Albion W. Tourgee: The ideological antecedents of Rush Limbaugh

[Ladyhawk]

After the Civil War, a Union officer named Albion Tourgee moved to the South to help with Reconstruction. I first read his semi-autobiographical novel, A Fool's Errand, twenty years ago when I was still a Republican and fundamentalist Christian. I'm sure it was one of the many tomes that ultimately convinced me I was in error.

I am in the process of re-reading it now. I'm blown away by Tourgee's understanding of the problems of the South and his compassion for the people of the South (both recent slaveholders and the recently freed). I'm especially flabbergasted at how similar today's problems are to those that existed in the late 1800's.

Ever wonder where Rush's ilk came from? Here's a snippet from Tourgee's book:

As soon as the reconstruction period had passed, this caution relaxed. More and more bitter, more and more loathsome, became the mass of Southern journalism. Defiant hostility, bitter animosity, unrestricted libertinism in the assaults of private character, poured over the columns of the Southern press like froth upon the jaws of a rabid cur.

Whatever or whoever was of the North or from the North was the subject of ridicule, denunciation, and immeasurable malignity of vituperation. Whoever had aided, assisted, or assented to the process of reconstruction, became a target for infamous assault. Rank, station, purity of life, uprightness of character, religious connection, age, sex, were no safeguard from these assaults.

The accumulated malignity of the years of quietude and suppression burst its bounds, and poured over the whole country a disgusting flood of hideous, horrible, improbable, and baseless accusation and rabid vituperation. Men of the fairest lives were covered over with unutterable infamy; women of the highest purity were accused of unnamable enormities; and even children of tender years were branded with ineffaceable marks of shame.

The previous training which the press of the South had received in the art of vilification, under the régime of slavery, became now of infinite service in this verbal crusade. The mass of their readers had long been accustomed to believe any thing absurd and horrible in regard to the North. To them it was already the land of thieves, adulterers, infidels, and cheats. There might be good men there; but they were counted rarer than in Sodom.

I seldom post here anymore, but I may make a few more posts based on Tourgee's observations following the Civil War.

Before the flame wars start, I am NOT trashing the South. Though he loathed the violence of the South, Tourgee was not trashing the South. As the book progresses, he gains an understanding of the South the Republicans of the time did not possess. (Republicans then = Democrats now.) The Republicans, in not recognizing the culture of the South, totally screwed up Reconstruction. There's enough blame for everyone.

You can read the entire book here: A Fool's Errand by Albion W. Tourgee.

[barbtries]

1. thank you for sharing Ladyhawk

i imagine this type of crap has been around since letters. it's a damn shame how much currency it gets these days.

[Ladyhawk]

2. The right doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of behavior,

but the most recent outbreak started with them.

Tourgee also notes that the South was more than willing to use these tactics while Northerners wanted to compromise and just be friends: another cultural rift.

Now that we've moved all over the country, "Southern" and "Northern" views live side by side, but we are no closer to understanding one another.

[Warpy]

4. I keep pointing out why Jesse Helms enjoyed such a long career

People in NC are as sensible as anyone else in the country and few actually shared his politics but they recognized that his antics would royally piss off all those pointy headed college boys from New York City who were always telling them how to live, or so they thought.

Southern culture has a blind spot when it comes to the north, too, and prefer antagonizing people outside the region to working with them in order to better the country.

Don't expect insane politicians to be defeated down south until and unless the cultural blindness on both sides is addressed. It's just not going to happen.

[Ladyhawk]

6. I am a daughter of both cultures.

My family is from a region of Missouri that espouses Southern values. I grew up with Southern values, went to a Southern Baptist Church...all here in the Northern Californian foothills.

I remember lots of racist remarks from my family. My grandfather called my slingshot a "nigger flipper."

My mother thought it was a sin for races to intermarry. "Be ye not unequally yoked," she quoted. When I pointed out that the entire verse was "Be ye not unequally yoked WITH UNBELIEVERS," she stopped with that little bit of racist nonsense. Of course, now that I am an atheist, that little verse has come back to haunt me.

I went to college and bucked Liberal views through all four years. My professors were patient with me and I was always friendly with them. In fact, I found I had more in common with the professors than I did with my classmates.

During college and after, those pesky little pieces of reality slowly seeped into my religion- and right-wing-addled brain. I now consider myself a Liberal and an atheist.

During my childhood, I was taught black-and-white absolutism. Now, even though I know better, it makes my brain hurt. Can my mother be a bigot and still a good person in many ways? Yes. Just that simple fact makes my head feel as if it will split in two. Sometimes I feel I am two people. Literally. I've suffered bouts of depersonalization.

