Remember, Remember, The 5th of November

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

Some of you are old enough to remember the Anonymous Mask. Following the 2005 movie V for Vendetta, it gained popularity as an international symbol of protest. It found itself in various movements from the anti-surveillance movement born after the Iraq war, to Occupy Wall Street after the recession, before it went out of fashion sometime in the 2010s, probably due to 4chan making anonymity dangerous to society, but not in a cool way. It’s an interesting token of Bush Era culture, when distrust of institutions was a left-wing, instead of a right-wing thing, but ultimately, like all fads, which most protest movements are, it faded into the ether.

The mask might have been chosen because it’s a smug, long-faced man, but it belies a history that long predates anything that V for Vendetta stood for. The mask depicts Guy Fawkes, the most recognizable of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5th, 1605. This was a plan to, and this sounds made up, but the authorities say it happened, to stash gunpowder under the House of Parliament and blow up the entire building while in session—killing King James I and all of the lords and MPs of parliament. The conspirators were Catholics who were attempting to reverse the entrenchment of Henry VIII’s Anglican church, which he created to get a divorce. So the story goes that an anonymous letter was sent to the British Authorities, and they caught, tortured, and executed the conspirators. This event is commemorated in English history with the poem, subverted by V in the movie, bearing the visage of the conspirator, “Remember, Remember the 5th of November”, going into increasingly unhinged rhetoric against Catholics, peaking with a call for a noose for the Pope. That line wasn’t kept in the movie.

Back in 2005, we knew that Guy Fawkes didn’t have much to do with the movement for freedom that V was the symbol of, and we had this sort of tongue-in-cheek contempt for Fawkes, as if his sectarian squabble couldn’t compare to our serious fight for freedom and privacy. But we should ask, why 400 years after the fact was Guy Fawkes a recognizable fixture in Britain? And think of our 5th of November, 9/11. Yes, we’ve seen another peak in Islamophobia as the Right Wing Zionist Press has attempted to mobilize it in defense of the Jewish state, but can we say with any confidence that 9/11 will reverberate through the ages like the 5th of November? Will 2400 hipsters be wearing Osama Bin Laden masks (thinking about it, he kind of looks like Guy Fawkes)? The enmity Protestants held towards Catholics in the Anglo World, which includes America at least up into the 20th century, ran deeper than hatred for welfare queens, or muslim terrorists, or Haitian migrants, or whatever Sean Hannity is talking about today. It is worth being examined seriously, rather than just a petty hatred of a less enlightened time.

From Cromwell to Washington

The Protestant Reformation and the subsequent struggles subdued Europe for more than a century; they culminated in the 30-years War. The World Wars set a new standard for destruction, but before them, the 30-years War was the catastrophe of European history. Parts of Germany were depopulated by 50%, which compares to the extent of destruction in Belarus during the Second World War. England, as usual, got off easy. We already discussed the failed gunpowder plot, but it must be exemplified how pathetic the urban legends in the Anglosphere are compared to the apocalypse of the 30 years' War. The paragon of Catholic Repression, “Bloody” Mary Tudor, killed a mere 300 people. In one incident of the 30 Years' War, the Sack of Magdeburg resulted in the near complete destruction of the city and its population. About 30,000 civilians were killed, not counting the rape, torture, and looting that the Catholic soldiers visited upon the Protestant city.

England suffered a smaller holocaust during its Civil War between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, the Roundheads and Cavaliers, about a century after Henry VIII’s split from the Catholic Church and about 50 years after the Gunpowder Plot. Anglicanism was firmly entrenched in Britain by the time of the Civil War, but not enough, according to some in the English Parliament. King Charles I, along with his French Catholic wife Henrietta Marie, attempted to implement a form of “High Church Anglicanism,” adopting some of the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic Church. Along with this, Charles attempted to circumvent the English Parliament and rule like the absolute monarchs of countries like France and Spain. However, unlike France and Spain, Britain had a powerful Parliament, which Charles depended on to raise taxes. When Charles convened Parliament to raise taxes to crush a Scottish rebellion, Charles was unable to make the concessions necessary to Parliament, and so the Parliament and the King went to war.

The Caveliers won some early battles, but with the creation of the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell, the Roundheads folded the Caveliers, most decisively at the battle of Naseby. At the end of the war, Charles I was executed, more than a century before the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Cromwell would then go on to disband parliament himself and rule as “Lord Protector” of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell would go on to wage wars against the Netherlands, Spain, and, most infamously, in Ireland, where his name is still invoked to denote Protestant terror.

