By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on May 26, 2021
Republicans are trying to whitewash the January 6, 2021 insurrection and riot at the National Capitol in Washington, D.C. by supporters of former president Donald J. Trump. They are now characterizing this violent event as a normal tourist visit of the Capitol. This whitewashing of the insurrection demonstrates, once again, why we cannot trust the history of America, as recorded by many white historians and political figures.
Videos of the January 6th insurrection showed rioters with helmets, body armor, metal batons, signs proclaiming their desire to "Hang Mike Pence," Confederate flags, pepper spray canisters, and marijuana as they broke doors and windows inside the Capitol, attacked police officers, seized control of the Senate and House chambers, and destroyed Congressional offices, all while frightened Democratic and Republican legislators were fleeing for their lives.
The insurrection was an organized rebellion that was designed to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory over Donald Trump by any means necessary, up to and including violence. It was planned by organizers who were paid by the Trump Campaign and incited by Trump himself.
Despite the disturbing video evidence of the widespread violence at the Capitol and a Capitol police officer screaming for his life as the mob attacked him, Republicans in Washington and around the nation are trying to whitewash this violent event rather than find out the root cause for it and report the truth to the American people.
In short, these Republicans are fully prepared to live with a lie about the events surrounding the January 6th insurrection rather than tell the cold, hard truth to the American people about what really happened that day, and why.
American History is Full of Outrageous Lies
American history is full of outrageous lies that were written by white politicians, self-appointed scribes, so-called historians, and news reporters like the Republicans in Congress, GOP Internet bloggers, and commentators on Fox News and News Max. These lies have been told in our history books for over 400 years.
The best and most comprehensive documentation of lies regarding America's history is set forth in James W. Loewen's national bestseller, "Lies My History Teacher Told Me," Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995, Revised and Updated in 2007. Loewen's book presents everything our American history textbooks have gotten wrong over a 400-year period.
White America's documented propensity to lie about history is one of the primary reasons I have recorded and published my family's history in America as persons of color who have been "slaves," freed men and women, pioneers, and notable "public figures" in the Deep South since the 1830s. In my own case, every newspaper in Alabama that has covered my career since I desegregated the University of Alabama's School of Law in 1970 was a formal participant in the FBI's COINTELPRO counterintelligence program that sought to discredit civil rights activists, political dissidents, and black business owners who could not be co-opted by Alabama's white ruling oligarchy.
Declassified FBI documents reveal that white reporters from The Birmingham News, as well as local FBI agents and Birmingham-area federal judges, were the leading participants in Alabama's COINTELPRO program. Some of these groups have continued in their traditional roles in the Alabama COINTELPRO program for five decades after the FBI's centralized COINTELPRO program ended in 1971.
This is one of the reasons why the public has never seen Birmingham News/Al.com reporters publish articles criticizing federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors in Alabama who target outspoken black elected officials, public figures, and business leaders for persecution solely because of their race. With the lone exception of former federal judge U.W. Clemon (Birmingham, Alabama) and senior federal judge Myron Thompson (Montgomery, Alabama), both of whom are black former civil rights attorneys, this also explains why nearly all federal sitting judges in Alabama today continue to coddle modern-day COINTELPRO federal prosecutors.
In 2018, a well-known former federal prosecutor confirmed to me the COINTELPRO role traditionally played by Al.com reporters/columnists like John Archibald and Kyle Whitmire. Prosecutors in Alabama often used these local reporters, who are essentially spin-masters for the modern-day version of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, to poison the well of public opinion against targeted black public officials, public figures, and business owners long before an indictment is handed down in criminal cases against these COINTELPRO victims.
Interestingly, Archibald and Whitmire have never criticized Alabama federal prosecutors for their glaring failure to prosecute Alabama-based Wells Fargo bank executives in connection with the bank's five-year nationwide crime spree (from 2012 to 2016) in which Wells Fargo publicly admitted to defrauding millions of its bank customers by creating more than two million unauthorized bank accounts in its customers' names for the sole purpose of bilking them out of hundreds of millions of dollars in unearned banking fees.
Yet, Archibald, Whitmire, and other Alabama reporters have aggressively publicized the cases of innocent blacks like Montgomery, Alabama attorney Chris Pitts and Birmingham, Alabama businessman Jonathan Dunning, both of whom are black and were the unfortunate victims of "twisting" -- a practice used by COINTELPRO federal prosecutors to rig judicial proceedings by deliberately omitting pertinent facts and/or distorting favorable evidence that benefits innocent defendants in order to indict and/or convict them on fabricated financial fraud charges. "Twisting" is prohibited by statute in every state, but permissible in federal courts.
The Truth is Available for Those Who Seek It
Fortunately, the Internet provides an invaluable forum for interested readers to independently discover the unvarnished truth about American history. The public no longer has to rely on the embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, colossal misinformation, and outright lies that are spewed by misguided white politicians, historians, modern-day COINTELPRO news reporters, and biased presentations of historical facts in today's history textbooks.
Whitewashing only succeeds when people of goodwill turn a blind eye to the truth. Sadly, many people cannot handle the truth because it shatters their negative stereotypes and misconceptions about certain groups of people that have infected their rational thinking for decades.
The GOP has taken whitewashing one step further. They want Americans to ignore videotaped evidence and simply believe the Republican Party's false narrative of lies about the violent January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.
All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins
Comments