Brian Britt has summarized many of the characteristics of neo-Confederate culture. Note that the theme is similar to Applebome's Dixie Rising. Compare these two works.
NEO-CONFEDERATE CULTURE
By Brian Britt
Some say that everything good in the South is vanishing and everything bad is spreading nationwide. One growing trend in America is neo-Confederate culture, which encompasses history, literature, museums, reenactments, monuments, battlefields, and organizations dedicated to the principles and founders of the Confederate States of America. Neo-Confederacy intersects with white supremacy, the Christian Right, the Populist Party, and the states' rights movement. To an increasingly diverse set of Americans, neo-Confederate culture supplies a regionally- and historically-grounded message of right-wing righteousness and urgency.
Neo-Confederate culture presents two faces to the world: one of heritage and another of hate. Heritage bespeaks the mythical past of the antebellum South and its valiant defenders, but this gentility often adjoins angry right-wing extremism. There are many history buffs, collectors, genealogists, and fans of the Ken Burns PBS Civil War series whose interest in the Confederacy is casual and innocuous. But there is also a hard core of politically-motivated, right-wing neo-Confederates from the North as well as the South. According to Al Benson, Jr., of Arlington Heights, IL (a wealthy Chicago suburb), "There are a lot more of us Northern Confederates out there than most people realize. We are the worst nightmare of the politically correct--people that grew up under their brain washing [sic] in their public schools, and still, by God's grace, rejected their abolitionist propaganda!" Benson, who edits the Christian Educator, a home-schooling newspaper, also belongs to a secessionist group called the Confederate States of America and circulates a crudely-reproduced pamphlet called "The Communist Revision of Reconstruction (Paving the Way for Civil Rights)."
There is nothing new about passion for Civil War history or even its use to justify defiance and rage. By the 1890's, many organizations, holidays, and memorials had been established in honor of the Confederacy. The 1915 film Birth of a Nation electrified Americans with a myth of white goodness (the Ku Klux Klan) against black evil and ushered in an era of unprecedented Klan activity. What is new about the neo-Confederates of hate is their urgent appropriation of Confederate culture for new political attacks on immigration, welfare, gays, and the federal government. The first and most strident neo-Confederate publication was Southern Partisan, first published in 1980; several others, notably The Southern Re-Enacting Veteran and Citizens Informer, have appeared more recently (1992 and 1993, respectively). Neo-Confederates generate numerous conferences, newsletters, reenactments, and journals, all drawing parallels between the supposed raw deals of the past (i.e. Northern aggression) and current debates over equal opportunity, federal bureaucracy, immigration, foreign policy, and Black History Month.
Neo-Confederate culture comes from the myths and traditions of the Lost Cause that emerged after the Civil War. The term goes back to Edward Pollard's 1866 history of the Confederacy called The Lost Cause, which refers to the war as "the most gigantic struggle in the world's history." Pollard hoped for a "new political conflict, in which the South will stand stronger"; this cause, he wrote, "is the supremacy of the white race." Lost Cause tradition teaches that bad things happen to good people, but also that the South shall rise again. Several myths, dating back at least to the 1880's, sustain the Rebel cause. Robert E. Lee is the central hero, a "Christian knight" who leads the battle. Jefferson Davis, imprisoned after the war, is the tragic martyr: "Davis sat in the silence of his prison cell 'at midnight alone with his open Bible before him'....His suffering had a redemptive quality for the Southern people." Stonewall Jackson was "like a stern Old Testament warrior," and the executed private Sam Davis was a Christ figure. The Lost Cause recalled the Edenic harmony of antebellum plantation life, and the Yankees' wanton torching and plunder of the South. According to historian Edward K. Eckert, "The antebellum South became more than fact; it was transformed into legend and remembered as a Garden of Eden, a noble culture, a benevolent way that had been struck down by Yankee materialism and overwhelming numbers." Losing the war plunged white Southerners into grief, and Lost Cause mythology provided consolation. For neo-Confederates, the Lost Cause is concentrated and stuck in one stage of the grieving process: anger.