One may contend that the religious fervor and devotion to Parliamentary power of the Parliamentarians were separate entities. That they were advocates of a more representative system of government who happened to be religious zealots. However, you cannot separate these two things. When they talked of papal tyranny, they weren’t bullshitting. Their religious fervor didn’t merely coincide with their support of Parliamentary supremacy; their religious fervor was part and parcel with it. The Parliamentarians could, with credibility, point to the comparative despotism in France and Spain and utilize their Protestant fervor against it.

After Cromwell’s death, the Monarchy was restored, but with its powers deeply reduced. Decades later, with James II, Great Britain would have its last Catholic monarch. Needless to say, he didn’t last long and was replaced in the “Glorious Revolution” by William of Orange and Mary I, his daughter. The Revolution cemented the supremacy of Parliament in Britain and also reinforced bans on Catholics to public office (though they had been enacted decades prior).

Americans like to flatter themselves by proclaiming that they’re the first colonial state to achieve independence, and that their revolution, which advocated the preeminence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, predated the French Revolution by more than a decade. Unfortunately, this is just hype. The American Revolution was an important event in the history of the British Empire, but its direct effects were minimal. It didn’t cause a mass revolt in the colonies of European Empires; it would fall to the British to finance the independence of the colonies of Spain (this is a topic for another time, but the “Monroe Doctrine” was really enforced by the British for the first 100 years), and the truly world-shaking revolution would take place in France. The American Revolution was a continuation of the English Revolutions previously discussed. The leaders of the American Revolution didn’t have the same Puritan Zealotry as those of the English Civil War, but really of the same stripe. It wasn’t actually that offensive that rich Anglo-Protestants could declare independence from other rich Anglo-Protestants, and in sum, for its first 100 years, America was probably more of a boon to Britain as an independent country than it would’ve been as a colony. Britain didn’t have to pay anything for the Americans to explore a continent, extract its resources, and put them on the global (British) market. The two countries would remain intimately tied by culture for more than a century, and also tied by a little isle off the coast of Britain and its inhabitants.

Ireland

When defeat was nearly certain for Charles I in the Civil War, the King made a desperate alliance with the Catholic Church of Ireland, which, had Charles been victorious, could’ve led to a Westphalia-type settlement proclaiming a religious peace on the Isles. This, of course, didn’t happen. Cromwell’s victory in Ireland assured a genocide in the old-fashioned way. Cromwell’s men massacred the cities of Drogheda and Wexford, Irish Catholic territory was seized and redistributed to Protestants, and many were formally deported to the Caribbean. A class system emerged where Protestants, often absent, owned the land and Irish Catholics worked it. This was agitated against numerous times by the Irish, but always brutally crushed by Britain.

The repressions Britain inflicted resulted in a trickle of Irish Emigration, which would turn into a flood with the Famine of the 1840s. In the 2 centuries between Cromwell and Victoria, Britain had become a gentlemanly empire, and thus learned the gentlemanly method of genocide. No longer was it just massacring cities; it was exporting grain as entire countries starved. If the market deems the lives of the Irish invaluable, then why should Britain help? Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, refused to send aid, proclaiming, “A want of food and employment is a calamity sent by providence, except to a purgatory of misery and starvation. I cannot see how Ireland is to emerge into a state approaching quiet and prosperity.” The British Paper The Times is more honest, saying “Ireland is at this moment like a half-famished wolf, prowling about, and sucking at the very blood of England”. The famine reduced the population of Ireland by ~25% due to death and emigration. Ireland's population has not yet recovered to pre-famine levels. Here is where the greatest flood of Irish immigration to the United States occurred.

America was not perfect for the Irish. America was primarily composed of Anglos and Scotch-Irish, and don’t let the Irish there confuse you. These are the Ulster Scots whom the British brought to Ireland to subjugate Irish Catholics. The anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment of these people would manifest in sometimes horrific ways in America. But what can’t be denied is that while Britain whipped the Irish for centuries with all means available to them, hoping one day the next famine or massacre would finally vanquish them, America saved them. Today, there are 40 million Irish in America and 6 million in Ireland. It’s no coincidence that, until relatively recently, the only serious critique of the British Empire in American classrooms would be towards their treatment of the Irish. The Irish managed to weave themselves into the fabric of a new country after being rejected by their occupier. It would take decades of oppression for the Irish to be accepted, but such acceptance wasn’t offered in the centuries that Britain ruled Ireland.