My family's complete unwillingness to compromise makes it hard to find a place of acceptance, even though I fully recognize they are human and I am human and all of us are horribly flawed. Something is missing. Maybe no one really accepts anyone else for who they are.

[izquierdista]

3. Culture of the South

I've lived in the South and also spent some time in Germany. Although Berlin in 1945 was in about the same shape as Richmond in 1865, the Germans decided to prevent a possible resurgence of right wing thinking, not just blame their collapse on the enemy. Every country that has been run into the ground by right wingers gets an opportunity after such a catharsis to outlaw that kind of behavior and advance. If they recognize racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious fanaticism for what they are and take steps to outlaw them, they advance. If they don't, the rest of the world advances without them.

[Ladyhawk]

5. Learning from mistakes...

The United States isn't very good at this.

It's amazing how many movies, documentaries, video games, etc. vilify Nazi Germany. Even today's Germans vilify Nazi Germany. Lately I've been playing a campy--but highly addictive--game called "Nazi Zombies."

How come there are no games entitled "Republican Zombies" or "American Zombies"? I'm sure people in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq and many other places would enjoy such games...if only the pain wasn't so recent. Also, you kind of need electricity and at least a little disposable income. I'm not trying to be snarky. We've pretty much devastated some of these regions. Did we ever get the power back on in Iraq?

Granted, I don't think we've caused destruction or murder at nearly the same level as Nazi Germany, but we haven't learned from our mistakes, either.

[MisterP]

7. Slave Power had very strong echoes:

they threatened secession in the 1830s, imposed a gag rule, prevented Abolitionist literature from being mailed in the South, enlisted science, and burned down Kansas; it wasn't really fear of modernization, but sheer brattiness and authoritarianism

when Sen. Sumnter was almost killed, the Richmond Enquirer wrote that "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate" who "have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission."

now, strictly speaking, the GOP's Southern Strategy isn't a direct descendant of Slave Power, but there is a strain of authoritarianism separate from--and even antithetical to--capitalism's ideologies, like its pet, right-libertarianism; conservatives employ integralism, authoritarianism, and neoliberalism/Randism

[HillbillyBob]

10. I do not advocate(hell Its REPUGNANT), but to extend understanding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dixon,_Jr.

He wrote about the kkk as if they were the good guys.

Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Some of the stuff (lies) he wrote actually can still be heard today.
Like the nonsense that black men wanted nothing more than to rape white women.

Another thing I think all should read is the story of Rosewood Florida.
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=L1Kddhtbm22gwB1ZPPywlnpPLZBpq7DsTWdSwLzMDNfZ9TFGgZDQ!1741084175!1888687908?docId=5000376080

"A violent racial disturbance took place in Rosewood, Florida during the first week of January 1923 that destroyed the community. Two white men and several blacks were killed and there was extensive property damage. This episode created headline stories in Florida papers and the national--especially black--press. Yet interest declined, and soon the incident faded into obscurity, disappearing even as a footnote. Interest was renewed in 1982 as the result of the work of Gary Moore, an investigative reporter with the St. Petersburg Times, and a decision by the descendants and surviving residents of Rosewood to publicly tell their story. The Florida legislature took up the Rosewood incident in 1994 and passed a bill to compensate the Rosewood victims for loss of property as a result of the state's failure to prosecute the parties responsible.
The Rosewood bill was the nation's first compensation bill for African Americans who had suffered from past racial injustices. The act was based, in part, on the results of a study by a team of historians commissioned by the Florida House to provide an objective account of the incident. The author of this article was one of the participating historians.(1)

In examining racial violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars have attributed such incidents to a variety of factors, including political instability, sexual fear, religious fundamentalism, class conflict, economic competition, and hot weather. Such a multitude of explanations and theories makes it difficult "
Snip

I think we should all read and learn more so that when we are tempted to act on bigotry we will or should stop and think about what we are doing and thinking.

[kelly1mm]

12. Thanks for posting the link to Dixon. Interesting that Birth of a Nation

was based on his writings. I have heard the proposition that black men wanted nothing more than to rape white women by (mainly) older relatives. However, I do think that the statistics for rape based on race of the perpetrator and the race of the victim do show that black men are much more likely to rape white women than white men are to rape black women. Any thoughts on what are the underlying factors for this?I will look for a recent link to back up my recollection.

[JohnnyLib2]

8. Thank you; that's now a must-read for me.

I "married in" to the deep south (MS) after a childhood in the west and have been in KY for many years. Encountering breakthrough moments of "rabid vituperation (his term) still shocks me. I hope you do post more on this.

[Ladyhawk]

9. Thanks. There is another thread here:

Albion W. Tourgee: the beginnings of Democratic timidity

[Ladyhawk]

11. Kicking this because I think it's interesting as hell. ;) nt