Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Abe Lincoln, Racist Fascist?

By MICHAEL DICKINSON | CounterPunch | February 9, 2013

I’m going to the cinema tonight in Istanbul to see Steven Spielberg’s biopic, ‘Lincoln’. The other choices of films in English this week are ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. I’ll catch them later. I’m not expecting much from ‘Lincoln’ apart from some excellent performances and great camera-work. From what I’ve heard, we’re presented with the standard loveable father figure that Americans are indoctrinated from childhood to believe in – the sanctified image of the simple country lawyer from Illinois who heroically defended his country and freed the slaves – not the unscrupulous fascist that he really was.

The fact of the matter is that ‘Massa Lincoln’ was a die-hard racist. When he said “all men are created equal” he meant all WHITE men.

This quotation from a speech he made in Charleston in 1858 shows how he really felt:

“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.”

Over and over again he stated that he was opposed to equality of the races. He was not an abolitionist, he denigrated and distanced himself from them. In 1862 in a letter to the New York Tribune Editor he wrote:

“If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the union.”

And in the same year, addressing a meeting of freed black leaders at the White House, Lincoln said:

“But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”

Not only was Lincoln a racist who supported the noxious pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African-Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North, he was a white-supremacist whose projected plan for dealing with racial problems was ‘colonization’ – the deportation of all American blacks to Africa, Haiti, or Central America – anywhere but the United States, which would be for whites only. If Lincoln had had his way there would be no black people in America today.

The idea of deporting the blacks from the country was that of his fellow-fascist friend Henry Clay, upon whose plan, ‘The American System’, or ‘Everyone for Himself at the Expense of his Neighbour!, the Lincoln regime had been built – consolidating massive power in the hands of a small cabal of manufacturers, bankers, and politicians at the expense of the rest of society, and which called for a regimen of high tariffs, federal support for “internal improvements” such as road building and railroads, corporate welfare, and a national banking system based on fiat money. ‘Honest Abe’ eulogized Clay as “the beau ideal of a statesman,” noting that: “During my whole political life, I loved and revered [Clay] as a teacher and leader.”

In fact, despite President Obama’s reverence for Lincoln as the ‘Great Emancipator’, it doesn’t take much research to uncover him as he really was – a political opportunist, a corrupt corporate insider and a lifelong mercantilist.

Lincoln ruled over an oppressive police state under which a military draft was implemented; income tax was introduced for the first time to help finance a Civil War that killed 620,000 young men; dissenters were imprisoned without trial; ‘habeus corpus’ was suspended in some regions; and legal documents were authored which paved the way for corporations to becoming recognized as the equivalents of “legal persons.”

Before his career as a politician Abraham Lincoln had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including “Big Rail”- the prevailing corporate interests of his day, a governmental pie of railroad subsidies in which all the big Republican Party Cats had their fingers. As president he championed protectionism and corporate welfare schemes where the force of law was used to benefit a select group of politicians and their cronies, signing legislation that virtually gave away miles of public land to the railroads for free. His son, Robert Todd Lincoln, went on to a successful career as the president of the Pullman Car Company.

It’s no secret that President Obama is a big fan of ‘Honest Abe’. He made the announcement that he was running for president in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps of the Old Capitol, where Lincoln was a legislator; he traveled to Washington by retracing the final stages of the train trip Lincoln made to assume his presidency; the Bible last used for Lincoln’s oath of office was used for his swearing-in; the theme of his inauguration was taken from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “A New Birth of Freedom”.

Lerone Bennett Jr, executive editor of popular black-oriented Ebony magazine describes the whitewashing of Abraham Lincoln as “one of the most extraordinary efforts I know to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history.”

How can Obama support such a charlatan racist as his role model? Is it because he exists in a political environment largely inherited from the Lincoln era where enriching oneself and one’s friends while hiding behind a smokescreen of “humanitarian” propaganda is the norm – a government of the poor by the rich and for the rich?

