Chronicles Magazine leaves the Confederacy behind. Charlemagne does publish it, but they haven't left the Confederacy behind.

HAVE NOT LEFT THE CONFEDERACY BEHIND.

My correctiong blog. https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2020/02/completely-wrong-about-chronicles.html#.XlqxuSieGiM

There has been a merger between the Rockford Institute which publishes Chronicles Magazine and the Charlemagne Institute.

Relevant links.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/about/the-rockford-institute/

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/magazine/

https://charlemagneinstitute.org/

It seems that the Rockford Institute has been acquired by the Charlemagne Institute because they wanted to have a print magazine with some established readership.

The Charlemagne Institute purpose is that they are "Defending and Advancing Western Civilization."  Charlemagne was the person who founded a local European empire in the late 8th and early 9th century and for many the founder of modern Europe. Likely this is so. Charlemagne was constantly at war, this was the Early Middle Ages, and so this name selection indicates a military spirit of those who think Westeren Civilization is under attack.

The Charlemagne Institute had this online publication for which they claim a large following in terms of million of page views or something like that. I have no reason to doubt their claims.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/

Backstory

John Howard founded the Rockford Institute in 1976 which undertook to published Chronicles Magazine. He apparantly had the financial resources to fund the effort. He brough Thomas Fleming in the mid-1980s.  Fleming made it into a paleoconservative and neo-Confederate publication. Fleming launched the League of the South in the Chronicles Magazine pages. Howard died in August  2015. Chronicles Magazine circulation had been in servere decline. Fleming retired from Chronicles Magazine in June 2015.  From reading accounts it seems that Howard was very much in decline and I speculate that the board of the Rockford Institute saw a change to dump Fleming.

This is the link to the Fleming Foundation.

https://fleming.foundation/

He hasn't given up on the Confederacy. At this website there are links to the Abbeville Institute and Shotwell Publishing.

The Merger and Chronicles Magazine

This has meant some changes for Chronicles Magazine.

Aaron Wolfe who was going to be one of the key players running the magazine suddenly and unexpectedly died. Chilton Wlliamson reportedly decided to leave the magazine.

Williamson has this web presence.

https://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/

On this page he announces that "Articles will now be posted more frequently." https://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/articles/index.html

So I don't think Williamson is going to retire, he just isn't going to be running Chronicles Magazine. I speculate with Aaron Wolfe gone, Chilton Williamson decided he would be there alone and the magazine was going to go in a new direction and he would be kept on but isolated.

On the masthead is Bill Murchison, a person seen in neo-Confederate publications here and there, and Donald Livingston who headed the league of the South Institute and now heads the Abbeville Institute. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/

The current subscription base has been concerned about the new direction of Chroniclces Magazine so I think Murchison and Livingston will be kept on. However, I think the old Chronicles Magazine, excepting some token articles, is gone. Murchison and Livingston will likely pass on to retirement or just pass on so there isn't any urgent need to have them resign.

I don't think the topic of the Confederacy will be avoided, but it will be only engaged as part of a general rightwing antipathy  to losing a white landscape as opposed to being part of any neo-Confederate agenda. There base, the readers of Intellectual Takeout, (don't worry, no heavy meals here, and we are hip I tell you we are hip.), I don't think are that interested in the Confederacy. I think  the Confederacy will come up as part of a general antipathy to demands for racial justice and as part of fear of losing a white landscape in general, but not as a specific neo-Confederate agenda. Perhaps there might be a token article or two so they hang onto current subscribers while getting their Intellectual Takeout readers to subscribe.

But as the Intellectual Takeout readers becomes the magazine's base of readers, the prior subscribers of the matgazine will not be needed. After all it there are millions of readers of Intellectual Takeout, with a few percent of them subscribing, they will have several times more readers than Chronicles Magazine ever had before.

They can depend on some Chronicles Magazine subscribers continuing out of habit anyways with an occasional bone thrown them.

As a force for the neo-Confederate agenda, that phase of the Chronicles Magazine existence appears to be over.

Some of the things that happened since the 1990s when Chronicles Magazine was in its heyday is that people now know what neo-Confederacy is and can recognize it. Also, I had for years an online index of the issues, title of the article, one sentence summary, and author. I know people were not happy being known to be in the index. Like with the Southern Partisan, a point came where I suspect people did not want to have Chronicles Magazine on their resume and the association with neo-Confederacy. John Shelton Reed dropped out in the mid-1990s.

So I am happy to consider that I contributed some to their demise.

Am I going to track Chronicles Magazine in the future? Probably at some point in the future I expect to stop tracking them.

What Next?

I think it is time to inform the public about the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  They are still a major force to keep Confederate monuments. The SCV appears to be one of the two significant forces for neo-Confederate ideology. The other one is the Abbeville Institute which they work with.

I think I can be effective in ending their influence in a few years.

