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Facebook Idiot of the Week
by Nixon
This is the first time a Facebook Idiot of the Week, like Livejournal Moron of the Week, has gone to a group instead of a person. Facebook usually has such fertile user grounds and boring generic groups that there is no need to look into the group half of the website. However, when researching a future mark, this group, "The Truth about the Civil War!", jumped out at both myself and Doom as an amazingly worthy week winner. I mean, sure, Facebook is littered with generic Southern Pride groups, but only this one seeks to state what they all edge around: that the North distorted the truth through their carpet bagging ways, and that the war was really, truly, honestly not about slavery. They swear!
Search Method: Future Facebook Idiot of the Week's group list.
There's barely a need for a punchline on this picture. Seriously, how hard are the site's creators pushing to establish the Confederate military flag as 'not racist'? "I know many black Confederates! Some of them are my best friends, even!"
So as the first picture clearly sets up, this group is filled with barely disguised racism, along with a lot of attempts to explain why the North was the "real villains" of the Civil War. Also, I heard Abraham Lincoln liked the cock and was secretly aborting slave children at the same time. In all seriousness, this group puts out a lot of arguments that attempt to distort the context of how we now view the war, and fails understand the core concept of the Civil War, 1)rich southerners = wanted to keep slaves, 2) northern government = not so much, 1+2 = CIVIL WAR. Sure, maybe the hicks that got shot to death thought they were fighting for states rights or whatever the fuck they wanted to believe, but that's just what they were told. I'm pretty sure to get them on the battlefield CSA leadership would have said that the North was going to sell their children to cannibals if they felt it would get one more woodsman from the backwoods of Georgia to go die to keep slavery and the social structure it allowed alive.
!!BE AWARE THIS GROUP IS FILLED WITH SOUTHENERS!!!
Now, for a bunch of rednecks trying to defend the South, this group puts out some pretty dangerously Northern claims, like "the North won the Civil War". I, for one, believe that to be a falsehood perpetrated by foreigners, blacks, liberals, Jews and history majors. None of which can be trusted. As noted in the caption, the group immediately has a lot of "no racism" bits spackled around its intro, something I have found that only needs saying when it's blatantly obvious that without it members would be complaining about niggers left and right. Or just use it to organize local Klan rallies. Same difference. Seriously, when topics aren't inherently hateful, do you ever see a bunch of "no hate" statements posted anywhere? It's been a long time (well, never) since I went to a General History forum and saw a bunch of "No Hate" warnings all over the place. Yet every time I visit an anti-UN group, or a Palestine is Not a State group, or an Anti-Affirmative Action group, there's a slathering of "NO HATE HERE" posts. Jeez, I wonder why? Oh, right, all the people who post there are racists in real life but they don't want that persona projected on the internet, because Facebook bans hate groups. Of course, at the same time, the group picture also clearly states "No Apologies". Much like when groups have to have "No Hate" pasted all over because they're a bunch of racists in real life, groups having to post "No Apologies" all over the place generally have a lot to apologize for. In this case, the rest of their poorly constructed argument representing a lot of bad knowledge of history, and a general attempt by a bunch of redneck nutballs to try and claim racist Southern heritage as acceptable in modern society.
Lie Number 5: I am literate.
Okay, to begin at the first point, the first quote the site uses to argue why it's right happens to be from Jefferson Davis. I believe, in a historical context, this would be what we consider a "biased" quote. Like Jefferson is going to tell a bunch of poor white Southerners they should fight for a few rich guys. As I noted earlier, whatever the guys on the ground were told they were fighting for doesn't mean shit. What was in the minds of the statesmen that made it happen does. States right's only ever really comes up in Civil War discussions when talking about who the South thought should be allowed to control slavery. So, yes the South was fighting for a State's right, the right to keep a race in bondage for a supply of cheap farm labor. And they didn't think it was the State's right for any other reason than the majority of the American people (and hence Federal government) voted into power a party that thought otherwise. You think that if the Federal government was controlled by a Southern party that was willing to spread slavery to the 4 corners of the nation they would be clamoring about how it's the State's right to say no to slavery? Hell no, they'd be spreading slavery faster than slave owners were making illegitimate children with their 'property'. When they did get influence over the government they passed shit like Fugitive Slave laws, and encouraged the spread of slavery to the territories, not amendments trying to solidify slavery as a "State's right". So let's make this perfectly clear: regardless of what the Southern majority was told, the only interest the Southern aristocracy had in a civil war was to maintain slavery so that they could maintain their control on the South politically and economically.