Catholics and Evangelicals in America

The Anglo Wars of Freedom and Property, from the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, to the American Revolution, existed as somewhat isolated events in the larger context of the world. The American Revolution was the closest to being a world-historical event, and even then, it was a sideshow to the larger great power conflict between Britain and France. It wouldn’t be in the Anglo world where the stage was set for the struggle between the forces of Republicanism and Reaction; it would be in France. The precarious Republic, followed by the Napoleonic tide, which swept across Europe, would provide the iconography and ideological inspiration for European revolutionary movements throughout the 19th century. After the peace of 1815, Old Europe had mostly succeeded in stifling the forces of Revolution for the following decades, though the cracks in the post-Napoleonic system were turning into ravines. In 1848, a series of liberal and nationalist revolutions would sweep across Europe, from Italy to France to Austria. Initially, this resulted in the resignation of Klemens Von Metternich, the architect of the conservative post-Napoleonic European system. The revolts were eventually crushed by the forces of reaction, chief among which were the Austrian and Russian Monarchies and the Catholic Church. A few years later, Britain and France would go to war with Russia in Crimea, the first direct European war between 2 or more great powers since Napoleon. The war itself was a bloody and unnecessary blunder for everyone involved, but it did result in the breaking of the conservative alliance between Russia and Austria, which had crushed the ‘48 revolutions, after Austria had failed to support Russia amidst the Franco-British invasion. During the period of the conservative European system’s teetering, America experienced its first major wave of nativism.

The collapse of the American Whig Party in the mid-1850s foreshadowed the central crisis of the American Republic. It's clear in retrospect that this would come down to the sectional conflict over slavery between North and South; however, this was not clear to all people during the time. As the remnants of Southern Whiggery were swept into the Democratic Party, then straddled the line between being a pro-slavery party to the south and a populist, pro-immigrant party in the North, various minor parties vied for control of Northern Whiggery. The first successful one was the Know Nothings, or American Party. In the 1840s and 1850s, the usual Anglo and Scotch-Irish sources of immigration had dried up in comparison to Catholic Irishmen and Germans.

Were the Know Nothings racist? Yes. Was Know Nothingism a red herring for the true issue of the age, slavery? Yes. But like the Protestant fervor of Cromwell, their hatred belied not only provincial Anglo Anti-Catholicism, but also a small r republicanism. The Catholic Church, though a shell of what it was during Cromwell’s day, did stand with the forces of reaction in Europe, which successfully crushed Republicanism not a decade earlier. And across the Atlantic, the Catholic Church was always a swooning mistress to Slave power. From when the Spanish first arrived to their interactions with abolitionists in America. Whom they correctly marked as kin to the republican movements of Europe. The Know Nothings would have one successful election in 1854, before pro-freedom and pro-slavery settlers in Kansas would draw the eyes of the nation, and push slavery unambiguously to the fore of American politics.

The American Civil War not only occurred within the context of Anglo-American history, where it was viewed at the time by both sides, primarily the South, as a rehash of the English Civil War, with the Southerners being portrayed as Romantic Cavaliers and the Northerners as mercantile zealots. However, in the context of the 19th-century world, the war had a truly world-historical significance. In the Northern struggle, and eventual triumph to excise succession and slavery from the country, European Radicals saw Union fighting for the same ideals of Republicanism and Nationalism that the forces of Reaction had so brutally crushed in ‘48. British textile mill workers celebrated emancipation even as they were impoverished by the Union blockade. Black people rejoiced, and the last remaining bastions of slavery, Brazil and Cuba, trembled as America had truly become, if only for the six glorious days between Appomattox and Ford’s Theater, an Empire of Liberty. And this is exactly why Americans make a Hallmark brother vs. brother movie out of the Civil War, because Americans are stupid, small, and hateful. But that’s a topic for later in this essay.

The Anglo-centric strain of Civil War history captures something about the Civil War that the wider European and world context doesn’t, and that is the religious dimension. No, Lincoln wasn’t literally Cromwell, but there was a religious devotion imbued in the Civil War. Abolitionists weren’t abolitionists because they believed in the Non-Aggression principle or something. It’s because they had an Evangelical fervor which dictated that slavery was a sin against god. The fringe New England abolitionism, which would eventually capture nearly the whole north, oozed with Evangelical fervor, from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to John Brown’s appeals to scripture during his trial, to Julia Ward Howe’s anthem for the crusade which the Civil War would become, Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Ken Burns' Civil War documentary ends with Shelby Foote reading a wistful memoir of a southern soldier, envisioning Valhalla with his comrades in both grey and blue “And after the battle, then the slain and the wounded will rise, and all will meet together, under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughing and cheers, and all will say: Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”. This appears as yet another whitewashing of the Civil War as a tragic brother v. brother war, because it is. But it cuts into the gravity of the war, and of living through history in general. How could men go back home and live as they had done before? And how could the country adjust to peacetime? The work of ensuring true freedom for the ex slaves wasn’t complete, but it would take something more delicate than the terrible swift sword of the Union army. It would take legislation, political support, and decades of reconciliation between the white South and the black South. Needless to say, the will for this evaporated within 2 decades after the war, and the blacks would be subjugated once again under segregation, instead of slavery.

After the Evangelical fervor for abolitionism had dissipated, it was directed towards other social aims. The age-old animus towards Catholics persisted, most notably in the temperance movement. The evangelicals envisioned a country of hardworking family units, unmolested by the crime and dysfunction brought upon by alcoholism. Whereas in Catholic communities, taverns were important centers of social life. The temperance movement was also tied deeply to the suffragettes, who, rightly, interpreted alcohol, as it still is today, as the primary cause of domestic violence. Though women can drink too now, so I guess it’s okay.

With the turn of the century, Catholics found more sophisticated means for social mobility than crowding in tenements and working for pennies on the dollar, though they still did their fair share of that. Political machines developed in American cities, usually run by the Democratic Party. The most famous of these was Tammany Hall, which offered appointments for those of immigrant stock, mostly Irish Catholics. The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw an increase in the volume of Italian immigrants in America, who, because of their perceived, and sometimes actual, connections to organized crime and political extremism, faced discrimination as well.

This takes us to the progressive era, which gives most Americans the ick because they don’t quite know where to put it in the grand narrative of American history. The contradictions between the popular ideas of progress and regression are best exemplified in Woodrow Wilson. A Southern Progressive Democrat. In short, people can’t reconcile that he was a racist, but he also supported women’s suffrage. Also, it’s a dorky libertarian thing to hate him because he implemented the first income tax.

This is all mistaken. Woodrow Wilson was really the most stereotypical Puritan ever. His pale, stolid face belied an unflappable, nearly devotional conviction to whatever beliefs caught his fancy at the right moment in his life. I gave evangelicals a great degree of credit for their abolitionism earlier in this essay, and they deserve it. But evangelical fervor wasn’t really an airtight set of principles. It went on to justify a great degree of things, from things we like to things we don’t like, and Wilson is the embodiment of these contradictions. Under Wilson is also where we see the origin of a white nationalism resembling the white nationalism endemic to white America today. The first KKK was basically petty terrorists who harassed black people. They were easily defeated when the state started taking them seriously. The second Klan represented a union between White Protestant North and White Protestant South against blacks and catholics. This kind of nativism wasn’t like the Know Nothing nativism because Know Nothings, for their bluster, were essentially 1850s Republicans who cared more about Catholics than Slave Power. They disappeared after slave power became unavoidable. The Klan would reach millions of members and remain a fixture in American politics until the end of World War 2.

Despite its prevalence, the 2nd Klan would be the last serious expression of American patriotism that explicitly excluded Catholics. Throughout the 20th century, the Catholics continued to rise in America through legitimate (working hard, joining the army), semi-legitimate (ethnic patronage, ie, Irish Cops), and non-legitimate (Mafia) means. After the triumph in World War 2, America emerged as the economic, naval, and atomic power in the world. At that point, Americans didn’t really have the energy to hate on Catholics anymore. The new, totally not anti-catholic America would be inaugurated in 1961.

Camelot

1960 was one of the most rigged elections in American history, and JFK basically got away with it because he’s sexy, according to some. Social attitudes had changed from the time Wilson screened The Birth of a Nation to 1960, but the parallel structures Catholics had constructed, primarily for survival, in the decades prior came to tarnish the election with malpractice. This is usually played off as a joke nowadays, but really, it signals the sordid history of anti-Catholic discrimination in America, which would in the coming years be buried by the Kennedy mythos.