I will be expanding my efforts to the racialized landscape in general. For example this page on Fair Park.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/fair-park.html

And this page on the Hatton W. Sumner Court Room in Dallas.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/hatton-w-sumners.html

This is my blog for my efforts to deracialize the Dallas landscape.

https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/

United Daughters of the Confederacy whine as neo-Confederacy is rejected.

https://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-davis-arch-letter-removal-20190802-story.html

The whining and dissembling of the United Daughters of the Confederac (UDC) is of note in this article. The reality of the UDC's agenda is denied by talking a narrative to make it an issue of something else.

There are some other notable aspects to this. Even with monuments locked into place by court order and by court decisions, there is still a lot of other things left to do in de-Confederating your locality. The neo-Confederates spent some time thinking of how to embedd the Confederacy into the landscape and historical memory in multiple ways. There is a substantial amount of non-monument things to be dealt with.

With each of these non-monument removals the remaining marks of the Confederacy landscape seem more anomalous and also less legitimate. They are seen as being present because the state against the local wishes has forced the Confederate monument on them. With each of these non-monument removals the issue is kept before the public.

The Confederate built landscape diminishes week by week. People just don't want it.

Confederate Railroad chooses to stick with the Confederacy / This will help de-Confederating the landscape

In this previous blog post I mentioned the three bad choices the band Confederate Railroad had open to them.

In this blog post.
https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/07/confederate-railrord-continues-to-derail.html#.XUWZgm82qiM

I said:

At some point, maybe soon, Confederate Railroad is going to be forced to either shut down, change their name, which will greatly annoy their fans, or embrace right wing support. None of these choices are appealing.

They have chosen not to change the name. 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/01/entertainment/confederate-railroad-name-backlash-trnd/index.html

I didn't expect them to shut down. Without their name they don't really have a reason to exist. It was the "Confederate" in their name that gave their fans a thrill and differentiated them from the many  other country western bands that exist and strive to be known to country western music fans. 

Now what that thrill was exactly will now progressively surfact as time goes on. As vendors, fairs, events decide they don't want "Confederate" in their event, the venues where Confederate Railroad appears will be constrained to areas of the country where there is a lack of concern over racial justice. 

Even then there will be protests over the appearance of the band Confederate Railroad and there will be counter-efforts to the protestors by individuals which the Confederate Railroad probably would rather not show up or be seen. 

Progressively Confederate Railroad will find that by a process involving the places that still do invite them and by the actions of their supporters in public debates their image will be progressively worse.

Confederate Railroad will help deConfederate the landscape also. As their appearances generate controversy people will think about their local Confederate monument and some will think that they would like it removed and some will take action to request that it will be removed.

Confederate Railroad will constantly agitate the issue and their appearances in locals where there are Confederate monuments will give an opportunity for local activists to get the issue of Confederate monument removal before the public.  

This is a previous posting about the band showing up for a Sons of Confederate Veterans event. 

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/07/confederate-railroad-performed-at-neo.html#.XUWY8W82qiM

Sons of Confederate Veterans webpage has gotten "software issues"

This is the link to the Sons of Confederate Veteraans (SCV) webpage.

https://www.scv.org/

This webpage used to re-direct you to this page.

http://www.scv.org/new/

It does seem to be a broken web page.

I am not sure what has happened. It could be it is just that "software issues," but I am not sure exactly what makes a working webpage not work. Did one of the SCV staffers screw it up? Was it hacked? Or was the webpage an embarrassmet and they have pulled content hastilly?

I am not sure what makes a webpage spontaneously fail.

I suspect, speculate, that the webpage was disabled because of some reason the SCV doesn't want to make public.

Confederate Railroad performed at neo-Confederate event held by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and reported in the Southern Partisan

Confederate Veteran has lost two bookings over their name. This is their website. http://www.confederaterailroad.com/

This is their Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/ConfederateRR/

They have been dropped from two fairs as of 7/26/2019.

There is an attitude that they are being picked on.

Charlie Daniels is really upset as reported in this article.

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/cody-leach/charlie-daniels-blasts-decision-cancel-confederate-railroad-band-giving-fascism

In this Brietbart article Danny Shirley is all innocence saying, "I've done nothing wrong" and attributes the name to being derived from regional pride. He is quoted saying, "I love the part of the country I'm from and I will never apologize for that."

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/07/25/confederate-railroad-banned-from-second-state-fair-for-name/

He does other whining.

However, it turns out that when the band started they were quite the defenders of the Confederacy.

The 2nd Quarter 1993, Vol. 13 Southern Partisan (pp. 42-43) had an article by neo-Confederate Devereaux D. Cannon Jr. about "The Southern Heritage Jam," put on by the Sons of Confederate Veterans at their new national headquarters on May 22, 1993.

The article has a picture  of  Danny Shirley with the caption, "Danny Shirley, lead singer of Confederate Railroad, the "Best New Country Band of 1993," rallies the troops." These would be neo-Confederate 'troops.'

The article makes special mention of Confederate Railroad and thanks to Confederate Railroad as defenders of  the Confederacy. I quote:

"The first started by Alderman exploded as he introduced the final act of the evvening, the award-winning, and politically incorrect, "Best New Country Band of 1993," Confederate Railroad. The young men who make up that band are more than proud of their country and heritage, as the name implies. They are often asked in interviews whether they are criticized for having "Confederate" in their name. Each question offers them an opportunity to "witness" for Dixie, and opportunity which they never pass up."

