The usual White supremacist claptrap about how Freedom is something for Whites to give Blacks – even though Racial Slavery was never legal - as if it were, therefore, something Whites could ever deny them. This White arrogance is designed to make it look like Whites are better than Blacks (although this alleged superiority is only ever based on Whites’ self obsessive, military backed, political power – the only means of enforcing Slavery, in the first place.)
Here, Whites still need to establish themselves as something special – above and beyond those non Whites they look down their noses at – even though history tells a somewhat different story of 500 years of ongoing White imperial bestiality: Rape, Murder & Theft.
What we have here is two groups of White supremacists – Democrat & Republican – deciding what is politically best for the USA, without reference to ethics. How to avoid the high costs of Slavery while keeping Blacks in an inferior social position. All without any reference to the fact that individual States could secede if they wished to but Lincoln, the tyrant who wanted to keep Southern States in bondage to the North, dictatorially decided to wage war against those who wanted to leave the Union of their own free will; one form of slavery supplanting another. Nor any discussion of the inherent flaw in first-past-the-post democracy in that Whites will pass laws to ensure they are in the majority (eg, denying suffrage to non Whites, restrictive immigration, anti miscegenation laws, etc), to make it easier for them to oppress minorities; eg, Ethics & Politics can never mix.
Here the movie does well at showing how greedy Whites are at abolishing Slavery for their own economic benefit since, apart from anything else, States divided will not be good trading partners.
The idea that Whites would kill each other to free Blacks is ludicrous – the film contradicts its own premise by showing how White supremacist White culture is. But Whites would kill each other over the economic downside of Slavery; eg, White unemployment caused by Blacks not being able to demand wages or industrialization making slaves an unnecessary hindrance to technological progress.
The movie fails to show that Lincoln was the classic Machiavellian politician by presenting him a Christ like teller of parables. There is no reference to Lincoln’s White supremacy in order to muddy the waters about the great difference between Racial Slavery and White supremacy by pretending that abolishing the former is identical with abolishing the latter. There is no reflection on the fact that Whites face a constant internal conflict between saying Slavery is bad; while being just as determined to preserve the benefits of same.
Here are Whites struggling to come to terms with the endemic hypocrisy of White culture and, largely, failing. This explains why there is no mention of the fact that Civil Rights for Blacks did not arrive in the US until 1968; while admitting Whites will never share the stolen wealth of the US with non Whites.
This movie is proof, if ever it were needed, that it was far easier for Whites to abolish Racial Slavery than it will ever be for them to abolish White supremacy. This inability explains why Whites love nostalgic trips down Memory Lane, like this one, to ease their present day guilt and shame at the failure of White culture to produce true civilization: A typically-cowardly renegotiation with a guilt ridden past.
It is inevitably hard for Whites to be honest about their own brutish history, but at least this politically unsophisticated attempt to propagandize for Whites (when the reality of Whiteness is the opposite of what is ahistorically shown here) is a little easier to sit through than the execrable for the same reasons Amistad.
