Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) was soundly trounced on social media Thursday when he tried to use Nikki Haley's flub about the Civil War to attack Democrats.
Cotton said that the Civil War began because Democrats supported slavery over the Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Over and over fact-checkers have said that Republicans may have supported the union in the war, but the parties shifted over time as the Civil Rights and Equal Rights Movement spread across the South. People of color demanded the right to vote without intimidation, eat in the same restaurants, use the same water fountains, and attend the same schools as whites.
The comment earned some mockery, and several people were willing to school the senator on the history of his own state.
"You can’t believe history! It’s a woke liberal plot," exclaimed David Corn of "Mother Jones."
Bhavik Lathia asked Cotton rhetorically: "Which party is actively defending the confederacy in the year 2023, and which party is working to tear down confederate statues and monuments? It's been a 158 years since the Civil War ended. The parties have different values today. The GOP is on the wrong side of history."
S.A. Cosby begged Cotton to fact-check himself before ranting on the internet.
"I swear to God if you would just google one g-ddamn thing before you tweet you'd spare yourself from looking so stupid Lincoln was not anti-slavery until the war forced him to be. It was the Compromise of 1850 that led to the war because slave states didn't want to be outnumbered," he posted.
"LOL. Democrats today aren't waving or defending the Confederate flag or lamenting about the 'lost cause.' That's Tom Cotton's GOP. If Lincoln was a Republican today, the MAGA extremists would probably try to assassinate him," said Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali.
Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob knocked what he called Cotton's "propaganda" campaign that tries to ban teaching about civil rights or slavery in the United States.
"MAGA propagandists like Tom Cotton don't want you to understand that Southern racists used to be Democrats but are Republicans now. This partisan sea change happened through the 1960s, '70s and '80s. It's explained in those history books that Republicans don't want you to read."
Infamous activist BrooklynDad agreed: "Tom Cotton is an idiot, and the Republican Party would fully reject Abraham Lincoln as being 'too woke' if he were alive today."
"I am truly grateful to Tom Cotton for the periodic reminder that two degrees from Harvard are absolutely worthless if you were born a dipsh-t and revel in cultivated arrogance," said Arkansan Will Watson.
Professor Manisha Sinha, who teaches history regarding slavery, abolition, the Civil War and Reconstruction, reposted Cotton's comments to say he was remarkably similar to "Rip Van Winkle" because he "has been asleep for the past hundred years. Will someone enlighten him?"
Legal analyst Adam Cohen pointed out the photo of the MAGA fan marching a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and explained it was the representation of the Republican Party today.
They started "insurrections where they attack the Capitol and scream about Civil War while carrying the Confederate flag, [they] refuse to let schools teach children the truth about slavery, and [enact] laws to limit the voting rights of Black Americans."
Shawn Leigh Alexander, professor of African and African American studies at the University of Kansas, recalled the moment when Cotton called slavery 'a necessary evil' when he called the 1619 Project "revisionist history." Cotton also once touted his ancestry to his great-great-great-grandfather, John Cowger, who enslaved six people in 1850 before he moved to Arkansas, she posted.