"Southern Heritage Jame I was put together on a shoe string, with no advertising budget. Despite that, it provided to be a grand success and will grow into an annual event. (Rumor has it that Waylon Jennings has agreed to headline Southern Heritage Jam II.) ... The Jam was a success because  so many  artists were willing to donate their time and energy to benefit Southern Heritage. Confederate Railroad is to be especially commended in thsi regard. They played a concert earlier in the day at Jackson, Tennessee. From that concert they drove some 150 miles to donate their time and talent to the cause of the South, and then immediately set off, at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, to invade Ohio."

The article then urges other artists to support the Confederacy like the Confederate Railroad.

Danny Shirley sought to get the support of neo-Confederates by supporting a neo-Confederate event. According to the article are proud of the Confederacy. Devereaux Cannon mentioned as the "Chairman" of the Confederate Heritage Committee of the SCV.

Confederate Railrord continues to derail.

The cancelling of Confederate Railroad appearances is now getting attention in the political press.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/454768-country-band-loses-second-gig-over-use-of-confederate-flag-imagery

This is my previous posting.
http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/07/confederate-railroad-becoming-train.html#.XTs9Weg2qiM

This is the next post on the Confederate Railroad at a neo-Confederate event supporting "Southern Heritage."

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/07/confederate-railroad-performed-at-neo.html#.XTucu-g2qiM

Breitbart has covered the second lost booking.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/07/25/confederate-railroad-banned-from-second-state-fair-for-name/

It has made Fox News.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/country-rock-band-confederate-railroad-booted-second-state-fair

It turns out that the members of the band Confederate Railroad don't see anything that  they have done wrong. It doesn't occur to them that naming themselves after an insurrection to preserve slavery and white supremacy is wrong.

The significance of this type of coverage such as The Hill is that the political class is now aware. Every politician will realize that the appearance of Confederate Railroad in their area is going to be a political issue.

The coverage in the right wing press is going to mean that a lot of sensationalistic right wing groups will want to get involved to support Confederate Railroad in ways which in the end will not be helpful to the band Confederate Railroad, but will infact damage their image.

I think as cancellations occur over time, the occurance of a Confederate Railroad concert at your  event is going to give your event and your locality an unfavorable identity. A put down of a place might be that the place is the type of place that would have a Confederate Railroad concert.

Local chamber of commerces will not want Confederate Railroad at a fair event where their appearance could give the locality an unfavorable image.

At some point, maybe soon, Confederate Railroad is going to be forced to either shut down, change their name, which will greatly annoy their fans, or embrace right wing support. None of these choices are appealing.

These are Facebook postings that I am sure Confederate Railroad doesn't want. The old saying "With friends like these you don't need enemies."

https://www.facebook.com/groups/901544073513517/permalink/904864759848115/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-land-of-lincoln-bans-confederate-railroad/

Confederate Railroad becoming a train wreck. They need to book Lil Nas X instead. UPDATE links added at end of blog post.

It was just a matter of time that other state and local fairs would start considering whether having the band Confederate Railroad as a performing group is such a good idea.

For those who are unaware of what is happening, the band Confederate Railroad was dropped from the Illinois State Fair.

https://nypost.com/2019/07/09/rock-band-called-confederate-railroad-booted-from-illinois-state-fair/

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/09/confederate-railroad-says-name-got-it-ousted-from-state-fair/

Now it turns out that Confederate Railroad has gotten kicked out of another summer fair.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/07/25/confederate-flag-costs-country-band-confederate-railroad-two-gigs-month/1828242001/

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/7/25/8930392/confederate-railroad-band-dropped-from-another-fair-confederate-flag

Suddenly people are thinking, hey being named after an insurrection to preserve slavery and white supremacy is not a good thing.  Suddenly booking Confederate Railroad would be like booking a band named "Third Reich Rock and Rollers." 

For jobs for which the band has already been booked, I think some will have them perform and some will drop them. Each fair that decides to keep them will be realizing that it will be bad publicity locally and questions will be asked, especially as the third and fourth cancellations start coming in. Also a fair manager has to realize that the Confederate Railrod band will be leaving the county, but the people angered by their performance will be remaining in the county to condemn them all year.

Also, with a second fair now having cancelled Confederate railroad, people scheduling fairs in 2021, 2022 etc. are not going to have to drop Confederate Railroad, since they are not going to be signing them up in the first place. Regardless of how fair managers regard the Confederacy or care about the name of the band, they will decide it is a headache they don't want.  For rural fairs wanting to attract some urban business the Confederate railroad will definitely be something they don't want.

Also, white nationalists will be campaigning for Confederate Railrods and they truly will be the case of "With friends like these, you don't need enemies."

In the future no band will want any name which makes a direct or oblique reference to the Confederacy. 

Neo-Confederates look at the future  of Country  Music.

