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In reply to the discussion: A History of Liberal White Racism [View all]AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)And yes, I read BOTH articles, by the way.
Honestly, the one thing that really bothers me more than anything is that Katznelson seems to take every single thing he reads at face value(and apparently, so does Coates). And having actually *legitimately* studied U.S. history myself, I can certainly tell you one thing: Theodore Bilbo was NO liberal. Neither was Ben Tillman. They were actually nothing more than extreme right-wing faux-populists who merely latched on to some economic progressive causes to gain voters, and were willing to bluster and bullshit as much as they could to keep their voters happy and uninformed.....much like guys like Rand Paul today; after all, Rand Paul does align himself with a certain few progressive causes, such as lessening of drug laws, or the occasional lip service against Wall Street corruption, but he's no liberal.....not at all. Not even close. Paul, like his intellectual forebears of eras gone by, namely, Tillman & Bilbo, is also a populist....or rather, a faux-populist.
Those people lauding these two articleas as if they were founts of wisdom, or whatever.....well, unfortunately, they are completely dead wrong.
Honestly, more than anything, this OP shows that it isn't just the far-right that engages in, and/or encourages revisionist history.....so too, do the fringes on the left(at least as far as Coates is concerned).