monuments, those that have been constructed in certain cities of America (that fought against Nazi Germany!) and the way that the Holocaust is used by -- well by people like you! There is something really perverse in the way this is used.

I reject it absolutely! With no hesitation.

So yes, very much, and you are asking me to *Denounce the Holocaust* because you seek to assert over me your 'moral authority'. You are playing not only a ridiculous game but a profoundly unethical game. You evoke contempt. You twist ethics and you violate morals.

I use the term 'game' (ludic) frequently and here I could say you ask me to rehearse a ritual in which you demand that I *publicly declare* that the Holocaust was (fill in the blank). This is game.

You will not be able to make any honest response here, so as not to lose face, but I suggest that you look into this absurdity.

 

[jpn]

The act of *Denouncing the Holocaust* has become an absurdly strange ritual -- or what would you call it? It has replaced some sort of abjuration of the devil, don't you think?

I got this phrase from Jonathan Bowden: ontological malevolence as a way to describe what you are abjuring and demanding that I abjure with you, and to grasp the function of these Holocaust Memorial monuments, those that have been constructed in certain cities of America (that fought against Nazi Germany!) and the way that the Holocaust is used by -- well by people like you! There is something really perverse in the way this is used.

I reject it absolutely! With no hesitation.

So yes, very much, and you are asking me to *Denounce the Holocaust* because you seek to assert over me your 'moral authority'. You are playing not only a ridiculous game but a profoundly unethical game. You evoke contempt. You twist ethics and you violate morals.

I use the term 'game' (ludic) frequently and here I could say you ask me to rehearse a ritual in which you demand that I *publicly declare* that the Holocaust was (fill in the blank). This is game.

You will not be able to make any honest response here, so as not to lose face, but I suggest that you look into this absurdity.

So your answer to my very straight-forward question is, "Yes, very much."

Great. Glad we agree on that.

Why can't you extend the same "moral authority" we both employ in denouncing the Holocaust to unequivocally denouncing slavery as practiced by the South?

 

[Master Debator]

I did not and am not *defending* either murder, theft or slavery. The reason you choose to think this is because you wish to employ underhanded tactics to inhibit intellectual freedom.

When you say things like slave states have a right to exist, then you are absolutely defending slavery.

 

[Master Debator]

So yes, very much, and you are asking me to *Denounce the Holocaust* because you seek to assert over me your 'moral authority'. You are playing not only a ridiculous game but a profoundly unethical game. You evoke contempt. You twist ethics and you violate morals.

I use the term 'game' (ludic) frequently and here I could say you ask me to rehearse a ritual in which you demand that I *publicly declare* that the Holocaust was (fill in the blank). This is game.

No, it's really people just trying to get a handle on your moral values, trying to understand the framework from which you're working with.

 

[jpn]

You will not be able to make any honest response here, so as not to lose face, but I suggest that you look into this absurdity.

You're quick to claim the "honesty" high ground. Isn't this the same as when you accuse me of employing "moral authority" over you? You're claiming that you're being honest and I'm not. How unethical of you.

I would venture to guess that you were raised in an environment in which the Confederacy was viewed as a victim. You have been surrounded by statues heralding the great champions of the South's freedom to continue with their "peculiar institution" as they saw fit and outsiders had no business pushing their morality on you. You've been steeped in excuses and rationales defending the former Southern way of life. So it's easy for you to denounce the Holocaust, but doing the same to Southern slavery sticks in your throat.

Many Germans right after WWII felt exactly the same about the Nazis (a sentiment that's making a comeback in some corners of the country). They felt that Hitler was a great leader who made some tragic mistakes. They felt that "purifying" their "race" was a noble pursuit. And so on.

So when you write: "Say what you want about the *means* but the actual fact remains: those of African descent owe their existence to what was given to them through their process of bondage," we can hear the goose-stepping in the background.

It's all so very human. Alas.

 

[Alizia Tyler]

So your answer to my very straight-forward question is, "Yes, very much."

Huar huar huar! Straightforward?!?

I stick with my response, not your paraphrase of it.

 

[jpn]

Huar huar huar! Straightforward?!?

I stick with my response, not your paraphrase of it.

I didn't paraphrase your response, I quoted it.

Pretty lame attempt at dodging my post. You are nowhere near the towering intellectual you seem to think you are.

 

[Parrish]

The Seventeenth Century Background, Basil Willey
Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture & Society, Marcel Detienne
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn
What Caused the Civil War? Ed Ayers
Agitprop in America, John McElroy
The Philosophy of Communism, Charles McFadden
The End of White Christian America, Robert Jones
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Christian Zionism, Stephen Sizer
A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of It’s Members and Leaders, George Shaw
One Hundred Percent American, Thomas Pegram
A Culture of Conspiracy, Michael Barkunin
Religion and the Racist Right, Michael Barekunin
The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Richard Hofstadter
North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era, Susan-Mary Grant
Fancy & Imagination, RL Brett
The Dispossessed Majority, Wilmot Robinson
Rightwing Critics of American Conservatism, George Hawley
The Re-Discovery of America, Waldo Frank
The Problem of Democracy, Alain de Benoist
Beyond Human Rights, Defending Freedoms, Alain de Benoist
Homo Amereicanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, Tomislav Sunic

Shall I continue? There are 30 more titles I might list.

But my question to you is: Now what? You asked for some sources — these are what is on my bookshelf next to my desk — but what does this mean to you? What does reading mean to you? On what basis have you built your view of the present?

What have you read and what are you reading?

Ahh. Got it @Alizia Tyler .