By Allan Wall
12/14/2023
Last year, VDARE.com writer Neil Kumar admirably explained in The Waltons Go To War On Ozarkia what Walmart and its owners, the Walton family, have done to his hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, not least by orchestrating the removal of the town’s Confederate statue from its central square.
Well, my younger son and I recently traveled to Kumar’s “Ozarkia,” so I can report that the Great Replacement continues full steam ahead. Walmart and other companies are not only importing Third World immigrants, as Kumar reported, but also even rewriting history at Bentonville’s Museum of American Art. The first goes hand in hand with the second.
Before getting to that, permit me to explain a few things about the Ozarks, a 47,000 square-mile distinctive, picturesque region in southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, part of eastern Oklahoma and the southeast corner of Kansas.
Known for its folklore and music, the “hillbilly” image of the Ozarks came to the small screen in “The Beverly Hillbillies,” a popular program about Jed Clampett and his family that was canceled in CBS’s “Rural Purge” in 1971. The fictional Clampetts were from the Ozarks.
Many in the region embraced that image, which was linked to a particular type of tourism that reached its high point in Branson, Missouri, a sort of Redneck Las Vegas and a fun place to visit.
Point is, the Ozarks are part of Middle America, and is exactly the kind of place under attack by the Biden Regime with its Great Replacement illegal-alien invasion.
But Biden isn’t the Ozarks’ only enemy, which brings me to the Walton family and their subversive push to bring Ozarkians into line with modern thinking; i.e., into accepting self-hatred and their dispossession and replacement.
One method: utilizing the famous Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, built by Walmart heiress Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation. It opened in 2011 and has free admission. Its location raised the snobbish, contemptuous question of who might put a first-class art museum in Bentonville, which Big City Leftists consider Flyover Country. Well, some of us might like to know why one wouldn’t put a nice museum in Bentonville. Certainly, the city’s residents can enjoy fine American art as much as the PBS-watching Ruling Class in New York or Washington, D.C.!
To its credit, the architecturally impressive museum does contain a great collection of American art and is worth seeing. The locale and architecture is impressive.
On the other hand, the way the art is presented raises some questions.
In the first place, everything is bilingual. Signs and captions and everything, presented in both English and Spanish.
Why? Is it for the large and recently-arrived Hispanic colony in the region? Is it for visitors from Latin America?
Or is it, as I suspect, a way to show they are “inclusive” and to put English and Spanish on the same footing.
Then there’s the text presented in the museum, which seems to discredit the historic American nation.
The explanation titled “Networks and Power” points out the “dominant European perspective” of early American art, and lectures the reader with this:
As the nation developed, the United States defined its heritage as Northern European, Protestant, and English-speaking, despite the persistent and rapidly growing presence of people of varied backgrounds, beliefs, and cultures.
You can see where they’re going with that — into a sort of artistic Critical Race Theory. “As the nation developed,” the nation was defined as largely northern European, Protestant, and English-speaking because almost all early settlers were, in fact, British Protestants.
The War News from Mexico, by Richard Caton Woodville, 1848, portrays Americans reading the latest news from the Mexican War.
“This genre painting (scene of everyday life) represents the hierarchies of American society during the time period of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848),” the exhibit explains:
Only white men with the ability to vote appear within the stage-like space of the porch. A woman listens from the hotel interior, while an African American man and child sit on the steps near the ground. The presence of African Americans signals the debate ongoing at the time about whether slavery would spread to the regions ceded to the US by Mexico.
The museum used another painting, Union Refugees, by George W. Pettit, 1865, to promote a contemporary agenda:
The issue of Union refugees — people fleeing the Southern states — was frequently discussed in Northern newspapers during the war and became a subject for this Philadelphia painter. Who would take them in? What would be their fate? The subject remains relevant today, as refugees displaced by wars worldwide leave loved ones and belongings behind to seek a better life.
You see where they’re going with that one too.
But how about this one — The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix (Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, 1856 ). It’s a guy in the woods fighting a bear — how ideological can that be?
Oh, it can be:
While a tight fix first appears to embody American frontier mythology and rugged masculinity, the painting also references tensions and uncertainty over slavery. The man and bear in the foreground are at an impasse — both are injured, and neither combatant is winning. Viewers in mid-nineteenth America may have been particularly sensitive to an impasse between white and Black fighters. Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait painted the scene during the fierce but deadlocked war over slavery in the Kansas Territory.
Note that the explanation presents no evidence that Tait’s painting had something other than bear hunting in mind.
Hopefully most museum visitors won’t read the labels.
Really, what does an exhibit label need besides the name of the painting, its artist and the date? Let visitors draw their own conclusions.
Changing these labels would go along way to improving Crystal Bridges and would have no effect on their splendid architecture !
Rather than construct an artistic tribute to the historic American nation, Alice Walton has allowed it to be used to debunk the historic American nation. Even National Review has noticed this !
One might wonder about the connection between the museum and what’s been happening to Bentonville and the Ozarks. Like the rest of the country, they are changing ideologically and demographically, as Kumar explained.
Northwest Arkansas has exploded with growth and sprawl in recent decades. Walmart, which began in Bentonville, and such corporate behemoths as Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt are driving that growth. Of course, economic development brings benefits. On the other hand, unrestrained growth can be a cancer because it means population growth, and even Midwestern Americans who move to the region are culturally different than native Ozarkians.
So also the hordes of Asians and Latin Americans who have settled there.
