Too late?

[Primula Baggins]

Lee fought to defend a centuries-old economic system that kidnapped innocents from their homes and transported them across the ocean, a journey in which many died of neglect or contagion. The survivors were enslaved, and their children were born enslaved. Millions of human beings were commonly raped, beaten, or killed at their owners' will. This lasted for generations.

[Faramond]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-cha ... story.html

The whole thing is worth reading but I'm going to pull out a few passages.

BuzzFeed News reporter Blake Montgomery -- “Most white supremacist and Nazi groups arrived armed like a paramilitary force — carrying shields, protective gear, rods and, yes, lots of guns, utilizing Virginia’s loose firearm laws. They used militarized defensive maneuvers, shouting commands at one another to ‘move forward’ or ‘retreat,’ and would form a line of shields or a phalanx — it’s like they watched ‘300’ a few times — to gain ground or shepherd someone through projectiles. It seemed that they had practiced for this.”

To me this moves beyond free speech into violence, or at least the threat of violence. Intimidation. They *wanted* a fight. Real Nazis always want a fight, after all. I'm not talking about ordinary Trump voters and people who watch Fox News -- they don't want a fight, usually. I'm talking about the people at this rally, the ones who think they're fighting to save the soul of their country. Those are the Nazis, and they want a fight. Why give it to them?

The thing is, the racists never should have been allowed to demonstrate like this, with weapons and shields and clubs. The police should have intervened. Maybe the police were unprepared. Maybe the national guard should have been called in.

I will defend the the right to free speech, as too few are willing to do in this country these days. ( By too few I mean anything less than 100% of the population, really. ) ( I'm talking about all the conservative speakers who are not Nazis being prevented from speaking on college campuses by leftists antifa ( acting just like fascists themselves when they shut down legitimate speech)) http://www.businessinsider.com/list-of- ... ges-2016-7 But I won't defend intimidation and provocation that masquerades as speech or protest. The line can sometimes be a hard one to draw between legitimate protest and violence. But it's clear it's been crossed when people brandish weapons threateningly and threats of death and rape are made. The racists were not peaceful.

“Marcus Cicero,” a far-right blogger at Occidental Dissent -- “Now, to begin Saturday’s rally, the League of the South assembled at an area only a few blocks from Lee Park – I myself was one of the shield men. As we advanced down the street toward the park, I immediately noticed a horde of Antifa, BLM terrorists, and other assorted genetic refuse ready and willing to block the street leading up to our destination.”

I include this just to let this m-----f----r hang himself with his own words.

Washington Post reporter Joe Heim -- “Counter-protesters fought back, also swinging sticks, punching and spraying chemicals. Others threw balloons filled with paint or ink at the white nationalists. Everywhere, it seemed violence was exploding. The police did not move to break up the fights.”

Spraying chemicals? Throwing balloons filled with paint? That they just happened to find lying around? It's one thing to throw a rock, which is despicable enough, but -- spraying chemicals? Here again we have people arriving at the protest prepared to commit violence. They are not excused because their opponents are the bad guys. You don't spray chemicals in self defense, unless they're talking about pepper spray, maybe. But then that reporter would have said 'pepper spray' I assume.

I will say, and not for the last time, that of course the counter-protesters are better than the racists. But, you know, this isn't a high bar to clear. It's like walking over a crack in the sidewalk. The sad part is by how little some of the counter-protesters managed to clear it.

Again, the police are just standing by. Maybe they didn't have the numbers, but to me this is just inexcusable.

Unicorn Riot, a left-leaning news outlet -- “Police then pushed the white supremacists out of Emancipation Park, and closed the park.... Unable to continue rallying in the park, the white supremacists took to the streets, where they were quickly followed and confronted by anti-racists. Several more extremely violent fights took place, with police looking on from their nearby substation.”

So the police did eventually manage to do something. And -- the anti-racists follow and keep confronting? This reminds me a little bit of those umpires who will follow a batter who just complained about a strike call and keep jawing at him as he walks back to the dugout. This sustained confrontation here just seems unnecessary and likely to lead to additional violence.

