Neo-Confederate Hero John Randolph of Roanoke on Latin Americans, mocking Simon Bolivar, something to read for Cinco de Mayo

John Randolph of Roanoke is a big hero to neo-Confederates today. He was a leader among slaveholders in the South.

When Latin America achieved independence they wished to have diplomatic relations with the United States and they proposed also having congresses of all the republics in the Western Hemisphere. At the time the great majority, almost all of the world's republics were in the Western Hemisphere. Europe was by and large ruled by monarchies and principalities of various sorts.

However, to American slaveholders the Latin American republics were suspect being that they weren't based on white supremacy, and that some leaders of the Republics weren't what they considered white. The Latin American republics were moving to abolish slavery.

Randolph sees a threat to slavery by working with them.

This speech in the U.S. Congress by Randolph not only shows the typical racial attitudes of slave holders towards Latin America but his conceited and pretentious nature and his hostility in general to egalitarianism. Further his complaint about London reminds the reader about 20th century racist complaints about New York City.

The link to the article is:

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=99:18290301-john-randolph-of-roanoke-speaks-on-latin-american-in-the-us-senate&catid=41:the-gathering-storm

You might consider doing a search for the terms "Latin" for other articles by slaveholders and Neo-Confederates about Latin America and the people there.

Anti-Hispanic views of neo-Confederates

This article documents the anti-Hispanic views of neo-Confederates.

http://hispanicmuslims.com/articles/alamokosovo.html

Where Dr. Hayes-Bautista's book documents the Hispanic struggle against the Confederacy, this paper I wrote documents the active hostility of the neo-Confederates against Hispanics today. The struggle in the past continues into the present.

Cinco de Mayo an American and anti-Confederate holiday

Cinco de Mayo is an anti-Confederate holiday and for that reason alone it is a good holiday to celebrate. Of course it has other positive attributes.

Things you can do to celebrate Cinco de Mayo

1. Purchase David Hayes-Bautista's book, "El Cinco de Mayo: An American Holiday," and read it.

3. This blog posting of mine has my photos of a Civil War Cinco de Mayo exhibition at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes. It has a video of Dr. Hayes-Bautista speaking about the exhibit. Click on the pictures so you can see the entire picture.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2012/09/cinco-de-mayo-civil-war-exhibit-pictures.html#.UXsgfrWsiSo

3. Videos about Cinco de Mayo by David Hayes-Bautista.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CESLAMedia

Also, let others know about Cinco de Mayo and its origin as a Civil War holiday.

It would be good if Juneteenth developed a more anti-Confederate theme. Think of what you might due to celebrate Juneteenth as an anti-Confederate holiday.

"Daily Beast" article, "Racists on the Prowl," involves neo-Confederates.

The "Daily Beast" has an article titled, "Racists on the Prowl," which is about the head of the Towson White Student Union and his "partrols" to protect white women from minority members on campus. Towson is a university in Maryland. The following is the link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/24/mostly-noise-riding-along-with-towson-s-white-pride-safety-patrol.html

What is interesting is that a member of the League of the South is involved. There is a picture of the back end of his pick up truck.

You can see it here on the second page of the article.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/24/mostly-noise-riding-along-with-towson-s-white-pride-safety-patrol.html

The longer the WSU are active the longer students there are educated what Confederate "heritage" is all about. As the WSU gets national attention the nation will be educated what Confederate "heritage" is all about.

REPULSIVE: League of the South President Michael Hill gloats over the Boston Marathon bombings

I think this blog posting by League of the South (LoS) President Michael Hill tells you everything about the nature of the neo-Confederate movement.

http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-short-tale-of-two-nations.html

They are their own parody, their own caricature. You can't make stuff like this up.

The conclusion of his gloating is:

As a Southerner, I've had a belly full of all this whining, complaining, hyperbole, and fear-mongering from New England. Meanwhile, our Southern kinfolk in Texas are quietly going about the business of cleaning up and looking to the future amidst a much greater and more deadly disaster in the little community of West. We are indeed two very different nations. -- Michael Hill

The disaster in West, Texas, a small town along Highway 35 south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area is an explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town, an industrial accident. It wasn't an act of terror. Ammonium nitrate is a convenient to use solid to disperse fixed nitrogen in the soil, but it is also a good basis for an explosive.

