Thursday, December 31, 2015

Petition to get rid of a Jefferson Davis monument in Brownsville, Texas


https://www.change.org/p/mayor-of-the-city-of-brownsville-texas-commissioners-of-the-city-of-brownsville-texas-remove-the-jefferson-davis-memorial

The above is a link to a www.change.org petition to get rid of the Jefferson Davis memorial in Brownsville, Texas.

Please help this person by signing the petition.

Jefferson Davis was a vicious racist.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Denied it was racially motivated

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-confederate-flag-lying-guilty-20151223-story.html

A person working at the Army Corps of Engineers who had had loud confrontations with an African American co-worker decided after the massacre in Charleston to print out a Confederate flag from a computer and secretly place it on the co-worker's desk.

There was investigation and the person putting the flag on the desk lied to a federal officer and as a consequence was convicted of this lying and has been sent to jail. What is interesting about this story is:
Thompson eventually confirmed she had been angry with the person but denied it was racially motivated.
Since we don't have instruments to read people's minds we can't refute this with any concrete evidence.  However, I think you would have to be an idiot to believe this person's claims that there wasn't racial motivation.

This person might sincerely think that they are not racist because the person doesn't wear funny clothes or use racial slurs narrowly defining a racist to only those who are belligerent.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/breaking-the-white-nation.html

The neo-Confederates are always denying being racist. Even when they are caught out, they have sort a strategy that could be summed up as "I was racist 15 minutes ago, but now I am not."

In this article the Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania is claiming that they are not a racist organization.

http://timesleader.com/news/489335/ku-klux-klan-recruiting-in-northeast-pennsylvania-for-a-new-era

Richard Quinn, editor for nearly two decades of the Southern Partisan, when he was running Lindsey Graham's campaign claimed that he had changed.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/03/longtime-lindsey-graham-advisor-ripped-mlk-as-editor-of-neo-confederate-magazine/

Neo-Confederates will continue to assert they aren't racist and I suppose that will provide an excuse for those who really don't care about the issue of racism to accept these groups as legitimate.



Thursday, December 24, 2015

St. Louis committee recommends removal of Confederate monument

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/committee-supports-removing-confederate-monument-from-forest-park/article_ebdc99a2-b37c-55aa-b3a9-a461fb6b6d6f.html

A committee appointed to consider the matter has decided to have a major Confederate monument in St. Louis removed.

With the monuments removed from New Orleans and St. Louis it will set the momentum rolling for more monuments to be removed. Memphis is getting rid of its Forrest monument. If Baltimore doesn't move on removing its monuments it will seem very anomalous.

The tendency is developing for monuments in major cities to be removed.

Every Confederate monument removed makes the remaining Confederate monuments seem more anomalous and the failure act to remove them a negative mark on a community.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Lindsey Graham out of the Presidential race, hopefully will be defeated for re-election

Lindsey Graham has dropped out of the presidential race. His campaign never did particularly well and then became irrelevant.

Lindsey Graham interviewed in the 1st Quarter 1999 Southern Partisan.  He was given a free pass on this by Columbia, South Carolina newspaper The State.

For his 2015-16 presidential campaign he hired the former editor of the Southern Partisan, Richard Quinn.

Now his presidential campaign has become irrelevant and to naught except that it is now on record that he never really regretted pandering to neo-Confederates. It would have been terrible if someone who had interviewed with the Southern Partisan was even one of the presidential candidates of a major party.

Hopefully he isn't re-elected U.S. Senator either. What is delicious irony is that the same forces which he pandered to in the Southern Partisan are the same people who are going to try to end his political career in South Carolina. It is a fate that Graham richly deserves.

There aren't too many Republican office holders who interviewed in the Southern Partisan who are still in office, but I look forward to the day when there are none.

I think  U.S. Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi is the last one.




Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Shouting in New Orleans, Kevin Levin horrified.

The City Council in New Orleans has voted 6 to 1 to get rid of three Confederate monuments and one monument that celebrated the restoration of white supremacy in New Orleans through violence.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/us/new-orleans-confederate-monuments-vote/

Evidently there was rancor in debating this issue.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/confederate_monument_debate_de.html#incart_river_index

This has horrified Kevin Levin who referred to this article in his recent posting that Richmond could show New Orleans the way on Confederate monuments and is critical of the efforts in New Orleans to get rid of the monuments.

http://cwmemory.com/2015/12/14/new-orleans-should-look-to-richmond/

I track Kevin Levin as representative of a certain type of mentality that tends to find one reason or another to criticize any effort to remove the Confederacy and end a racialized landscape. The concept of a "racialized landscape" won't appear in Levin's blogging.

Some things are immediately obvious. Richmond isn't getting rid of any of its Confederate monuments. New Orleans is getting rid of its Confederate monuments. It seems Richmond might look to New Orleans rather than the other way around.

Levin's link is to the New Orleans major daily paper and it might occur to him that the newspaper might not be very sympathetic to the monument removal, but for the purpose of argument, let's accept that the reporting is accurate. This leads to an observation about Levin's rational that controversy is to be avoided at all cost.