Debates over Confederate symbols like the Rebel battle flag are the most visible side of neo-Confederate culture. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi have all struggled over the issue. In South Carolina, where the flag has flown over the state building since 1962, business leaders and the mayor of Columbia are suing the state, and African Americans have threatened a boycott of state goods and tourism to end the practice. Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan praised the banner before the primary there. In Georgia, three years after the Governor surrendered his drive to change the state flag, thousands of cars still display front-end car tags bearing the flag design. An informal survey of hundreds of such vehicles has found that every one of them (except for a single delivery truck) has had exclusively white drivers and passengers. A recent measure to change the flag failed, even though it was attached to a bill making English the official language of Georgia. And in Todd County, Kentucky, cross burnings and a barbecue in honor of James Earl Ray have followed the killing of a white teenager by black youths over a Confederate flag in the victim's pickup truck. In Richmond, Virginia, many whites recently objected to placing a statue of the African-American tennis star Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue, which is lined with statues of Confederate heroes.
But neo-Confederate concerns go beyond symbols to the core of the right wing. Southern Partisan, a quarterly magazine with a circulation of 10,000, specializes in a shrill blend of neo-Confederate culture and politics. The cover of a recent issue shows a veiled woman in black resting her hand on the shoulder of a blond boy in gray suspenders and pants, a white shirt, and a black armband. In his hand is a Confederate battle flag. He and the woman are staring wistfully to the side above the caption, "Is the Confederacy Obsolete?" The magazine features Southern culture, book reviews, and regular columns like the "Scalawag Award" (given to traitors of the cause), "The Smoke Never Clears," and "UnCivil War." Southern Partisan's contributors and advisors include: Pat Buchanan; J.O. Tate, who appears on the masthead of the National Review; Paul Gottfried, Senior contributing Editor of World and I; and prominent "conservative" Russell Kirk.
The neo-Confederates are well-represented in Congress: Southern Partisan has published fawning interviews with Senators Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott, who describes the Republican Party as the party of Jefferson Davis, and with Representative Dick Armey, who recently referred to Barney Frank as "Barney Fag." Armey shows his genteel side in response to an interviewer's question about the South: "I grew up with the bitter winters of North Dakota and the starkness. The romance of the South was a big attraction. I tell my wife that like in the Li'l Abner comic, every Yankee boy has a fantasy about a Southern woman, and she's my fantasy. There's just something about Dixie that is absolutely special." Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth, a descendent of a Condederate soldier, was quoted by The New York Times as saying, "White men are an endangered species...what with affirmative action and everything." Chenoweth has the support of the Militia of Montana and former Ku Klux Klan leader E.R., who sees her election as a win for "race-based campaigns." Another member of Congress, David Funderburk of North Carolina, appears on the masthead of Southern Partisan as an advisor and contributor.
Lott also writes regularly for the Citizen Informer, the mouthpiece of Council of Conservative Citizens, a national group with chapters in about twenty-four states that leads the fight for the Rebel flag in South Carolina. The CCC calls for an end to forced busing, limits on welfare and immigration, and preserving "our honored TRADITIONS by fighting efforts to destroy America's heritage." In addition to Lott, the list of politicians affiliated with the CCC includes Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice; Rep. Mel Hancock of Missouri, Gov. Sundquist of Tennessee, and former Governor Guy Hunt of Alabama, named the 1992 "Patriot of the Year" for keeping the Confederate battle flag flying above the state's capitol.
Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University and author of the award-winning book, Reconstruction, compares Southern Partisan to a rock: "You turn it over and all sorts of things come out." One of those things is the racism of Reid Buckley's column on immigrants:
Can anybody tell me of a Latin nation that has successfully practiced democracy even as a formal system....No. Well, then, we must ask why. It is because the basic principles of democracy are secret? Tampoco. (No, senor, there ees no meesteree about eet. You geeve the vote to avery paisan, and then you shoot the estupidos who vote against you.) The difference is in the temperament of the people, and that is racial. Negroes, Asians, and Orientals (is Japan the exception?); Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never had, and probably never will.