New link added.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/454768-country-band-loses-second-gig-over-use-of-confederate-flag-imagery

UPDATE Southern Partisan had article about Confederate Railroad at neo-Confederate event.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/07/confederate-railroad-performed-at-neo.html#.XTucu-g2qiM

Hopefully we hear more of this. Delaware Historical Society loses $14,000 of state funding for pro=Confederate activities.

The Georgetown Historical Society in Delaware lost $14,000 of state funding due to its neo-Confederate nonsense. 

This is an article about it online. Note that the vote was unanimous. 

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2019/07/22/confederate-flag-costs-georgetown-historical-society-14-k-state-funding/1753885001/

In the former slave states many local historical societies work with neo-Confederate groups.  You read it in every issue. They tend to be societies composed of older white people who haven't realized the world has changed and have varying degrees of affection to the Confederacy or really don't care about the issues of race.

I think I out to make a list of local historical societies working with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans and send them to legislators.

This action in Delware won't be unnoticed in Maryland or elsewhere. Some historical societies will likely decide to stop or attenuate connections with neo-Confederate groups. 

Activists, minority communities, will start to realize this is going on and realize that penalizing this type of activity and not funding it is a realizable goal. 

I  think this is a new trend. Also, without the local historical societies colluding with neo-Confederacy the neo-Confederates lose a venue in which to conduct their activities and legitimize themselves. 

Bit by bit the Lost Cause is losing its sources of strength and becoming more and more viewed as abberant by the general public. 

AntiNeoConfederate Channel Created.

his is a link to a video on the channel. You can go there and subscribe to the channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wll-kvEcOAY

This is the link to the channel itself.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_TBuNDUeTcx0e2SlYfCYqw

Next video will be on the neo-Confederates pro-slavery views. Also, the Kennedy Twins' belief that slave holders should have been paid for their slaves.

This is the video embedded.

The Sons of Confederate Veteran idea of the Civil War being a theological war

From the conclusion of my paper, "The Sons of Confederate Veteran's Concept of the Civil War As a Theological War."

The SCV before the media portrays itself as persons with a nostalgic sentimental interest in history and remembering ancestors and speak of “heritage” and protecting history. The reality is that it is an extreme radical right religious organization, self-identified with a military tradition, so right-wing it sees pro-slavery theologians as heroes and rages in anger at the modern world. 

The link to the article is:

http://templeofdemocracy.com/sons-of-confederate-veterans.html

I will be mailing this article to the churches in Mobile, Alabama and will be offering to speak on this topic and another which I will be choosing.

Make sure you are sitting down before you start reading it.

VERSION HAS BEEN UPDATE. AT SAME LINK SHOWN ABOVE.

SB1663 IS DEAD! NEO-CONFEDERATE DEFEATED!

Yes. SB1663 is dead.   It seems the Sons of Confederate Veterans haven't siezed the narrative.

https://twitter.com/lmcgaughy/status/1130271572684627968?fbclid=IwAR2HQLP91v66mB3aA4xouM42w4esI8KlNeFjtLGBj8_o17qhjrXE81rrKuc

https://youtu.be/3GwjfUFyY6M

BREITBART reports that Robert E. Lee was a poor military leader and cruel to slaves. /HOLY MOLY GERALD HORNE IS QUOTED! NEO-CONFEDERACY IS GOING DOWN!

I about fell out of my chair reading this article this morning. (4/27/2019). The neo-Confederacy is going down!

This is the article.

https://www.breitbart.com/news/ap-explains-trump-revives-debate-about-robert-e-lee/

I check Breitbart every morning to see how they process historical memory in their politics. I have about 3 to 4 linear feet of printouts of their articles.

So with the title, "AP Explains: Trump Revives Debate About Robert E. Lee," I expected a long article about how great Robert E. Lee was and how the left hates America, etc. etc.

I was quite surprised to see that instead the article was highly critical of Robert E. Lee.

On slavery the article explains:

"Documents show Lee was cruel to his slaves and encouraged his overseers to severely beat slaves captured after trying to escape. Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor said in a 2008 American Heritage article that Lee was angry about the slaves’ demands for freedom and 'resorted to increasingly harsh measures to maintain control,' breaking up most slave families. One slave at Arlington, Pryor noted, called Lee, 'the worst man I ever see.'"

Again, this isn't The Guardian, or The Root, or The Grio, or some liberal/left publication, it is Breitbart.

As for his performance as a soldier the article states:

"Lee eventually commanded troops in the field, winning battles largely because of an incompetent Union Gen. George McClellan, according to historians."

There is more than this quote explaining how Lee was a poor military commander.

The Lost Cause mythology is torn apart. Confederate monuments are associated with the rise of racism and the Ku Klux Klan.

HOLY MOLY GERALD HORNE IS QUOTED!

By the early 20th century, Northern state politicians — fearing deadly violence over black civil rights in the South — caved to pressure from Southern leaders to cast Lee in a more conciliatory light, said Gerald Horne, a professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Houston. “The South showed it would shed blood,” Horne said.

