Working to destroy the nation. James Ronald Kennedy on the Abbeville Blog has a posting on Calexit

The posting of interest is:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/could-calexit-create-a-left-right-confederacy/


What James Ronald Kennedy (He has a twin who is a leading neo-Confederate) hopes is that there might develop a left/right alliance for secession and nullification.

http://www.kennedytwins.com/

This is not so fanciful. There was a left/right alliance against American overseas military adventures and some of the leftists were quite angry to be called out on it.

There are certainly a fair number of idiots who call themselves leftists who would support such an alliance for secession.

Nullification is an inanity which basically nullifies a nation's existence. If on some rationalization or some interpretation of the Constitution a state can nullify a federal law, you essentially don't have a nation. You just have 50 separate nations arising from the dissolution of the nation.

What is of interest is that the neo-Confederates are still on the prowl for some way to break up the nation. James Ronald Kennedy and his brother Walter Donald Kennedy get published in the Confederate Veteran, the official publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and have their books sold by this organization. The SCV has 30,000 members and significant resources and a headquarters which is substantial. This is not a group with a shack and a few members. They are able to promote ideas to a significant base.

The Abbeville Institute is also doing a reveal here. This is campaigning for the break up of the nation.

I have been discussing on this blog the Texas Nationalist movement. They are moribund at this time and will be until it starts appearing that Trump will not be able to carry out his agenda.

However, I think the neo-Confederates are perhaps also seeing hope for the revival of their agenda with the expected "blue wave" in which Democrats are expected to recapture control of the U.S. House. With the Democrats controlling the U.S. House the Democrats hope to undermine Donald Trump and go after Donald Trump in every and any way they can.

The group 538 looking at the polls sees a good chance that the Democrats will capture the House. They see a 6 out of 7 chance which is a really good chance. However as 538 states, it isn't 100% chance.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/

One thing the website shows is that with computers you can easily do all sorts of analyses. When I first started my engineering career, you did statistics with a pencil and paper or mechanical calculator if you were a student or an ordinary engineer. By the time of the end of my career I was routinely doing fairly sophisticated analysis with JMP software.

This is a rather detailed break down of the possible results for the U.S. House elections.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=rrpromo


The U.S. Senate is expected to remain in the hands of the Republicans. Odds are 5 to 6.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/senate/?ex_cid=rrpromo


So even if the U.S. House does fall into Democratic Party hands, it remains to be seen how much they can actually undermine Trump's agenda. I am sure they can certainly cause problems for Trump and I am very sure they can heat up the political situation even more than it is, a whole lot more.

However, the path of developments to support secession may work this way.

The Democrats in the U.S. House may not be able to hinder Trump as much as inflame an already quite polarized situation such that when in 2020 elections Trump is possibly defeated there will be a radicalized and really alienated base to support secession.

If the Democrats win in 2020 the so-called "left" secession movements will collapse. The right wing ones secessionist movements will start gaining support.

James Ronald Kennedy's idea of a left/right secession alliance developing is wrong. If the left is in control of the government the left secessionist movement will be moribund. If the right is in control of the government the right secession movements will be moribund. They won't be active at the same time.

However, I think Nov. 6, 2018 election will need to be over so we know what the political landscape. Also, it won't be until after Jan. 3, 2019 that we will know what the Democrats will be be doing. However, I think the Democrats have likely already been planning a fair amount as to what they want to do, so I think that the conflict with Trump will start immediately after Jan. 3, 2019.

However, between Nov. 6, 2018 to Jan. 3, 2019 there will likely be statements from the Democrats what they intend to do, speculation about what the Democrats will do, calls from groups as to what the Democrats should do, and right wing fear mongering on what the Democrats will do.

So between Nov. 6, 2018 and Jan. 3, 2019, I think secessionists will pick up some interest from the Trump base of supporters but not in terms of supporting secession. I think that the impetus of most Trump supporters will be to support Trump and not support secession. I think though privately they might give it some thought as I said, as a Plan B.

However, there is likely to be some Trump supporters which will decide that secession has become their option of choice and since the secession movements are somewhat small, even a very small fraction of the Trump base of supporters would be a big increase for the secessionist movement.

We are going to just have to wait until the evening of Nov. 6th or even the morning on Nov. 7th to see where things are heading.

My expectation is the Democrats will win control of the U.S. House and things will start heating up very shortly after the election results are known.

Chemtrail history at the Abbeville Institute

When you are just delusional and mentally just flailing.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/revisiting-the-conerstone-speech/


The neo-Confederates have always tried to ignore or rationalize away Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens' speech.

Another rationalization is that he misspoke himself. Stephen's did regret one part of his speech in which people felt he denigrated the American Founders. However, in a series of his speeches he repeats very similar or the same assertions supporting his white supremacist views of the enslavement of Africans.

However, as the Lost Cause infrastructure crumbles they are getting wild and desperate. This essay is really off the wall.

So I am calling it Chemtrail history. In case you are not on Facebook probably have been offline for a few years, Chemtrails is a idea in a conspiracy theory that the vapor trails that jets leave behind at great elevations are not merely the condensation of water vapor from the combustion of fuel, but some sinister plot to dispense chemicals over the United States.

