WhatFinger


It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the effort to remove the Confederate monuments in Dallas began--behind closed doors in City Hall--long before it surfaced in the Dallas media, and in public meetings of the Dallas City Council.

An 1984 lynching of history in 2017 Dallas



The question "Will Dallas join the 2017 Great Purge of American History?" was posed in the first of a six-part series recently posted on the Canada Free Press. The answer is--Yes, and it has.

The Purge Playbook

In his book Rules for Radicals, legendary Chicago-based, community-organizer Saul David Alinksy (1909-1972) wrote the playbook for America's alt-left assault on Confederate Monuments. Alinsky Rule 13 is active today in protests across America.
"The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil...[T]he problem...is that of identifying...a target upon which to center the attacks...It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target...The forces for change must...pin that target down securely...One of the criteria in picking your target is the target's vulnerability--where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When you 'freeze the target,' you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all the others to blame. Then, as you...carry out your attack, all of the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target. [A] target must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a community's segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identify, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.

Support Canada Free Press


With this focus comes a polarization...all issues must be polarized if action is to follow...The real action is in the enemy's reaction. The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength. Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action."
The current target of the alt-left is "white supremacy." The frozen targets are Confederate monuments, particularly statues of Robert E. Lee. Although monuments are inanimate objects in metal and concrete, and the man R.E. Lee has been dead for 117 years, the alt-left has personified him as the leading symbol of contemporary white supremacy and racial injustice. The alt-left's goal in removing Lee, and other Confederate monuments, is societal polarization. And that action--that polarization--is spreading across America, by intent. Here's how it's happening in Dallas, Texas, as you read this.

Dallas' polarization began elsewhere

On May 19, 2017, the Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans, Louisiana, was removed as a result of a December 17, 2015, 6-1 vote of the City Council to remove monuments to Lee and several other Confederate generals. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the monuments "celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for. And after the Civil War, these monuments were part of that terrorism as much as burning a cross on someone's lawn." August 2017 was an active month for removing monuments to Confederate generals, and Lee monuments in particular, as his statues came down across the country, including: August 12th, Charlottesville, SC; August 16th, Baltimore, MD and Brooklyn, NY; 19th, Duke University, Durham, NC; and the 21st at the University of Texas, Austin. "Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action," and the attack on "neo-confederate, white supremacists," embodied in the monuments, is on the move. In Charlottesville, SC an "enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction" added strength to the movement by dialing-up the polarization factor. It's all about dividing the nation.

Chronology of a Dallas show trial with a rigged jury

August 8: The Dallas Morning News reports that, as the title reads, "Dallas' 4 black City Council members say Confederate statues 'must and will be removed'-- after process." Four African-American City Councilmen declare the issue of the Dallas Confederate monuments settled, before a public discussion even begins. August 15: Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings proposes the creation of a Task Force to study the Confederate monuments issue and then submit recommendations to the City Council as to how to resolve the matter and maintain city "unity." This is his statement delivered verbally:
"As a city we can never ignore the fact that race and our racial injustices of the past continue to haunt us and the institutional instances of racism we see every day keeps us from the goal we have as a city. One symbol of those injustices are {sic} public art and statues in some parts of our city. As I expressed before, I think they are dangerous totems in our Dallas society because they divide us, versus unite us. It's easy to jump on the bandwagon and say 'tear em' down' because it's, frankly, politically correct and in many ways it makes us all feel good. I feel that way. But I hesitate and the reason is because I realize that the city of Dallas is better, is stronger, when we are united and not divided. So there are really two questions we face. One, is what do you do with the statues--do you leave them--tear them down--put them in a museum? How do you approach this? The second question is just as important. How do we go about making this decision for the city? How do we go about listening to our community so that at the end of this process we are better united, versus ending up more divided? I believe this problem that we face is really a gift that has been given us. And that we need to take advantage of this gift to learn how we listen to one another, and not get caught up into wedge issues."
As the "process" of "listening to our community" unfolded, it became clear that the Mayor's two questions had already been asked and answered. Consequently, the Task Force appears to have been designed as a buffer between elected city officials and citizens with sentiments running against decisions already made. In other words, the Task Force was a puppet show from the get-go.