However, not to get hung up only on one of the points the group tries to raise, that of Confederacy fighting to keep slavery, let's talk about the others. My favorite was "LIE - Lincoln thought the black race was equal". This reminds me of a pretty simple concept - two wrongs don't make a right. As in, just because one group of people doesn't know history doesn't mean that another group can use their error to make them seem more just. Of course Lincoln didn't hold slaves as equal, even the most progressive anti-slavery personalities were hard pressed to claim the black race was equal. It simply wasn't a concept popular at the time, or even that mentally entertained. But there was a difference between "not equal" and "enslaved", which many people, including Lincoln, recognized. Lincoln wanted to do away with the institution of slavery in time, which the Southerners realized would be sooner than they wanted, their time to do away with slavery being "never". So they revolted. Yes, Lincoln didn't free the slaves in non-revolting states during the war, but guess what: he wanted to win the war first! That's a revolutionary concept right there, winning the war before you try to reform the society that started it. It would be like Poland trying to organize a better system of parliamentary election in 1943. NOT MUCH GOOD.
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/flags/usa/confed.htm
Here is a link to the flags used by the Confederacy. Note the flag used for this group is clearly the "Battle Flag" and not the flag of the nation. NOW LET'S LEARN SOME BASIC CONCEPTS.
There's also the whole battle over the flag shit, "LIE - The Confederate flag is a racist symbol". First off, here's what I don't get. The flag they choose to use is the Confederate Battle Flag, as they are well aware. Yet, the whole point of the site, unless I've missed its point, is trying to defend the South as a whole and the actions of the CSA, what with the war not being about slavery and all. Which would argue towards using the CSA's flag, the Blue Bonnie or the later Stars & Bars (which, common misassumption, is a far different flag from the Battle Flag used). You know, the flag of the country. See, by their logic, if you defend the US's actions you should be using say...the Marine Corps flag. Because apparently using the flag of what you're actually trying to defend is off limits, and instead you have to grab something tied by proxy to your cause. No, see, the reason they grabbed the Confederate Battle Flag is because the actual flag of the Confederate nation died with its broken cause, while the Battle Flag lived on...in the Klan. The reason why one symbol is still known of and the other is collecting dust is that one happened to be employed for centuries after by a bunch of drunken Southern fucks who thought they were doing God's duty to keep niggers in the back of the bus. Arguing the Confederate Battle Flag isn't a racist symbol is like arguing the Nazi swastika is just "a reversed Hindu sun-symbol!!!11111"...when used in Neo-Nazi rallies. No, dipshit, it was a reversed Hindu sun symbol right up until it was used to kill 10 million plus people in the name of hatred and racial purity. And much like the Confederate Battle Flag, it can never be "reclaimed" because its historical importance is more vested in what it has now been used for than what it ever stood for before it. Even extending the assumption that the members of this site aren't racist fucks who want to be able to fly the flag in public without being called ignorant racist redneck motherfuckers, they still can't have any real reason to use the flag other than it has more public grip now thanks to its racist employment.
On a final, laughable note, they remind us that the Confederate Battle Flag is actually a deeply Christian symbol. So, instead of it being a racist symbol, it's a symbol that the revolting South would be a Christian Theocracy instead of the secular state the Founding Fathers envisioned. Man, they just keep reminding me of more and more reasons to hate the South.