Redneck Revolt, an armed leftist group that brought rifles to Justice Park, one of the spots where anti-racist groups had gathered: “At many points during the day, groups of white supremacists approached Justice Park, but at each instance, Redneck Revolt members formed a unified skirmish line against them, and the white supremacists backed down. Most of the groups were not easily identified, but at separate points, contingents from Identity Evropa and the Proud Boys were recognized. The groups that threatened the park yelled racial and homophobic slurs.”

I mostly include this for the description of the Redneck Revolt. One person was killed in this mess, but it could have been so much worse, with all these armed people confronting each other in a charged atmosphere. All it would have taken was maybe one guy with a rifle to be hit by a thrown projectile maybe, and then to panic and start shooting, and then everyone else start shooting -- it could have been so much worse. I think it would be best if weapons aren't allowed at these demonstrations, by any side. Violence of any kind, including the use of fists, should be prosecuted, except in self-defense. ( Punching someone for saying horrible things isn't self-defense. )

The thing about violence is that it often has unintended and chaotic consequences. In a legal and even a moral sense the only guilty party when violence is committed ( again excepting self-defense ) is the person who committed the act. But sometimes violence can create the conditions for someone later to commit even worse violence. Consider the man who was punched in Germany for giving the Nazi salute. What if he had been armed? What if he'd had a knife, and decided to use it on the guy who punched him? This would, I think, not fall under self-defense, and I would not legally or even morally hold the man who punched responsible for the subsequent stabbing -- and yet -- the stabbing never would have happened without the initial violent act. Hypothetically. But the violence in Charlottesville was not hypothetical. And I think a lot of it was made possible and more likely by what came before. You're more likely to lose your inhibition against violence if you see other people being violent. Every act of violence is like playing Russian Roulette.

The guy who drove that car is solely responsible for what he did. Not a single counter-protester is to blame for that. But I think it's very likely that he didn't go to that rally intending to mow a bunch of people down. The violence that preceded it made it much more likely. To the person committing violence, it may be a righteous act, even a morally responsible act. But to the other people there it may look different. It may cause desperation, drop inhibitions, encourage anger -- enough to cause those who are not righteous to nevertheless feel righteous in committing their own violence. So those who committed previous violence are not to blame, but they did help create the unpredictable environment that made it easier for a racist to commit and unspeakable act. This is one of the tragedies of even "righteous" violence.

Violence against nazis is okay in the context of war, or law enforcement action against a crime, or rebellion against an authoritarian government. Not because someone is saying reprehensible shit. Nazis are inherently violent. They use their hands not to hold a pen or paint but to punch. Don't be like a Nazi.

My next post will highlight a first-hand account that shows the worst of both sides. Obviously one side is much worse than the other.

[Faramond]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/opin ... ville.html

I've pulled out one account in particular.

Isabella Ciambotti

Creative Writing, ’19

Violence and hate and blood, that’s what I saw. What happened in Charlottesville this past weekend wasn’t a rally. It was a riot.

I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. when a counterprotester ripped a newspaper stand off the sidewalk and threw it at alt-right protesters. I saw another man from the white supremacist crowd being chased and beaten. People were hitting him with their signs. A much older man, also with the alt-right group, got pushed to the ground in the commotion. Someone raised a stick over his head and beat the man with it, and that’s when I screamed and ran over with several other strangers to help him to his feet.

There was alt-right propaganda playing on speakers somewhere, and a woman was trying to sermonize into a microphone, but all of it was drowned out. Everyone was screaming obscenities. And everyone had cameras and iPhones out to record it all.

I know the cameras let people capture their individual perspectives, and some might not otherwise be seen. I filmed the protest for 15 minutes straight until my phone died. It was my shield, and my weapon of proof. But the filming en masse was a strange sort of horror. It seemed to precipitate a certain outcome — the kind that might be sensational enough to spread online. It was like fights in high school, where everyone gathered around holding their cameras, and there was an unconscious intensification of the violence.

There were absolutely groups of peaceful protesters in Charlottesville this past weekend, many making a mature show of resistance. But what I saw on Market Street didn’t feel like resistance. It felt like every single person letting out his or her own well of fear and frustration on the crowd.