During the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s a lot of people didn't oppose civil rights directly, argued instead that it needed to be gradual so that violence and outrage could be avoided. As if African Americans should have their rights denied so some racist white people wouldn't be upset.

Levin's argument is an exact parallel to this.

Levin's example, which he puts forth as counter example to what happened in New Orleans, is the discussion in Richmond about memorializing the slave trade in Shockoe Bottom. This isn't about eliminating a white racialized landscape or doing something about it. It isn't about removing Confederate monuments. However, they evidently don't have heated conversations which is Levin's criteria for judging the process of addressing the landscape. But it is nothing about the Confederacy. It is inane to use it as a counter example.

It doesn't occur to Levin that perhaps this memorial is a ploy to keep the Confederate monuments on monument avenue.

Or more likely it is a ploy to get some of the African American groups to go along with the gentrification of Shockoe Bottom which is going to displace poor African Americans. As explained in this article. http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2013/11/21/richmond-mayor-seeks-to-gentrify-along-slave-burial-ground/

I don't necessarily know all the issues about what is happening in Schockoe Bottom but I am not holding out Schokoe Bottoms development as a reason to slap New Orleans. It also shows how superficial and uncritical Levin's thinking is.

The real obstacle to getting rid of the Confederacy and white racialized landscapes is not just groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy or the Sons of Confederate Veterans and crank white extremists. It is people like Levin who find all sorts of complications and needs for interpretations and their professional input which seem to keep these racialized landscapes in place.

In the following link you can read about how people like Kevin Levin in various historical societies in New Orleans tried to keep the Confederate monuments with their various rationalizations and how they were rejected by the African American community.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/confederates-preservationists-new-orleans

What it is, is that the loss of these monuments means the loss of white privilege and various professionals and individuals and historians start instinctively to come up with rationalizations to keep the monuments.

That The Atlantic has him write on Civil War related matters and controversies over Confederate monuments is revealing of the The Atlantic magazine.

Kevin Levin should realize that historical memory isn't the exclusive province of elites nor is it going to be decided by the League of Self-Important Civil War historians.

P.S. My article on white banal nationalism.

http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/breaking-the-white-nation.html


Texas Nationalist Movement Petition, What happened? /Prospects for Texas Nationalist Movement

The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) http://www.thetnm.org/  on their web page was reporting on the progress of their petition to get a secessionist measure on the Texas Republican Primary ballot.

The deadline was Dec. 15, 2015. So how many signatures did the Texas Nationalist Movement get?

This was one news item at their web page on the petition that is still online.
http://www.thetnm.org/petition_2015_we_are_close

They evidently had a online event about what to do next after the petition campaign.

http://www.thetnm.org/hangout_tnm_petition_next_steps?recruiter_id=1379

How many signatures? Did they reach their goals?

My guess is that they fell somewhat short of signatures, and they only had to get 68 thousand some signatures. A discussion of actually how many signatures they got would show how insubstantial their movement is. I am surprised, I thought they could have gotten the signatures. In a state of 27 million plus people, 11 million plus white people I thought they would have gotten enough signatures. https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chs/popdat/ST2015.shtm

I think they just didn't have enough volunteers to collect signatures and face people who are going to express that you are crazy.

The TNM best opportunities seem to be to pressure the Texas State Republican Party which seems to be beholden to fringe groups and are not willing to stand up to any fringe group. This is especially important given that the TNM doesn't have any real popular support.

So they are continuing to advance their agenda in the Republican Party.One member of the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is going to push to put secession into the Republican Party referendum.

http://www.thetnm.org/voigtsberger_texas_independence_platform

The posting writes:

"... he specifically responded to the groundswell of support surrounding a vote on Texas independence.
But evidently not enough of a groundswell to get the required signatures. There is this constant claim of some popular support for Texas secession but there really isn't. That is why the TNM is focused on the Texas Republican Party, their best chance of success is pressuring political groups and not hoping for popular support.

It shows you the state of the Texas Republican Party that the TNM could find any member of the SREC to support secession.

The Democrats locally and nationally are absolutely hoping that secession gets into the Texas Republican Party platform.  It would destroy U.S. Senator Ted Cruz's campaign to be United States President. It would be disastrous to any Republican running for public office, not only in Texas, but nationally. Texas secession would be a national issue.

What was interesting was that the SREC members were afraid to go on record as being against Texas secession and did a voice vote instead of a roll call vote.

http://www.thetnm.org/breakdown_of_srec_voting

You would think standing up for America would be a given for Republicans, but it doesn't seem to be. This tells you more about how crazy the Texas conservative movement has become.

However, the window for any type of Texas secession is closing. By 2020 the demographic changes in Texas, it being more urban, there being more generational change in the electorate, more people having moved to Texas, there being more minority voters might very well make Texas a Democrat state and not a Republican one. The dominating political forces won't have any interest in Texas secession.