The full picture section almost puts the "Look, black female likes Confederacy too!!1111" picture to shame. Most of the pictures tie to the same theme though, showing black people around/waving Confederate Battle Flags. As if that's supposed to make it all right. I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could find a picture on the internet of some Orthodox Jew waving a Nazi flag, or I could fake it. Either way, there would be my clear evidence that the Nazi flag is not a racist symbol. "See, some Jew waved, it's okay everybody!" Then there's some other gems in the picture section, like the outline of the Confederate States and "fighting terrorism since 1861" imposed over it. Terrorism implies the North was both the aggressor and using subversive means (aka terrorizing) versus...legitimate war tactics. So let's take this bit by bit. First off, the United States of America elects Abraham Lincoln as president. You know, clear majority and what not. Then the South declares independence and shoots at Fort Sumter. Yep, North was the aggressor. The closest you could claim the North ever came to 'terrorizing' the South would be in the tactic of total war practiced by personal hero William Tecumseh Sherman, but there are two problems with that. One, the North had exhausted the normal option (defeating the South in battle was not producing quick results) and two, the South needed burning. Let's face it. The South's core, Georgia, was formed as a British penal colony. There wasn't much point in letting it remain intact.
Alan Bauman, ready to protect his computer from illegal immigrants and blacks.
Lastly, after noting the stupidity of the idea of the group, I would like to analyze the members themselves. For a group claiming both 'we have the Civil War wrong' and 'Confederate Battle Flag =/= racist', the founders and key members sure are bunch of stereotypical racist motherfuckers if ever I saw them. It's hard to have a picture of you with a gun, and a Confederate flag in the background, and not come off as the "Remember y'all Klan rally at 5!" type. Sure, they can load their picture section with blacks using the Confederate Battle Flag (all 5 of them) but can they load their founders/officers list with them? Oops, guess not. Instead, we get a bunch of good ol' boys. Even the member section proves this, out of 254 members, they have two members who have black user photos, or .8% of the membership may be black. Know what I call that? Margin of error. The only real reprieve one could hope for would be if they were educated/getting an education as history majors or at least going to reputable colleges, but instead we get Louisiana State University and the Marine Corps, both beacons of education to the unwashed masses. Oh, wait. No, these are just a bunch of white boys of the 21st century, with do nothing degrees to match their know-nothing beliefs.
On a final note, I hope Chris "Marine Corpse" Bell goes to Iraq and survives only to, years later, go on to found groups explaining how the Second Iraqi War was fought originally for Iraq to be broken into three separate nations, since clearly that is what was intended in "stopping Hussein from making/having WMDs". I know that's what I was thinking!
NOW FOR SOME STATISTICS, OR AS SOUTHERNER'S CALL THEM, CARPETBAGGER MATH THEORY.
Average Group Member's Cause of Death:
100:1 - Pick-up Truck drives into ditch, driver launched through windshield
and into tree.
50:1 - Sherman rises from the dead, burns down/slaughters South again.
9:1 - Laughs to death at Larry the Cable Guy concert.
7:1 - Goes to inner city, tells blacks to get jobs. Never seen again.
6:1 - Confederate Flag used as robe spontaneously combusts.
5:1 - Dies in tragilarious hunting accident involving Gitch, a shotgun, and one
fast moving vermit.
3:1 - Incorrectly brewed Moonshine turns out to be toxic.
2:1 - Confederate flask turns out to be lined with asbestos.
1:1 - Gets to excited calling into local talk radio show, high cholesterol
Southern diet catches up with them.
"The Truth About the Civil War" group is...the Jefferson Davis of dictators (a do-nothing idiot), "The Truth About the Civil War" group is...the Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy characters (a racist), "The Truth About the Civil War" group is...the Jackson State of slaughters (overlooked and involving dead black people), "The Truth About the Civil War" group is...the Britney Spears of whores (Southern and stupid) and finally, "The Truth About the Civil War" group is...the Marge Schott of baseball owners (racist beyond a shadow of a doubt).
View previous Facebook Idiots of the Week:
Week 1:
Deric Hope
Week 2:
Amy Rymaszewski
Week 3:
Kris Allen
Week 4:
Steph Warsh
Week 5:
David Adams
Week 6:
Adam Butler
Week 7:
Peter Szlachetka
Week 8:
Jordan Powell