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Feb 9 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I wish more people knew about this story: a bust one of the KKK’s founders (!), in the year 2000 (!), in Selma, Alabama (!), in direct reaction to the election of a Black mayor. Grapple with this in earnest and you’ll understand so much about America’s past and present.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is famous not in spite, but solely because he was a traitor, war criminal, and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was the embodiment of white supremacist violence when he was alive, and has been a symbol of continued white supremacy ever since.
What would you say about a German town with a large Jewish community, that just elected a Jewish mayor, erecting a statue of a Wehrmacht general who was infamous for being an anti-Semite, massacring Soviet soldiers, and founding a neo-Nazi terror organization after the war?
No one witnessing this - not the neo-Confederates behind the idea of publicly displaying a new bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest nor the people protesting it - was under the illusion that this was anything but a celebration of white supremacy. In the year 2000, in Selma, Alabama.
“Defender of Selma
Wizard of the Saddle
Untutored Genius
The First with the Most”

That’s some seriously remarkable (in the worst possible way) stuff right there… Once again, this is from the year 2000. Very subtle.

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More from @tzimmer_history

Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 10
A clarifying piece by @perrybaconjr: What kind of democracy, and for whom?

Conservatives want to restrict democracy in order to uphold white Christian patriarchal rule. They are turning to authoritarianism because they are failing. Thoughts from a historical perspective: 1/
There are two key questions that have defined recent U.S. history: How have ideas and realities of democracy changed, specifically since the 1950s? And how has political conservatism reacted to those shifting versions and visions of democracy? 2/
It is often said that the U.S. is the world’s oldest democracy. While that is not necessarily incorrect, depending on the definition of “democracy,” it obscures rather than illuminates the reality of American life, past and present, and the nature of the current conflict. 3/
Read 33 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 8
The 21st-Century History Wars #GEST535

Here’s a recap of Week 3, last week’s class: A look at the conflict over National History Standards in the 1990s, and an attempt to figure out how to relate the History Wars to the current wave of the anti-“CRT”/ education bills.
The general idea last week was to explore broader contexts in which to situate the current conflict over history education, specifically, and establish a framework for what is happening currently. Three broader contexts stood out. #GEST535
The first context is the general conflict over public education. The conservative critique of public education has a long history – in many ways, it’s been an important part of the modern conservative project since its inception. #GEST535
Read 24 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 8
The 21st-Century History Wars #GEST535

As we are entering Week 4, a quick recap of what we’ve done so far, for everyone who wants to follow along and catch up.
In Week 2, we started with a look at some big-picture takes on the History Wars and a broader reflection on the question: Why is everybody talking about history? The goal was to raise questions rather than to find final answers – an attempt to refine our agenda. #GEST535
The discussion focused on two pieces by historians Timothy Snyder and Matthew Karp that try to offer a broader diagnosis of what the History Wars tell us about American politics, society, and culture right at this current moment. #GEST535
Read 11 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 7
Perfect example of the slippery slope argument conservatives like to deploy to delegitimize cultural change they reject.

The actual issue: The gratuitous use of the N word in fiction faces more criticism today than it used to – is that bad?

Nichols: The road to the Gulag!
If we actually were “killing culture” and descending towards “a Sovietized, carefully censored culture,” I’d agree that’d be bad. But where is the evidence for that? The fact that Quentin Tarantino might get criticized if he used the N word as much today as he did in the 90s?
But, of course, once you start censoring (no one is censoring) the genius of great artists (white men, that is), once you silence them (no one is silencing), that’s clearly an indication that society as a whole is on a path to totalitarianism.
Read 9 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 6
This is a crucial observation: In the American political discourse, “working class” is often just shorthand for “white people with certain reactionary cultural sensibilities” - as in: “The working class rebelled against the establishment and voted for Trump.”
It’s really striking how the terms “blue collar” and “working class” almost always refer to either a type of professional occupation or certain reactionary cultural sensibilities of white people and are often entirely detached from matters of class / socio-economic status.
This is well in line with the pervasive assumption of a white “normal” that still governs the American political and cultural discourse. Concepts like “working class,” or “parents,” or “Christians” often come with a silent “white.”
Read 6 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Feb 4
The 21st-Century History Wars

Here’s the reading list for this course I am currently teaching. It’s somewhat preliminary: It’s a new course and changes may occur, depending on where our discussions take us. I’ll also certainly add more primary sources. Follow along at #GEST535 ImageImage
We started with a look at some big-picture takes on the History Wars and a broader reflection on an important question: Why is everybody talking about history? #GEST535 Image
This week, we looked at some previous iterations of the History Wars, specifically at the conflict over National History Standards in the 90s, and tried to situate the current anti-“CRT”/ education bills in that longer-term context. #GEST535 Image
Read 15 tweets

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