I don't want to focus too much on the LoS in this blog. I think occasionally they make a good example of what the mentality behind neo-Confederacy is. However, they are not prominent in the neo-Confederate movement. The two most important neo-Confederate groups in terms of explicitly pushing neo-Confederate ideology are the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Abbeville Institute.

The League of the South was big during the late 90s and a couple years into the early 00s, but with various management issues and comments about 9/11 they crashed shortly after 9/11. Most of the founding board members have resigned. It is a remnant of what it once was.

They mostly just have conferences, write articles, and occasional social functions. When they started they were the only neo-Confederate group doing this. Now there is the S.D. Lee Institute of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the Abbeville Institute. The LoS is superfluous. Their political program is to hope some future debacle will suddenly wake up people to accept their message.

League of the South exploits Boston Marathon bombing tragedy

The League of the South wasted no time yesterday, Monday, April 15, 2013, in exploiting the Boston Marathon bombing.

In a posting titled, "Boston Massacre," the League of the South announced that the Boston police had made an arrest and quoted the New York Post saying that a Saudi national was a suspect and under guard at a hospital.

This led the League of the South to post in their blog:

I'm afraid the inescapable lesson of this is that we cannot have a free society with open borders. Our handlers aren't about to adopt sane immigration policies, so we're stuck with the nightmarish combination of an increasingly diverse, alienated population and a police state to impose order.

http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2013/04/boston-massacre.html

It turns out that the Saudi national is just a young student with a student visa to study in the U.S. and is a victim of the bombing like many others. He isn't an immigrant and he is here on a visa which has nothing to do with open borders. It turns out there is no "inescapable" lesson about diversity at all.


The New York Post's inaccurate and irresponsible article has been subjected to widespread ridicule and the Onion did this satire. http://www.theonion.com/articles/this-is-a-tragedydoes-it-really-matter-exactly-how,32076/?ref=auto

Simple checking of multiple online news sites would have given the League of the South some reason to question one source. When something like this happens there is all sorts of inaccurate statements, rumors, and claims.

One would think that the League of the South would have remembered that the Oklahoma bombing was initially reported to be done by a person from the Middle East which turned out to be false. 

However, the League of the South instead saw the opportunity to score some points to justify their cranky racist world view. It proved to be irresistible and they couldn't even what a few hours to check what was really known. 

Who is responsible for the bombing? I have no idea. I don't think it is likely to be any neo-Confederates. They talk a lot, but I don't seem them doing a bombing. I think we will find out  who did it soon enough. With the tremendous forensic effort being done and the resources being devoted to investigating the bombing, it is likely something will turn up. 

Hilarious column, "Tennessee lawmakers plan secession from the 21st century"

You can go read the column here:

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/14/scott-mcnutts-snark-bites-tennessee-lawmakers/

The tenor of the ideology described reminds me of the tenor of the neo-Confederates. A lot of it sounds like something a neo-Confederate would say. Though I am not saying any of the legislators mentioned are neo-Confederate or even have neo-Confederate ideas. It probably a matter of convergent evolution in the thinking of both groups to a similar anti-modernism.

It does show that when someone wants to ridicule a belief they invoke the term secession which shows how secession is viewed by the general public, ludicrous.

Sons of the Confederate Veterans Chief of Heritage Defense sees Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Ruling as a result of the defeat of the Confederacy

In the March/April 2013 issue of Confederate Veteran (CV), official publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), on pages 10-11, is a column, "Forward the Colors" by Gene Hogan, Chief of Heritage Defense for the SCV.

After criticizing the Emancipation Proclamation, Hogan states:

Well, if the proclamation was no law at all, Roe V. Wade was the striking down of legitimate Texas state law by the US Supreme Court. Since when did the Federal government get to nullify state law? That is a rhetorical question, but I guess the answer would have to be April 9, 1865 ... the day much of what our Founding Fathers fought to build began to be disassembled. (Ellipse in the original.) [

So the defeat of the Confederacy is what led to Roe v. Wade.

This assertion is part of a larger complaint about the evangelical movement for equating the Christian abolitionist movement against slavery as being the same as the Christian movement against abortion.

This is what Confederate heritage has been all about, a political agenda. Now with the SCV it is coming to the surface where it is plainly visible.

Now everyone has a right to a political opinion, and this blogger is not going to take any position on the issue of abortion, and people have their right to have opinions for and against it.

The point I am making here is that the SCV is not an apolitical organization for the purpose of just historical remembrance. It is a political, or more specifically, a ideological organization with an agenda that encompasses much more than historical remembrance. Of course historical remembrance is often intertwined with a political agenda. With this blog posting I am identifying what the SCV actually is. Not a group devoted to sentimental remembrance.

United Daughters of the Confederacy defends the Black Codes of 1866, a general white supremacist view of African Americans, African American men as rapists, and Reconstruction

One of the major activities of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in supporting white supremacy is their  promotion of a white supremacist narrative of Reconstruction. Generations of UDC members promoting this view of Reconstruction is why so many segregationists denounced the modern civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s as the 2nd Reconstruction.

In the Dec. 2012, Vol. 75 No. 11, issue of UDC Magazine, the official magazine of the UDC, on pages 11-14, is an article "Reconstruction, 1865-1877," by Retta D. Tindal, former Historian General of the UDC, 2010-2012. 

The article is the usual white supremacist view of Reconstruction where white southerns are supposedly oppressed by Reconstruction.

African Americans men are implied to be a menace as rapists in this passage. 

Added to their other worries was the Southern woman's great fear of the shantytowns that sprung up in almost every town. Newly liberated Negroes were not prepared for their freedom and wandered from town to town, sometimes living in shacks and makeshift tents in great congregations on the edges of towns. They, too, were hungry, sick and unsure of their fate. Negroes greatly out-numbered the whites, and the women were terrified to pass the shantytowns. 

The story of Reconstruction is the story of African Americans being violently attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, The Knights of the White Camellia, Red Shirts and being terrified by these groups.  This implied threat of rape is evidently to justify to the UDC members opposition to Reconstruction. 

The Black Codes are defended as reasonable and as being done for the benefit of African Americans to care for them. 

Enter the Black Code. Modeled after the Northern vagrancy and apprenticeship laws. the Code granted basic civil rights, excluding the right of suffrage, the right to site on juries and the right to testify against whites. Punishment for crimes were severe; whipping was permitted for recalcitrant minors. All Negroes, except landowners, were forbidden to own weapons, and marriage between races was prohibited. Without special permit, a Negro was still confined to the jobs of field laborer or house servant. When a Negro agreed to a work contract, he was once again a "servant," his employer was his "master," and the servant was unable to leave the master's premises without permission.

Exactly what basic civil rights an African American would have after all these restrictions on their freedoms would be small indeed comparable to those of prison inmates I suppose. Excepting that prison inmates aren't whipped and don't have to work for their meals. 

Opposition to the Black Codes is presented as being unreasonable and the 14th amendment as the result. 

Northern reformers and radicals, who had been deprived of an contact with field hands, protested that the Code limited the Negroes' civil rights and used this as an excuse to oppose the President's reconstruction plans and further hinder the south. These radicals screamed that the South was reviving slavery. 

It seems from Tindal's description of the Black Codes it was indeed close to slavery, but Tindal evidently sees there was some difference. 

Much of the article is the usual complaints over Reconstruction. At the end of the essay five major results are  listed. No. 2 is in regards to African Americans. They are still problems in the mind of Tindal. 

2. The problem of the Negro was compounded to a greater degree than before the war. While it is a fact that the Negroes gained freedom and citizenship because of the war and Reconstruction, almost all of them were ill-equiped to support themselves and make sound political decisions. ... As slaves, they had been fed, clothed, and nursed. As free men, their health declined because of poor nutrition and lack of medical care. 

I would like to suggest that African Americans weren't the problem but instead the problem was former slave owners attempting to re-establish a regime of white supremacy which they unfortunately succeeded in doing.

