There are a LOT of young, white leftists who canonize John Brown without internalizing a shred of what he fought & died for
Just today I saw a "John Brown stan account" on Bluesky condemning nonviolent usamerican protestors for "supporting Hamas"
When all number of people attacked him for his display of deeply ironic hypocrisy, he invoked Brown's name as a shield in a way that reminded me of how neoliberals invoke MLK Jr to argue against black power (which is no less absurd)
It's not the first time I've seen Brown's name abused this way, and it likely won't be the last
I believe that for many, John Brown serves as their non-problematic white saviour, an idol to project themselves onto
We must oppose this juvenile power fantasy, but even that is not enough
We must also recognize that even as we discard the rubbish of Great Man theory, John Brown still has an important place in our historical memory
I'm at the point today where I tend to invoke his name alongside the names of Helen Keller, Naim Ateek, Des Wilson, Malcolm X etc, all notable figures in liberation theology
We must seek not to canonize him into some secular sainthood, but rather understand and analyze his place in the extensive, often overlooked history of liberation theology
To me John Brown is heroic for being able and willing to live the life, such that at a time when the dominant liberal view was one to sit back and hope for the best w/r/t an end to slavery, he was willing to actually take up arms and attempt to take meaningful action against an entrenched slave state.
That his uprising failed almost doesn't matter. It happened at the exact moment it needed to in order to galvanize the involved parties into escalating to a war that led to, at least partial emancipation. The way I've had that history shown to me, with the caveat i'm not a fucking historian and that I'm massively paraphrasing my own unspoken understanding: I don't think we'd have had a civil war if things like bleeding kansas and Harper's Ferry weren't happening.
But that's a really narrow thing for me. I exalt him sure, as an example of how to comport one's personal beliefs to useful praxis, and how helpful, principled praxis carried out in the face of failure can lead to larger successes downstream, but I think he gets touted as some kind of Leftist Lincoln-type figure whose ideology and place in history is blurry outside of "a white guy tried, and died, doing something kinda useful about slavery on the eve of the civil war" - I think making sure the scope of these things is in check is a solid first line defense on it being blunted and turned into semi-meaningless Great Man History garbage in the minds of the average person.