As the alt-right crowd started to disperse, I followed them further down Market Street and saw the most significant organized group of counterprotestors I had seen all day. They were locked arm in arm, chanting, waving flags and signs. Some were shouting “Get out of our town!” at the alt-right as they marched. I joined in. We were only a few feet away from them, yelling, when a woman from their line turned to me, looked me dead in the eye and said, “I hope you get raped by a ni##er.”

I would hear that line several more times before the end of the day.

I think this essentially speaks for itself. There were unfortunately many despicable acts committed by counter-protesters. I think we need to condemn all the violence. Violence isn't only wrong when it's backed by racism and hatred, after all. Some of the worst violence is often committed by the righteous.

But, again, the racists were obviously worse. The last two paragraphs of the account show this pretty clearly.

Finally, I want to highlight this sentence.

It felt like every single person letting out his or her own well of fear and frustration on the crowd.

This is the charged and dangerous atmosphere that can lead to unpredictable and catastrophic results. This is what law enforcement and the 'good guy' protesters should do their best to avoid. The police need to cut off violence before it gets out of control and the counter-protesters need to avoid violence whenever possible.

Unfortunately I don't think they did a very good job in Charlottesville.

[Beutlin]

Lee fought to defend a centuries-old economic system that kidnapped innocents from their homes and transported them across the ocean, a journey in which many died of neglect or contagion. The survivors were enslaved, and their children were born enslaved. Millions of human beings were commonly raped, beaten, or killed at their owners' will. This lasted for generations.

I am very well aware that the Confederate Army fought for the perpetuation of chattel slavery and I myself dismiss any notions that this did not play a key role in the outbreak of the American Civil War. Thus, my last post opening with the line "the CSA's strong efforts to preserve chattel slavery". And if one values human rights and liberal democracy, it is clear that the right side won the war. But equating the Confederate States with WWII Germany is just wrong. To put it simply, if Lee had been the moral equivalent of Hitler he would have decided to exterminate the black population of the South in the last years of the war and managed to do so to a high degree. He would still have lost the war, there would likely be no statues of him standing around now, but the Southern States would be the equivalent of "judenrein".

[Túrin Turambar]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-cha ... story.html

The whole thing is worth reading but I'm going to pull out a few passages.

BuzzFeed News reporter Blake Montgomery -- “Most white supremacist and Nazi groups arrived armed like a paramilitary force — carrying shields, protective gear, rods and, yes, lots of guns, utilizing Virginia’s loose firearm laws. They used militarized defensive maneuvers, shouting commands at one another to ‘move forward’ or ‘retreat,’ and would form a line of shields or a phalanx — it’s like they watched ‘300’ a few times — to gain ground or shepherd someone through projectiles. It seemed that they had practiced for this.”

To me this moves beyond free speech into violence, or at least the threat of violence. Intimidation. They *wanted* a fight. Real Nazis always want a fight, after all. I'm not talking about ordinary Trump voters and people who watch Fox News -- they don't want a fight, usually. I'm talking about the people at this rally, the ones who think they're fighting to save the soul of their country. Those are the Nazis, and they want a fight. Why give it to them?

The thing is, the racists never should have been allowed to demonstrate like this, with weapons and shields and clubs. The police should have intervened. Maybe the police were unprepared. Maybe the national guard should have been called in.

I will defend the the right to free speech, as too few are willing to do in this country these days. ( By too few I mean anything less than 100% of the population, really. ) ( I'm talking about all the conservative speakers who are not Nazis being prevented from speaking on college campuses by leftists antifa ( acting just like fascists themselves when they shut down legitimate speech)) http://www.businessinsider.com/list-of- ... ges-2016-7 But I won't defend intimidation and provocation that masquerades as speech or protest. The line can sometimes be a hard one to draw between legitimate protest and violence. But it's clear it's been crossed when people brandish weapons threateningly and threats of death and rape are made. The racists were not peaceful.

