Paul Duggan dis an indepth article, Nov. 28, 2018, in the Washington Post about Frank Earnest who heads up "heritage defense" for the Virginia Sons of Confederate Veterans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2018/11/28/feature/the-confederacy-was-built-on-slavery-how-can-so-many-southern-whites-still-believe-otherwise/
It is a good indepth article about neo-Confederate view polnts and how neo-Confederate think.
Well Kevin Levin was not happy over this.
http://cwmemory.com/2018/12/07/relegating-frank-earnest-and-the-lost-cause-to-the-trash-bin-of-history/
Levin wants to shut down discussion of neo-Confederates.
We need to stop taking these people seriously. Their views have been discredited and whether they acknowledge it or not, their attachment to this particular memory of the war is wrapped in nostalgia and racial animus. But what troubles me the most is that the attention granted given to individuals like Earnest and the SCV obscures a much richer landscape of cultural identification with the past. In short, what other profiles could be written that tell us something about where we are in 2018 re: Civil War memory and where we might be headed?
In the end, Earnest is part of a rear guard action that is growing weaker and weaker owing to age. It’s time to move on.
The issue though is that Earnest and others like him have influence with legislators and there are states in which State law forbids the local governments. There is a neo-Confederate movement whose members write some of the books with the very popular conservative Politically Incorrect Guide series. There are neo-Confederates in positions of influence in the conservative movement in the United States. Thomas Wood's "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" is a New York Times bestseller.
People like Earnest get high positions in the Federal government. This article in CNN is about one of them.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/va-secretary-confederate-president/index.html
If more people knew about the existence of the neo-Confederate movement, people like Robert Wilkie would not get appointed to important government positions, in this case Wilkie was appointed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs by Donald Trump.
Levin uses some false opposites. Reporting on Earnest doesn't mean we can't report on other things regarding the Civil War and historical memory. I don't think the Washington Post has a quota of profiles either.
What Levin wants is the whole issue of neo-Confederates swept under the rug and the narrative of the Civil War and its remembrance to remain in the cloistered confines of the self-appointed League of Distinguished Civil War Historians like himself, to remain within the establishment.
The problem is that the influence of neo-Confederates in shaping the built landscape has been obcured. It is now coming to light.
Paul Duggan called Levin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/a-civil-war-expert-objected-to-my-profile-of-a-neo-confederate-i-called-him-to-discuss-his-critique/2019/01/08/fb89917c-02d4-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html?utm_term=.314df442ce88
This is Levin's reporting on this article.
http://cwmemory.com/2019/01/09/a-conversation-with-the-washington-post/
Kevin Levin's concerned to keep discussion of Civil War memory confined to establishment Civil War historians works to enable the neo-Confederate movement.
I have decided to publish my paper on Kevin Levin. I will be doing a separate posting of the link and will update this blog post also with a link to it.
I have the paper I wrote about Kevin Levin online at the following link.
http://templeofdemocracy.com/kevin-levin.html
I took the time to printout and archive all of the pages relevant to this essay and others that might be needed to support this essay and file them.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment