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Johnny Arnold
Hi Hugh and Edward thanks for your notes. Good to hear from you.
Yes words matter. Symbolism matters. Evidence based facts matter. Actions matter.
Some background on how and why I take some of my positions. I value these conversations and hearing from classmates.
I was barely born in the US. My Czech Jewish mother was 17 and pregnant with me on the flight coming over from Europe with my father, from Paris exactly. My mother’s family had to flee what had become after the war a Communist Czechoslovakia. My father is multi-generational Jacksonville family.
My wife has intensely studied our genealogy including doing every DNA test available. My Arnold family came to the Americas in 1635. Yes, I am related to Benedict Arnold. My father used to tell me when he was growing up in Jacksonville pretty much all the Arnolds in Jax were relatives. I am related to Confederate officers including Confederate General Miller.
My mother was Czech from Prague. My grandmother was Jewish. My grandfather was not Jewish. The family was highly successful. My grandfather was an engineer. He owned Kadlec Instruments which made compasses which were the standard for European pilots. 10s of 1000s made and they are still being sold by collectors online. The DC Holocaust Museum has one. I have some that I bought online. My family house in Prague was a large house by the factory. The Nazis wanted the compasses, so my grandfather had to keep the factory going and people employed. My family house was used as a Nazi headquarters. We have pictures of Nazis in the house.
The way my immediate family survived the war was to say they were Catholic, and the Nazis needed the factory. Over 30 close family members were killed in concentration camps. We have found thru recently released Nazi documents over 100 other relatives killed in concentration camps. I had an uncle that was in Auschwitz for 3 years and lived. He was about 5’10” and weighed 60 pounds where released. His entire family was killed. His father, Oskar Glaser was a prominent attorney. Their house was right on the river by the Charles Bridge, a prime location. All but my uncle killed. I grew up knowing people with numbers tattooed on them. If you any doubts about the Power of Symbolism or the how white supremacy can infect a societ study some Nazi history. It is steeped in symbolism of a white superior race according to them.
Hugh in response to your note, yes, the word massacre is not used according to the definition. Let’s set that aside as I have no investment in the word, but I do have an investment in the actions of that day and in the response to those actions. I had no idea the Ax Handle event, beating, assault happened until recently. Nazis and Neo Nazis are White Supremacists. I cannot emphasize enough the visceral feeling I get when people whether Jewish, Black Muslim, Hispanic, LGBQT or others are targeted by any person or group because of the who they are. It is in my DNA. Racism with violence grows when not confronted immediately at the onset. No rationalizing, excusing, justifying, joining in excusing the actions that white supremacy groups take.
On the statues. Symbolism matters. History matters. History is always being rewritten. George Washington was a brilliant military strategist. As SunTzu said in the Art Of War "All warfare is based on deception" he was a master of deception, a brilliant liar when he needed to be. That quality that made him a great general was thought to be a negative quality in a President so a campaign was mounted to portray as we heard as kids as never telling a lie. Our views of history are as dynamic as the present just talk with a history gradute student working on a her/his PhD or read a book by presidential historian like Michael Beschloss.
The argument that taking statues of confederate Statues down is not about rewriting history but is acknowledging the history that comes from the white supremicist movement in the early 1900s and 1920s. The KKK and similar groups were very active then What the statues represent is celebrating the uprising of one part of the US against the other in a Civil War where the south was fighting for a way of life which included slavery, white power and rule. White supremacy has not gone away. I didn't know about the KKK in Jacksonville growing up. Do we celebrate it? To some the pre Civil War south represents a mythological past when white people ruled, not governed, in the south. White people owned slaves. Anti slavery movements in Europe and around the world begin to grow in the late 18th centuryand continued into the 19th century. Some of my extended family back then had slaves. I need to acknowledge it, but I will never celebrate it. There is a rebel mythology about the Confederacy. It is thriving today and recruiting more to join. I see this as a very bad sign.
I learned from being in the middle of a family that were the targets of Nazis and a father who enlisted in the army young, right out of Bolles to be an American Soldier in WWII to fight against the Nazis that are definition of white supremacy. It was a huge danger then and has not gone away. It is a real and present danger in the US, Europe and elsewhere now. White nationalist groups in the US now have been identified as the biggest terrorist threat we face. We are in danger from white nationalist domestic terrorists like the the Neo-Nazi group the proud boys and the anti-government group the bugaloo boys.
Confederate statues and naming schools after generals that tried to split the country, is for me, setting a horrible example of who we are as a people. In the early 20th century putting the statues up and naming schools was an attempt, successful in some ways, to rewrite history to glorify an ugly piece of not just American history but global history. Some will be inspired by the symbols of an ugly past to join these groups and so be inclined to take up, join in so to return or remake the present based past “glory” of a country where whites owned people and ruled. It is extremely dangerous and is showing to be real in the present.
Disclaimer: I don’t like to use this cliche phrase and here is the BUT I have found that we as the class of 69 are very good people. So the cliché is “We are better than this”. We can take our positions as Elders, not as elderly, and show that we have learned from a lifetime of experience. History is a story we tell based on events, people, acts and records. It is ever changing. Let's write the story we want to the future to see by taking the actions, speaking the worlds, addressing the both the good and the horrible that is.
If we can send our message forward let's show the future that we, right now, faced a pandemic, racial inequality, racial injustice, climate change or rather climate nightmare, economic crisis and the threat of white supremacy with courage, truth, respect and vision of how things can be good for all people and all life. This is the time.
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