Major article in the "Atlantic" about federal government support for neo-Confederacy, including mention of the Arlington Confederate Monument, Ed Sebesta quoted several times.

I am going to updated this blog tonight, but you can read the article online here: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/you-wont-believe-what-the-government-spends-on-confederate-graves/277931

Some extracts:

The desire for more Confederate memorialization at the turn of the century came not only from a sense of respect for history, heritage, or states' rights, but amid a torrent of racism and racial suppression. Celebrations of Jefferson Davis' 100th birthday in 1908 were held without restraint. The novel, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, became a runaway hit when it was published in 1905; a theatrical adaptation successfully toured the South and was even staged in Washington, D.C. (Most of us have heard of the story of that novel and play because of the screen adaptation, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation). And Confederate heritage groups like the UDC began erecting monuments and memorials that recalled a righteous cause.

I am quoted:

 "Every time the federal government gives them a headstone, it's an opportunity to hold an event, and a gathering" for these groups to engage in Confederate nostalgia, Ed Sebesta, co-editor of Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction. While not all, or even perhaps most, members of the SCV and UDC hold racist views, Sebesta says that at the leadership level, they've recently become much more open about their views of Confederate history and the values it represented. These include leaders -- sometimes in official SCV and UDC publications -- defending racist government policies of the past, or decrying the civil rights changes of the past 60 years.

For example, the December 2012 issue of UDC Magazine had an article defending the Black Codes. A 2003 article in the official publication of the SCV's Educational Political Action Committee, in Sebesta's words, "explains why segregation is justified." A 2006 article in Southern Mercury decried the judicial and legislative milestones of the Civil Rights Movement, asserting that in the 1960s, "The cultural Marxists relentlessly hammered away at Western cultural norms using the sledge of anti-racism as a battering ram to bring down the walls of traditional Western culture."

I have much of the racism of the neo-Confederates in the early and mid-20th century documented at the website www.confederatepastpresent.org.

You can read articles in which Confederate "heritage" groups praise the Ku Klux Klan at these links:

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=161:extracts-from-the-book-qthe-ku-klux-klan-or-invisible-empireq-by-mrs-sef-rose-and-endorsed-by-the-sons-of-confederate-veterans-and-the-united-daughers-of-the-confederacy-&catid=37:the-nadir-of-race-relations&back=yes

http://www.confederatepastpresent.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=162:the-united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-defends-the-ku-klux-klan-in-1936&catid=37:the-nadir-of-race-relations&back=yes

There are many more articles praising the Klan at www.confederatepastpresent.org. Use the search engine at the site.

If you want to know more about the Arlington Confederate Monument and the effort to get the president to stop sending a wreath to the monument go to this blog:

http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/

This blog also had some documentation of the 21st century racism of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.