Although he has never been really poor in his own life himself, in his autobiography an admiring Obama wrote: “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat – in all this, he reminds me of my own struggles. I find him a very wise man. There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.”

But what would Lincoln have thought about the idea of a black man as the president of the United States of America? Most likely he would have been astounded – and appalled.

Michael Dickinson can be contacted at his website – http://yabanji.tripod.com/

Related articles

February 10, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hollywood myths harming the whole world: Ken O’Keefe

Press TV – February 3, 2013

A prominent human rights activist says Hollywood films and other media portray a false account of US history, perpetuating great harm to Americans and the rest of the world.

On the latest episode of Press TV’s Cinepolitics, panelists discuss Hollywood’s impact on global politics and society, with a particular examination of Steven Spielberg’s use of psychological manipulation and disinformation in his recent film “Lincoln”.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ken O’Keefe, human rights activist, to further discuss the issue. O’Keefe is joined by Maria Duarte, a film critic with The Morning Star. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How accurate was this portrayal?

O’Keefe: It was another nauseating example of Hollywood propaganda and it really has no resemblance to the truth.

In fact, there was another Lincoln movie that came out earlier that year, Lincoln the Vampire Slayer, and I reckon that there was just about as much – I’m not kidding when I say there’s just about as much evidence to support Lincoln as a vampire slayer as there is about him wanting the end of slavery and freeing black people. There’s no historical truth to that whatsoever.

Lincoln’s life is a testament to the fact that he was a man of his time. He used the word n***** repeatedly in his life. He never had any kind of an epiphany and changed his perspective. He never cared anything about freeing the slaves.

This was all about concentrating power, maintaining the union and concentrating more power in the Federal government.

The implications of that bloody war, Civil War, and concentration of power into the Federal government, we see to this very day. That’s why I’m not going to forgive Spielberg or the propagandists of Hollywood for this kind of junk because it perpetuates myths that cause great harm in this world.

Press TV: I have a letter from president [Lincoln] himself to Horace Greeley where he says, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union; it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” He goes on to say, “What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this union.”

…Do you think that this Lincoln movie corrects his image? -Because historically, I believe that he was shown as a villain.

O’Keefe: Well, there’s no question that in America there’s a cult surrounding the mythological Lincoln and it protects him very, very well.

I suppose there are many important reasons why the powers that be want to maintain this myth because the American people in general don’t want to face many facts about their country. Hell, they’re not even able to understand the fact that it’s not actually a democracy; it’s a republic.

Under a republic, the states are supposed to have rights.

In fact, the Federal government – the original founding fathers envisioned the United States of America, i.e. nation states of America, was that the states would be able to determine their own political reality and that the Federal government would only have so much power as would be required for it to maintain certain duties.

Instead, what we have, and that’s where the implications of this film are quite so profound, is the beginning of the concentration of power to the point that we see the American empire now at this point in time running roughshod over the world.

If that Federal government had been kept in check and the states had been allowed to make up their own minds and decisions, slavery would have ended. Let us not mistake the fact that America’s the only nation in the world that had a bloody civil war that had to deal with slavery.

Every other country in the world managed to do this without such a bloody war. They did it before the United States, as well.

Lincoln was not this great emancipator.

In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves at all. It only provided the means for slaves in the South that were rebelling against the Union because they were trying to increase taxes and so on and so forth. That’s the only people that it dealt with.

It didn’t do anything to free the slaves up North, and there were slaves there as well.

Really, there’s just so many myths. Again, the implications of maintaining these myths is that the American people and others around the world continue to be in the dark about the real reality of American history. I think that’s an important subject for us to be aware of.

Press TV: Ken, what do you think about that scene [in the beginning of the movie]?

O’Keefe: It was a noxious scene, and it was the first scene in the film.

There is simply no way that black men would have had an audience with the president in that kind of context and actually been affectively sort-of chastising Lincoln for more equality not coming that much quicker. It’s ridiculous!

