Special Interests and Pressure Groups Team Up Against the Confederacy

Last month, the Hillsborough County Commission voted 4-3 against destroying a 106-year-old Confederate monument, “Memoria In Aeterna” (Latin for “In Eternal Memory”), outside of the county courthouse in downtown Tampa. On February 8th, 1911, just over 50 years after Florida seceded from the Union, over 5,000 people attended the dedication of the monument. After unveiling a monument featuring statues of two Confederate soldiers – one marching northward to war, the other returning southward to defeat, a tower pointing to the heavens between them, and a poem etched into the pedestal – the speakers at the dedication “paid tribute to the Confederate soldiers who had marched to defend the Old South then returned to build the New South from its ashes,” as well as “praised the generals who led them and the women who supported the cause from home.” According to Mayor D.B. McKay, the monument would “stand forever as a testimonial of our undying love for the cause that we of the South believe was right, and of our pride in the substantial achievements of the hosts who through those terrible years made records on land and sea unparalleled in the history of the world.”

Instead of destroying the monument, however, the HCC recommended painting a mural behind it which celebrates the county’s diversity and funding anti-racist education initiatives.

Two years ago, the HCC voted 7-0 to remove the Third National Flag from the county center (across the street from the courthouse), where it had been displayed along with the Spanish, French, British, and U.S. flags (all flags which have flown over Florida at one point). In 2007, the HCC ceased honoring Southern Heritage Month (of course, Hispanic Heritage Month is still honored). In 1997, the Confederate flag was removed from the county seal.

Commissioner Les Miller (a self-advertised descendant of slaves) was the first to raise the issue, and although initially defeated, plans to raise the issue again at the next meeting. This time, however, the same old pressure groups are teaming up with rich and powerful special interests – sportsball, to be specific. The Tampa Bay Rays and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, responding to inquiries from the Tampa Bay Times, both issued public statements endorsing the destruction of the monument:

Rays: “We understand and believe that these decisions belong in the hands of elected officials. At the same time, we are supportive of its removal from the courthouse.”

Bucs: “We support the removal of the Confederate memorial. We do not believe it is a true and accurate depiction of the values that make Tampa such a great, progressive city.”

The Tampa Bay Lightning, also responding to the Times, declined to take a side. “We believe this important decision should rest with the county commissioners that have been elected to represent us and our county,” replied the Lightning. “We trust these officials to carefully study all considerations necessary as they make their decisions, trusting them to govern Hillsborough County in the best interest of all its people.”

For what it is worth, the Rays are owned by (((Stuart Sternberg))), the Bucs by (((Bryan Glazer))) and (((Joel Glazer))), and the Bolts by (((Jeffrey Vinik))), none of whom even live in Tampa.

It is disgusting that a billion-dollar football team named after “buccaneers” is throwing its weight against a lonely old statue, tucked away in a corner outside the county courthouse, which was raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor the Confederate veterans of the community.  It is embarrassing that the Muggers of the Caribbean are a politically acceptable symbol of Tampa Bay’s heritage and identity (the city also hosts an annual celebration of the birthday of thief, raper, and murderer Jose Gaspar), but that our forefathers, who sweated, bled, and died for the honor and independence of their country, are so shameful that all physical traces of them must be destroyed.

The endorsement of the Rays may prove persuasive to commissioners who voted against destroying the monument. In 1998, the city of Saint Petersburg, located across the bay in neighboring Pinellas County, built a stadium for the Rays, which so far has cost $323 million. When the city refused to built yet another $450-million stadium, however, the Rays blamed their worst-in-the-league attendance on their location and have been trying to relocate to Tampa, where taxpayers will presumably fund yet another stadium. Tampa politicians, hungry for tax revenue, are eager to appease the whims of sportsball – one in particular, Ken Hagan, the HCC’s biggest booster for relocating the Rays, who originally voted against destroying the monument, is now signaling that he may switch his vote.

It is outrageous that a failing baseball team is, in effect, bribing a city government to sell out its history. Local liberal columnist Sue Carlton (someone who might be expected to oppose money in politics) actually wished for this turn of events – that is, wished for corporate interests to trump the democratic process. “Cultural identities and symbols like the Confederate flag or even non-Confederate symbols and monuments and national identity and national sovereignty are really merely obstacles to the global operations of multinational capitalism,” observed the paleo-conservative intellectual Samuel T. Francis, “so from the standpoint of the businesses that have sided with the NAACP on the Confederate flag issue, it is in their interest to do so, even though it means the destruction of some of our basic symbols and traditions in the South and in the United States.” According to Francis, “multinational capitalism” is “multiculturalism’s silent partner.”