It occurred to me I've never actually posted my own views on Charlottesville, but this is pretty much it. I fully support the right of Neo-Nazis or anyone else to hold a peaceful march. I don't support the right of anyone to turn out as an armed paramilitary force in direct challenge to the legitimate authority of the state. As much as I don't like the sight of any government using force on its citizens, this is a case where it's warranted.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Beutlin, I don't think you have any conception of the horrors that were perpetrated against the people of Africa and of African descent by the system of slavery that the Confederacy was fighting to preserve. Speaking as someone whose family was all but exterminated by the Nazis in the Holocaust, I have no problem with stating that the system of slavery that was perpetuated by the Confederate states was fully as morally reprehensible as the Holocaust. The horrors of the Middle Passage still haunt my dreams just as much as Auschwitz does, let alone the degradation that these human beings were subjected to once they arrived (the relatively few who did do so).

Faramond, thank you very much for those extremely helpful and informative posts. I fully agree with everything that you say.

[River]

I wonder if the police had been more willing to take matters into their own hands, or summon those that would, if counter-protesters would have felt compelled to bring their own weapons. Chances are some still would have - antifa has a broad anarchist streak and people who want to smash things too often find a home among them - but would it have changed the tone if the counter-protesters believed they'd get protection? I ask because one of my sisters gets involved in things like this routinely and she has seen cops stand by and allow harassment to happen on multiple occasions. If people are just being left to sort it out for themselves extra-legally, they will. But it won't be pretty.

On the flipside, I've seen marches and civil disobedience actions where the cops took an active role in protecting the protesters and while frustration happened (no one likes it when traffic gets blocked) no one got hurt either.

Also, in the case of Charlottesville, I wonder how many cops the city even has. I live in a town of roughly 20000 and we have 40 cops. Charlottesville is roughly twice that so maybe twice as many? Maybe more because they have UVa (which probably has its own police force but their jurisdiction would be campus). If 4000 white supremacists showed up to rally (not likely) our police force would be instantly overwhelmed. OTOH, for a major event like that, they'd presumably put their mutual aid agreements to work but I have no idea what that would entail. My point being the problem there may have had more to do with available manpower than willingness.

[Beutlin]

Beutlin, I don't think you have any conception of the horrors that were perpetrated against the people of Africa and of African descent by the system of slavery that the Confederacy was fighting to preserve. Speaking as someone whose family was all but exterminated by the Nazis in the Holocaust, I have no problem with stating that the system of slavery that was perpetuated by the Confederate states was fully as morally reprehensible as the Holocaust. The horrors of the Middle Passage still haunt my dreams just as much as Auschwitz does, let alone the degradation that these human beings were subjected to once they arrived (the relatively few who did do so).

Voronwë, two semesters ago, I attended a lecture on the history of the British Empire in which we had to choose two specific topics to study for our own research. I chose the British Far East and the transatlantic slave-trade. I read several books on this issue, such as Rawley's "The Transatlantic Slave Trade". Last semester, I also took part in a seminar on International Treaties in which I chose to look at a contemporary boundary conflict between Cameroon and Nigeria. In my paper, I also explored the role of the slave trade in the Eastern Niger Delta region in the eighteenth century. So while I would not call myself an expert on this topic by any means, I would contend that I have some conceptions regarding the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade.

My argument is not to downplay the suffering of any enslaved person. I have read about the Zong massacre and other episodes which illustrate the ubiquitously violent nature of slavery. I am not implying that the individual agony of an eighteenth-century Efik woman captured in her homeland and dying of malnutrition on a slave ship was in any way more benign than the fate of a Jewish man dying of malnutrition in Mauthausen.

My argument here is not about the victims but about the perpetrators and the system which they created. Slavery was a nearly universal concept for millennia, which slowly began to be questioned in the West in certain aspects in the High Middle Ages, and progressively more generally in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is a moral difference when it comes to slavery between Julius Caesar, Charles V, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Caesar enslaved and killed hundreds of thousands of Gauls, Germans, etc. in a time when not even the greatest philosophers criticized the concept of slavery. Charlemagne's era was marked by the (eventually successful) attempt of the Church to prohibit the enslavement of fellow Christians. Charles V lived in a time when the Valladolid debate took place. Lee led the Confederate Army in the 1860s, nearly thirty years after Great Britain had abolished slavery in nearly all her territories in 1833. That said, even most Northerners at the time regarded abolitionists as "crack-brained fanatics".(1) And finally we come to Baghdadi who not only wants to preserve slavery but has effectively reinstated it in a region where legal slavery was not seen for generations.
This historical contextualization of perpetrators of slavery matters and must also be taken into account for 1940s Germany. Hitler did not simply want to preserve a system in which he was born into: he sought to rebirth the nation (palingenesis) and for him this could only be achieved by killing and enslaving tens of millions of Jews, Slavs, and others.

