Collapse of the Neo-Confederacy and what will happen to remaining Confederate statues. /UPDATE

Confederate statues are coming down everywhere. They are being removed all over the place.

There are so many that I am overwhelmed trying to keep up.

One important trend has emerged. It used to be just prominent statues in major city centers that were the focus of efforts for removal. Now it more minor Confederate statues, statues in less prominent locations.

Most importantly it is statues in smaller cities and towns, the effort isn't confined to major metropolitan centers. Also, as major cities get rid of their Confederate monuments entirely it is becoming a mark of being provincial or a small town with a small view when you have a Confederate monument.

Suddenly you are seeing the next tier of smaller cities start looking at getting rid of their Confederate monuments and even smaller municipalities. This is going to put a lot of pressure on smaller towns to get rid of their Confederate monuments.

As more and more Confederate monuments are removed, the ones that remain will seem more and more anomalous. As larger towns get rid of their monuments, small towns which retain monuments will mark themselves as backward. People won't want to move to such a place. A factory will find it an impediment to hiring skilled professionals and technical help. Other towns competing for a factory or other commerical establishment will mention that their rival has a Confederate monument.

When there are three or four or five possible locations to choose from it will be easy to discard a place that still retains a Confederate monument.

As these forces drive small towns to get rid of Confederate monuments those towns which still then retain Confederate monuments will look especially backward and menancing. And it doesn't seem at the present much pressure will be needed to get smaller towns to get rid of Confederate monuments. They seem to be coming down in small towns fairly frequeently.

In the future perhaps even horror fiction will adopt the idea of a small town out of the way having a Confederate monument as a sign of evil lurking there.

If you have a tomato festival or hay festival or antique festival a Confederate monument will be discouraging.

Also, the neo-Confederate groups themselves will appear to be more and more fringe. A couple decades ago they were people who sort of pushed a romance of reunion type of interpretation of the Civil War. Those type of people are no longer in control. Now the type of people who are running the show are like the Chief and Deputy Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Heritage Committee. They are the authors of several really fringe neo-Confederate works and this is there website. http://www.kennedytwins.com/

They are also an aging group of people whose membership's average age is increasing.

Also, defenders of the Confederacy have become very partisan and aligned themselves with one political party over the other. Also, the Democrats have decided that being anti-Confederate is a politically winning position to take. Donald Trump has emerged as the great champion of the Confederacy.

It used to be the centrist Democrats were scared of being seen as critical of the Confederacy and it was Jimmy Carter who got Jefferson Davis his citizenship back. Those days are gone. The Democrats are finding Confederate things that even I didn't know existed to be removed.

With Donald Trump's disastrous management it looks like the Republicans are headed towards an electoral disaster.

I think the Confederate monuments at the national parks will be the focus after the election.

The Confederacy is imploding at a rate that just astounds me. It is an implosion which is self-reinforcing for the reasons just given. By Nov. 2020 having a Confederate monument still will mean either there is a court case and the city is prevented from immediately acting, or it means that your town is really creepy.

UPDATE: 

The story is about a giant corporation doesn't want to locate major facility in town with Confederate monument. You can be assured that every chamber of commerce at some point will be thinking about this or cases like this. Every board member of some government economic panel for development will be hinking about this. 

https://www.thetimesnews.com/story/news/2020/08/24/ups-supports-moving-alamnace-county-confederate-monument/3414199001

Popular culture going against Confederate monuments. Article in "Vice"

http://www.vice.com/read/america-still-has-a-ton-of-racist-monuments

Above is a link to the article.

What is interesting is that this article would not likely run if the editors of Vice didn't think it would be a popular article with its readership and that the readership would be receptive to it.

The article is important because besides promoting the idea that this is important and the monuments need to go, it also provides arguments against the usual rationalizations for these types of monuments and represents the people that argue for the monuments as stupid.

What ever the opinion polls might say about the Confederacy and the general public, among those who set trends, among younger people, among the educated the Confederate is being rejected.

Support for the Confederacy  is tending to be concentrated with those who are ranting and raging against the modern world.