Foner himself was recently the subject of an attack in Southern Partisan for his alleged "Marxist-Leninist" and "anti-South" views. According to Foner, what bothers these critics most is the idea that slavery is basic to understanding Southern history. "You can search Southern Partisan in vain for any recognition of black history," said Foner.
Recent presidential candidate Pat Buchanan ranks high in the neo-Confederate pantheon. Wayne Powers, the president of the Confederate Society of America, an organization based on the Confederate Constitution, warmly endorsed Buchanan's failed candidacy, asking "What other candidate proudly mentions Robert E. Lee and the Confederate battle flag in his campaign speeches? . . . A Buchanan victory will be a Confederate revolution at the ballot box--without one shot fired!" Southern Heritage Magizine, which features anti-gay and racist advertising, also endorsed Buchanan in 1995. Despite his Yankee Catholic roots, Buchanan sits as a senior advisor and writer for Southern Partisan. In a recent film review, he observed: "Forrest Gump, Conservative": "In `Forrest Gump,' the white trash are in Berkeley and the peace movement; the best of black and white are to be found in little towns in the South, and in the Army of the United States." Southern Partisan's home page (http://www.dixienet.org/) includes a link to Buchanan's campaign homepage.
Buchanan's former advisor, Larry Pratt, is a member of the Southern League, a seccessionist organization based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that recruits members by mail in its effort "to advance the cultural, social, economic, and political independence and well-being of the Southern people by all honorable means." The letter goes on to advocate building a "mass base" from which to launch a secessionist movement. Michael Hill, president of the Southern League, evidently supports violence as an "honorable means"; in defense of the militia movement, he wrote in a 1995 issue of Chronicles: "If Americans had guts, they would tell the courts to go to hell, take back their Second Amendment rights to arm themselves, and organize 'well-regulated Militia' state by state." Hill, who elsewhere has described lesbians as "deviants," teaches at the University of Alabama and historically-black Stillman College.
Southern League's board includes Clyde Wilson, a professor at the University of South Carolina, and Grady McWhiney from Texas Christian University. In terms Foner describes as "essentialist" and "anti-historical," McWhiney's Cracker Culture argues that Southern culture comes from its Scotch-Irish settlers and placed it at odds with the North. The organization's home page on the World-Wide-Web depicts the Seal of the Confederate States of America and up-to-date postings on the secessionist cause, such as an endorsement of Quebec's separatist movement. The Southern League also has a home page (http://www.dixienet.org/) which lists the group's views and links to other groups, such as Heritage Preservation Association and SCV.
The Populist Party of Georgia, which has garnered up to 3% of the vote in recent elections, also backs neo-Confederate causes. A recent issue of The Southern Populist, the party newspaper, contains a front page story condemning Holiday Inns for refusing to display the Georgia flag: "Holiday Inn Joins South Bashers." Inside the same issue is a drawing of Medusa's head, titled "The Atlanta Constitution," with the following attack on the newspaper's staff:
Medusa's coiffure includes cartoonist Mike Luckovich, whose Asiatic ancestors burst out of the innards of Mother Russias, spotted greener bucks in America's pastures, and hightailed it here; editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker, Afro-American cheerleader for dark genes, whereever they may be, whatever they may do; and columnist Tom Teepen, lord of puffery, who flowers his prose with words like `angst' and `arguably,' `mantra' and `maven.' Teepen's ancestry not known, but Fauntleroy suspected.
