This week, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an Ohio State University history professor and the brother of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined the mantra of many on the left for citizens to rise up and fight the system “by any means necessary.” However, Jeffries added a menacing element in calling for citizens to emulate John Brown, who murdered white farmers who supported slavery. He is not the first academic to use Brown as a model for political action today.
In a social media post flagged by Libs of TikTok, Jeffries declared that “John Brown understood that the only way to free Americans from the scourge of white supremacy was to get rid of white supremacists by any means necessary. He was right then. He is right now.”
The posting was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled rationalization for political violence, a dangerous contribution to an age of rage marked by rising attacks, including assassinations.
Other academics have pushed Brown as a model for activists in fighting racism, oligarchy, and other ills in society.
Stacey Patton, professor of journalism at Howard University, previously pushed this model in a blog titled “John Brown Didn’t Ask Enslaved People How to Be A Good White Ally.” Patton scolded white liberals to stop asking how to be a better “ally” to minorities. She wrote:
“It’s a question that always lands heavy. Not because I doubt their sincerity, but because the question itself is still a form of protection that centers the asker’s confusion instead of the target’s danger. It’s a request to be taught, forgiven, and reassured, again and again. It’s another round of homework assigned to the wounded…It’s exhausting as hell because it’s still a form of emotional outsourcing.”
Brown is best known for his pivotal role in the period known as “Bleeding Kansas” and the infamous Pottawatomie massacre.
In 1856, he orchestrated the Pottawatomie massacre. He and fellow abolitionists dragged five Kansas settlers, at least three of whom were pro-slavery sympathizers, out of their homes and executed them. His own son, Salmon Brown, said that when his father and his brother heard about the caning of abolitionist Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, they went “crazy, crazy.”
Brown was eventually captured after his raid on Harpers Ferry and hanged.
I understand that Brown is viewed as a figure who recognized that the scourge of slavery would only be excised from our nation by force. He is viewed as a catalyst of the Civil War by many. However, his murder and kidnapping of whites were efforts to use terror and vigilanteism to achieve the worthy goal of emancipation.
Frederick Douglas wrote beautifully about his divided emotions about Brown, crediting him with being “the thunder clap” that helped spark the struggle for freedom. He spent time with Brown who was a guest at his home and admired his convictions and passion. However, he was also a critic of the raid on Harper’s Ferry and argued for political, not violent, change. ( He wrote that “taking of Harpers Ferry was a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote.”).
For his part, Abraham Lincoln denounced Brown as an insane zealot, adding that this “was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate.”
Lincoln notably compared Brown to “the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.”
Patton (and apparently Jeffries) now suggest that Brown’s blood-soaked legacy may be worthy of replication. Patton heralded Brown, who “saw the horror for what it was and decided that ending this racist f*ckery mattered more than being understood.” What clearly makes Brown stand out for Patton is his violence: “So when white allies ask, ‘What can I do?’ here’s the answer: Be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?”
She added, “If you don’t want to die like John Brown, fine. But understand that somebody always does.”
Now, Dr. Jeffries is picking up the same call to rally behind Brown’s legacy. Notably, Brown himself dismissed those who believed that real change could occur without a blood-soaked reckoning: “I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”
According to his university bio, Jeffries teaches in areas such as “Power, Culture, and the State,” “the Black Power Movement,” and “Race, Ethnicity, and Nation.” He was featured by PBS as part of its series Black America Since MLK.
His better-known older brother, Hakeem, has notably been accused of fueling the rage in society, including posting images of himself brandishing a baseball bat. He has remained silent on his brother raising the specter of “Bloody Kansas” as a worthy inspiration for students and activists.
As many celebrate or rationalize the assassinations of figures such as Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the effort to encourage others to embrace the legacy of John Brown is hardly a subtle message. Many will take it as another signal that violence is not just warranted but righteous.
Rage rhetoric has already taken hold of much of our politics and the most extreme candidates garner support from voters.
