William Lloyd Garrison was no John Brown. An earlier article described the extent to which John Brown should not be considered an “abolitionist” of the kind in general white amerikan supply prior to the Civil War. Garrison was one of those abolitionists. As that previous article made clear, John Brown was the exception to the white nationalism first ideology of the white abolitionists. William Lloyd Garrison was the rule.
As such, Garrison epitomized the political stand that we would today call liberalism. Political liberalism is pressed into service when a contradiction between oppressor and oppressed starts to percolate. If the contradiction itself is not too fundamental and the percolation has only just begun, then liberalism can maybe handle it. “Handling” here means doing just enough to simmer the percolation so the lid stays put while fending off those who might turn up the heat, and in the end doing nothing much of anything at all to change the oppressor-oppressed relationship. To this end, for instance, liberalism is equipped to, say, talk a good game while doing nothing. It’s that kind of oppressor’s tool.
Garrison did a lot of talking. “Fiery” was the description often given his oratory. William Lloyd Garrison delivered plenty of fiery speeches about how Black emancipation should be achieved through “moral suasion” rather than by force. Lest any Blacks be confused about his message, he was blunt: “We do not preach rebellion; no, but submission and peace.”
Again, as our earlier article pointed out, this kind of “abolitionism” was a product more of a fear of Black rebellion than the revolutionary identification with the oppressed that was John Brown. That fear was all too justified. In a white nation of 27 million, a slave nation of 4 million – not a minor contradiction. Keep in mind that the whites came to war with each other just over the potential eruption of this contradiction.
In the 1850’s all white amerika had its ear to the ground listening for tremors from the Black Nation. The early warnings had always been around, but the signals had gotten ever more frequent and insistent. Just in 1791 Toussaint L’Ouverture had led a slave uprising liberating all of Haiti from the French. Don’t think amerikkkans overlooked that little event. Then in 1800 and 1820 plots for slave rebellions were discovered in Richmond and Charleston, and in between, in 1811, there was a large slave uprising near New Orleans. So that by the time Nat Turner came around in 1831, and my goodness gracious was he violent … well by then it was clear that things could quickly get very out of hand. Could quickly get to the point that the whites wouldn’t know whether to shit or, you know, go blind. It could get just that far, just that, you know, quick.
Well Garrison wasn’t having any of that just over some “inferior” slaves. His fail safe position was to simply get rid of the South – let them have their damned slaves, let them get overrun by those “savages.” Then he’d build a big wall around the North and the outside would be painted all over in big block print saying, “Gee, you have no idea how sorry we are, really, and for the love of god almighty pulleeeze don’t hurt us.” That was William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist. Not a John Brown.
Like we said, liberalism works best when a contradiction is not too very fundamental and is not terribly exacerbated. Those conditions allow liberalism the luxury of hiding its reactionary agenda most effectively. Obviously these ideal conditions for liberalism did not obtain in the U$ in the 1850’s. The contradiction between the white nation and the Black slave nation couldn’t get any more fundamental and it was exacerbating all too quickly. Garrison’s “abolitionism” thus shows liberalism with its back to the wall. In his newspaper, right alongside articles urging that slavery be ended Garrison ran lurid tales of the horrors (to whites) of black rebellion: “Three savage negroes rushed into my house and killed my wife and my child before my face …,” etc. He stood the white nation’s hair on end with these horror stories and screamed in their faces about the peril they faced from the “gigantic cannibal” of the Black Nation. When push comes to shove liberalism has no choice but to get refreshingly honest about “the problem” and its own reactionary intent in dealing with that problem.
And what does all this have to do with today’s white nationalist so-called “left,” as the title claims? Well Part Two, coming shortly, clears that up quite nicely we think.
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