It does not use with these people to point out that it is very cold up at the heights jets operate and that the combustion of gasoline or other hydrocarbon is water and carbon dioxide and that the water would precipitate at the very low temperatures of the upper troposphere. The internet has enabled the paranoid, the delusional, the mentally defective, the disturbed. Flat earthers are organized and there are endless health quackeries facilitated by the Internet.

So for the exceptionally delusional neo-Confederates I am going to deem them Chemtrail history.

Abbeville Institute's pretensions at being a scholarly institute shattered with the Kennedy twins.

This is an article by the Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy who is one of the neo-Confederate Kennedy twins.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/wall-street-journals-confederate-animus/


This is the Kennedy twin's website.

http://www.kennedytwins.com/

Who knows? Perhaps in the future they are going to include articles by Lochlainn Seabrook.

http://www.lochlainnseabrook.com/

By the way bookstores in Gettysburg, PA, at least one, carry Seabrook's work.

Maybe Frank Conner will be a contributor?

Southern Partisan magazine, Abbeville Institute, Revival or Decline of the Southern Partisan and the neo-Confederate movement

The Abbeville Institute is running a lot of essays from the Southern Partisan magazine.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/

First I want to discuss and dispose of this website which seems to be some zombie thing in case anyone thinks it represents a real continuation of the Southern Partisan magazine. This website exists with the old Southern Partisan cover title.

https://www.southernpartisan.com/

However, it seems to be a content farm or some type of website in which an algorithm scans published articles and presents them on the website.

All the authors are, "by Editor," or at least the ones I have reviewed.  I don't see any of the old Southern Partisan material from the magazine available.

So it is with some interest that I have seen a lot of Southern Partisan material being republished online at the Abbeville Institute. Is it a sign of the Southern Partisan neo-Confederate ideology continuing on into the present and possibly into the future?

I thought initially it might be that. However, I am also thinking that it might be that the Abbeville Institute needs filler. I noticed last week on the blog it is all or almost all old Southern Partisan articles.

It could be that since 2015 there are less and less individuals willing to write for the Abbeville Institute. They no longer list a faculty, and I can't find online any indication anymore that Brion McClanahan is the editor. I notice that some contributors have nothing to lose in their reputations.

Or it could be that this nationalist movement is dying out. The purposes which drove neo-Confederate nationalism and much of Southern studies, the maintenance a hierarchy of class, gender, race are still there, but neo-Confederate nationalism is no longer seen as the means to maintain these hierarchies. It could be that among neo-reactionaries, white nationalists, other reactionary sorts neo-Confederate nationalism is seen as irrelevant or at best a charming antique from the past.

These reactionary forces might still respect the Confederacy and revere figures of the Confederacy, but they don't see neo-Confederacy as a means or program to direct the future.

One of the forces which drove neo-Confederate nationalism was the need to maintain a separatist anti-democratic and explicitly racist section in the former slave states against national democratizing trends and national movement towards civil rights. It was to facilitate an internal secession.

The Southern Partisan started in 1979 and got serious funding in 1980 and was really launched that year, when it seemed that with the election of Ronald Reagan there was a real chance of overturning or rendering impotent civil rights legislation. The neo-Confederates felt very betrayed when Reagan didn't restore the pre-civil rights era status quo, though Reagan did much to undermine civil rights.

Though there still is a struggle over civil rights in 2018, the old segregationist regimes of the 1950s are gone forever. M.E. Bradford's hopes remain dashed.

Also, the struggle is for the nation at large. States' rights is gone. All the political forces are playing for the nation. Separatism is conceived as being realized through external secession in the form of a nation state and not internal secession with the vehicle of states' rights.

The whole Lost Cause argument of the Civil War being about states' rights doesn't seem to be that important. Secessionists might believe that the Civil War was over states' rights, but they are planning secession. They may be justifying secession a little because they see a lack of states' rights.  But I think the whole discussion might be seen as superfluous to secessionists who are conceptualizing their arguments within nationalist concepts, and nationalists aren't interested in being within a larger polity with or without "states' rights."

Neo-Confederacy is not dead though. It will continue as a reactionary thread in American thinking. It is still a concern. It has influence, such the "Politically Incorrect Guides" of the Regnery Press.

Because a specific nationalist movement is becoming less important, doesn't mean that the Lost Cause is fading out. School textbooks pander to the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause and its monuments seem to have become an agenda item of reactionary or racist websites like Breitbart. But Breitbart doesn't care about M.E. Bradford or neo-Confederate writing or ideology. Instead their defense of Confederate monuments is more about white nationalism in general and white resentment.

At this time neo-Confederacy is largely expressed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The United Daughters (UDC) of the Confederacy seems to have dropped entirely advocacy of neo-Confederate ideas. Privately they might still support neo-Confederate ideas though, it just isn't public. The UDC has set up their website such that archive.org doesn't archive it.

This doesn't mean neo-Confederacy is dead or will be dead. I don't think it will be what it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It will likely be picked up as a narrative in a larger reactionary narrative of national or world history. It might be a field of study for reactionaries reading reactionary books.

