Deleted Comments: Democrats Did The KKK, So Wonkette's The REAL Racist

We sure did get a Passel o' Stupid in reply to our piece suggesting that Memphis should get rid of its big Nathan Bedford Forrest statue (the public one, not the crazy-ass Nashville abominationabove, which is on private land), seeing as how the guy was a vicious racist and war criminal. Except really, we mostly just got the same stupid comment, repeated with endless variations, and it looked a little something like these examples from "Angyl Ricardi," who knows the real source of racism:

• I just read the article quickly ... did I miss the word DEMOCRAT by the name Nathan Bedford Forrest? maybe it was after the words KKK founder? Hmm, I wonder why they left out that he was a DEMOCRAT, and that the confederate flag is the flag of the democrat party? I personally don't believe every person that flies that flag is a racist - some honor other history of it, but it was the democrat party that flew that flag at every one of THIER KKK meetings, so why not mention that with every article on this subject?

• All these facts and you conveniently forgot to add that he was a member of the DEMOCRAT PARTY? you forgot to add that that flag was flown at every KKK meeting held by DEMOCRATS and ONLY DEMOCRATS to keep blacks from voting republican, to keep blacks from owning guns.

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And that is all the history anyone needs to know, of course, because absolutely nothing changed in American politics after 1964.

There were some variations on the theme, like this, from "simontemplar" (go figure -- "The Saint" was a Confederate apologist?):

Actually rename the Democratic Party and remove every vestige, symbol, and reference to it as IT WAS THE PARTY OF TRAITORS THAT CONDUCTED THE CIVIL WAR, FOUGHT INTEGRATION, ATTEMPTED TO STOP THE CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION, AND TRIED TO STOP THE INTEGRATION OF THE ARMY. IN fact, every democrat president starting with racist Woodrow Wilson would be proper.

Also too from "ChuckTX," who likes the meme so much that he keeps coming back with new accounts after we ban him, but who is also so proud of his thoughts that he wants credit -- so the new accounts have been "chucktx01," and so on:

• Dig up all those racist kkk founders and the members of the political party of which they belong too!!!Oops, they were Democrats ...

• Tear down any member of the political party the kkk was founded with.Democrats

• You dipstick, they are still democrats.They use welfare for slavery now.

And from "samshile":

Wow, this the lamest revisionist history I have read to date. Republicans have nothing to do with the flag or Forrest. Clearly. they are not defending Democrat behavior.

You are all over the map with your fallacious and weak conflations. What a mess of a post.

All historical institutional racism belongs to Democrats and it is their history.

When Indiana began the 2nd KKK rise, it was 1915 and followed Democrat Woodrow Wilson and his Jim Crow laws. Wilson stirred up segregation all over again [...]

A calculation of 26 major civil rights votes from 1933 through the 1960's civil rights era shows that Republicans favored civil rights in approximately 96% of the votes, whereas the Democrats opposed them in 80% of the votes! These facts are often intentionally overlooked by the left wing Democrats for obvious reasons. In some cases, the Democrats have told flat out lies about their shameful record during the civil rights movement. The anti-civil rights politians were almost exclusively Democrats and many were Liberal. Contrary to liberal folklore, the Democratic segregationists were not all Southern -- and they were certainly not conservative. They were dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats on all the litmus-test issues of their day. They voted left wing FDR New Deal policies, dumbass.

Funny, and then after the 1960s, history stopped. And yet we feel like there's still a name that hasn't been mentioned yet. Now who could it be...? Happily, "Rayne" remembered:

Is Virginia planning to dig up Robert Byrd, Grand Kleagle and Klan Recruiter, too?

That would be a weird thing for Virginia to do, seeing as how Sen. Byrd was from West Virginia! "Kyle Bradelle" remembered him and some other Southern Democrats too:

You can expunge all the history you want, but it still exists. Still you and your ilk serve a purpose--three weeks ago 75% of your target audience had never heard of Nathan Bedford Forrest beyond some obscure reference in the Forrest Gump movie.

But you may have a point. What other old racists shall we dig up? Al Gore Sr? George Wallace? Robert Bryd? Robert Byrd was a KKK Grand Dragon, but he served in Congress for over 50 years.

Why, yes he was! And he apologized, repeatedly, and in fact spent the second half of that Senate career trying to make amends. He was appropriately ashamed of his past, as he acknowledged in a 1993 CNN interview with Bernard Shaw:

Q: What has been your biggest mistake and your biggest success?

A: Well, it's easy to state what has been my biggest mistake. The greatest mistake I ever made was joining the Ku Klux Klan. And I've said that many times. But one cannot erase what he has done. He can only change his ways and his thoughts. That was an albatross around my neck that I will always wear. You will read it in my obituary that I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

That's a bit different from the approach taken by Strom Thurmond, who ran for president as a segregationist Dixecrat, switched to the Republican party in 1964 and never renounced or apologized for supporting segregation.

Reminded by another commenter of Byrd's renunciation of the Klan (and his high approval rating by the NAACP), Kyle Bradelle replied,

Robert Byrd renounced his KKK affiliations. That's your argument? So did Forrest. Let the dead bury the dead. The NAACP has worked against black folks interests for a generation and have completely excused that whack job Rachel Dolezal, so their credibility is nil.