Democratic voters turned out for a candidate in Texas who has called for the imprisonment and even castration of “Zionist billionaires.”
In Maine, the Democratic candidate Graham Platner has called himself an “Antifa supersoldier,” referring to the most violent and anti-free speech group in the country.
Platner has channeled the most unhinged aspects of John Brown. Indeed, some of his statements are strikingly similar to Brown’s: “There are times in this world when, for the good of tolerance and humanity, you need to kill a motherf—er.” He added the Brownesque twist that “Sadly most people who are true believers in tolerance and humanity find that activity repulsive.”
In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I explore the rise of such radical voices calling for violent action in the context of our 250th anniversary. These “new Jacobins” are unleashing the same impulses that led to “Terror” in France as citizens threw off any restraints to vent their rage. They too dismissed notions of nonviolent political action. As Platner observed, “I suppose [tolerance] is morally good, but pragmatically a shortfall.”
Among the Jacobins, a lawyer stepped forward to advocate for the “pragmatic choice” of violence. His name was Robespierre, and he declared, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.”
Ultimately, Robespierre himself would be guillotined like the tens of thousands of his victims. One of the few surviving central leaders after the French Revolution would offer a cautionary tale to those who seek to fuel such rage to achieve political power. French writer Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote in 1793 that “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
This column also appeared on Fox.com
Hakeem lays on the type of screeching rhetoric, North and South, that led to the Civil War and over half a million American deaths.
Some in the North seemed to be promoting a race war like the bloodbath in Haiti. How would they expect Southerners to respond to calls for their mass murder? We see something similar in South Africa today.
We didn’t invent slavery; we inherited it from essentially all of the civilizations and cultures in history. The West ended it after more than 5,000 years of civilizations that accepted it.
It likely would have ended by peaceful means as in England but for firebrands like Hakeem.
The US went to war against white supremacists in the 1860s. Why is it wrong now?
“Why is it wrong now?”
Because by “white supremacists” the Left means republicans.
Women were not allowed to vote when democracy was created in Greece in 508 B.C.
Women were not allowed to vote by the American Founders in 1788.
Women are not allowed to vote in China.
And so on…
Most men were not allowed to vote, neither. Rich boys. They got to vote.
Based upon Sally’s comments and the post menopausal purple haired movement I would say, I understand the reasoning!🤣
Will you please visit China and tell a few hundred million women to stop voting then? They’ve been doing it since 1947 and you need to put a stop to it.
It is whites who are hated for the color of their skin, these days. You done seen to that. Your hatred for whitey be all over your racist language. Every breath you take, girlfriend, you be demonstrating that. You do the owning of the “White Race,” you know, as those who are supremacists, across the board, without exception. It be whitey now you lump together as all being all evil. You’ve got him fixed. But it be you, YOU, is being supremacists nowadays.
I have a dream
I have a dream
You? You?
“. . . get rid of white supremacists by any means necessary. (John Brown) was right then. He is right now.” (Jeffries, echoing the Left’s rationalization for mad, blind violence)
Here are the means Brown used during the Pottawatomie massacre:
Brown “then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing, you cant say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one, but has only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children . . .” “O how it pained my Heart to hear the dying groans of my Husband and children . . .” (Mahala Doyle, the wife and mother of those murdered by Brown and his henchmen)
No arrest by law enforcement. No presentation of charges. No trial, no judge, no jury, no reference to objective laws and procedures, no right to counsel. Just cold blooded execution. Remember that the next time a race huckster invokes the name of John Brown.
When vigilante murder is your means, you have lost any claim to a moral high ground.
“…beat the hell out of them” – a quote from from the leader of the Republican Party to beat up people for exercising freedom of speech at a Republican rally.
For the first time in a decade, Republicans should lead by example advocating non-violence? Then Republicans would have credibility to call out violent divisive rhetoric.
You are a liar. You placed words in quotes, but no source. Fraud and lair.