Another issue promotes eugenics: "A good case of sleeping sickness of the genitalia, spread over the continents of Africa and Asia, is the best remedy for the world's over-population problem." In addition to this kind of editorializing, The Southern Populist carries ads for the Heritage Preservation Association, an organization that aggresively lobbies to keep Confederate flags flying in South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia and notices of such neo-Confederate events as upcoming meetings of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Even seemingly-innocuous institutions like the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virgina can harbor undercurrents of hatred. Museum scholar Ludwell H. Johnson, III, muses on the museum's purpose in a recent issue of Southern Partisan:
When the Museum looks outward and sees what might be called the Moseley-Braun syndrome becoming ever more promineent in educations, politics, and moral attitudes, what possible accommodation can it make to this new view of the past? Should it attempt to pacify these new definers of the American soul, who, while damning the Confederate flag as a hate symbol, have themselves hoisted anew the Bloody Shirt of Civil War hate propaganda? (24)
At the same time, the museum issues attractive gift catalogues year-round, featuring Confederate neckties, cufflinks, glasses, coasters, flags ("Display your colors with pride!"), and a butterfly scarf: "The symbolic butterfly represents the immortal and beautiful soul of the Confederacy." And for the holidays, the museum offered its members a working replica of Robert E. Lee's revolver.
Every culture has its rituals, and Civil War battle reenactments, which are taking the Southeast by storm, rank high on the neo-Confederates' list. In Andersonville, Georgia, where thousands of Union soldiers died under brutal prison conditions, there are reenactments throughout the year. The highlights are full battles performed in May and October each year. In October, 1994, over 300 reenactors staged two battles before large crowds. On February 25, 1995, about 40 men, including descendents from both sides, reenacted the prisoners' march from the train depot in Andersonville to the prison site while families and a Boy Scout troop from Douglasville, Georgia looked on. An annual reenactment event at West Point, Georgia features live demonstrations of "Rations Distribution, Colors Formation, and Company Drills." Southern Festivals, a tourist publication, adds that "Last year over a thousand visitors enjoyed the event. The crowd was entertained when a private stole a ham from an officer's tent and was subsequently court-martialed. That evening a few lucky visitors were invited to partake of the delicious camp stew."
But reenacting too fuels hatred. The Southern Reenacting Veteran, a magazine started in 1992 (and changed recently to Southern Heritage Magazine), purportedly devotes itself to accounts and announcements on the subject, though it also addresses issues of the day; an editorial by John F. Cummings III decries "flagrant homosexual expression"; ads in its pages offer T-shirts with Lincoln's face captioned by "Sic Semper Tyrannis," and another with the Confederate St. Andrew's cross displayed like the "X" of Malcolm X, under which is written, "Dedicated to Individuals Across the South Who Have Lost Their First Amendment Rights. (Malcolm Who?)".
For those who can't afford the expense and commitment of battle reenactments, there are museum simulations like the Battles for Chattanooga Museum in Tennessee (better known as Confederama), which displays electronic battle maps and 5,000 miniature soldiers. Visits to famous battle sites such as Vicksburg, Mississippi also satisfy neo-Confederate nostalgia: 88% of respondents to a Southern Heritage Magazine poll report trips to "battlefield parks and historical sites." Stone Mountain, Georgia, the world's largest sculpture, attracts millions of tourists each year to gaze at the bas-relief forms of Lee, Jackson, and Davis; during the summer, tourists can attend a laser-light show featuring the sculpture and patriotic music.
Neo-Confederate music ranges from traditional favorites like "Dixie" (the subject of feuds from the University of Mississippi to Warner Robins High School in Georgia), to country music and Southern rock; take Rebel Rock, for instance, a compilation of hits by the Charlie Daniels Band ("South's Gonna Do It Again"), The Outlaws, Barefoot Jerry, and others. The group Confederate Railroad has hit the charts with songs from the album "Trashy Woman"; though tongue-in-cheek, the group nonetheless sets neo-Confederate toes a-tappin'. A review of their performance at the Southern Heritage Jam in 1993, along with The Winder Brothers and Larry Alderman and the Lost Highway Band, appears in Southern Partisan. Michael Andrew Grissom, author of books like Southern By the Grace of God, plays piano for the country and gospel group The Rebels, not to be confused with the Rebelaires, another neo-Confederate ensemble whose songs include "Zell's Blues" (a reference to Georgia Governor Zell Miller), "Sons of Confederate Veterans," and "The Sword of Lee."
