'We were watching, in real time, a racial backlash.' 6 are a bunch of white people,' Jefferson says. 'It's not by some dent of the universe or some sort of random act that the faces that we see in these photographs and videos from Jan. 'We were watching, in real time, a racial backlash' It's Thompson's very Black Southern-ness that allows him to 'weave into this narrative, both explicitly and implicitly by way of his identity, how much this has to do about race,' Jefferson says. Thompson got his start in politics registering Black people to vote in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Trump, born into his wealth, has previously peddled a racist conspiracy theory denying the legitimacy of the nation's first Black president. 'How striking to see someone who looks like Bennie Thompson wield this amount of institutional power, against a person like Donald Trump, who is awash in the markings of whiteness and privilege and all that it affords.' While not a criminal trial, the proceedings have had a legal laser focus, to show the culpability of the former president.īut just the symbolism of Thompson at the helm of the hearings places race and history on display, Jefferson says. There has been little direct mention of race during the televised hearings, which paused in August and are set to resume in September. Thompson's direct mention of race and America's legacy of racism at the top of the hearings was a bit of an aberration. Jefferson says both the Lost Cause and the Big Lie are myths meant to justify - and at the same time deny the existence of - violence meant to preserve white power.

The Lost Cause and the lie that Trump won the 2020 election are myths to justify violence and preserve white power Just as the Lost Cause denied the brutal racism of slavery in order to perpetuate violent inequity through other means, at the heart of the Big Lie is also a drive to protect a racist order, according to Stanford University political scientist Hakeem Jefferson. 6, 2021, and extended out to include another lie, one that painted the violent attempt to overturn the election as a peaceful protest. It was a lie so large that it drove the insurrection on Jan. The Big Lie has come to mean the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election but that it was stolen from him. Everything that follows, the nadir of American race relations, the violent dismantling of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the erections of Confederate monuments and the conflation of a treasonous Confederate flag with patriotism, are all in the name of this Lost Cause.

It tells a false story of generous slave owners and happy slaves, as well as lies that the Civil War wasn't really fought over slavery - it was about states' rights. The Lost Cause is the racist myth that justifies chattel slavery. 'I'm reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 'I'm from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching,' Thompson began. 6 Committee hearings, Chairman Bennie Thompson drew a line across history, connecting the Lost Cause to the Big Lie.

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