G.O.A.T. Tournament Round 2: White Identity Politics

The second round of our Greatest Oppressor of All Time tournament features first-ballot white supremacy and a few underrated racist all-stars.

Welcome to the second round of the G.O.A.T. Tournament!

After a scintillating first round of nail-biters, blowouts and upsets, 32 of history’s most deserving racists are still vying for the title of the Greatest Oppressor of All Time. Hopefully, the villains who survived and advanced have not destroyed your bracket as much as they’ve destroyed America.

In the first round of the tournament’s Politics and Government Division, we gave you each competitor’s backstory. But in the days of legalized gambling and sports analytics, ContrabandCamp decided to provide some advanced metrics for each team that may help our readers who enjoy wagering on race-based athletic competitions.

If you’re new to the tournament, here’s how this works: Each day, we’ll focus on one division. Readers will have three days to vote on each matchup, and the winner will move on to the next round. At the end of the competition, we will crown the G.O.A.T. of white supremacy (You can see the whole bracket with updated scores here. Remember, voting is only open to paid subscribers to ContrabandCamp.)

Here are the second-round matchups in the Politics and Government division:

Thomas Jefferson:

Teams: Patriots, Virginia Colonizers, Democrat-Republican Slave Masters

Positions:

• 2nd governor of Virginia

• 2nd vice president of the United States

• 1st U.S. secretary of state

• President of the United States

• Slaveowner

Career statistics:

• Number of slaves owned: 600

• Number of slaves formally emancipated: zero

• Ranking among peers: No. 1 (Enslaved more human beings than any other “Founding Father”)

• Percentage of his own children that he enslaved: 100%

• Most impressive act of racism: Whipped enslaved nephew three times per day for being too sick to work.

• Career achievement: Wrote “All men are created equal” while treating men unequally

Best quote:

“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”

Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman:

Teams: Slaveowners, Confederates, Democrats, Redeemers, Red Shirt Serial Killers

Positions:

• Senator (D-S.C.)

• Governor

• Leader of S.C. Red Shirts

Career statistics:

• Massacres led: Two, Ellenton and Hamburg

• Supervised murders: 100-plus

• Elections overturned: One

• Black voters disenfranchised: 400,000

• Ranking among peers: During his second term as governor, he presided over more lynchings (17) than any governor in American history.

• He was “the most violent negrophobe” in the most violent county in America.

• Most impressive act of racism: The people he enslaved on his vast forced labor camp didn’t know they were free until a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation.

• Career achievement: To prevent Black elected officials from being elected, Tillman abolished local and county elections in majority-Black South Carolina.

Best quote: “The whites have absolute control of the State government, and we intend at any and all hazards to retain it… We deny, without regard to color, that "all men are created equal"; it is not true now, and was not true when Jefferson wrote it.”

Jesse Helms

Teams: Democrats, Republicans, Segregationists, Vote Suppressors

Positions:

• Senator

• Vote suppressor

• Propagandist

• White racist

Career statistics:

• Black women senators he personally attacked: All

• Pro-civil rights votes: zero

• Civil rights legislation filibustered: 18 (including Voting Rights Act, funding for AIDS research, desegregation, and the MLK holiday)

• Career achievement: Literally had to sign an agreement promising to stop being racist for eight years.

• Most impressive act of racism: Coined the phrase “Wake up white people.”

Best quote: “It’s the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in Congress.” — Jesse Helms on the Civil Rights Act of 1965

Ronald Reagan

Teams: Democrats, Republicans, Mass Incarcerators, Capitalists,

Positions:

• Governor of California

• President of the United States

Career statistics:

• Most racist legislation: Banned guns after Black Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol.

• Black-to-white incarceration rate: 2.5-to-one (highest of any president)

• Crack-to-cocaine sentences: 100:1

• Best use of racism: “Welfare queen”

• Most impressive act of racism: Opening his presidential campaign at the site of a racist murder.

Best quote: “To see those monkeys from those African countries. Damn them. They're still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”

Donald Trump

Team: Republicans, MAGA, Fascists, J6 Insurrectionists, Election Deniers,

Positions:

• Dictator

• President of the United States

• Convicted felon

• Rapist

Career statistics:

• Number of walls promised vs. walls built: 1-0

• Racist executive orders: 73

• Felony indictments: 88

• Number of times found innocent: zero

• Number of times detained: 1

• Number of people he detained in concentration camps: ~530

• Number of legal immigrants status revoked: 530,000

• Number of non-Hispanic white immigrant statuses revoked: 0

• Number of executive orders fighting DEI, transgender rights or immigrant rights: 18

• Number of executive orders protecting Black Americans, LGBTQ rights or immigrants: 0

• Trump administration’s Nazi-to-Black ratio: 1:1

• Most impressive act of racism: Project 2025

Best quote: “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.”

Woodrow Wilson

Teams: Democrats, Confederate “Clansmen,” the Lost Cause Whitewashers

Positions:

• President of the United States

• Governor of New Jersey

• President of Princeton University

Career statistics:

• Number of Black supervisors in federal government when elected: 17

• Number of Black supervisors in federal government one week after his election: two.

• Number of Klan films screened in the White House: 1

• Best friend: “The grandaddy of white nationalism," Thomas Dixon Jr.

• Ranking among his peers: Most celebrated history whitewashed of all time

• Best hire: Before the FBI existed, put a young J. Edgar Hoover in charge of the “Radical Division”

• Most impressive act of racism: Refused to address lynching, despite being president during the Red Summer of 1919.

• Career achievement: Every single institution Wilson oversaw was more segregated after he was put in charge.

Best quote: “The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and conducted in the interest of adventurers… Until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

Strom Thurmond

Teams: Democrats, Dixiecrat Segregationists, Republican Race-Baiters, Anti-Communists

Positions:

• United States senator

• Governor of South Carolina

• South Carolina state senator

Career statistics:

• Voted against: Civil Rights Act of 1957, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, King holiday, Thurgood Marshall’s Supreme Court nomination

• Voted for: Segregation in the Constitution, Signing Southern Manifesto, States Rights Democratic Party platform, Massive Resistance, Confederate Flag, Confederate Memorial Day,

• Ranking among his peers: 1st (Nominated by the racist party to run as president of the racists)

• Intersectionality: Among the top 5 racist Democrats and the top 5 racist Republicans of all time.

• Career achievement: Holds record for longest official act of racism ever

• Most impressive act of racism: He did all this while having a secret Black child.

Best quote: “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches!”

Andrew Jackson

Team: Democrats, Confederates, Slaveowners, Genociders

Positions:

• U.S. president

• Senator (D-Tenn.)

• Superior Court judge

• State representative

Career statistics:

• Genocide statistics: 10,000 deaths, 100,000 natives displaced.

• Pro-slavery: Used federal troops to crush Nat Turner’s revolt.

• Slave-owning statistics: Enslaved 300 humans. Plaid slave catchers extra for every 100 lashes.

• Ranking among peers: 1st in ethnic cleaning, 1st in massacring natives, No. 1 in slave brutality.

• Most impressive act of racism: Tried to start his own slave-owning country

• Career achievement: When people say “Old Hickory,” they are specifically referring to Andrew Jackson’s reputation for whipping slaves.

Best quote: “Before a slave of mine should go free, I would put him in a barn and burn him alive."

Choose wisely!