We looked into that assertion, and it does seem that Forrest apparently did renounce the Klan, and later rejected his earlier racist views. Of course, these details aren't what Forrest's neo-Confederate fans tend to lionize him for, and as the Nashville Tennessean says, "many historians argue those actions are too little too late for the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader." So hey, we learned a thing about Nathan Bedford Forrest, but we're not inclined to suggest that Memphis simply rename his statue and burial site as a Civil Rights shrine.

Mind you, we also learned that other figures from American history did bad things, so it would be wrong to move Forrest's bones to a private cemetery and take down his statue. "Simontemplar" had thoughts on this, too:

Why stop there comrade? How about General Custer? He killed a lot of Indians, what about Washington, he owned salves? Maybe we should rename Carnegie Hall, he was a robber baron. In fact get rid of the Lincoln statue, he was a racist most of his life and said a half dozen times that the war was not about slavery and if he could he would settle the conflict and not free the slaves. Then there is that Henry Ford, dig him up, he gave tons of cash and support to the Nazi's.

Huh. Well, in order: Custer was a bastard, and in fact shouldn't be honored. Washington and Lincoln's complicated histories should absolutely be taught in full -- but whenever teachers try to suggest that great heroes of American history were often seriously flawed, conservatives call them a bunch of America-hating commies and pass laws requiring that history focus on why America's heroes were wonderful. Andrew Carnegie built the thing, so he gets naming rights, we suppose, and Henry Ford was indeed an anti-Semite -- and honest history should acknowledge industrialists' flaws, not simplistically praise them as geniuses of capitalism.

Also, we had no idea that Washington was so controversial for his use of ointments.

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We got a nice slippery slope fable from "dwstick" (we assume his first name is "Dip"):

After we dig up the Forrests and bury them elsewhere, let's all march on down to the local Public Library. There's bound to be some books there that offend us. We can have ourselves a good old-fashioned book-burning! Then on to the local museum. There's got to be a painting or statue that offends somebody that we can burn, too!

Who's with me?!

Of course, dwstick has another thought about why the Forrest statue must stay: because there are other problems that exist, and they won't be solved by doing this one thing:

If digging up the Forrests' bodies and burying them elsewhere will help rid Memphis of all it's past and current problems with racial discrimination, crime, poverty, bad schools, drugs, high unemployment, etc, I offer a counter-proposal:

In my pocket, I have some magic beans that I will gladly sell to the city of Memphis. Plant those beans throughout the city, and all the problems mentioned above currently affecting the city will magically disappear, just like removing the bodies will!

And I will sell them to you for less than it will cost to exhume and rebury those bodies!

Excellent rebuttal! Now explain to us why we must not enforce leash laws since that does nothing to reduce heroin use.

"Kurt Cook" had these similarly well-thought-out arguments in favor of keeping the statue where it is:

• Do you know which state it was that was the LAST to outlaw slavery?

  New Jersey- a Union state! and they only outlawed it with the passage of the 13th amendment that outlawed slavery in ALL states. READ A BOOK!

• The South was not fighting to own slaves, you moron, less than 3% of them actually did! the south was fighting for independence, and the North didn't give a shit about slaves -- they were fighting to keep the South part of the country. READ A BOOK!

That's pretty good advice about reading a book, though. It sure beats reading the thoughts of Confederate apologists.

From "Amerikan Citizen," we had this terrific insight into how to solve All the Problems Ever:

Every day, White people in urban areas all over this country have to see Blacks. Given that this is a reminder of the racist behavior of Blacks for the last hundred years, and of the anti-White crimes committed by them on a daily basis, I believe we should dig up the rotting remains of Black communities across the land, and give them what many Black activists have demanded for years-a Black Homeland, consisting of the following; Mississippi, Alabama, & Georgia.

Let all who would live as Radical-Blacks move there, and remove all vestiges of the history of the area. They can create their own Utopia, or they can go the way of Detroit and Gary, two cities that famously have no Confederate gravesites or heritage, have been governed by Blacks for decades, yet, somehow, have still sunken to the status of Third-World shitholes.

In the meantime, it only makes sense to form an all-White ethnic Homeland, as well. Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, the Virginias, Kentucky, and any other State that votes to join.

The remainder of the country could be an open-zone, free for anyone who wishes to live there to do so.

Save the bloodshed of another Civil War, let’s just do this and get it over with.

Egad -- having to see black people is certainly upsetting. But we really like your "ethnic homelands" concept, which is just as original today as it was in 1968. Would the relocated black people be required to wear dashikis?

Amerikan Citizen was joined on the Group W bench by "Jimmy Lemley," who apparently has gotten really good at avoiding language filters on other websites. See if you can guess what his REAL message is!

• I bet when you puzzys went to school the ni99ers didn't have to take your lunch money you just gave it to them

• malicious murdering asshole town the more the ni99ers kill each other the better

Also too, there was "Proudly Unaffiliated," who had this warning, for after the South Rises Again, we guess:

Keep destroying our heritage. We are taking note of who is doing this. And one day, we will destroy your's as well.

Finally, a thought on a different post but the same basic topic, from one "Martin Lewis," whose first name hasn't spoken to his last name for 20 years:

If the South would have won we wouldn't have the federal government forcing States to recognize same sex marriages.

And darned if we'd ever have to worry about relocating any statue honoring Paul Lynde, either. READ A BOOK!