Classic EssaysWilliam Pierce

Confederate Flags and Other Distractions

Confederate Flag with Battle Scenes, ca. 1875

by Dr. William L. Pierce

WHAT THE Roman emperors learned 2,000 years ago about keeping the urban rabble from becoming restless by supplying them with lots of spectacles in the Colosseum still works. I get a lot of letters from listeners who are pretty good examples of this sort of thing: people who are so distracted by the unimportant things that they don’t notice the important things. Many listeners tell me that I should comment on the efforts of the Blacks, Jews, and liberals to force the White citizens of South Carolina to abandon their flag. The Blacks and their boosters complain that the flag reminds them of the time in the not too distant past when Blacks in the United States were plantation slaves. The Whites reply, “No, no,” it’s just a reminder of our Southern heritage. “The flag isn’t a racist symbol,” they say.

Well, of course, I sympathize with the desire of anyone to preserve his heritage or to fly the flag of his choice, but this Confederate flag issue is mainly just a distraction. It’s simply not important. And I say that as a true son of the South. My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side of the family was Thomas Hill Watts, attorney general of the Confederacy under Jefferson Davis and later governor of Alabama. His photograph is on the $10 Confederate bill. He also had been a member of the council of secession which voted for secession from the Union, and then he served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, commanding the 17th Alabama Infantry Regiment in the bloody battle of Corinth, Mississippi. But whether or not his flag continues to fly from various public buildings in the South is completely inconsequential in the face of other things which are happening in the South every day. And you don’t have to live in the South to know what those things are; they’re happening all over America. One White man murdered by Blacks, one White woman raped by Blacks, one White child terrorized in a school restroom by Blacks, one politician in Washington allowed to go unhanged is a greater tragedy than taking down the Confederate flag from any statehouse.

You know, the various organizations which are busy defending the Confederate flag today always assert that the flag is not a racist symbol. But of course, it is and always has been. My great-great-grandfather, Governor Watts, never heard the word “racist.” The Jews hadn’t invented it as a term of opprobrium yet. But by every common standard in use today he was a racist. Certainly not all, but many of his fellow Southerners did not approve of the institution of slavery. They would have been happy to be able to outlaw the institution and to ship every Negro and every mulatto and every quadroon to Africa and set them free. But to a man they were racists, by today’s media standards. They were racists because they recognized the simple fact of racial differences. Most of them had no animosity toward Blacks before the war: before the Blacks were turned loose to terrorize White Southerners. But if my great-great-grandfather or any other Southern gentleman had seen a Black male put his hands on a White woman or make a suggestive remark to a White woman, he would have drawn his sidearm and put a quick end to that Black without giving the matter a second thought. Of course, Northerners pretty well felt the same way about things. They were as much racists as the Southerners. There just weren’t any Southern gentlemen in the North — or many gentlemen of any sort — to keep things in order.

If we could use a time machine and go back in time 140 or 150 years and take with us a VCR and a monitor and a few video cassettes of recent Hollywood films or television shows or even news programs with street scenes in Montgomery and Atlanta and Richmond today and play them for my great-great-grandfather and a hundred or so of his most influential friends and explain to them that this is what the Jews would be saturating the consciousness of White Americans with in the future . . . well, if we could do that, they simply wouldn’t believe us. They wouldn’t believe that their descendants could become so degraded in a mere four or five generations as to permit such things to happen: so degraded as to acquiesce in such things. But if we somehow could convince them that our videotapes weren’t fraudulent, they would have understood that much more was at stake than political independence for the South. They would have understood that survival of the race was at stake, and they would have fought even harder and more valiantly than they did, because in those days there was no shame in fighting for one’s people, for one’s race. Anyway, I bring this up just as a reminder that we aren’t the only ones who have failed to focus on the really important issues at hand. Throughout history our people have been distracted by inconsequential issues and have neglected the crucial ones.

So what’s more important today than the latest ball game and the other distractions? Really, it’s exactly what was important 140 years ago. My great-great-grandfather and the other leaders of the South should have been concerned first and foremost about the racial issue — not about economic issues or political issues or anything else. There was a disagreement between the North and the South on the issue of slavery, of course, but there was plenty of common ground on the racial issue. Before the war neither Northerners nor Southerners wanted racial mixing. If it hadn’t been for the economic aspects of slavery, an agreement very likely could have been reached to send all Blacks back to Africa. President Lincoln looked favorably on such a plan even after the war.

Without the slavery issue, the warmongers probably wouldn’t have been able to get a war started. But Southerners who wanted to keep the institution of slavery for purely economic reasons put these economic reasons ahead of the racial interests of their people. They didn’t understand the degree to which their racial interests were threatened. And so we had a bloody and destructive civil war, and even worse — much worse — we failed to solve the racial problem when it might have been solved with relatively little trauma.

So today we have a racial catastrophe in both the North and the South, and the Jews are pumping their lies and filth into all of us every day. And instead of focusing on these real problems, most of us let ourselves be distracted by utterly inconsequential issues such as where the Confederate flag can be flown.

