Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an Ohio State University history professor and the brother of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined the call of many on the left for citizens to rise up and fight the system “by any means necessary.” However, Jeffries added a menacing element in calling for citizens to emulate John Brown, who murdered white farmers who supported slavery. He is not the first academic to use Brown as a model for political action today.
In a social media post flagged by Libs of TikTok, Jeffries declared that “John Brown understood that the only way to free Americans from the scourge of White supremacy was to get rid of White supremacists by any means necessary. He was right then. He is right now.”
The posting was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled rationalization for political violence, a dangerous contribution to an age of rage marked by rising attacks, including assassinations.
Other academics have pushed Brown as a model for activists in fighting racism, oligarchy, and other ills in society.
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Stacey Patton, professor of journalism at Howard University, previously pushed this model in a blog titled “John Brown Didn’t Ask Enslaved People How to Be A Good White Ally.” Patton scolded White liberals to stop asking how to be a better “ally” to minorities.
“It’s a question that always lands heavy. Not because I doubt their sincerity, but because the question itself is still a form of protection that centers the asker’s confusion instead of the target’s danger,” Patton wrote. “It’s a request to be taught, forgiven, and reassured, again and again. It’s another round of homework assigned to the wounded…It’s exhausting as hell because it’s still a form of emotional outsourcing.”
Brown is best known for his pivotal role in the period known as “Bleeding Kansas” and the infamous Pottawatomie massacre, which he orchestrated in 1856. Brown and his fellow abolitionists dragged five Kansas settlers, at least three of whom were pro-slavery sympathizers, out of their homes and executed them. His own son, Salmon Brown, said that when his father and his brother heard about the caning of abolitionist Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, they went “crazy, crazy.”
Brown was eventually captured after his raid on Harpers Ferry and hanged.
I understand that Brown is viewed as a figure who recognized that the scourge of slavery would only be excised from our nation by force. He is viewed as a catalyst of the Civil War by many. However, his murder and kidnapping of Whites were efforts to use terror and vigilanteism to achieve the worthy goal of emancipation.
Frederick Douglas wrote beautifully about his divided emotions about Brown, crediting him with being “the thunder clap” that helped spark the struggle for freedom. He hosted Brown at his home and admired his convictions and passion. However, he was also a critic of the raid on Harper’s Ferry and argued for political, not violent, change. He wrote that “taking of Harpers Ferry was a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote.”
For his part, Abraham Lincoln denounced Brown as an insane zealot, adding that this “was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by White men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate.”
Lincoln notably compared Brown to “the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.”
Patton (and apparently Jeffries) now suggest that Brown’s blood-soaked legacy may be worthy of replication. Patton heralded Brown, who “saw the horror for what it was and decided that ending this racist f*ckery mattered more than being understood.” What clearly makes Brown stand out for Patton is his violence: “So when White allies ask, ‘What can I do?’ Here’s the answer: Be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?”
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She added, “If you don’t want to die like John Brown, fine. But understand that somebody always does.”
Now, Professor Jeffries is picking up the same call to rally behind Brown’s legacy. Notably, Brown himself dismissed those who believed that real change could occur without a blood-soaked reckoning: “I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”
According to his university bio, Jeffries teaches in areas such as “Power, Culture, and the State,” “the Black Power Movement,” and “Race, Ethnicity, and Nation.” He was featured by PBS as part of its series Black America Since MLK.
His better-known older brother, Hakeem, has notably been accused of fueling the rage in society, including posting images of himself brandishing a baseball bat. He has remained silent on his brother raising the specter of “Bloody Kansas” as a worthy inspiration for students and activists.
As many celebrate or rationalize the assassinations of figures such as Charlie Kirk and United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the effort to encourage others to embrace the legacy of John Brown is hardly a subtle message. Many will take it as another signal that violence is not just warranted but righteous.
Rage rhetoric has already taken hold of much of our politics and the most extreme candidates garner support from voters.
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Democratic voters turned out for a candidate in Texas who has called for the imprisonment and even castration of “Zionist billionaires.”
In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has called himself an “Antifa supersoldier,” referring to the most violent and anti-free speech group in the country.
Platner has channeled the most unhinged aspects of John Brown. Indeed, some of his statements are strikingly similar to Brown’s: “There are times in this world when, for the good of tolerance and humanity, you need to kill a motherf—er.” He added the Brownesque twist that, “Sadly most people who are true believers in tolerance and humanity find that activity repulsive.”
In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I explore the rise of such radical voices calling for violent action in the context of our 250th anniversary. These “new Jacobins” are unleashing the same impulses that led to “Terror” in France as citizens threw off any restraints to vent their rage. They too dismissed notions of nonviolent political action. As Platner observed, “I suppose [tolerance] is morally good, but pragmatically a shortfall.”
Among the Jacobins, a lawyer stepped forward to advocate for the “pragmatic choice” of violence. His name was Robespierre, and he declared, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.”
Ultimately, Robespierre himself would be guillotined like the tens of thousands of his victims. One of the few surviving central leaders after the French Revolution would offer a cautionary tale to those who seek to fuel such rage to achieve political power. French writer Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote in 1793 that “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