The chances for success of the Texas Nationalist Movement within the Republican Party might increase as the Republicans become more alienated and more fringe. A party that is obviously going to be out of power for a long time, can often become a party for fringe elements to vent their rage.

For the time being it seems that the TNM will be something that is reported on when the Texas Republican Party is having to deal with it as an occasional story for laughs.

Also, again this shows how delusional the neo-Confederates claim that there is some global trend towards secession. The TNM petition effort failed.

Podemos Victory Squashes Catalan Secession Advocates.

http://in.reuters.com/article/spain-election-catalonia-idINL8N1490OG20151221

In a real election, instead of a privately run event pretending to be a vote or referendum, it seems that there isn't a super majority for secession in Catalonia. From Reuters:

MADRID, Dec 20 Left-wing newcomer Podemos, which opposes a split of Catalonia from Spain, topped polls in the northeastern region in Sunday's Spanish general election, dealing a blow to Catalan separatists already struggling with divisions in their movement. 
Podemos, the only national party to back a Catalan referendum on independence from Spain although it has said it would recommend voting against secession, won 12 parliamentary seats in the wealthy region of 7 million. 
Altogether, parties opposing a Catalan split from Spain, including the Socialists, Ciudadanos and the People's Party (PP), garnered 30 seats.

That compared with the 17 seats won by the pro-independence camp - nine for leftist party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and eight for centre-right Democracia I Llibertat, the party of acting regional government head Artur Mas.
There were internet claims that there was some overwhelming desire for independence in Catalonia based on a staged private event pretending to be a referendum which showed supposedly some overwhelming super majority in favor of secession. These claims are now shown to be just so many fables. (http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2014/11/81-of-catalans-vote-for-independence.html)

Also, one thing to be considered is that through the Spanish language, Spaniards are culturally connected to all of Spanish speaking Latin America. Neo-Confederates, very often enthusiasts for Donald Trump, (http://conservative-headlines.com/2015/06/trump-enters-presidential-race-with-hard-line-anti-immigration-speech/) and (http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2015/08/trumps-audacious-southern-spectacle-is.html) of course place no value on the culture of Latin America given their attitudes towards non-whites and Latinos. (http://conservative-headlines.com/2009/01/non-white-gangs-terrorizing-the-united-states/) and (
http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2008/11/mexican-gangs-now-infiltrating-kentucky.html). Neo-Confederates can't see the value in being connected to Latin America culturally.

The Catalan independence movement did plan on joining the European Union and to continue to be part of that system which is integrating national states into a European Union. Even the Catalan secessionists plan on not being an isolated nation, but part of larger supranational groups.

The Catalan secessionists are not right wing cranks planning on some isolationist republic fending off the modern world.

Secession movements are contingent on local factors. In Catalonia there was suppression of Catalan language by the Franco fascist government in an increasingly distant past. However, there are other solutions to dealing with secessionist movements, such as various accommodations.

Neo-Confederates desperately hope that secession elsewhere will aid secessionist movements here. They might give hope to those already alienated because the United States is a multi-racial democracy and not a white supremacist nation, but beyond that there isn't support for it except for cranks which includes Kirkpatrick Sales.

There is an assertion that secession is the wave of the future, but these mirages dissipate when there are actual elections such as in Scotland where secession was rejected and now in Catalonia where the leading political parties are against secession.. In Quebec secession seems to be less likely a prospect of secession each year.

When you read a neo-Confederate internet claim that some place some where is on the brink of secession it would be well to examine these claims closely. Also, examine the local history driving a secession movement. Chances are whatever is driving secession there is not likely to  be a driving force for an independent republic of Vermont or Texas or East Swampy County or 14th Street.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Dixie Highway renamed after Obama in Florida City

http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263731-florida-city-renames-old-dixie-highway-to-honor-obama

Neo-Confederates in Florida must be having a fit.

Another article on the name change from a local paper.

http://eyeonpbc.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2015/12/17/old-dixie-signs-in-riviera-beach-replaced-by-ones-honoring-obama/

One benefit of what is currently happening is that there are two many changes for the Sons of Confederate to fight all at once.

The neo-Confederate world is crumbling.


Sunday, December 13, 2015

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.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

"The Library of Evil and the University of Missouri Press" published by "Black Commentator"

The article is at this link:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/633/633_cover_missouri_library_of_evil.html

When the Univ. of Missouri was in the news recently I wasn't entirely surprised and it was a location which I was very familiar with since I had already purchased a great many books from them as part of my research into the neo-Confederates.

The other press of interest is Transaction Press at Rutgers in New Jersey. 

Hopefully this article will get the public aware of the issue and other presses will think about what they are doing. 

I am not saying that these author's shouldn't be able to get their books published, what I am raising with university presses is why are you deciding that you want to publish this stuff and lend your reputation to this and is publishing this material in keeping with your purported mission.

If Liberty University was publishing this material I wouldn't see it as being contrary to its mission at all. 
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