I can see how it would work on much of the American population because it’s been so dumbed down that most people will swallow whatever is put into their mouths no matter how much rubbish it is. That was an absolutely ridiculous scene. There’s more such scenes like that later on in the film.

Press TV: Ken, what do you think [of the relationship between Lincoln and his wife]?

O’Keefe: Wherever it can take liberty with issues that we can’t possibly know the real details, it does. And where it comes to historical realities, it just blatantly, intentionally, willfully deceives the viewers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if these kind of exchanges are so far from the truth that it bears no resemblance to anything that actually happened. At the same time, I don’t know enough about their personal relationship to say it’s accurate or not.

Press TV: In the House of Representatives there’s obviously a lot of interaction – the Republicans and Democrats are actually at each other’s throats. How do you think they’ve been portrayed? Was it accurate, their view towards slavery?

O’Keefe: Party politics obviously was a factor then as it is now. So, that was definitely somewhat accurate, I would say.

The truth of the matter is that the abolitionists were clearly in the minority. This idea that all the Republicans were very much in agreement about freeing slaves and what not is again completely ridiculous.

Again, when we see these sort of debates and the idea that Republicans are for this and the Democrats are against it, that’s simply not true.

The abolitionists – if you want to give credit to anyone in America for actually helping to bring about the end of slavery or at least get that issue to the floor, it is a very small minority of abolitionists who really did stand for that. It certainly wasn’t Lincoln, that’s for sure.

Press TV: Somebody, I think a historian, accused the film of exaggerating the possibility that by January the war might have ended with slavery still intact. Do you think that’s an accurate statement to make?

O’Keefe: It’s true but the fact is that slavery would have ended one way or the other. In fact, it was becoming quite unprofitable.

The Civil War was really sort of a tax revolt. The union, the Federal government, was exercising powers that were being abused and those abusive powers were translating into higher taxes for the Southerners. This was making life too difficult for them. That is why, ultimately, they revolted. That’s really what this is about.

Press TV: And the wealth was actually in the South, the cotton mills, the plantations…

Do you think that Spielberg is guilty of presenting possibly a utopian vision of the US?

O’Keefe: Yeah, it’s perpetuating the myth. The myth of America is freedom and democracy and so on and so forth. In fact, it’s an empire. It’s the latest empire. Like all other empires, it’s falling and it’s going to continue to go down.

Also, in that scene it shows another one of those lies, that Lincoln was somehow a most adored and loved president. Actually, he was probably one of the most hated, certainly one of the most hated.

Press TV: Mary says this on the film. His wife, she says you’re one of the most loved.

O’Keefe: Yeah, that’s not true at all. Only after he was killed did we find some sympathy for him. Actually, many people in America, in facts large numbers of people would have celebrated his death. He was in fact one of the most hated presidents.

This is just another blatant lie. You cannot say that that is an accident. It’s intentional. It’s a willful intent to deceive the audience.

Press TV: I read an academic online. She said she was going to be using this film as part of an aid in her history classrooms. I thought, is this the version of events that’s being presented to future generation in textbooks?

O’Keefe: I think there are some good teachers out there who will teach in a more accurate understanding.

But largely there is a cult protecting the myth of not only Lincoln but of the US as a whole. Of course, it would be no surprise at all that students are being cheated out of a real understanding of history and ultimately being told this sort of rubbish. This will help perpetuate that kind of misunderstanding.

Press TV: You’ve mentioned something earlier. Yes, the acting was superb but if you’d done it with the accurate facts, it would have made it all the more better.

O’Keefe: With that kind of resource, you know, that kind of acting talent, the producers, everything that’s involved in a movie of that magnitude, if it were done accurately, it would have been a hugely important and beautiful film. I’ll agree, the acting, it’s incredible.

But if you had given the actors a real script that reflected an honest understanding of what had really happened, then it would have been a magnificent film.

Of course, Spielberg is not in the business of making historically accurate films. He’s in the business of propaganda and he’s done it well once again.

Related articles

February 3, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | 11 Comments