NPR today: “Some see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism and hatred. Others see it as a symbol of Southern heritage.” I personally fuse those views: flying the Confederate flag is an embrace of a Southern heritage of racism and hatred.
Joe’s post is right on. The horror of South Carolina is not the fanatics, it is the ordinary people like Nikki Haley, the governor, or my brother in law William Quick, who live there and accept the racism intinisic to their own community. Bill, for example,told me he went to a prayer service for the nine victims on the Shabbat following the assassination. I guess that is a good thing but I wonder how many white folks in Charleston accept as Bill does, the presence of swastikas .. starsnbars all aound them in Charleston or protest the appointment of a bold faced confederate general impressionist as president of the city’s major university????
To be fair to the white folks in South Carolina, are not as bad as the populace of Dachau. That town was socially liberal, artistic enclave before Hitler and during the Nazi years the citizens outside the walls of the camps must have heard the cries and smelt to stench.
I would compare the whites of South Carolina to the ordinary Israelis who bemoans Netanyahu and Hamas while ignoring the way the Palestineans live.