Then she deleted it. Very tricky ricky
How about the whole quote in context and the actual person speaking. As opposed to some vague ” “leader from the republican party”.
regardless. “…beat the hell out of them”
Is something said at football games and other competitions – it is not a clear exhortation to violence.
John brown both advocated and committed murder – and actual insurrection .
As to “violent divisive rhetoric” – the only thing those of you on the left accept as non-violent and not divisive from republicans is capitulation.
Your Efforts to impose your will by force on others and limit their freedom will be resisted – by FORCE even violence if necescary – that is NOT divisive, That is NOT violent, it is self defense.
You do not seem to understand that whether it is actual violence or rhetorical – whether it is justified depends on the objective.
Actual Self Defense is justified. The initiation of violence merely to get your way politically is not.
Of course Republican language will be divisive – atleast to you.
Republicans are advocating for what 80% of the country wants – you are the odd man out in the looney 20%
another tolerant liberal. LOL
Since it is Progressives who are fighting for todays slaves….illegals, Hakeem wants to John Brown THEM????
Steve Scalise says, “Violence is never the answer.”
https://x.com/SteveScalise/status/2058332213754638561
Pres. Trump should demand a retraction. It’s ok if ICE does it or the USAF.
or José Antonio Ibarra
I like the leftist guerillas who demand ICE back off because they are killers when, at the same time, somehow, inexplicably, almost miraculously really, they can’t recall Laken Riley.
They make their motives and intentions very clear, and they have done so over a considerable period time: It is they who decide who should live and who should die.
Most of us actually understand human language in context.
Literally the role of government is to use force or the threat of force to secure our rights.
The use of force is violence.
Violence is justified in self defense.
When the law is not obeyed – Government is justified in using FORCE to acheive compliance.
If we do not like that – we must change the law – all laws are ultimately enforced by Violence.
ICE is enforcing the law – with force, Violence if necescary.
If you do not wish to be subject to the use of force – obey the law.
If you do not like the law – work through the legislature to change the law.
That is how the actual rule of law works.
Paul makes this request of Philemon:”…receive him (Onesimus, a slave) forever, no longer as a slave but better than a slave, a beloved brother…”
Add to it- during this time the kingdoms and principalities. Do you see?
Love one another, as I have loved you.
Is a duty that religion imposes on individuals.
It has absolutely nothing to do with government.
It brings values, morals, informs the individuals otherwise officials would be self serving as seen now , js. Reason works too but then Christianity is about reason and not magical thinking.
Religion is for those who don’t want to go to hell.
Spirituality is for people who’ve been there.
If we complied with all they would like us to do, what would that involve exactly? Mass Suicide? Becoming slaves? Giving everything in our possession to folks of color? Yield our jobs to any/all those of color. Torture ourselves? What is it we should do? I get confused. Line up to be shot or imprisoned for life?
What is their bottom line? Starve us to death? They hate all whites, right? Or, just white Americans whose ancestors owned slaved? What if you’re white and you’ve fought to end discrimination or have a relative who marched with MLK? What about people of color who sold people of color into slavery or people of color who owned people of color and held them as slaves? According to the 1830 U.S. Census, roughly 3,775 free Black people owned enslaved individuals.
What exactly are they demanding? What must America do to satisfy their demands? I don’t know. Do you?
Historty?
I have often thought that the Brave, Masked, Wonderful Warriors of Antifa ™ should take their message of love, joy and tolerance to rural Kentucky or Coeur d’alene, Idaho. Of course, they won’t, they only go to overwhelmingly leftist areas where the local authorities will turn a blind eye.
antonio
What do we celebrate the Sons of Liberty but demonize John Brown, both domestic terrorists whose causes we ultimately support?
I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion of this. I just think it is interesting that most history textbooks cover the Tea Party without discussing the violence the Sons of Liberty waged against Tories and Brits. Both actions ultimately sped up the eventual wars that followed.
I’m not sure John Brown’s actions are analogous to fighting against an oppressive occupying army.