These are the books by Gerald Horne sold on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Gerald-Horne/e/B001HCVSVK?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1556384783&sr=8-1

Interestingly neo-Confederate Marshall DeRosa is quoted to take apart Lee's military record. I don't think the Abbeville Institute is going to be happy over that. Maybe DeRosa is bailing out of the neo-Confederate movement or is working on an exit strategy. DeRosa I will come up with a web page for you so your Confederate service isn't forgotten.

Of course this article might be a fluke. Or Breitbart might retreat is their support base is upset. Even if they do retreat, they might have the strategy of just not covering the issue and avoiding the issue.

As for African American conservatives who have supported the Confederacy or neo-Confederacy or Lost Cause rememberance as part of their careers, what is their situation after this shift by Breitbart? In the new strategy to get African Americans to support conservative causes, these pro-Confederate African American conservatives are not useful because they have this Confederate baggage. They will be dumped.

WHY?

In 2015 and 2016 and afterwards there were many many articles in Breitbart in defense of Confederate monuments, suddenly there is this reversal.

I think the conservative movement has decided that the neo-Confederacy is a lost cause in terms of 21st century politics. If they are going to have a conservative African American movement like Breitbart's Blexit, the Confederacy needs to be left behind.  If they are going to have some politics supporting racial hierarchy having the Confederacy attached to it makes it obvious which would defeat that politics.

I think it has been observed that campaigning on supporting the Confederacy doesn't win elections. There have been some candidates which have run on defending the Confederacy and they have lost elections and cost the Republicans important offices.

Also, Christianity is more and more centered outside the Western world and the Confederacy is not going to be a selling point there when Christianity is in competition with other religions.

In America Christianity finds its strongest support in minority communities.

These changes are manifested in the Southern Baptist Convention apology over slavery some years back and in 2017 (or 2018?) rejection of the Confederate flag.  Evangelical Christians are leaving the Confederacy behind and are finding it an obstacle in the way of their aspirations for the future.

Robert E. Lee is totally gone from Turtle Creek Park, Oak Lawn name gone also. Dallas Southern Memorial Association EAT DIRT

Years ago after testifying to have the Dallas Southern Memorial Association (DSMA) a reporter wanted to interiew me. So we sat at a table to talk, The members of the Dallas Southern Memorial Association sat at the table next to us. So we moved to another table and they followed to a table next to us with triumphant grins on their faces.

My message to the DSMA today is EAT SHIT!

This was the inscription on one of the benches for the Robert E. Lee monument. CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE THE COMPLETE IMAGE FULL SIZE.

The inscription reads "NO CALUMNY CAN EVER DARKEN HIS FAME FOR HISTORY

Continuing. HAS LIGHTEN UP

Continuing  HIS IMAGE WITH HER EVERLASTING LAMP

These are scenes of the location today.

This is a view from the opposite direction.

It seems that racist garbage isn't going to be celebrated forever.

Of course there is more to be done. I have recently typed up an inventory of what remains to be done in Dallas.

See this other blog focused on Dallas itself. https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/

And the Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1983418798539308/

FIRST ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING TO DECONFEDERATE DALLAS

We will be having an organizational meeting Thursday, April 18th at 7:30 pm. WILL UPDATE WITH LOCATION SOON.

The agenda is about deracializing the landscape and will include additional items.

It will be somewhere along Highway 75 (Central) near a DART light rail station. I will be updating this posting when I fix the location.

Meetings will be 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month.

We will be discussing possible projects and an agenda.

To find background information on Dallas there are these online resouces.

1. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1983418798539308/

2. http://templeofdemocracy.com/dallas.html

The following agenda is by no means complete but I think it is a good start.

UNFINISHED TASKS

1. The replica Arlington House in Oak Lawn built to glorify Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy.

2. Many schools named after Confederates and other white supremacists.

3. Two minor Confederate monuments in Oak Lawn Park.

4. The whole Fair Park is an assemblage of white supremacist art and architecture.

5. Hatton W. Sumners honored at the Red Museum.

6. Many streets named after Confederates, white supremacists, and one after Nathan Bedford Forrest.

7. Exclude Lost Cause jurors from Jury duty.

We need to have regular meetings and plan strategies. The easy victories are done. Now we enter the hard fight against the racialized landscape.

Documenting neo-Confederate hostility to Muslims at the Mobilize resistance blog

I am still posting new information, but you can start with this posting and from there look at newer postings.

https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-neo-confederate-movement-is-hostile.html

Kaufman County Confederate Injustice Center

When you drive down to Kemp, Texas you go past Kaufman, Texas which is the Kaufman County seat.  (This is my blog on the billboard near Kemp,Texas. https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/2019/03/billboard-in-kaufman-county-near-kemp.html)

So after I did my photo documentation of the neo-Confederate anti-Dallas billboard I returned and stopped by the Kaufman County Confederate Courthouse. The court house is a bracket shape wrapped around this court yard.

You will notice that there are a lot of glass windows. So after I did a lot of photo documenation of the monument and its inscrptions and took pictures from a variety of angles etc. I went inside the court house to take pictures of the monument from the inside of the building. I thought that the building was purely administrative and I would be able to get a few photos from inside the building showing the historical context that the Kaufman administration exists within.




