Kontextmaschine

7th January 2021

Photo reblogged from left unity with 722 notes

quoms:
““As rioters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, a photographer named Saul Loeb managed to encapsulate the siege’s dark historical context in a single image. His photo shows a man waving a Confederate battle flag in front of two portraits of...

As rioters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, a photographer named Saul Loeb managed to encapsulate the siege’s dark historical context in a single image. His photo shows a man waving a Confederate battle flag in front of two portraits of Civil War-era figures in the Capitol building.
To the man’s right is a portrait of Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator who protested slavery. To his left is a portrait of John C. Calhoun, the seventh US vice president, who was a staunch defender of slavery and heavily influenced the ideology that ultimately led to the South’s secession. […]
“What I find fascinating about that juxtaposition is its connections to violence, because of course [Sumner] was a victim of violence in the Capitol when he was attacked for having had made a speech critical of slavery,” Judith Giesberg, a Civil War historian at Villanova University, told Business Insider. “What that image should remind us of is that there’s a history of having violent political confrontations in Congress.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-trump-supporter-riot-confederate-flag-us-capitol-2021-1
Wednesday’s riot is not the first act of political violence to take place inside the Capitol. One of the greatest men ever to serve in the Senate, the Republican abolitionist Charles Sumner, was beaten nearly to death in the chamber by a vicious Democratic slaver, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina. It was a savage attack in response to a blistering speech: Brooks broke the gold-handled walking stick he used beating Sumner over the head, and the senator was sidelined by his injuries for three years. Brooks was a hero to the slavers, who sent him hundreds of new walking sticks in the mail. Brooksville, Fla., and Brooks County, Ga., were named for him shortly afterward.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-trump-presidencys-inevitable-wretched-end/