August 24: Mayor Rawlings announces the formation of the 22-member Mayor's Task Force on Confederate Monuments, with one member appointed by each of the 15 Councilpersons, and the remainder appointed at-large by the Mayor. Hence, the jurors were appointed by those who had already made the big decisions that the Task Force was tasked to consider. A rigged jury. August 31: The first meeting of the Mayor's Task Force on Confederate Monuments is held. Most of the members' self-introductions stress the importance of their upcoming work and how honored they are to serve on the Task Force. The second meeting is scheduled for September 7. But, before it can happen... September 6: Dallas City Council votes 13-1 (with one abstention) to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Park in Dallas, thereby rendering irrelevant any eventual Task Force recommendation concerning the Lee monument. September 7: At the second meeting of the Task Force, the director of the City of Dallas' Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) briefed the group on the historical context of the erection of Confederate monuments and "names" (meaning public places and things with Confederate names). Here's how that briefing began:
"Thank you, and thank you all for being here tonight. Before we get started, I know we gave you all these stacks of materials, and they're going to be several documents we reference; you might want to have them at your fingertips. This Lee Memorial Dedication program is the long document, and then there're two additional articles that I will be referencing, "The myth of the kindly General Lee" and "How the cult of Robert E. Lee was born." So you may want to have those articles as we delve in and take a bit of a look back on how Dallas was during our monument building phase. Next slide please. This briefing was requested at the last meeting. We had several questions for some history, there were some emails. I am not an historian, nor do I purport to be. Our team has been spending months, however, reading about these issues, looking at other cities, looking at their history, and really trying to dig in on putting our monuments as well as other confederate names in some historical context, and trying to understand what was happening in Dallas at that time."
The reference to research begun "months" before that September 7 meeting indicates that the OCA's "delving" into "these issues" began at least as early as July 7--two weeks after the removal of monuments in New Orleans on May 19, and over a month before the August cascade of Lee memorial removals that began with the Charlottesville, SC riot on August 12. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the effort to remove the Confederate monuments in Dallas began--behind closed doors in City Hall--long before it surfaced in the Dallas media, and in public meetings of the Dallas City Council.

September 10: After a 12-hour court stay that temporarily halted removal of the Lee statue and inadequate equipment was unable to hoist the heavy statue, a second crane, sent from Houston, is hit and damaged, at 8:00 pm that Sunday evening, by a semi-trailer truck at an intersection in Dallas. The collision results in the death of the semi driver--Darell Murray, age 66, of Duncanville, TX--a southern suburb of Dallas. He leaves behind a large family. September 14: The Robert E. Lee Statue in Lee Park is hoisted off its pedestal by another crane and hauled away. September 29: You can read the Task Force's final report to the Mayor and City Council here. It recommends removing the tall Confederate Monument (pictured here) in Dallas' Pioneer Park, and changing the names of a few, short streets with Confederate-related names. The estimated cost of changing the signage on long city streets softened the zeal to erase all street names associated with dead Confederates. No doubt the business community of Dallas weighted in on that issue. The final report also directs attention to Confederate "totems"--to use the Mayor's language--in Fair Park where the Annual State Fair of Texas is held. Interestingly, there is no mention by the City of Dallas, or the Dallas Independent School District (D.I.S.D.), of either the statue of a late, famed Dallas businessman--and prominent member of the Klu Klux Klan--L.R. Thornton that stands in Fair Park, or of the D.I.S.D. school named after R.L. Plus, there's a big, busy highway running through Dallas named the R.L. Thornton Freeway. The silence reference R.L. may be attributable to a financial brake placed on the social warriors, plus the taboo of assaulting the reputation of a Dallas name that still carries considerable weight.

Another Confederate General on the list for erasure

General Albert Sidney Johnston will be removed from the Confederate monument in Pioneer Park. Plus, his name is now scheduled to come off a D.I.S.D. school. Johnston led the Confederate forces that fought in the April 6-7, 1862, Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, against Union forces led by U.S. Grant. The causalities at Shiloh were horrific. It was the bloodiest of the 50-plus battles of the first, full, year of the Civil War. Johnston died at Shiloh. Grant lived to command the entire Union Army and accept R.E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. But they had one thing in common: Shortly before the war started, they both owned slaves. A week after Johnston died at Shiloh, on April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed into law "An Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia." It is also known as "The DC Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862." "Compensated" meant the federal government bought the slaves' freedom. The DC Act is not to be confused with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862. The DC Act was an act of Congress. Five months later, the Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order of the President. The DC Act freed about 3,000 women, men and children enslaved in Washington, D.C. So, from April 12, 1861 to April 16, 1862, throughout the first, full year of the Civil War, slavery was legal in the capital of the United States of America. That is history.

Conclusion

Concerning the title: The protagonist in George Orwell's book "1984" is Winston Smith. He works in the Ministry of Truth. Winston's job is to change recorded history so that it aligns with the Party's version of events--past, present and future. His work makes him doubt the veracity of all facts distributed by the Party. The Thought Police discover Winston's skepticism, and he pays for his wrong-headed thinking with physical pain, and lost love. Because, eventually, changing history brings pain.

View Comments

Lee Cary -- Bio and Archives Since November 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles for several websites including the American Thinker, and Breitbart’s Big Journalism and Big Government (as “Archy Cary”). and the Canada Free Press. Cary’s work was quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles have posted on the aggregate sites Drudge Report, Whatfinger, Lucianne, Free Republic, and Real Clear Politics. He holds a Doctorate in Theology from Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL, is a veteran of the US Army Military Intelligence in Vietnam assigned to the [strong]Phoenix Program[/strong]. He lives in Texas.

Sponsored