So I went inside and started taking photos on the 2nd floor. When I got to the 2nd floor I realized I was in the room in which people wait before being admitted to the court room.

As jurors and witnesses wait they gaze upon a monument to the Confederate soldier.

It is a Confederate Injustic Center.

They did not permit any photos of the court rooms so I was not able to take photos of the court rooms, but this space is on the first floor and shows the windows on the first floor facing the Confederate monument.

The windows that you see on the side wings of the court room are the same. So during a trial the judge, the jury, the lawyer can easily gaze upon the Confederate monument.

The monument has night time illumination. (Lights indicated by the red arrows.)

This is so the monument can be illuminated at night so that the Confederacy can be glorified and be a beacon representing Kaufman County's core values.

"American History for Home Schools," by 16 members of the Society of Independent Southern Historians

I have received my copy of "American History for Home Schools, 1607 to 1885, With a Focus on Our Civil War," by "16 Members of the Society of Independent Southern Historians."

This is the link to the Society of Independent Southern Historians, http://southernhistorians.org/

You can download it for free also according to their page, but archival purposes, I wanted a hard copy.

As you might assume, it is a farrago of Lost Cause talking points. It has been advertised for sale in the Confederate Veteran.

The list of the sixteen contributors contains the usual neo-Confederates: Clyde N. Wilson, Karen Stokes, H.V. Traywick, Joseph Stromberg and others who really have little to lose in terms of credibility with historians.

What was interesting is that one of the contributors is Earl L. Ijames, of NC, who has been noted elsewhere as a purveyor of questionable historical assertions.

It might be asked how useful this book will be to advocating a Lost Cause view of history. The question it potentially could be a lot. The past is always viewed from the present, and thus it is always seen differently.

In rewriting the Lost Cause argument to make it more desireable to people in the present is a necessary and useful task in the advocacy of any view of history.

Whether they have done a good job or not in this book, I don't know and I am not going to read it. It is going on the shelf.

The other question is whether anyone is going to read it. I don't know. However, the question of how many people will read it, needs to be viewed in the framework of how many people do you need to pass down through time a viewpoint of history. Not that many actually. There are still monarchists out there and they have their events.

Mostly this entry is about who Earl L. Ijames is revealed to be.

Commander-in-nonsense Paul C. Gramling, Jr. They aren't apathetic, they just don't want to be publically known as Confederates

In the March/April Confederate Veteran, Paul C. Gramling Jr. Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), in the regular column for th C-in-C, starts out decrying apathy.

He points out that in a town the SCV had to cancel participation in a parade due to lack of interest.  Gramling is very disappointed since it would be a great opportunity to promote the SCV and its goals. He is correct, it would be a great opportunity to move forward to achieve the group's goals. He also points out that many camps of the SCV, including his own, are rejected from local parades or are fighting to get into them or being kicked out of them.

Gramling sees the failure to participate as a lack of "committment."

I suggest that the the failure to participate as due to members not wanting the whole town to know that they are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It might be fine to get with a group where you can ramble on about your ancestors, Robert E. Lee, and feel special about yourself. Talk about battles where from their perspective 19th centurry men were manly men and real men and where the present with its gays, women's lib, outspoken African Americans, and the modern world with all its vexations hasn't happened yet. However, the membership didn't sign up to be infront of the whole town with their Confederate interests and they certainly haven't signed up for the neo-Confederate movement besides a general crankiness regarding the modern world.

As the radical face of the SCV becomes more generally known, more and more some SCV members will quietly drop out, others will be at functions that aren't in the public eye.

Having the Kennedy twins run the Heritage Defense for the SCV will greatly accelerate the exit of members who are nostalgicists from their ranks, leaving a more radical residue that will be prone to crazier things.

Even small towns don't want neo-Confederate garbage

This is a very revealing and interesting story.

https://www.kbtx.com/content/news/Madison-County-scraps-proclamation-for-Confederate-History-Month-506999661.html?fbclid=IwAR027zXq1wIpLytke-ME3LL0hcGn34oECOr3NfBzLv3SHOSIPA22o7Aeq2o

Madisonville is a small city in Madison County, Texas.

Recently the county didn't declare a Confederate History month because there was opposition.

Before going forward, I want readers to know where Madison County is in Texas.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Madison+County,+TX/@31.2311252,-97.2476362,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x86464f65d5a175f9:0xb5fcd36f4e2f82f8!8m2!3d30.9888479!4d-95.940971

Very roughly it is half-way between Dallas and Houston. There aren't any towns as big as Huntsville, Waco,or Bryan College Station.  Not urban at all. Really rural.

Yet Madison County supervisors decided that they didn't want controversy over a Confederate history month. If you can't get a Confederate history month declaration here, I wonder where in Texas, besides East Texas, you can get such a declaration. Even East Texas will realize that a declaration of a Confederate history month will do nothing but confirm stereotypes that they are racists.

Another effect will be that if Madison County doesn't have a Confederate month, other rural countries adjacent will not likely to want a Confederate history month and look bad in comparison.

