John Brown is the answer to the question; What would Abraham Lincoln have done if he never became President and shaved his beard?
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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Nah, John Brown would end up growing a giant beard the older and more radicalized he got. Plus, Lincoln wasn't as radical as he's currently made out to be by disgruntled southerners. He was kinda pushed into emancipation by the south, he originally just wanted to halt the expansion of slavery not force the end of the practice.
Yep. He only pushed to end it once politically convenient in securing support from other countries.
Or, alternatively, what would Robin Williams do if he was born a lot earlier.
Lincoln wishes he was as cool as John Brown. The unfortunate truth is that Lincoln was a pro-establishment moderate who was afraid to rock the boat. He initially fought the confederacy simply to restore the status quo rather than for emancipation. It's only thanks to the stupidity and hubris of the confederates that his hand was forced. The civil war was primarily a conflict between competing factions of the ruling class, and the northern industrial establishment opposing slavery was motivated more by economic factors than any moral principles.
The unfortunate truth is that Lincoln was a pro-establishment moderate who was afraid to rock the boat.
Considering that even Lincoln's incredibly moderate position on slavery in the 1860 election ended up erupting into the bloodiest war of US history, I don't think it's unfair to suggest that the fears moderates had of Southern reaction were very real. They just underestimated just how much more radical the South had become since the 1840s.
He initially fought the confederacy simply to restore the status quo rather than for emancipation. It’s only thanks to the stupidity and hubris of the confederates that his hand was forced.
I would argue that this is partly inaccurate - Lincoln's hand was not forced, the Republican Party was openly anti-slavery. Hell, that was the only real uniting cause of the Republican Party, which included support from both wealthy industrialists and labor radicals. Lincoln striking against slavery was far from universally popular in the North, and any history of the politics of the US Civil War will trace out the planning done by the Lincoln administration, far in advance of the measures taken, repeatedly keeping such things 'in their pocket', so to speak, until military successes allowed them to present them from a position of strength.
The civil war was primarily a conflict between competing factions of the ruling class, and the northern industrial establishment opposing slavery was motivated more by economic factors than any moral principles.
... most conflicts are motivated more by material factors than abstract factors (though certainly not all, and I would also point strongly to the symbiotic relationship between Southern aristocracy and Northern industrialists to oppose a purely material basis for the war). If you're Marxist to any degree, that's even what a socialist revolution is.
Nah, abraham lincoln was just as much of a dick as the majority of the us when it came to indians.
Lincoln was still kinda racist and thought blacks were inferior to whites. He was even willing to delay emancipation, if the South hadn't been so nuts about it. They forced his hand.
So I studied Human Rights in Uni, and one area of study is Columbus’ first contact in the Caribbean. And he was balls to wall evil. In his treatment of the First Nations he encountered. Monks travelling with him wrote about how evil this was and unsuccessfully appealed to the Vatican to condemn this behaviour.
When people say ‘it way a different time and things were different then” I call it out as bunk.
Wasn’t he sanctioned on his return to Spain because even his own people at the time were like ‘no dawg, that was despicable’?
Yep. Returned to Spain in chains, lost his governorship and lucrative deal with the Spanish crown, and only escaped real punishment because of a mixture of his closeness with the royals, and because finding Spain an entire continent to colonize, even by accident, was considered a valuable prior service.
Sounds like a true American hero.
It’s like when people excuse Jefferson owning a shit ton of slaves as “part of the time” meanwhile his contemporaries John and Samuel Adams were staunchly anti slavery and thought the whole thing was wrong and disgusting.
So if even Jefferson’s own contemporaries could recognize that slavery was evil, he had no excuse
He did rewrite the bible, right?
Kinda seems like he thought he knew better than everyone else.
Some people get real weird when you say "slavers deserved death". Almost like on some level they know they would have been one.
~~know~~ think
They were still not part of the in crowd then, as much as they are now.
Don't "slavers" include the low-level overseers?
Only if those low level slavers don't release their place.
If we can get him all wrath and "fuck you racist mfers"
yes, all john brown statues need laser eyes
^this but ironically
Seconded. And his eyebrow game is unmatched.
You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough,
But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?
There's a pretty decent reggae band named "John Brown's body" that I think have a good answer to this.
Hmm. I didn’t know he had a flag, which he is apparently gripping in the image, for the “subterranean pass-way”. Seems like that flag, could a reasonable facsimile be arrived at, be a suitable counter to the Gadsden flag used by the Right. The Left could use a symbol like that.
E: after digging around, he may not have had a flag. The one un the image may have been a prop, nobody has written about any flag he carried, and the SPW flag was a suspect later addition. IOW, there are no verifiable flags associated with John Brown.
I want a statue of him with his manly beard
Waiting on this movie to be made.
I thought you were anti-tankie? He should have just kept voting for moderate Republicans.
I thought you were anti-tankie? He should have just kept voting for moderate Republicans.
In what fucking world is a revolutionary automatically a tankie? I'm sorry you don't see the difference between totalitarian police states with a thin coat of red paint and "Any political violence".
I thought elections in a bourgeois democracy were always pointless. I guess Stephen Douglas would have fought slavery too, just like Lincoln.
All definitions of "AutHoRItaRiaNisM" that .world, piefed, or other right-wing lemmy instances subscribe to is anything that modern centrist liberals don't like or involve "political violence". Lincoln and John Brown would be "Violent Authoritarians" according to modern liberals if they existed today.
It goes back to the definition of a liberal: A liberal is anyone that is anti-war, except for all the current wars and is in favor of liberation struggles, except for any that are still ongoing.
All definitions of “AutHoRItaRiaNisM” that .world, piefed, or other right-wing lemmy instances is anything that modern centrist liberals don’t like or involve “political violence”. Lincoln and John Brown would be “Violent Authoritarians” according to modern liberals if they existed today.
It goes back to the definition of a liberal: A liberal is anyone that is anti-war, except for all the current wars and is in favor of liberation struggles, except for any that are still ongoing.
Lord.
right wing lemme instances
Lmao.
You write like a stoned paranoid