Special interests have no regard for the heritage and identity of their community. All that they care about is making money, and they will bulldoze anything if it is good for business. They want to make their communities look like every other cosmopolitan, commercialized city, and there is no place for Confederate monuments in such a scheme. Sportsball, in particular, has zero loyalty to their community, but rather to the highest bidder. These teams will abandon their “hometown” and their “fans” if they get a better offer elsewhere, which is similar to what the Rays are doing now. Mayor Bob Buckhorn illustrated the problem when, after the initial vote, he complained, “As we look to compete on a global stage, having those memorials of a dark chapter in our history is not helpful.” A mossy old statue which most locals did not even know existed until recently is not repelling global capital investment in the area.  Tampa is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, undergoing a multi-billion dollar investment/revitalization, yet the world’s largest Confederate flag is flying at the intersection of I-75 and I-4. While Tampa may be in the top twenty of American cities for economic growth, it is also in the top twenty for crime – something which is indeed likely to repel investment and which destroying the monument will only make worse. Even if such a statue did repel global capital, however, a community should be governed by more than its economic interests. A community should not sacrifice who it is, where it comes from, and what it did just to be “globally competitive.”

Ironically, one of the speakers at the monument’s dedication warned against the dangers of outside influence. At the time, Tampa was a small Southern port city, but it was opening itself up to Northern tourism and investment. “The South stands ready to welcome all good citizens who seek to make their homes within her borders, but the South detests and despises all, it matters not from whence they came, who, in any manner, encourage social equality with an inferior race,” announced State Attorney Herbert S. Phillips “The South declares that a President who appoints a negro to office within her borders engenders sectional bitterness, encourages lynchings, injures the negro, is an enemy of good government and a traitor to the Anglo-Saxon race.” Phillips was referring to past President Theodore Roosevelt, who would not remove or replace black officeholders to whom whites objected – a policy which had already been reversed by President William H. Taft. Of course, the all-too-accurate warning in Phillips’ speech – that a community which opens itself up to outsiders risks the disruption of its way of life – is lost on most of those involved in the controversy, who have cited the speech only to prove that the monument is “racist.”

Although special interests are to be condemned for interfering in politics and the commissioners are to be condemned for selling out, it is the Lugenpresse which orchestrated this whole situation in the first place. The only reason that these teams even commented on the controversy was because Steve Cantorno (a Times journalist who clearly objected to the presence of the monument) asked them for a statement. Whether they cared either way, the teams certainly knew that if they did not agree with the newspaper, they would be portrayed negatively and result in bad public relations. Last, but not least, the sudden involvement of these teams, prompted by the meddling newspaper, is likely to sway the vote of a local politician who originally voted against destroying the monument. This is activism disguised as journalism: by reaching out to these teams (which were not involved in the controversy), the newspaper created pressure for these teams to get involved in the controversy, which in turn created more public support for the newspaper’s desired outcome and will probably alter the vote.

Outside the perpetual grievances of the usual pressure groups, destroying the monument will not, as Tamara Shamburg of the Hillsborough County School Board put it, “make a difference” and “promote healing.” As in New Orleans, the destruction of the monument is not meant to unify whites and blacks; it is an act of hate of blacks against whites, not an act of racial healing. There is no polling on the issue to my knowledge, but I would not be surprised if as in Louisiana and New Orleans, Hillsborough County and Tampa’s black population is unaware of or indifferent to the monument. “Every time I go by a little chill runs through me,” claims Fred Hearns, who gives black-history tours in Tampa. “I know what it meant.” Surely, Hearns is in the minority; until recently, the monument was largely unknown. What blacks want from whites are not spectacles of self-hatred and self-humiliation, like what has happened in New Orleans, but “mo money fo dem po-grams.” Tom Scott, a former county commissioner and city councilman, admitted as much when he commented, “It’s understandable not to want those kinds of symbols that portray racism, but after removing the statue, we still have a problem if we’re not addressing the systemic issues.” In this case, “addressing the systemic issues” means “gibs me dat.”

Dylan Roof’s courageous crusade to save Dixie by going full-Punisher on dangerous thugs in the ghetto murdering harmless old ladies in a church is the excuse for the explosion of vitriol and outright violence against Southern history, but it is not the real cause. Roof merely provided the Left with a golden opportunity to do what it has always dreamed of doing. As Les Miller boasts, “When I became a county commissioner one of the things I said to myself was, ‘I’m going to one day get that removed.’ The timing had to be right.” After Roof, the timing was right, and leftists like Miller have pressed their advantage coldly and hardly, often overriding the opposition of their communities. The destruction of monuments like the one in Tampa has nothing to do with Roof, but rather the Left’s longstanding hatred of this country and its suicide pact with most misanthropic fringe elements of the society and culture (ethno-centric minorities and ethno-masochistic whites, as well as other assorted deviants and degenerates). As Sam Francis once put it, “What we are seeing in this concerted and protracted attack on Southern and even our national and other ethnic symbols is nothing less than a crusade for the overthrow of any symbol that suggests the white – dare I say the real – heritage and history of this country and their replacement by their own symbols and their own racial propaganda and mythology.”