The neo-Confederates even boast their own financial instruments. Confederate Veteran, the house publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, solicits its readers to buy a Confederate Calling Card ("Start Dialin' For Dixie") and a Sons of Confederate Veterans Visa card, which make automatic donations to neo-Confederate organizations. An investment firm--Robert Thomas Securities, Inc.--even offers discount services to SCV members. Members can also support the SCV through a percentage of contributions made to the United Way. The CSA News (of the Confederate Society of America) solicits funds for the Confederate Legal Education and Defense Fund, to challenge perceived anti-Confederate efforts.
No poet has claimed the neo-Confederate laurel, but John Meroney holds the title of anti-poet to the Cause for his attack on Maya Angelou, who he claims plagiarized the poem written for President Clinton's inauguration. Noting similarities between Angelou's verse and Norton F. Tennille Jr.'s poem on an Outward Bound wilderness experience, Meroney observes (in the December, 1993 issue of Chronicles): "The only major difference I could perceive is that Angelou's poem features a gratuitous, voluminous, out-of-context filler about ethnic groups, homosexuals, greedy capitalists, and the environment." Whereas Angelou has committed the works of Shakespeare and James Weldon Johnson to memory, Meroney, who is the founder of the Andy Griffith Show Appreciation Society, "has memorized the plots of all 249 episodes," according to the interview. Southern Partisan commended Meroney: "Keep up the good work, John. All the folks in Mayberry are proud of you."
Leaders of more discreet, tax-exempt organizations like Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy like to keep their distance from hate groups and partisanship; SCV Commander-In-Chief Robert L. Hawkins 3rd decries "efforts by fringe groups to misuse and abuse our symbols for their own present-day purposes" in a 1994 issue of the house organ, Confederate Veteran. But SCV and UDC members have endorsed Southern Partisan and books like The South Was Right!, a shrill "history" advertised in Confederate Veteran with this teaser: "CULTURAL GENOCIDE: Why the victors of the War of Northern Aggression continue their attacks upon everything Southern."
The "good Reb-bad Reb" strategy broke down completely in 1994, when SCV Heritage Chairman Charles Lunsford resigned his post after the Commander-In-Chief asked him not to use his SCV title at a CCC rally for the battle flag in South Carolina. In the July, 1994 Southern Heritage Magazine, Lunsford accuses the SCV leadership of appeasing anti-Confederates while he continued "to fight 'Federals' and scalawags." Lunsford laments that "the SCV will no longer be fighting the fight for Southern heritage and those of us who made the SCV famous by fighting these battles and swelling the ranks are being purged." Lunsford is now Spokesman for the Heritage Preservation Association, which boasts a "nationwide computer system," a Legal Action Fund, and a Political Action fund to protect "Southern symbols, Southern culture, and Southern civil rights."
Like Lunsford, neo-Confederates across the country-- including the extremist Confederate Hammer Skinheads, a neo-Nazi gang with members in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Massachusetts, Canada, as well as the Southeast--are marshalling the forces of old myths, songs, and shrines behind new political campaigns that take no prisoners. Insofar as heritage embraces the embattled worldview of the Lost Cause, it fortifies the camp of hate. The recruiting brochure of Lunsford's HPA asks, "Did you know that the NAACP, QUEER NATION, ACLU and other such groups are working to censor and destroy ALL Confederate symbols incluing flags, songs, memorials AND courthouse monuments?"
Since its inception, neo-Confederate culture has proved a resilient source of pride and bigotry for generations of Americans. Gaines M. Foster calls neo-Confederate traditions "ghosts" that "had helped make it [the South] a conservative, deferential society...they were phantoms called forth from time to time by various people for differing purposes." No longer content with idle reading, collecting, meeting, and re-enacting, they promote their agenda with increasing openness and with growing numbers in the Congress and throughout the country.