I’ll go over that again: reality is that we are being pushed rapidly toward racial extinction. Reality is that the Jews are controlling the minds of a majority of our people for the specific purpose of keeping us headed toward extinction. Those are the real problems which we must deal with. Forget about the Confederate flag. Forget about ball games and the economy and whether a Democratic crook or a Republican crook should be elected later this year. Think about racial survival and racial freedom; that’s all that matters. Really, nothing else counts in the least.

That’s why you hear some repetition if you listen to many of my broadcasts. I keep coming back to the important things over and over again. Of course, I do talk about many inconsequential things as well. I use them as illustrations, as examples, which help us understand better the important things. And I also talk about unimportant things because I must consider my audience. I must talk about the things the members of my audience believe to be important so that I can catch their interest and then lead them to the truly important things.

Here’s an example which ties in again to the Civil War. A lot of men — overaged kids, really — like to play soldier. They like to reenact various historic battles, and Civil War battles are among their favorites. They like to get out on the battlefield and pretend that they are members of real military units of the past — such as my great-great-grandfather’s 17th Alabama Infantry Regiment — and then they fire blanks at each other and maneuver around as they imagine it actually happened. They pride themselves greatly on the authenticity of their uniforms and equipment. They will spend thousands of dollars for various bits and pieces of uniforms, and they will pore over old dispatches and memoirs to make sure that they’ve got all of the details right — all of the details except one, that is: the mindset of the soldiers who actually fought the real battles. Talk to one of these Confederate make-believe soldiers sometime. The first thing he will assure you is that the fact he likes to play soldier in a Confederate uniform doesn’t mean he is a racist. No, no, no! Far from it! In fact, he will try to persuade you that the real Confederate soldiers weren’t racists either, but instead were models of Political Correctness. Fake ammunition and fake beliefs. No more integrity or honesty than most of the supporters of the Confederate flag. They cling to the trivial and deny the important.

I really have to hold my tongue when I talk with these people. But I do talk with them. An interest in history certainly is a healthier sign than no interest in history. So I talk with some of these make-believe soldiers about military history, and sometimes the conversation can be steered into more important matters.

I believe that one of our biggest problems today is that our comfort level does not match our situation. We are far, far more comfortable than we ought to be, considering our situation. As a race teetering on the brink of extinction, we should be naked, starving, freezing, and covered with painful sores from head to foot. We should be miserable, frightened, and desperate. Then perhaps we would be better able to understand what is important and what is not. But when we spend our time chatting on our cell phones while tooling around in our BMWs, we have a hard time keeping our priorities right.

Of course, back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, many Americans were uncomfortable. They had lost their farms, their homes, their businesses. They couldn’t feed their families. They stood in breadlines. They were cold and miserable. But they still let themselves be tricked into turning to Franklin Roosevelt and being led into the cruelest, bloodiest and most destructive war in the history of the world, a war to save communism and the Jews from the Germans. So what that tells us is that being uncomfortable is not in itself enough. We need to have leaders whose priorities are right, and those leaders need to have open lines of communication to the mass of people, and then the people need to become uncomfortable enough pay attention to what’s happening. When the right message can be gotten to the people, that’s when they need to be hit hard on the side of the head with a two-by-four to catch their attention.

Well, the discomfort is coming, believe me, and it’s going to be a lot more painful than being hit with a two-by-four. That’s good. That’s necessary. But will we be ready to benefit from the discomfort? At the end of the Civil War my great-great-grandfather got a good dose of discomfort. He was kicked out of his job as governor by an enemy army. He was treated as a war criminal, because he had made the mistake of being on the losing side. His plantation was burned, along with a huge warehouse full of baled cotton, which represented most of his actual wealth. He was no longer a rich and powerful man, no longer a member of the Southern aristocracy. He was ripe for getting his thinking straightened out. But of course, it was too late for him to benefit from a new understanding. If he had understood before the war what he understood after the war, I am sure that he would have tried to persuade his fellow Southerners to adopt a wiser course than secession. Or failing that, he would have fought with more desperation at the battle of Corinth and perhaps turned that into a Southern victory instead of a Southern defeat.

What happened to the South reminds me of what happened nearly 130 years later to the people of South Africa. In the 1970s and 1980s they were fat and happy. They had built a rich, White country in the southern part of the African continent. They had wonderfully productive farms, industries, mines. They had gleaming cities of glass and steel. And they had lots of cheap, Black labor, which was making the richest South Africans even richer. But even the ordinary South Africans with whom I spoke had Black gardeners and Black cooks and Black cleaning women and Black baby-sitters. And they weren’t concerned at all about the future. Black terrorism was simply keeping them on their toes a bit, giving their superb armed forces a little realistic training. They even had nuclear weapons.