Which would you rather be – a white resident of the Massachusetts colony or a black slave in antebellum South? I know my answer!
You left out the White indentured servant in the antebellum era option.
I’m still not sure John Brown’s actions in murdering individual settlers are analogous to fighting against an oppressive occupying army.
The murder of individual settlers is not justified by the fact that they are slave owners.
Just as the bombing of abortion clinics is not justified because they perform abortions.
The Sons of liberty through tea into the harbor.
The minutemen were engaged in self defense.
John Brown was not a slave engaged in revolt.
Killing is not justified by what someone has done in the last or what we beleive they will do in the future.
It is justified by the defense of self or the defense of others against a very real threat of death at the moment.
Unjustified killing is murder.
I would further note – John Brown was not freeing slaves when he attacked a federal armory, killing soldiers.
He was not tried and executed by southern slave-owners for freeing slaves. He was executed by the federal government for murdering soldiers to get guns.
It wasn’t an oppressive occupying army. At the time it was the army of the legitimate sovereign.
But the Sons of Liberty were not a formal organization; they were more like Antifa. And while some of them got violent at times, I don’t think they ever descended to murder.
But mostly I think they have the good reputation they do now, because most people are unaware of most of their violent activities. The Tea Party sounds to the modern ear like a prank rather than the equivalent of a bank robbery; even bank robberies of a century or more ago sound to the modern ear like daring adventure, not at all like ones that happen today.
Ken Burns has an excellent documentary on the revolution that goes into the often violent conflicts between revolutionaries and loyalists before and during the revolution.
Separately the purpose of the declaration of independence was to legally justify independence by establishing that King George was NOT a legitimate sovereign.
The more famous introductory paragraphs of the declaration of indepence lay out the purpose of legitmatge government and that when government fails at that purpose the people are justified in replacing it.
The 2nd longer portion is the list of failures of King George and his government that make it illegitimate.
No, the Declaration does not in any way deny that the UK was legitimately sovereign over the colonies. It merely asserts that the colonists had the right to throw off that sovereignty for legitimate cause, and that when doing so they owed the world an explanation of what drove them to such a drastic measure.
Overthrowing an illegitimate sovereign needs no explanation, and no justification. Merely show his illegitimacy and the right to overthrow him is automatic. But because they acknowledged that up to that day he was legitimate, and they were renouncing their legitimate duty of loyalty to him, they had to explain and justify themselves.
It’s like when you break a contract for cause, that doesn’t change the fact that it was binding until you broke it. Or when you get divorced for cause, you were still married until then.
The Sons of liberty engaged in civil disobedience – throwing Tea into Boston Harbor.
John Brown engaged in murder.
Brown is no different from those who bomb abortion clinics and assassinate abortion doctors.
Very few pro-lifers support them.
Destruction of property is not civil disobedience. It’s a violent crime.
And I do support stopping the murder of children with as much force as necessary to achieve that goal — but no more. If someone is about to murder a child and the only way I have of stopping him is to shoot him, I have the right to do so. If I can stop him without deadly force then I have no right to use deadly force.
The nephew doesn’t fall far from the uncle.
The American Founders gave Americans Their Nation, Their Law, and Their Population.
The singular American failure was and remains the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES and OUR POSTERITY.”
– Preamble of the American Founders
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Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
As if Hakeem weren’t awful enough with his pandering to and being part of the lefty left, we are now subjected to a relative of the same ilk. The former a mouth with nothing to do but seek publicity and preach victimology. Unfortunately, the latter gives out grades and has the ability to harm students who are not sycophants.
I really don’t think the Professor believes that these people are killers. Those who aren’t usually approve of it. Just b/c it isn’t happening much right now, doesn’t mean it won’t. Trump is just a start for them. They are no different than the Iranian leadership.
OT
Note to President Donald J. Trump:
________________________________________
“If not us, then who? And if not now, when?”
– President Ronald Reagan, September 14, 1981
You know who else was right? Lincoln.