Richard Malaby had seen my post “Is the Nackey Loeb School Ruing the Day It Gave Robert Azzi its First Amendment Award?” HIs response to that is here. But afterward, Richard felt compelled to write a more formal response to the Union Leader as a counter-point piece. That is below.
But first, I want to bring this to the attention to our readers. In the original I found on the Union Leader, Azzi listed a number of “White Supremacists”:
Today, we know well the content of Gingrich’s character. Desperate to stay bonded to America’s original sins of slavery and genocide of indigenous peoples, Gingrich, Frank Edelblut, Dan Richards, Mike Moffett, Joseph Mendola, and others have disseminated, across multiple media platforms, white supremacist ideology to keep Americans from learning an unexpurgated American history from its 1619 origins alongside the dominant White 1776 narrative.
All those names are still on the Union Leader piece. Mike Moffet writes for us at GraniteGrok, for full disclosure.
At the Concord Monitor, however, those names, but for Gingrich, have been scrubbed:
Desperate to stay bonded to America’s original sins of slavery and genocide of Indigenous peoples, Gingrich, among others in our state, has disseminated, across multiple media platforms, white supremacist ideology to keep Americans from learning an unexpurgated American history from its 1619 origins alongside the dominant white 1776 narrative.
But on his own site, it’s clear Azzi was sloppy:
Desperate to stay bonded to America’s original sins of slavery and genocide of Indigenous peoples, Gingrich, Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, among others in our state, has disseminated, across multiple media platforms, white supremacist ideology to keep Americans from learning an unexpurgated American history from its 1619 origins alongside the dominant white 1776 narrative.”
Why is this, Robert Azzi? I also dryly note that he is not allowing comments on his posts on his site. Why is that, Robert Azzi?
Without further ado, Mr. Malaby’s more formal response:
Dope vs. Scope
Robert Azzi’s recent piece, (White Supremacists Reveal Content of Their Character, 6/18/21), was one of the most repulsive bits of dreck I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. In an era where the slo-mo version of Simone Biles’ technically brilliant floor routine goes viral, her performance pales in comparison to the mental gymnastics of Mr. Azzi, who attempts to claim with a straight face that white politicians favorably quoting Martin Luther King is an effort to “conceal the truth of systemic racism.”
It’s true that America had slavery. It is just as true that the institution of slavery predated Christianity and Islam, and had been practiced on every inhabited continent by every civilization including Africans, Asians, Greeks, Indians, Ottomans, Romans, and Russians. America is exceptional because it was the first country where the “peculiar institution” was under attack from the moment of its establishment, as evidenced in private writings and public statements by its founders. When America ended the slave trade per the Constitution, the loudest objection came from its biggest beneficiaries: African and Middle Eastern countries. The second line of the Marines’ Hymn, “To the shores of Tripoli,” is in reference to the Barbary War, where the American navy defeated bands of pirates who had been raiding and selling Europeans into slavery in northern Africa. Without America’s commitment to ending the slave trade or utilizing its naval might to sink slave-trading ships and executing enslavers, it is hard to imagine the practice coming to an end. Inertia is a politically powerful force.
As a layman, I have yet to hear one politician of any party or race deny historical injustices faced by minorities in America in different eras. On the other hand, I have yet to hear one “anti-racist” such as Mr. Azzi compare the history of American race relations with that of other countries. He writes that slavery is America’s “original sin,” but how can that be when people of every color were enslaved for thousands of years, and slavery still exists in certain countries today, mercifully on a much smaller scale?
As disappointing as the lack of perspective is the general tone of Mr. Azzi’s writing. I can’t claim to know what position he is promoting as he has spent his whole column smearing his adversaries as “white supremacists,” “ignorant beyond redemption,” and “fellow travelers,” a term used for those who were ideologically sympathetic to, but not members of, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – the Nazis. He labels the 1776 Action program “anti-American excrescence;” would he use the same terminology for Bob Woodson’s 1776 Unites, a collection of black scholars who share a more patriotic, uplifting view of the founding of America? What about Booker T. Washington, who stated in Up From Slavery that blacks ending up in America was nothing short of Divine Providence? Would he be considered a white supremacist today?
We live in a time where it is not only fashionable but profitable to disparage America, yet the standard of living is better here than anywhere else in the world, regardless of race. America is not perfect, but has there been a country which has satisfied the lofty standards of Mr. Azzi? I mentioned Africa and Middle Eastern countries above, but neglected to mention the brutal treatment of slaves by Brazilians, the largest importer of African slaves. Even then, it has been estimated there were more slaves in India than there ever were in the western hemisphere. Yet, no one is criticizing Brazil, India, the northern coast of Africa, the Muslim world, or any other country for their involvement in the slave trade because there is no money to be made or awards to be won by doing so.
On multiple occasions, Mr. Azzi claims “we” know the content of the character of others based on their politics. In reading him, I cannot claim to know Mr. Azzi’s character, but unfortunately I’ve identified his level of intellectual rigor, or lack thereof. What can I say? People don’t know what they don’t know.
Richard Malaby