I think there still remains work to be done about neo-Confederacy. There is the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their enablers. There is still the issue of the complicity of the field of Southern studies with neo-Confederacy which the field refuses to acknowledge much less address.

Of course like a herpes infection, neo-Confederacy might flare up again under stressful circumstances.

However, even then I think that it will be that elements of neo-Confederate thinking will be used by national reactionary movements to advance a national reactionary narrative rather than push regional agendas.

The publication of the American Ideas Institute is American Conservative though they have had neo-Confederate contributors.

After "Breitbart" article, I have decided I will be writing Jeff Sessions about his assertion about the "Southern Partisan"

It might be asserted that since the Southern Partisan is no longer being published it is not of importance that Jeff Sessions came to the defense of the Southern Partisan.

However, the Southern Partisan articles are being republished at the Abbeville Institute website. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Southern+Partisan&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=abbevilleinstitute.org&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=

Jeff Session's assertion that the Southern Partisan isn't some extremist magazine helps give neo-Confederate groups like the Abbeville Institute a free pass when they publish articles from Southern Partisan magazine. 

Even if the Southern Partisan magazine articles weren't being republished, defending the Southern Partisan magazine defends the neo-Confederate movement. This magazine has become a corpus of neo-Confederate writing which continues to be of influence. 

A considerable controversy has arisen over Jeff Sessions' nomination by Donald Trump to the position of Attorney General of the United States. 

Most recently Mark Thompson has stated called Jeff Sessions a "Confederate Attorney General." This statement has become a news item at Breitbart. 

Statement by Mark Thompson can be seen here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1j2GhQNayo

Breitbart's reporting is here, where you can watch a video of Thompson making the statement.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/01/14/msnbc-guest-jeff-sessions-is-a-confederate-attorney-general/

It occurs to me I should write Jeff Sessions to retract his defense of Southern Partisan magazine. 

One reason in particular is that it is inappropriate for Jeff Sessions, as Attorney General, to defend a magazine which supported the break up of the United States. That is my understanding of the import of this article in the Southern Partisan originally  published in 1997. (3rd Quarter 1997, Vol. 17, starting on page 18, by William Lamar Cawthorn Jr. )

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/the-south-as-an-independent-nation/

More generally, Jeff Sessions' defense of the Southern Partisan helps legitimize their pernicious agenda. 

Finally, I think whether Sessions rejects the Southern Partisan magazine or not will show who he is.  

Texas Nationalist Movement welcomes Neo-Confederate Abbeville Institute support.

This is the web page of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) referring their readership  to the Abbeville Institute article on Texas secession.

http://www.thetnm.org/texas_secession

This is the Abbeville Institute article.

http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/texas-secession/


I think this welcoming of support by the neo-Confederate movement tells a lot about the Texas Nationalist Movement and their attitudes on race.

I am going to start making up a list of things, large and small, that people can do to oppose the Texas Nationalist Movement.

John McKee Barr starts tearing apart Abbeville Institute Donald W. Livingston's "Confederate Emancipation" essay in the "Confederate Veterans"

John McKee Barr is reading and reviewing Donald W. Livingston's essay "Confederate Emancipation" which was published in the July/August 2014 Confederate Veteran.

http://loathinglincoln.com/confederate-emancipation-part-i/

Barr seeks not just to refute the historical argument but show the tactics of neo-Confederate argumentation. How they have serious errors in logical thinking, obscure the historical record, and are self-deluding.

The reader of John McKee Barr's series will not just learn that Livingston's essay misrepresents history, the reader will learn that Livingston's ideology prevents him from doing historical scholarship.

Liberty University: American or Confederate?

The 12th Annual Scholars Conference is at Liberty University.

http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/event/twelfth-annual-abbeville-institute-scholars-conference/

One year the history department at Liberty University put Abraham Lincoln on trial and found him guilty.

Kirkpatrick Sales is a neo-Confederate reactionary

Back in the 1960s and 70s I would come across elements in the counter culture movement which seemed to me reactionary or obscurantist. One example was the belief in astrology which irrational. There was a general uncritical reaction against all science and technology. This irrationality continues even today against vaccines. Some elements in the counter culture tended to apply stereotypes to people and things, in particular gender roles.

So it isn't surprising to me that Kirkpatrick Sale who came out of the 50s-60s counterculture has become a secessionist and reactionary who denounces the Emancipation Proclamation and has joined up with the neo-Confederates. 

This is his essay about breaking up the United States. 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/kirkpatrick-sale/devolution-dissolution-secession-separatism/

For those who think living in a small nation is wonderful, have Ruritanian fantasies, they should consider the history of Central America after the United Provinces of Central America broke up. 

Kirkpatrick Sales attends the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Stephen D. Lee Institute conferences, writes for www.lewrockwell.com, an associate scholar of the Abbeville Institute. Racism doesn't seem to be a problem for Sales. 

I don't see Sales as having gone from left to right in his politics. His politics are likely to have always been a reflexive anti-establishmentarianism from the beginning with romantic fantasies of some type of pre-modern life.