Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to whitesplain the Confederacy during a recent appearance on a right-wing podcast. And it didn’t go well.
Kennedy has been quite cagey about publicly committing to various political issues. One issue he’s been remarkably consistent on, however, is his sympathy for insurrectionists. You may remember that earlier this year, he claimed that the Jan. 6 insurrection wasn’t actually an insurrection in his view and claimed he’d investigate their “harsh treatment” if elected.
But Kennedy’s comments on the removal of monuments celebrating Confederate generals suggest that his backing of anti-government assailants spans multiple centuries.
As NBC News reported:
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the removal of Confederate statues in a recent interview, arguing that the people they honor may have had “other qualities.” Speaking Friday on the “Timcast IRL” podcast, Kennedy described a “visceral reaction to this destroying history.” “I don’t like it,” he told conservative podcaster Tim Pool. “I think we should celebrate who we are. And that, you know, we should celebrate the good qualities of everybody.” Kennedy also pointed to “heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves,” but he later praised Robert E. Lee, a slave owner, suggesting Lee, the top Confederate general, demonstrated “extraordinary qualities of leadership” that warranted recognition.
Kennedy continued, claiming, “We need to be able to be sophisticated enough to live with, you know, our ancestors who didn’t agree with us on everything and who did things that are now regarded as immoral or wrong, because they, you know, maybe they had other qualities."
You’d be hard-pressed to find a phrase as ahistorical and condescending as this one. Americans, for example, can and do “live with” the impact of Confederates, whether or not those Confederates are memorialized in statue form. Contrary to Kennedy’s claim, the issue isn’t that these Confederates “didn’t agree with us on everything,” the problem is that their most fervent belief — that Black people were subhuman and deserving of chattel slavery — is incompatible with civil society.
The idea that their behavior is only “now” regarded as immoral ignores the fact that it was immoral and wrong even then and many enslaved people denounced their bondage as they were experiencing it. And it’s highly offensive for anyone, let alone a wealthy, white Kennedy heir, to suggest that carrying this warped view of history amounts to “sophistication.”
Kennedy’s veneration for Confederates is detached from reality. That comes as no surprise, considering he's widely known as a conspiracy theorist. But the fact that this veneration fits a trend of him publicly defending violent anti-government forces should concern any voters invested in democracy.