The UDC hasn't changed their view of Reconstruction since the early 20th century if not before. What is changed is some of the language and euphemisms adopted. Africans Americans aren't called child-like or emotionally unprepared, but in Tindal's article, "bound emotionally to the mores of the antebellum South, and took many generations for the emotional ties to be severed." 

This article will not cause the Museum of the Confederacy to reconsider their association with the UDC. It will not cause Kevin M. Levin to reconsider his views of the UDC nor continue his "Romance of Reunion" view of the Civil War. 

Politicized Sons of Confederate Veterans disagree with President Obama about secession as part of a political agenda

The pretense that the Sons of Confederate Veterans are some type of historical remembrance organization instead of a political organization with reactionary political agenda is demolished with Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Commander-in-Chief (C-i-C) R. Michael Givens' recent editorial about Obama's rejection of the secession petitions.

In the March/April 2012 Confederate Veteran, pages 4,5, 24, official publication of the SCV, the "Report of the Commander-in-Chief" by R. Michael Givens is a political editorial.

After an initial paragraph about his parents visiting him in Los Angeles, Givens' first complaint is "Hollywood has recently lambasted us with two major motion pictures featuring the antics of Abraham Lincoln (one only slightly more whimsical than the other)," and "The Country has enthusiastically embraced the false notion of Lincoln's benevolence ad nauseum and swallowed the propaganda dawg -- head, legs, and all." (Italics in the original.)

The two movies I think he is referring to is Spielberg's Lincoln and the movie, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Further he is dismayed that a relative, a retired school teacher, who he regarded as "Southern to the core," very much liked the recent Lincoln movie and had a negative reaction when he tried to explain the neo-Confederate view of Lincoln.

This acceptance of Lincoln is to Givens a symptom of "Aesculaparian proportions," and writes, "I am personally beginning to embrace the mindset that we are dealing with a disease." This disease he sees as turning the nation away from liberty.

He also asks, "Have I become merely a crotchety old man who sees the sun approaching the horizon, still hoping for better days for my children?". His answer, "No, I think not."  Some of the readers of this blog may beg to differ with Givens.

Givens then gets to the theme of his editorial, "Since the defeat of 1865, every imaginable and unimaginable Marxist experiment has been pressed upon the American people," which he sees as having been forewarned by Jefferson Davis in 1881, quoting him "'.... the contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena'" and "'The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert it's self, though it may be at another time and in another form."

Given then refers to reports by the Conservative Heritage Foundation, WorldAudit.org, and Reporters Without Boarders to assert that the United States has suffered a major loss of freedom.

Now I am not going to express any opinion regarding freedom in the United States. It isn't an area where I have expertise and it isn't relevant to the point of this blog posting. I do think it is a nearly universally held view that being concerned and protective of constitutional freedoms and freedoms in generally is a good thing, though exactly what they are is often disagreed upon.

The point is that Givens' and the SCV can't claim to be non-partisan, or a non-partisan group eligible for special tax considerations or to be a charity. Givens' editorial isn't about the Civil War, or historical remembrance but is a political editorial. Certainly anyone has a right to write a political editorial, but in writing a political and publishing it in the Confederate Veteran, the SCV can no longer claim to be non-partisan.

The SCV has become a reactionary political organization. I question whether it should be an eligible charity for the Combined Federal Campaign, the charitable fundraising organization for government employees.

Then leading into a discussion of the secession petitions Givens' writes, "The power-hungry elite will certainly continue to push their agenda, but the repressed will just as certainly reach a saturation point and begin to resist." This is the context Given's gives for the secession petitions writing, "Before this new push to eliminate liberty," referring to gun control proposals, "petitions from every state in the union were sent tot he White House requesting the right to secede."

Given's rejects that the Union is perpetual and the White House's arguments against secession, in particular not caring for their quotation of Lincoln.

