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Torrance Stephens's avatar

Some study history, some don't. Some learn from history, some don't. Jesus wept.

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Lukium's avatar

You posted this article as a comment to one of mine, so I figured I'd do you a solid and reply to it here as well:

I read your article, and it’s an almost perfect distillation of right-wing revisionist history—full of rhetorical flair, but not much in the way of evidence or logic.

Let’s set the record straight, since this “Democrats are the real racists” line is the oldest propaganda trick in the book:

1. Parties Swapped. That’s a Fact, Not an Opinion.

The Democratic Party of the Confederacy and Jim Crow was the party of the Deep South. After the New Deal and especially after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, those “old Democrats” fled to the Republican Party, which built its modern coalition on their resentments—the so-called “Southern Strategy.”

The parties literally swapped. Today, the GOP owns the Deep South, rural America, and the politics of racial grievance. Democrats are the party of cities, the North, and the very people the old Confederacy sought to oppress.

If you doubt it, look at a single electoral map or the voting records of Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, or the entire “Dixiecrat” movement—every single one of them ended their careers as Republicans.

2. Who Actually Profits From Undocumented Labor?

The industries that exploit undocumented labor—agriculture, meatpacking, hospitality, construction—donate overwhelmingly to Republicans. That’s public record.

It’s Republican agribusiness and construction magnates lobbying to keep wages low, block citizenship, and maintain a cheap, terrified labor force. The “Democrats just want cheap labor” line is projection at its most brazen.

The only policy consistently blocked by the GOP for 40 years? A path to citizenship that would eliminate that exploitation—because then, workers could actually bargain for wages.

3. Today’s Republican Party Is the Party of Pre-Civil Rights Democrats.

The social base, the geography, the policies, the resentments—it all matches. The only thing that changed was the name on the door.

You say “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”? You’re right—but you’re pointing at the wrong tree. The roots of the current GOP are in the Confederate South, Jim Crow, and the anti-civil rights backlash.

4. On “Law and Order” and ICE:

The real story of “law and order” is a regime of terror aimed at the powerless and a total pass for the powerful. You want to talk about ICE? Let’s talk about the GOP's record of shielding employers while jailing workers and tearing families apart.

If Republicans truly cared about “the law,” they’d go after the employers who hire undocumented workers. But those employers are Republican donors. Instead, they scapegoat kids in the fields while giving the bosses a free pass.

5. The “Democrats Haven’t Changed” Lie is Just That—a Lie.

FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, MLK, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Barack Obama—these are not the party of Andrew Jackson or Jefferson Davis.

Pretending nothing changed is an insult to the millions who fought, bled, and died to change this country for the better.

So, spare me the fake history. The only people still falling for this “Democrats = Confederates” nonsense are those who never bothered to pick up a history book written after 1964.

Here’s the truth, repeated as many times as it takes:

Today’s Republican Party is the direct heir to the Confederacy and Jim Crow.

Today’s Democratic Party is the party of civil rights, the New Deal, and the multi-racial working class.

The record, the maps, the votes, and the donor lists all say the same thing.

If you want to keep running this tired old play, you’re welcome to. But the rest of us are done letting you get away with rewriting history to cover for the people actually running the biggest exploitation racket in modern America.

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