A clever historian is behind the drive to significantly upgrade how American history is taught.

The group is pushing to change the official designation of Arlington House to drop Robert E. Lee’s name and make it a national historic site that embraces the full history here. It will take an act of Congress.

Lee’s direct descendants support the name change.

“I don’t feel like we’re taking the name away,” says Rob Lee. “I think when you call it the Arlington House, you’re just opening it up to more of the families who lived there, honestly. And I think it’s just more appropriate.”

Great stuff, and here is the part that really had me jump out of my chair to salute this historian.

Descendants of enslavers are into accepting their family’s deep guilt, which is framed as a sincere appreciation for the descendants of their slaves.

The generosity coming from the descendants of people who my ancestors hurt so horribly, it feels like an incredible gift,” says Sarah Fleming. Her fourth great-grandfather was Robert E. Lee’s uncle.

“We all grew up being very excited that we were connected to the Lees,” she says. “We also grew up knowing slavery was horrible, but the family didn’t talk about the space in between, that the Lees were enslavers.”

The space in-between… being related to one of the worst men in history and knowing that he fought for the worst things possible in the worst ways?

Wat.

That space described is in fact no space at all, which is why this historian’s sharp logic bursting an old propaganda bubble is so profoundly needed.

Generosity from real victims of slavery was and indeed continues to be a gift, an undeserved one. It was literally what President Grant created as a path forward for the country after he won the Civil War, even personally intervening to prevent Lee from being hanged.

The fact descendents of pro-slavery have so grossly abused the gift and framed themselves as victims after they lost a war they started is pure tragedy. The fact they refused any guilt (e.g. Lost Cause) is what threw America back into a perpetual tailspin of repression and violent terrorism under Lee’s name.

…there were over 4,000 lynchings between the 1860s and 1960s in the united states, with over 500 happening in Georgia.

Lee often was used as inspiration for lynchings, cold and cruelly planned acts of domestic terrorism.

Civil Rights activist and investigative journalist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, life was profoundly changed on March 9, 1892, when three friends (and successful businessmen) were lynched in Tennessee. This incident stemmed from their opening a grocery store too close to their white competitors. After she spoke out against this outrage in print, her newspaper office was destroyed, and her life was threatened. […] What she uncovered was lynchings were not for acts of sexual violence, but for attempting to register to vote, for being too successful, for failure to demure acceptably to whites, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In addition, she showed that lynchings were not the act of out-of-control whites horrified over a grievous act. Rather, lynchings were often planned several days in advance and had police support. Not only were men lynched, but women and children were, too. Wells-Barnett’s work uncovered the thin veneer which was used to justify lynching.

Lynchings were gross denial of guilt, fraudulent claims of individual defense used as a thin veneer over widespread orchestrated terrorism. This has been the horrible legacy of the horrible traitor Robert E. Lee.

His name is a threat, whether on street signs or schools; a precursor and warning to racist violence. Robert E. Lee, like an Osama bin Laden Avenue or Timothy McVeigh Park is the detestable name of terrorism.

The story about Arlington being a house of reconciliation brings forward the obvious question what restorative work can his descendents really do to stop further perpetuation of heinous crimes under their name?

Removing the name from his house is a good start. First from his house, then maybe from their own.

Given recent stories in the news about certain Nazi-sounding people threatening to “invade” Mexico again, here’s a little food for thought.

A 2014 film called “Matria” gives important context to Mexico preparing for invasion and helping America defeat fascism in WWII, a relationship almost never discussed.

The Nazi war machine after WWI still was very tightly bound to military tradition like horsemanship (not to mention a post-Versailles regulation). So of course it makes perfect sense the movie centers on Mexican cowboys (the original cowboys) who were trained to protect their country against invasion by horse-riding Germans.

The threat and rise of fascism in Mexico is perhaps best explained in the work of a German languages professor in Guanajuato, a fascist provocateur named Hellmuth Oskar Schleiter. He had served in German intelligence during World War I and became a fervent adherent to Nazi party objectives for Mexico, masking them in “Make Mexico Great Again” campaigns (Unión Nacional Sinarquista).

Juan Alberto Cedillo describes in his 2007 book “Los nazis en México” how a network of German spies grew and linked across high-ranking Mexican officials, hoping to seize resources like oil reserves.

Nazi military intelligence campaigns really took hold with German companies doing business in Mexico, as evidenced by Swastika flags draped over their doors. The overt fascist signaling was then followed by violent attacks targeting Jews, Chinese, communists, and trade unions. A dangerous increase in threats to law and order from organized actions of fascist “Shirts” (first Green, then Gold, modeled on Hitler’s Brown Shirts) killed several people in 1935-1936. For example as fascists tried to open fire into crowds, ten of them were shot dead by police.

The Mexican government, driven by rising public outcry, tried banning violent fascist agitators from political groups (five years ahead of America). Their ban in fact resulted in the German-backed puppets moving headquarters from Mexico across the border to Mission, Texas.

Operating with protection from Texas the fascist anti-government “Gold Shirts” openly campaigned to violently undermine democracy until their leader died in 1940.

GEN. RODRIGUEZ, MEXICAN FASCIST; Leader of Gold Shirts, Exiled as Enemy by Cardenas in 1936, Dies in Juarez GOT HIS TITLE FROM VILLA Continued Activities Along the Border–Had 800,000 Ready to March on Capital

This might be a good point to remember how white foreigners like Davy Crockett a century earlier had immigrated to abolitionist Mexico and fought a violent campaign to create a pro-slavery state. The Nazi Germans in 1936 perhaps could be framed as walking down this well-known path of the 1836 Texas’ origin story. After Texas was birthed to deny freedom to non-whites it then was annexed by a foreign power (United States) under strict provision for the preservation of slavery. You perhaps could see why Mexico in 1937 eyed Texas and the United States as sources of fascism and racism. By 1939 German spies operating in America had managed to run a huge Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden under nativist and xenophobic “America First” banners.

I mean the 1940 reports of 800,000 fascists organizing in the former Mexican territory of Texas to invade capitol cities and replace elected governments with a racist dictatorship sounds strangely… familiar today. Not to mention the Sinarquista regressive nonsense falsely promising nativists a “return to old Mexico”.

Then, in May 1942 everything changed for Mexico when a Nazi submarine hiding in the Gulf sank two Mexican oil tankers seven days apart — Potrero del Llano and Faja de Oro. This switched defense concepts of Mexico from domestic to international. President Manuel Ávila Camacho responded with a call-to-action and declaration of war on Germany, Italy and Japan.

A popular veteran of the Mexican Revolution and President of the National Association of Charros — Antolín Jiménez Gamas — proposed that Mexican cowboys be organized to defend against the primarily horse-based Nazi military. A Legion of Mexican Guerrillas was formed and within a year Jiménez had 150,000 charros in 250 stations trained and ready to fight Nazis.

Of course Mexico also modernized its military. President Camacho created the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force (FAEM). Texas, given its slavery-based secession and habit of being on the wrong side of history in its attacks on Mexico, had been a constant problem for the freedom-loving Mexicans. Suddenly in 1942 America and Mexico joined on the same side for freedom and against the Axis powers.

The alliance was based on Mexico providing raw materials and labor to America for production of mechanized combat, such as planes and tanks, and in return Mexican pilots would be trained in Texas for combat. Negotiations with America to provide raw war materials slammed the door shut on Nazi aspirations to take them by force.

The FAEM became known as the Aztec Eagles. Their Escuadrón 201 was sent into duty for the Luzon, Philippines campaign and flew nearly 100 combat missions, side-by-side with Americans.