Given's then in his essay defines the purpose of the SCV as to pursue a specific neo-Confederate political agenda, that is the purpose of the SCV is to be a neo-Confederate political organization pursing a neo-Confederate political agenda. Givens' explains he isn't advocating secession, but that he sees present political controversies as being the same as those in the Civil War:

... but my head would be deep in the sand if I did not recognize that President Davis' words have proven quite prophetic. The contest is not over; the strife has not ended. Whether it's the Tea Party or the recent petitions, the fight is the same: Liberty.

With that asserted Givens' defines the Charge to the Sons of Confederate by Stephen D. Lee, a document which is held up by the SCV as to their entire purpose, as defining the SCV as a conservative political action organization. Givens' writes:

I firmly believe the ideals fo the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the cause as spelled out in our Charge are the very definition of patriotism. I am proud of our Confederate ancestors and pray that our own posterity will know we did our duty, and we, like our Confederate forefathers, never crouched down or licked a hand. ... But as the 19th-century pastor Charles Spurgeon put it. "Praying without working is a bow without a string ... If the the man desired that which he pretends to pray for, he would be eager to labour for it." 

In short, true SCV members, who are worthy of their Confederate ancestors, will fight for a conservative agenda and that is the agenda of the SCV.

Neo-Confederate arguments for official state religions for the states

It has been reported in the news that two Republican North Carolina state representatives from Rowan County, Harry Warren and Carl Ford, have proposed having an official North Carolina state religion. I post some links to news stories at the end of this blog.

It has gotten a strongly negative reaction and was considered embarrassing to the state and so the original sponsors have back tracked and said they were just trying to allow prayer at the opening of county meetings.

However, I am not so sure that Warren and Ford just made an error. There has been this idea in some reactionary circles that a state religion is permissible for a state.

In the Southern Partisan, Vol. 7 No. 3, Summer 1987, on pages 34-37 an interview with Federal Judge W. Brevard Hand, chief judge of the Federal district court for southern Alabama.

On page 35 Judge Hand explains that the 1st Amendment was only intended to prevent the Federal government from adopting a state religion. Also, that states had state religions when the constitution was first adopted. Judge Hand doesn't feel that a state could adopt a state religion now with the current supreme court rulings. Judge Hand explains in this interview response:

PARTISAN: Could it be done today in view of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Constitution?

HAND: No, I would think not. Under the interpretations of the First Amendment by the Supreme Court, a state's efforts to do that would now be regarded as unconstitutional.

As a matter of fact, the states today still seem to have a feeling of autonomy that no longer exists. The War Between the States was the beginning of a decline in state sovereignty. But I think the real death knell of the view occurred after the incorporation battle in the Supreme Court over whether the First Amendment or the first eight Amendments were properly incorporated against the states as well as the federal government. Some historians say that state sovereignty ended when the people got the right to elect their U.S. Senators by popular vote rather than maintaining it as a state-controlled mechanism. 

"Incorporation" refers to legal rulings by the Supreme Court that the Bill of Rights apply to the states as well as the Federal government based on the 14th Amendment to the constitution, an amendment which the neo-Confederates detest, and certainly the readers of Southern Partisan. They also detest the Supreme Court ruling incorporating the Bill Rights as applying to the states.

This idea that states really have a right to a state religion which is blocked by Supreme Court rulings which are destructive of what are seen as states' rights has been circulating among reactionaries for some time. This article was 25 years ago. This idea wasn't new with Warren and Ford, though I have no evidence that Warren and Ford were aware of prior thinking regarding the idea of a state religion for states.

I think that this proposal by Warren and Ford may well have been exactly what they were intending, but with the public's reaction they backtracked.

By itself this episode doesn't represent anything more than a couple state legislators with ultra states' rights views. However, with all the nullification proposals submitted by state legislators, it does seem that this specific episode is part of a larger trend of some Republican legislators towards embracing a neo-Confederate agenda.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/04/04/2802318/nc-religion-resolution-wont-be.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/04/04/a-state-religion-whats-next-north-carolina-secession/

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/north-carolinas-proposed-state-religion-isnt-as-unprecedented-as-it-sounds/274646/

"Daily Beast" on Confederate History Month

John Avlon has this article about Confederate History Month in Georgia.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/02/georgia-is-celebrating-confederate-heritage-and-history-month-really.html

The craziness of it all just astounds him.