White supremacy, like racism generally, is not just a Southern thing. As was re-emphasized this morning on WGDJ, a locally owned conservative talk radio station in Albany, NY.
Melody Burns spent 30 minutes, minus commercials and news, fluff-interviewing a fellow wingnut radio host, Jeff Crouere from New Orleans station WGSO, about the removal of a white supremacy monument in the Crescent City.
What struck me as diary-worthy was not that a racist wingnut from the South defended white supremacist monuments, but that a New Yorker whose father and several siblings served in the United States armed forces called Confederate leaders who fought the United States and indirectly killed more than 300,000 U.S. soldiers “heroes.”
They may be “heroes” to Lost Cause racists, but to everyone else, in New York, New Orleans and elsewhere, they should be considered what they were — traitors who levied war against the United States in defense of chattel slavery.
More, below.
I wasn’t taking notes or recording, but here’s basically what Crouere was arguing — “liberal Democrat” Mayor Mitch Landrieu is “destroying” New Orleans history because of his “politically correct aspirations.”
I do recall that Crouere heaped praise on the three traitors — Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis -- whose New Orleans monuments will soon also be removed. (FWIW, our current Attorney General is the third of his line named for two of these traitors. Helps explain who he is — a proud unrepentant white supremacist from Alabama.)
The monument removed Monday commemorated the Battle of Liberty Place, an 1874 coup attempt by Confederate traitors against the Reconstruction government of Louisiana. While Crouere obviously supports those traitors too, and bemoans the removal of their monument, he didn’t praise them as he did Lee, Beauregard and Davis.
The New Orleans traitor monuments were erected on city property in the Jim Crow era, with the full support of city leaders then.
They are being removed now because city leaders have legally decided to rid city property of large formal commemorations of treason and white supremacy.
Minor-league radio hosts like Burns who endlessly laud the Constitution should be OK with that — there’s nothing in there allowing secession, and treason is clearly defined as “levying war against” the United States. Plus, local control and all.
There can only be one reason they are not — racism.
Burns has said she’s considering a challenge to Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko, NY-20. I hope she gets in, because watching Tonko crush her will be her just desserts.