(the relatively few who did do so).

This has nothing to do with my general argument but I just wanted to point out that most enslaved Africans survived the Middle Passage. In the eighteenth century, roughly 13% of French-transported slaves perished during the passage. According to one study, somewhere between 8.5 to 9.6% of British-transported slaves (1761-1791) did not arrive alive in the Americas. (2) These number are, of course, still very high, and the conditions aboard were truly horrid, and "for a large number of slaves suicide was preferable to slavery".

(1) Patrick Rael, Eighty-Eight Years. The Long Death of Slavery in the United State. 1777-1865 (Athens/London 2015), 241.
(2) James Rawley/Stephen Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade. A History. Revised Edition (Lincoln/London 2005), 243-263.

[Cerin]

The thing that I feel is the point of departure in all of this, the new thing since the advent of Trump, is that we now have a group of people, the 'punch a Nazi' crowd, who have decided that they have the right to violently disrupt lawful speech and assembly because they find the ideas represented unacceptable. This is a very ominous development, in my view, but is it even being acknowledged in the media? It seems the Pres. has been castigated for daring to point out that both protesters and counter-protesters were violent in Charlottesville. Why is this not supposed to be acknowledged? I guess it's because people don't want to be seen to be defending white supremacist ideology; however, pointing out the facts isn't the same thing as defending white supremacist ideology (but I guess that is too fine a point to expect the media to parse). In fact, in a very strange sort of dissonance, the people who gathered to protest the removal of the statue, repugnant as some of the represented views are, weren't breaking the law by gathering. It's the 'punch a Nazi' crowd who are the lawbreakers, contesting the right of others to speak and assemble. I fear we may have just witnessed the first volleys in a new civil war.

[River]

So counter-protesting is commonly practiced and has been for a very long time. You want to trot around waving signs and others will do the same, right back at you. They've the right.

The rest Faramond covered quite nicely so perhaps you should go have another look at his posts. And remember which side of this committed murder over the weekend.

[Impenitent]

Thanks Faramond, comprehensively covered.


Sent from my SM-N920I using Tapatalk

[Primula Baggins]

Very valuable posts, Faramond, and well worth a second read. Thank you.

[Frelga]

OK, so my plan to wait until I have time for a comprehensive reply isn't going to work. New plan - I will type in the short bursts of time I do have, and if I have to stop mid-word, oh well. I'm also not going to quote specific posts, because it takes too long and will make for a much longer posts. But I will address individual posters and try to organize my thoughts.

Beutlin - is Lee worse than Hitler? That would only be relevant if they were facing off in combat to the death. I do not consider evil to have a sliding scale. There has to be a line beyond which one has to say, "That's evil and I will stand up against it." I can accept that the line is not in the same place for everyone, but both slavery and Nazism are way beyond that line.

That said, the C-ville mob carried both confederate and nazi banners, which suggest that they see an equivalency between the two.

ETA part 2

Faramond, your post is a thoughtful exploration from the perspective of a man who can walk past a nazi mob and be reasonably sure that they will not attack him unless he does something to express his opposition to them. From that perspective, it makes sense to place some responsibility on the anti-nazi protesters if you think of them as someone like you - people who would be OK if they didn't do anything to antagonize the Nazis.

Of course, even that assumption is flawed. Plenty of blond, blue-eyed Germans thought they had nothing to fear from the rise of Nazis, and they turned out to be very, very wrong in the end.

