Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech said the Battle of Bamber Bridge in World War II gives Americans a framework to see how American elites have forged “the comical stupidity of racial bigotry” into a “foundational principle for the organization of American society.”
“You never hear about the Battle of Bamber Bridge, but you should, because the insane politics of our time has made that fight suddenly relevant,” Domenech said. Bamber Bridge, Domenech said, didn’t have any Nazis or other high-profile people, but it’s where “the forces of freedom and oppression came to blows.”
“The two sides of the Battle of Bamber Bridge were the white soldiers and the military police of a still segregated United States Army versus the black soldiers of the 1511 Quartermaster Truck Regiment,” Domenech said. “The black soldiers had been going to the pubs of Bamber Bridge and the English villagers were happy to see and serve them. That didn’t sit well with segregation-minded white MPs. They visited the Bamber Bridge pubs with a simple request: implement racial segregation along American lines. The English pub owners agreed they promised that when the next white soldiers came to the pubs, they would find them racially segregated.”
The pub owners, Domenech continued, “kept their promise” to segregate the premises — but did so by posting a sign that read “black troops only.”
“Insulted and outraged by the taste of their own medicine, it wasn’t long before the MPs tried to arrest a black soldier at a Bamber Bridge pub. Event spiraled, as they do, and American soldiers came to blows with one another. The Battle of Bamber Bridge was on.”
This historical anecdote, Domenech said, is important and relevant because “it illuminates both how far we’ve come and how far we’ve progressed as a society deal grappling with race.”
“The African American soldiers of the 1511th never actually wanted blacks-only pubs, nor did the pub owners and villagers have any inclination to impose racial segregation in their own communities,” Domenech explained. “The ‘black troops only’ signs were explicitly meant and understood as absurd, illustrating the comical stupidity of racial bigotry…the black soldiers of Bamber Bridge and around the world did not seek supremacy for themselves. They fought for equality. As Americans, they deserved it. As men created in the image of God, they were born to it.”
But that hasn’t stopped “fanatical ideologues” from ignoring the “absurdity” and “bitter irony” of making everything about race.
“Imagine though a malevolent alternate reality version of this real-life tale. Imagine a world in which the Battle of Bamber Bridge was a real bid for racial supremacy on all sides, with the only question being whether whites or blacks would come out on top. You might say that sounds anti-American, dystopian, insane, a recipe for perpetual bloodshed — and you’d be right. But our elites, people of extraordinary moral depravity, say it’s exactly how the world should be…” Domenech said. “The comical stupidity of racial bigotry is for them a foundational principle for the organization of American society.”
This is why, Domenech said, race-based medical care and “the belief that race matters above all else” have seized elites and the institutions they have infiltrated.
“[For them], the only moral conduct of affairs is dictated by racial categories and hierarchies,” Domenech explained. “It’s no isolated incident and no preposterous parallel. Everywhere you look you see powerful people and elite institutions allying themselves with propositions abhorrent to the American founding and most Americans. They will use anything and everything to create racial strife fanning the flames of tension and destroying our common bonds as neighbors and friends. All men, they say, are not created equal.”
"Everywhere you look you see powerful people and elite institutions allying themselves with propositions abhorrent to the American founding and most Americans. They will use anything and everything to create racial strife…all men, they say, are not created equal." @bdomenech pic.twitter.com/nVtW037C42
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) April 22, 2021
Americans, however, Domenech said, “know better” than that, as did the black soldiers at Bamber Bridge.
“In a moral dispute between the ruling elites of our generation and the very best of the greatest generation, picking sides is an easy call. Racial bigotry can push our nation into great evils and great sorrows that shamed our past and still complicate our present. When it comes to those who would have that same bigotry define our future, there is no compromise.”