Within a few generations, this new anti-American/anti-white Left has achieved total victory in the “culture war” (or Kulturkampf, as the Trotskyites on their side called it). During the Civil War Centennial, President John F. Kennedy (a liberal Yankee who was pro-“civil rights”) gave speeches sympathetic to the Old South and the Confederacy. “For eight years in the U.S. Senate I have occupied a seat which was once held by a distinguished Senator, Daniel Webster,” Kennedy said at a speech in Columbia, South Carolina. “He served in the time before 1850, when the Senate was at its height, and included within its ranks Cass, Clay, Douglas, Benton, and all the rest, but none of these were considered by Webster to match the talents and the character of the Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun.” Historian Bruce Catton (a Midwesterner who grew up listening to war stories from Union veterans) wrote the authoritative books such as Centennial History of the Civil War, A Stillness at Appomattox, and Hallowed Ground, every word of which is an effort to create one common history for one common country. “To the American nation of reunited North and South,” Catton wrote of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, “it gave a tradition of undying valor and constancy that would be a vibrant heritage for all generations.” Today, the historical narrative is that the Old South was a proto-“Nazi Germany” and slavery a proto-“Holocaust.” Any President who dared to speak positively about a “racist” like Calhoun would not win any election, and any historian who dared to write positively about a “traitor” like Lee would suffer the fate of David Irving. What happened to this country – to my grandparents’ America?

What happened was several generations of mass-immigration from the Third World, which the Left used not just as a dependable voting bloc of dependents, but as a solvent to dissolve the national cohesion of the country. Since the passage of the (((Hart-Celler Act))) in 1965, which abolished the qualitative and quantitative restrictions of immigration which had been in place since 1790, 59 million immigrants have entered the United States, a torrent which is nearly triple the next-largest immigration wave of 1890-1924. While pre-1965 immigration was virtually 100% European, 85% of post-1965 Americans were from the Third World, particularly Latin America. Between 1924 and 1965, immigration (then exclusively European) accounted for about 9% of population growth, but from 1965 to the present, immigration (now predominantly Third-World) has accounted for 51% of American population growth, and is projected to account for 82% through 2055. At the same time, the white birth rate of 1.7 (which is already sub-replacement) is below that of most immigrants, particularly Latinos. In 1960, the United States was 82% white, but today it is only 62% white. If these demographic trends continue – diversity to some, displacement to others – White Americans are projected to lose their majority status by 2055, swamped by Third-World immigrants and their offspring. Unlike pre-1965 European immigrants to the United States, who were fundamentally compatible with European-descended whites and thus assimilated to their new European-descended host country, post-1965 Third-World immigrants are fundamentally incompatible with whites and are instead assimilating (or “de-civilizing”) the United States to their backward home countries. “People carry their culture in their heads and their hearts and do not leave it behind when they move,” explained Sam Francis. “Immigration, therefore, affects culture, importing new habits and patterns of thought and behavior that often conflict with the old habits of the culture that receives immigrants.” Indeed, it is just common sense that “the importation of massive population fragments from radically different cultures will affect the receiving culture.”

Of course, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy showed up to protest the first vote, and will show up again to protest the second, but as far as optics are concerned, they probably did more harm than good. So long as the opposition appears to be strange and small (e.g. an eccentric subculture of old folks dressing up in period costumes), it will not be viewed as a serious threat and these attacks will not only continue but also grow increasingly humiliating. Yet if the opposition appears normal and numerous (e.g. Sam Francis’ “Middle American Radical,” the class of white-working class populists and nationalists trapped between the elite and the underclass), then it will be taken seriously and these attacks will abate. The political consciousness of this class is severely degraded, but if the election of Donald Trump (who ran a populist, nationalist campaign which attacked the elites and the underclass) proved nothing else, it is that Middle American Radicals are the sleeping giant of American politics.

White Americans (and Southerners in particular, who are especially susceptible to sportsball) must choose between an irreplaceable, priceless heritage and identity of power, glory, and honor, which will always belong to them and their posterity no matter what happens, or another taxpayer-funded gladiatorial arena plastered floor to ceiling with advertisements, blaring jock jams, peddling junk food, and filled with negroes chasing a ball around in a circle, which may leave town for more money at any given moment.