I told them, get rid of your Black workers. Do your own dirty work. Accept a lower standard of living for a while by depending entirely on the White labor force. Don’t trust your Christian churches and Christian ministers: they will turn on you. And understand that it is not the Soviet Union which is your mortal enemy, but the United States. Communism has infected your Black masses, but White South Africans are in no danger of becoming infected by it. It is greedy capitalism, which puts profit and comfort ahead of race, which you must beware of. And above all, beware of the Jews.

And of course, they were sure that they knew better. They were offended by my warnings about their church. There was a special bond between church and people in South Africa, they assured me. The church supported apartheid. The Dutch Reformed Church would always stand by White South Africans. As for the Jews, they were God’s Chosen People — the Bible says so — and besides their interests were the same as those of the Whites. The only Jews who were hostile to White South Africans were ones like Harry Oppenheimer, Helen Suzman, Joe Slovo, and a few other Jew communists, I was told. And as for getting rid of their Black workers, that was ridiculous. They could keep their Blacks under control, they assured me. Blacks are like children. They need the White man to tell them what to do. They know that they could never run the country by themselves. And so on.

So now the South Africans have lost their country. Their church betrayed them. Shortly before the vote to end White rule, the church had a revelation from on high and announced that it had been wrong in supporting apartheid. Apartheid was not the Christian way, the church announced. Today the Dutch Reformed Church even accepts Black members. The White South Africans were right about one thing, however. Blacks are like children, and they cannot run the country. That’s why it is sinking rapidly into barbarism and anarchy under Black rule today.

The White South African population as a whole has undergone the equivalent of being whopped hard on the side of the head with a two-by-four. Their farmers are being murdered on a regular basis. Their women are being gang-raped by Blacks on an unprecedented scale, and a gang-rape by Blacks is almost equivalent to a death sentence, because of the prevalence of HIV infection among South African Blacks. Many White South Africans, who used to be assured of good employment and a high standard of living are now unemployed and destitute, without even enough money to leave the country. The ones who still have good employment huddle in walled compounds patrolled by armed guards and ringed with razor wire. In some areas they will venture out only in convoys. Johannesburg, which used to be a clean, decent, and safe city, now has the highest murder rate in the world.

All of this has done wonders to make White South Africans receptive to truth and to open their eyes to reality. But, just as in the case of my great-great-grandfather and the other Southern gentlemen of his era, it’s really too late for the truth to be helpful to them.

What about White Americans? When will they understand that what happens to the Confederate flag and whether the Democrats or the Republicans win this year are totally and completely unimportant? When will they understand that the only important things now are the fact that America is being overrun by non-Whites and the fact that the Jews control the organs of public opinion?

I don’t know whether it will be too late or not. About all we can do now is try to hit as many of them as we can on the side of the head with a two-by-four.

* * *

Source: Free Speech magazine, January 2000

Previous post

The True Story of "Dixie"

Next post

Bruno Bauer: Young Hegelian

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
5 Comments
Inline Feedback
View all comments
aa
aa
30 May, 2015 5:33 pm

“Forget about the Confederate flag.” That’s not likely to happen owing to the fact it’s bathed in the blood of Southern heroes. I suppose the only flags worth their symbolism today are state flags. To me, the federal ensign is a symbol of Federal tyranny.

fd
fd
30 May, 2015 9:16 pm

Battle of Fredericksburg (statehood)

“. . . the dying words of Gen. Maxcy Gregg were commemorated like a phrase of antique heroism: “Tell the Governor of South Carolina I cheerfully yield my life for the independence of my State!”

Will Williams
Will Williams
31 May, 2015 9:40 am

“Fake ammunition and fake beliefs.” What a great line by Dr. Pierce to describe deracinated hobbyist reenactors of battles from the fratricidal War of Northern Aggression.

Tucker
Tucker
4 June, 2015 9:32 am

I was listening to an interview or speech by Jared Taylor recently, and he mentioned how he, too, had once been enamored with some of these Confederate and Southern Heritage groups that Dr. Pierce is referring to – but then, he began to notice that these Whites were not willing to address the racial issue head on and although they would do everything possible to insulate themselves and their families from the destructive cancer of multiculturalism and multi-racialism, very few of them were passionate enough (or courageous enough) about White racial survival to discuss race openly and honestly. This is a classic characteristic that seems to affect the vast majority of traditional Southern Whites. This desire to be always polite and considerate, even to the point of engaging in acts… Read more »

Will Williams
Will Williams
30 August, 2017 11:52 am

These words of advice are as timely today as they ever were. Do not become distracted, kinsmen!:

… [R]eality is that we are being pushed rapidly toward racial extinction. Reality is that the Jews are controlling the minds of a majority of our people for the specific purpose of keeping us headed toward extinction. Those are the real problems which we must deal with. Forget about the Confederate flag. Forget about ball games and the economy and whether a Democratic crook or a Republican crook should be elected later this year. Think about racial survival and racial freedom; that’s all that matters. Really, nothing else counts in the least.