The New York Times’s Miriam Jordan explained what was happening to Northwest Arkansas two years ago [Decline in Immigration Threatens Growth of Regions on the Rise, August 10, 2021].
In 1990, Northwest Arkansas was 95 percent white. In 2019, that percentage had dropped to 72 percent. By that same year, Bentonville was 15.5 percent foreign-born, the same percentage as the country as a whole [US Immigration Reaching 15 Percent Milestone — How Much Higher Will It Go?, by Allan Wall, Border Hawk, November 15, 2023]. Springdale, Arkansas, a major poultry producer, was 37.6 percent Hispanic by 2019.
The gist of Jordan’s article was that Northwest Arkansas needs immigrants or it can’t advance.
“Northwest Arkansas, where the Ozark Mountains rise, used to be a sleepy corner of the state,” Jordan began. Then came Walmart, Tyson Foods, and J.B. Hunt and software companies that are driving its economic growth:
But there were not enough locals to build the burgeoning economy. Answering the call to work in poultry production, trucking, construction and computer programming were legions of immigrants from El Salvador, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, India and elsewhere.
And now, because of all those immigrants, the region has “upscale restaurants and forested bike trails.”
Translation: The old Ozarkians were backward hillbillies like the Clampetts, and why, if it weren’t for immigrants, those yokels would still be eatin’ possum innards! Or so Jordan explained in an infuriating account of an ungrateful Indian immigrant:
Baaju Chepuri remembers vividly the Bentonville he encountered in 2008, when he accepted a job to work as a software engineer for Walmart. On the drive into town from the regional airport, he felt like a city boy lost in the woods. The Indian community was minuscule. To stock up on Indian groceries, eat at Indian restaurants and watch Bollywood movies, they journeyed to Kansas City, Mo., or Tulsa, Okla.
“This place was 20 percent of what it is today,” Mr. Chepuri said. “There was literally nothing to do.”
“Nothing to do?” The Ozarks were full of things to do, such as fishing, boating, hunting, exploring history, folklore, cultural attractions, or even just the beautiful scenery. What he really meant by “nothing to do” was “no Indian things to do.”
Well, the problem of “nothing to do” was soon remedied:
Bentonville’s Indian population grew by 361 percent between 2010 and 2019. By then, there were Indian cafes and supermarkets dotting strip malls. A gleaming Hindu temple opened for worship in 2012, and the city is erecting two cricket pitches for the 25-team local league.
And let’s not forget the Hispanics and Marshall Islanders:
Less than 20 miles south of Bentonville along Interstate 49, immigrants also transformed Springdale, the center of the state’s multibillion-dollar poultry industry, as tens of thousands of Latin Americans, both legal residents and undocumented, arrived.
Hispanic-owned groceries, bakeries and car repair shops popped up on Thompson Street. At Murphy Park, Hispanic families grilled carne asada and celebrated birthdays with piñatas.
Families from the Marshall Islands also arrived. Arkansas certified the nation’s first Marshallese court interpreter in Springdale, and a Marshallese consulate opened its doors.
As of August 2021, immigration had stalled, and that was bad, Jordan explained. Still, her article suggests that Bentonville has become Little India.
Granted, Neil Kumar’s father is from northern India; his mother is an old-stock southerner. Kumar’s run for Congress in 2022, calling for an immigration moratorium, was disowned and sabotaged by the Republican Establishment. Read some more of his work.
Now to the bright side of our sojourn in the Ozarks…
In southern Missouri, we attended the reenactment of 1862’s Battle of Pea Ridge. The actual battlefield in northern Arkansas is one of the best preserved and is certainly worth seeing. The clash had the highest casualty count in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and ended in a Union victory. By today’s standards, by the way, the Confederacy’s troops were more “diverse” than the Union’s, because the former included Indians, and I don’t mean the kind of Indians who have invaded Bentonville thanks to Big Business.
Anyone who appreciates the Civil War in particular and American history in general — or better yet, the Historic American Nation — should enjoy attending a reenactment. The reenactors are very dedicated to recreating the period uniforms, equipment and weapons. Some even avoid using cellphones when they camp out for the weekend.
They also become real experts on the war, particularly because so many reenact actual historical figures. They’ll also talk your leg off, of course, because they’re camped out for three days, and they have a lot to talk about. Some reenactors have two sets of uniforms, so they can portray either Federals or Confederates.
When you watch a Civil War movie, such as Ron Maxwell’s Gettysburg, except for the stars, most of the soldiers you see are reenactors. It’s great for filmmakers as the reenactors already have their equipment and already know what they are doing.
Maybe they know too much, as some filmmakers have run into conflict with reenactors who don’t think they’re doing things the right way!
My son and I strolled about the site, talked to reenactors of both sides, and when it was time, we climbed up a small hill and watched the battle. It was impressive.
Civil War reenactors are dedicated to their craft, which is preserving American heritage. It’s an admirable hobby that educates the public.
And it makes one think about the big picture. As reenactors go to such great lengths to preserve the heritage of the Civil War, we must also preserve the Historic American Nation.
We can start by telling the Waltons we don’t want to see Leftist propaganda in museums of American art — and don’t much care for the cheap foreign labor with which Walmart and its corporate cronies are flooding our cities and towns.
As reenacters go to such great lengths to preserve the heritage of the Civil War, we should successfully work to preserve, in some sense, the historic American nation?
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008after many years residing in Mexico. Allan‘s wife is from Mexico and is now a U.S. citizen, their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Border Hawk blog archive is here, his website is here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.