[Túrin Turambar]

The thing that I feel is the point of departure in all of this, the new thing since the advent of Trump, is that we now have a group of people, the 'punch a Nazi' crowd, who have decided that they have the right to violently disrupt lawful speech and assembly because they find the ideas represented unacceptable. This is a very ominous development, in my view, but is it even being acknowledged in the media? It seems the Pres. has been castigated for daring to point out that both protesters and counter-protesters were violent in Charlottesville. Why is this not supposed to be acknowledged? I guess it's because people don't want to be seen to be defending white supremacist ideology; however, pointing out the facts isn't the same thing as defending white supremacist ideology (but I guess that is too fine a point to expect the media to parse). In fact, in a very strange sort of dissonance, the people who gathered to protest the removal of the statue, repugnant as some of the represented views are, weren't breaking the law by gathering. It's the 'punch a Nazi' crowd who are the lawbreakers, contesting the right of others to speak and assemble. I fear we may have just witnessed the first volleys in a new civil war.

There are certainly many cases where left-wing protesters, particularly associated with the Antifa Group, have used violence to suppress dissenting opinions. Using force to deny Milo Yiannopolous a platform at Berkeley is a classic example. Closer to (my) home, there was an incident where conservative journalist Andrew Bolt was attacked by Antifa protestors while attending a book launch in Melbourne.

That said, I'm not aware to what extent the counter-protestors at Charlottesville were violent. I haven't seen any photos or videos from the event of violent anti-racism protestors, certainly to the degree of the paramilitary white nationalists. Nor have I read specific reports of violence from left-wing protestors. So while it's legitimate to point out that the far left is just as guilty of violent protest (and I would say, more guilty in general, as I'm not aware of systemic campaigns to use violent protest to deny platforms to left-wing speakers) I'm not persuaded it's relevant in this particular case.

[Angbasdil]

If I get time I might address this stuff in more depth, but I want to quickly address a number of false equivalences I'm seeing lately. Some here, some on FB, some from other sources.

Lee is not Washington. He's also not Hitler.
Not even close on either of those.

Remembering is different from honoring. And museums are different from monuments.
And message board posts are very different from monuments.

Most importantly, I think, freedom of speech absolutely does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech. You have every right to spew whatever hateful racist crap you want. You even have the right to advocate violence in support of that crap. But the rest of us have the right not to let you speak at our universities, not to buy your chicken sandwiches, to boycott the sponsors of your TV show, and to spread your picture around social media calling you out on your stupid crap. Quite a few of these cosplay Nazi wannabees have been publicly shamed, been fired from their jobs, been publicly disowned by their families. Some have even expressed their fear of being victims of violence. (As a fan of irony, I probably enjoy those stories a little too much.) Yeah, they can use their right to free speech in some pretty messed up ways. But the rest of us are using ours to create consequences for them.
Karma's a bitch. But only if you're one first.

[Beutlin]

is Lee worse than Hitler?[/i] That would only be relevant if they were facing off in combat to the death. I do not consider evil to have a sliding scale. There has to be a line beyond which one has to say, "That's evil and I will stand up against it." I can accept that the line is not in the same place for everyone, but both slavery and Nazism are way beyond that line.

I on the other hand think it is very important to stress that evil has "a sliding scale". There is for example a difference between murder and mass murder. Both acts are still evil however and beyond the aforementioned "line". Stalin was not a good man but he defeated Hitler. He butchered millions and saved tens of millions. And my argument, once again, concerns the evil of the perpetrators. Through his actions, Lee supported an evil system at a time when this evil had only recently come to the forefront of public attention. This does not excuse his actions (for this reason I mentioned Caesar et al. in my last post) but there is a difference between Lee and Wehrmacht generals who willingly implemented the Commissar Order and subsequently proceeded to aid in the realization of the "final solution". Thus my criticism of the reductive analogy "There are no statues of Hitler in Germany".

[Angbasdil]

Eyewitness accounts of the so called "alt-left."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... _dt_fb_top

[Cerin]

So counter-protesting is commonly practiced and has been for a very long time. You want to trot around waving signs and others will do the same, right back at you. They've the right.