Kennedy’s early presidency wouldn’t fare much better. He humiliated himself with the Bay of Pigs incident, when he attempted a military expedition to communist Cuba. He would acquit himself somewhat with his handling of the Berlin Crisis, but he’d really make his career with the Cuban Missile Crisis. And in all fairness, he did handle himself brilliantly in that instance. After this, his focus would be on domestic policy. Also, a nepotistic appointment, his brother Robert would be made attorney general. He began to draft the Civil Rights Act, which would eventually be passed, but only after he was assassinated in 1963. I’m not going to go into who did it, though it definitely wasn’t just Oswald.

Here is where the mythic image of Kennedy was developed, not in life but in death. Jacqueline Kennedy was the one who coined the term “Camelot”, the castle of the legendary Anglo-Saxon King Arthur, for his presidency. After reading this far in the essay, I hope you have realized how extraordinary it is that, with complete sincerity, a Catholic could be compared to a mythical Anglo-Saxon prince.

As with Lincoln’s assassination nearly a century prior, the mourning climaxed with an epic, but ultimately futile display of catharsis. With Lincoln, the Grand Review of Sherman’s Army of Georgia and Meade’s Army of the Potomac across Pennsylvania Avenue, and with Kennedy, Judy Garland’s performance of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, and we for a few decades pretended that it had completed the work which had been left unfinished by the hasty end of Reconstruction.

The Children

John-John, the little boy who saluted his father’s casket, would grow to be even more handsome than his father. As Americans relived the Kennedy administration in memory, they saw John Jr. as a vector to relive it in reality. John Jr. stumbled through school and then marriage; this didn’t dampen, but enhanced the allure of the tragedy endemic to the Kennedy mystique. But as he was beginning his transition from failson to president, his plan crashed and was swallowed by the Atlantic, and so it was back to legend for Camelot

John was the dashing idealist; he, almost totally through charisma, attempted to guide America through the turbulent 60s. Robert was made of harder steel; he wasn’t as handsome or charismatic as John, but his energy and intelligence far exceeded John’s. After John died, Robert became the heir of John F Kennedy’s legacy, and in 1968, it seemed inevitable that he’d take over the Democratic Party, not with the magnanimity of America’s prince, but as Hamlet incarnate to avenge not only his blood, but the country. Robert, like his brother, would be assassinated, with an even more suspicious story. So what did the brilliant second son leave? That would be RFK Jr.

RFK Jr.’s very existence is a crime against his Father, his family, America, and thus civilization as a whole. He is the embodiment of arrogance, anti-intellectualism, and cravenness of modern America. He’s against vaccines because “can’t trust big-gubmit” and then goes on television to describe how Palestinians are pampered while they’re being genocided because god forbid he pisses off the few rich Jewish friends he still has. And perhaps that fits with his father. RFK was the substance of the Kennedy administration; JFK was the vibes. John F Kennedy Jr. captured the vibe of Camelot, which itself was a vibe of something had ceased to be decades prior, and it was a seductive vibe. He was the ethereal image of what America was for Lana Del Rey girls and old Catholics who still remember open suspicion of papism. RFK Jr. is what America is, a self-righteous, dying empire too confused to even keep track of what its supposed to hate, and America, which has subsumed both Catholics and Protestants.

Freedom

No one cares about freedom in America, not really. Any crisis, manufactured or real, overrides any concern about Freedom. Whether that be the 9/11 with Right Wingers, or COVID for Left Wingers. V in V is for Vendetta was nothing. He was a consumer product of rebellion, which became irrelevant as he went out of fashion. There isn’t a thick culture of freedom in our country; it’s emotional vibes, usually based on hatred, fear, and arrogance. Freedom is just another dog whistle for white, like “Christian” is.

The true freedom was the freedom we consider so molested by Religious conviction. Freedom was men leaving a burning chasm through the old world with full conviction that they were fulfilling god’s purpose, from Cromwell’s repressions in Ireland, to Sherman’s destruction of the Old South, to even America’s rape and concentration camps in WW2 France and Germany.

We remember the 5th of November because they remembered it, but we will forget. Not because we learned to love Catholics, but because we don’t have the capacity to remember. Remember, before 10/7 how 9/11 was played off for comedic effect. Note how Charlie Kirk’s assassination completely overshadowed 9/11? We aren’t forgetting 9/11; we have already forgotten it. Now it is just a loose piece of media to be pulled when the powers that be are on a rampage to massacre some muslims for fun, though perhaps they might prefer to show Kirk’s assassination instead.