While the followers of QAnon are just a bunch of batshit crazy folks who only pose a danger to reason, sanity and commonsense, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Patriot Front, and all the other hundreds of heavily armed, right-wing, neo-Nazi white organizations out there in America could pose a danger to the safety of minorities if law enforcement simply stands by (or worse, encourages) these modern-day vigilantes. Don’t think we black folk have not taken note of how police around the country have been offering succor (and bottled water) to these self-styled fascists.
These ideological descendants of what enslaved blacks came to call “paddy rollers” (a type of vigilante who can trace their beginnings back to South Carolina in 1704, but swiftly spread throughout the colonies) were armed groups of whites who were empowered by slavemasters to monitor and enforce discipline upon persons of African descent, no matter if they were enslaved or free.
While flying — and hiding behind — the flag of patriotism, these self-styled, modern-day losers and would-be enforcers of a new style of slavery have always been jealous and dangerous, in direct proportion to the efforts and successes of blacks who have moved into the middle-class in American society. Now, with the coming end of the Trumpist era and their daydreams of maintaining dominance going up in smoke, they might quite possibly go completely off the rails.
History informs us of what they are quite capable of.
The proto-plutocrats who first stole this country from its indigenous inhabitants — posing all the while as Christians, mind you — soon realized they needed to create an economic system that kept formerly indentured servants poor, but satisfied with their condition and station in life. So this financially disadvantaged group of individuals (who soon became known by the pejorative terms of “white trash” or “offscourings” in more polite circles) was given a title and a duty: Patrollers of the enslaved blacks. Monsters were created.
The term “white” was actually invented so they could differentiate themselves from the “blacks” that were to forever remain enslaved — again, because that’s what their Christian Bible not only allowed but encouraged — and thus these poor whites were given a class and “race” of individuals they could look down on. You’ve got to give the Devil his due, this was a diabolically clever scheme designed to keep them from ever looking up at the elite class that was oppressing, exploiting, and butt-fucking them just as much as they were doing to the despised blacks. These dupes could always say, “I may be poor as dirt and as dumb as a box of rocks, but at least I ain’t a nigger.”
Once the enslaved blacks begin to rebel against their servile condition (I know, history books, especially those printed in the South, posit that the Africans were all docile and accepting of their subordinate condition, which is one of the biggest lies ever told and one that is continually perpetrated), these poor whites were given the authority to stop, question, apprehend, brutalize, rape and sometimes kill any black they came across who was not accompanied by his so-called master.
Of course the killing of blacks without very good reason or justification was frowned upon, since a healthy enslaved male fetched the price (in today’s dollars) of a mid-priced automobile on the auction block. Capturing and returning the runaway Africans to their plantations became the primary occupation of many poor whites. This, of course, gives the lie to the storyline of supposed black docility and acceptance. If my ancestors were so damn happy with their condition, why did it take so many whites to keep them from running away towards freedom?
In point of fact, most plantation owners lived out their entire lives in abject fear of the people they were so brutalizing. Indeed, after the uprising staged by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 (where 51 whites were killed), that fear became palpable — and so too did the brutality to prevent further violent acts by those seeking to throw off the shackles of their enslavement.
Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, whites did not wish to relinquish their dominion over those they deemed to be subordinate. In fact, since blacks could no longer legally be owned, their lives were of far less value, a fact that is proven by the thousands of lynchings of blacks that took place from the 1870s through the 1920s.
But once blacks were drafted into World War I and glimpsed better treatment of persons of color in Europe, the stage was set for the nascent rumblings of a civil rights movement, something Frederick Douglass had been proselytizing about since the mid-1800s — and W.E.B. Dubois after him at the turn of the next century. The blueprint for our eventual freedom was, in fact, almost as old as the institution of slavery itself.
However, at every turn, whenever blacks demanded justice and equality, the forces of repression — acting out solely and entirely on the fear and jealousies of ignorant, weak-minded so-called “whites” — have attempted to “put those black bastards back in their place.” But that shit just ain’t happening, dude.
Indeed, the only thing these — again “so-called” — whites, the descendants of poor white trash, have to cling to is their belief in their position of being above “those niggers.” And they will attempt to do whatever they can, within or outside the law, to maintain their perceived (at least in their twisted little minds) hegemony and dominance over a group of people that have proved consistently to be their betters in every avenue and endeavor where the playing field has been level.
Know this: While these bigoted whites just love to believe in the myth (which was started at the beginning of the Civil War) that blacks won’t fight, they would do well to learn to respect the black man. While we are not inclined, by our very nature, to be retributive — we don’t seek to do to them what their ancestors did to ours — we are not about to allow the clock to be turned back on our progress, not by fiat or via the barrel of a gun. Not in a country that belongs more to us than it does to them since our centuries of free labor are the true basis of America’s greatness and wealth.
And yes, we’re going to continue to demand that the debt owed to us — by the government that allowed this ill-treatment — is paid.
Law enforcement — I’m speaking of racist cops too — had better put muzzles and choke chains on these hate-filled and racist mad-dogs before we black men have to rise up in unison and do it for them — for the survival of our race and the good of the country.
We’re not going to fire the first shots (and sincerely pray no shots have to be fired) but our race has a large cadre of armed, angry, ghetto-raised and dangerous young men with nothing to lose that are ready — indeed, itching — for a fight at the drop of a do-rag.
And if they think we’re not as armed as they are — have you ever been in a black neighborhood at midnight on New Year’s Eve? You’d think World War III had broken out. We’re not going to go into their neighborhoods, but they’d better not try to come into ours.
Like the Vietnamese who kicked America’s ass, we would have right on our side.
Listen all of you sick, demented, and deranged white boys out there running around the woods playing at being tin-soldiers: the jig is up, your days of intimidation of the black race went out of style when Huey Newton and Malcolm X showed up on the American scene. Truth.
You’d really better check yourself(s) before you wreck yourself(s). I’m just sayin’. In the immortal words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”
One Response to “MANSFIELD: The Rise of Vigilantism, American-Style”
Matt
These people are idiots. To put the Nazi flag together with the Confederate Battle and Gadsden Flags is asinine. Almost as if gatherings like this are engineered by people on one side of things too stupid to know what they are doing.