If it was a comedy I would give it a pass, but this episode wasn’t, or at least it was a bad one. The only sort of funny scene was the sermon. The rest was young boys slowly dying.

I get the focus is supposed to be on Elijah and how bad he is but the background is the lost cause myth and sympathizing with the common confederate troops. I guess you could say they didn’t want to make the confederates look bad so Elijah could look horrible in comparison, but you could’ve had Elijah just be even more racist then the troops.

Like the only sort of funny part where he gives the sermon, if it were realistic he would’ve gone full race baiting and go one about how the unions gonna come and free the n*****s and slavery is in the Bible etc. to rile up the troops. But in this mythical confederacy racism and slavery don’t exist which is ahistorical.

They gave it back after doing a war crime and executing prisoners of war. They also executed them with a fucking gattling gun which is just cruel. I think they were trying to get you to sympathize with the confederates about to die instead of the northerners who were killing an already defeated foe.

if it was a serious show I’d agree but it’s satire

I agree, righteous gemstones generally whitewashes the southern church and rarely shows the racism and homophobia that would be present. But I give it a pass because it’s funny, this episode wasn’t funny. The only joke of the show was him giving a bad sermon to those troops, the rest was just sad imagery of confederate boys dying. This episode was them trying to be serious and it didn’t work IMO.

It seems to be a bit of both. The article does cite a lot of comments agreeing with what the older relatives said and getting a bunch of likes. So some people are laughing at how horrible and racist it is, but some are laughing at the unapologetically saying what we’re all thinking aspect.

A lot of racist jokes are just people saying their biases out loud and unapologetically, and then the racists laugh because they agree, and they get to affirm those beliefs. You might get some people on the other side laughing at the absurdity, but for the people of the race being made fun of, it just feels like the attack it is. Especially when the subject is serious and you can’t distance yourself from it, and nothing is more serious than genocide.

Like if you showed these to a Palestinian child they’d probably become depressed and scared by it. If you showed these to a boomer israeli they would probably laugh at it and say they’re right.