The Confederacy is tumbling down. New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission votes to remove 4 monuments. UPDATE: Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal seeks to keep monuments in New Orleans UPDATE2: Jindal finds out there is no Heritage Act in Louisian

http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/historical-district-landmarks-commission-votes-to-recommend-removal-of-confederate-monuments/34703934

From the report: 

The first of two public hearings Thursday was conducted by landmarks commission. The hearings center on the Robert E. Lee monument at Lee Circle, the Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard statue at City Park, the Jefferson Davis monument in Mid-City and the Liberty Monument in the CBD.

During the hearing, the commission voted to bring forth its recommendation to remove the four monuments. The decision is not final, just a recommendation to the New Orleans City Council.

The Liberty Monument is a monument to a battle by the White League to restore white supremacy in New Orleans.

There has long been efforts against this monument. http://www.neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/283

The next commission to hear about the monument will be Human Rights Commission and I think it is very likely to vote for removal.

The neo-Confederates give their usual bogus and lame arguments.

As each city or state or park gives up Confederate monuments it sets the precedent for other political units to give up Confederate monuments. It makes the Confederate monuments that remain seem more anomalous and out of place. It also shows that the neo-Confederates don't have the political influence that people might have thought they did. Also, with so many places giving up the Confederacy the neo-Confederates face too many battles to focus on. It shows that the public symbols and monuments to the Confederacy can be removed and encourages people to attempt to do so. Finally, it creates an environment where the removal of Confederate monuments and symbols seems inevitable and so less and less effort is made to defend them and politicians don't want being a defender of the Confederacy to be in their political record.

UPDATE:

See this article.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/08/bobby_jindal_confederate_statu.html


From the article:

Gov. Bobby Jindal's office is looking for ways he can keep four Confederate monuments erected in New Orleans, presumably over the objections of Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the City Council.

UPDATE2: Evidently the "Heritage Act" that Jinal's office referred to doesn't actually exist.

http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/13178602-123/heritage-act-invoked-in-no

"Miami Herald" columnist reviews racist past of some Confederate memorials and the lunatic fringe that defends them.

This column by Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald explains the racist back ground of some monuments and memorials in Florida and Georgia and the lunatic fringe that continues to defend them.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/21/3831619/in-florida-when-it-comes-to-race.html

This is an excerpt from the column:

The day after Thanksgiving, Georgia state workers outraged southerners nostalgic for segregation by quietly moving the 12-feet-tall bronze statue of white supremacist Tom Watson from the capitol grounds to a nearby park. At the turn of the last century, the Georgia congressman whipped up white voters with vicious, hateful, lunatic diatribes against blacks, Catholics, Jews (“thick-lipped rakes who glut their eyes upon handsome Gentile women.”) His newspaper argued that lynching blacks should be legal. That blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was among the Georgia politicians responsible for the infamous 1915 Atlanta lynching of a Jewish factory worker, Leo Frank, on the flimsy evidence that this “member of the Yankee Jewish aristocracy,” as Watson called him, had raped and murdered a 13-year-old Anglo girl.

Yet, Watson has his admirers, who were aghast to discover that his statue, with the inscription, “defender of right,” had been relocated down the street. Georgia State Rep. Tommy Benton denounced Georgia’s surrender to “political correctness.” Benton introduced a bill that would outlaw moving historic monuments, arguing that “if you start taking down every monument because you find one or two things you don't particularly like about that person, there won't be any monuments left.” Though even a middling historian could count more than one or two things not to like about Tom Watson.

What is interesting about this column is that Grimm is not representing the issue as it was done frequently in the past by the media. In the past the media would represent the issue as if there was no objective historical record and that there was just a lot of different view points. Or they would say that in the interest of peace or general public good feeling that the monument should be moved or the flag changed, and emphasize that they have Confederate ancestors too and as Southern as the next person. They would not condemn the Confederacy, just plea for public harmony.

Grimm has none of this nonsense. The monuments, flags and the Confederacy, and Tom Watson are bad, and the excuses made for the Confederacy and people like Tom Watson is just rationalizing nonsense.

The attitude towards the Confederacy is shifting.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/21/3831619/in-florida-when-it-comes-to-race.html#storylink=cpy