I'm not talking about trotting around waving signs. What is the question posed in this thread? Should you trot around waving a sign? No. The question posed is, should we punch people whose speech we don't approve of. Should we meet speech with violence. And clearly, there is a significant movement afoot, of people who have decided that they will meet speech they deem unacceptable with violence, and are going around to Trump-related and right wing events with the intent to 'punch a Nazi.' I don't think this has happened before in this country -- that is, a movement -- or perhaps I should say, a mainstream movement -- that advocates violently silencing those you disagree with.

Faramond said this very early in the thread, and it concisely articulates my concern with this development:

Basically, when you punch a nazi, then for a moment the nazi isn't the most dangerous lunatic around.

[Primula Baggins]

Lee supported an evil system at a time when this evil had only recently come to the forefront of public attention.

Well, alrighty, then. He couldn't have known! It was something people just didn't talk about.

Oh, maybe a little (or so argues the Atlantic today, in The Confederate cause in the words of its leaders). From Mississippi's formal justification for secession:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. . . .

From an Alabama newspaper in 1856:

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas. . . .

And they had plans to spread the great boon of slavery to other parts of the Americas. A Mississippi senator in 1858:

I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well—if not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.

And a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring those other states. It will render them less valuable to the other powers of the earth, and thereby diminish competition with us. Yes, I want these countries for the spread of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and rebellious and wicked as the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them. . . .

And finally, from a Richmond newspaper:

‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.

Much more, all with links, at the Atlantic article that was the source of these (linked above).

[Beutlin]

Well, alrighty, then. He couldn't have known! It was something people just didn't talk about.

Primula, you are arguing against a straw man here. Throughout my posts here, I never argued or implied that Lee did not know about slavery or that the Confederate Army did not fight for preserving said system.

I am very well aware that the Confederate Army fought for the perpetuation of chattel slavery and I myself dismiss any notions that this did not play a key role in the outbreak of the American Civil War.

What my post about the historical "slavery perpetrators" should have made clear is that there is a moral difference between pre-modern figures, early-modern figures, the CSA, Nazi Germany, and present actors when it comes to slavery. Historical contextualization matters and the "possibility of morals" of a specific time matter. That is what differentiates the Confederacy from Roman slavers, but that is also what differentiates it from Nazi Germany.

As a result of the Enlightenment but more importantly as a result of new religious movements and economic changes, the millennia-old system of slavery began to be questioned on a fundamental level in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Accordingly, there is a fundamental moral difference between someone who owned slaves in the 17th century and someone who owned slaves in the 19th century. Whereas an early Virginian settler had never heard the word abolitionism, Lee and Jefferson Davis lived in a time in which the system of slavery was seriously questioned by a vocal minority. Confederate generals were accordingly at least somewhat familiar with anti-slavery arguments and could therefore see that slavery was evil.

But what is also true is that active opposition to slavery was a relatively new phenomenon in the States shortly before the war. Lee was born into a region and time which largely did not question slavery or even saw it as a moral good. In the 1850s, most white Americans (North and South) did not see slavery as a universal evil which immediately had to be ended by force. The North did not primarily fight the war to free the slaves. And after the war, only a tiny minority of people of European descent saw Afro-Americans as equal human beings.

Contrast this to Nazi Germany: Sure, antisemitism, militarism or ultra-nationalism were widespread at the time. What makes National Socialism different however is that it did not just want to preserve a system. Nazism was not a force of conservatism. I was both violently anti-modern and hyper-modern. It did not want to restore the past but create a new future; a future void of liberalism and communism, and the people that supposedly supported these ideologies. For this reason, fundamental moral laws of the time had to be broken. When Nazi officials decided to implement the Hungerplan they did not just act in accordance with long and widely-held morals of their time. When the Sonderkommandos murdered more than thirty-thousand Jews in two days in Babi Yar, they did not follow the ethics of their fathers and grandfathers.
As I wrote above, this does not suggest that the Confederacy was an honorable organization, fighting for a noble Lost Cause. Fighting for the preservation of mass chattel slavery was a moral evil even in 19th-century America, but fighting for the enslavement and extermination of tens of millions in 20th-century Europe was something entirely different.