I think we are seeing the first effects of major cities taking down Confederate monuments. Smaller cities and even rural counties will see affirmations of the Confederacy as public indicators of backwardness, a stigma they already suffer from. Removing monuments is going to involve a lot of controversy. Not declaring a Confederate history month is easy, you just don't do something.

You don't introduce a resolution, you avoid voting on it.

This is a significant sign that the Confederacy is being dumped and being dumped everywhere. Before the national SCV could pile on a single place and make it very uncomfortable for that city or country not to support the Confederacy. Now dozens of places are removing a monument, or not declaring Confederate heritage month, or doing something else.  There is no way the SCV can pile on like before on one location.

Also, the climate has changed a lot. Appearing with the SCV is an item for news reporting as an expose' or scandal.

Though there is a long fight ahead, we can take heart that the neo-Confederacy is crumbling in many cases on its own.

About neo-Confederate hostility against Muslims

I think that the readers of the blog need to know about the hostility of the neo-Confederate movement against Muslims. Go to the blog posting via the link below.

As part of a campaign already underway I have been alerting the churches in Mobile. My campaign planned on mailing Mosques in Mobile, AL this coming week.

I have decided to accelerate this and get the letters written and ready to go this weekend.

https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-neo-confederate-movement-is-hostile.html

Sent many many letters to Mobile, Alabama churches warning them about the potential for violence.

Dylann Roof before he massacred church members in Charleston, South Carolina

To see the letters you need to go to my other blog. https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE THEM FULL SIZE

Dylann Roof photo from his website

As I explain in my letters I don't necessarily think that it would be a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). But Dylann Roof wasn't a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), he just  read their inflammatory material.

Photo from Dylann Roof website

I will be doing a series of posts about the SCV and the reunion in Mobile.

New Orleans is so lucky! Neo-Confederates boycotting New Orleans

https://www.facebook.com/theconfederatecross/photos/a.952946451413132/2559936494047445/?type=1&theater

It doesn't occur to them that perhaps their tourist business is not wanted, that their presence in any modern city is not missed, in fact their presence is not wanted.

I don't think you can send a request for your city to be boycotted. You have to take down a Confederate monument.

For cities that don't have Confederate monuments you will need to be creative. Do you have a Confederate street that can be renamed. Perhaps a resolution could be passed? Perhaps you can have a Frederick Douglass holiday? I think you will just have to keep trying to do stuff to get them angry enough to declare a boycott.

Does this slogan sort of give you a Dylann Roof massacre flashback?

http://scv2020reunion.com/

On the page for the reunion is a poster with the headline "We Don't Reconstruct .. We Reload."

There is a picture of a Confederate soldier reloading a gun.  I am just wondering if this is the best image and slogan after the massacre in Charleston in 2015.

This is an article I had published in the Dallas Morning News.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles

What happened to the 2020 Sons of Confederate Veterans National Reunion website? UPDATE:

UPDATE: It is back up. 

By the way, the slogan "We Don't Reconstruct ... We Reload," sort of makes me think of Dylann Roof.

THIS WAS POSTED EARLIER.


The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) were gearing up for a national reunion in 2020 in St. Augustine, Florida. I let the activists there know about it. They started asking a lot of questions of city government about it.

Suddenly the website for the SCV National Reunion disappears.

Click on this link and you get a sort of empty BlueHost page.  http://scv2020reunion.com/   

But it did exist.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9xPjqyGH1QIJ:scv2020reunion.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

However, it is interesting that this website had instructions so archive.org didn't archive it. SCV is running scared.

And the cache is archived.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190227162915/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9xPjqyGH1QIJ:scv2020reunion.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

There are two major development here and a minor development here.

1. The major development is that it seems the SVC fled. They were looking at activists making their reunion in St. Augustine an issue for over a year. Of course it could be that it is some secret website.

2. The archiving was blocked. That means that the efforts of the SCV are being self-erased from the historical record. They are diminishing themselves. When you go secret, you lose visibility. Preventing archiving and going with a secret website all means that you are diminishing your public presence and you are limiting your effectiveness.

As you make your activities more and more secret it makes what you are doing seem like a dirty secret.

Of course it could be that a website pops up later.

3. Another major development could be that the SCV for future reunions will have to avoid major urban centers and progressive regions and seek out places that are rural and in sympathy with their beliefs. It will be an ever shrinking geography.

At some point having an SCV reunion in your town will be a sign of backwardness and bring ridicule on the city and even in the most rural location some local resentment of the SCV's presence will exist.

Not so enduring anymore

The title of the book is "Confederate Monuments: Enduring Symbols of the South and the War Between the States. 

Not so enduring anymore. 

About the "Disturbing Graves" pre-text. UPDATE: Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans upset with this post.

Seems I upset some neo-Confederates. I posted a link to a posting by the Texas SCV in DeConfederate Dallas.

https://www.facebook.com/edward.sebesta/posts/10158268078544829

They are deleting and reposting this item to break my links, so you might want to just go to their facebook page to see the post.

What you can see in this posting is that for neo-Confederates facts don't seem to matter.

ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS

One of the issues that the Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans is trying to push that moving the Confederate War Memorial from Pioneer Park is somehow sacriligious because it will disturb graves.

This issue is worth examining to show how much the neo-Confederates like to just make stuff up and get sanctimonious about it.

https://www.facebook.com/TexasSCV/photos/a.1230244337023283/2074016415979400

https://www.facebook.com/TexasSCV/photos/a.1230244337023283/2074125912635117

https://www.facebook.com/TexasSCV/photos/a.1230244337023283/2074126705968371

The fact is when it was moved to Pioneer Park from its old location to make way for a highway there were no complaints about possibly disturbing graves.

The monument is actually made of individual units which can be detached and moved. The only thing that will endup being disturbed is the members of the SCV and they seem to have been already disturbed.

Further a Dallas Morning News article from 1966 shows how hypocritical the Sons of Confederate Veterans are being. It is titled, "Park Board Considers Relocation of Graves," July 6, 1966, page 12.

From the article:

"The board discussed two requests at the meeting.

One was for reloca[t]ing remains of more than 100 Confederate war veterans. ..."

Who was making this request? From the article.

"John B. Hood Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, requested that the city relocate the remains of Confederate soldiers now buried in the Confederate Cemetery on Electra Street, just off Pine Street in South Dallas. 

The organization wants them placed in an area adjacent to the Confederate monument in Pioneer Park, next to Dallas Memorial  Auditorium. .... The group also has asked the city to change the name of  Pioneer Park to Confederate and Pioneer Park or  Confederate-Pioneer Park." 

The reason the Hood Camp gave for why they wanted these 100 plus Confederate soldiers to be dug up was that the new location would be more central in Dallas and seen by more people.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans seemed not to worry then about disturbing a grave even to the point of digging up and reburying the Confederate Veterans.

Dallas moves to remove another Confederate statue. Richmond however still stuck in the Confederacy

The Smithsonian article about the vote to remove the Confederate War Memorial in Pioneer Park. It is online here.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews-history-archaeology/dallas-city-council-votes-remove-massive-confederate-war-memorial-180971503/

This is the 2nd statue it is going to remove.

This Smithsonian has changed a lot since it was publishing stuff criticizing suggesting that Richmond, Virginia, which still hasn't gotten rid of any Confederate monuments, was somehow wiser than New Orleans which got rid of them all.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-richmond-has-gotten-right-about-interpreting-its-confederate-history-180963354/

When you are behind Dallas that must really hurt.

This is the town of M.E. Bradford and William Murchison. All their little dreams of neo-Confederacy Gone With the Wind!

As I have stated before, each time a statue is removed, the ones that remain seem more anomalous. With Austin, San Antonio having gotten rid of Confederate stuff, and Dallas moving forward, it won't be long until someone in Houston will decided it is time to move forward. 

No major metropolis wants to feel their are more retrograde than Dallas. Houston will start moving to re-examine its memorials.

As time goes on smaller metropolises will want to look at getting rid of their Confederate statues also, since Confederate statues will stand as a mark of backwardness. 

Neo-Confederacy is crumbling a statue at a time.

Clyde N. Wilson publishes guide to Civil War books, You can see who the neo-Confederate favorites are

Shotwell has published "The War Between the States: 60 Essential Books, A Southern Reader's Guide," and I am eagerly looking forward to going through it.

Why, because it shows which books are loved by neo-Confederates which tells something about the book and the book's author. It is amusing to see some books which I have always thought to be sympathetic to the neo-Confederate view, or having some very strong neo-Confederate elements in it, or just books I thought to be bad, are in this book which also promotes some real neo-Confederate fringe. The embarrasment of the association, well it should be there, but with some of these authors it probably isn't.

It also shows how different types of publishing work together to sustain neo-Confederacy.

Is this guilt by association? I suppose there could be a book written by an author which neo-Confederates could like, but the author abhors neo-Confederacy.

However, in many of these books it is fairly clear that they are sustaining of a neo-Confederate world view even though the author might have one view or another. The books truly  deserve their inclusion in this set of recommended books.

Some of the books are:

"Confederate War" by Gary  Gallagher.

"The Civil War" by Shelby Foote.

"So Good A Cause: A Decade of the Southern Partisan" by Oran P. Smith.

"The South Was Right!" by the Kennedy Twins

"Illustrated Confederate Reader" by Rod Gragg. It is a book where you would never read the declaration of causes why a state would secede.

This is a good book to establish the neo-Confederate canon for the Civil War.

Kevin Levin paper published

I wrote it in 2017 when Kevin Levin was attacking David A. Love so Love could have it as a refernece and I thought that it was time to write up all of Levin's actions into one paper.

All the CWMemory web pages referenced in this article are printed out as well as others that might be needed to defend the paper or for a future rewrite.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/kevin-levin.html

The next time he snipes at a journalist they will have this essay available for their perusal.

With enemies like this you don't need friends. "Citizens Matter" campaigning for the Confederacy and against police accountability

This is the website for Citizens Matter, a local group.

http://www.citizensmatter.us/index.php

This group is mobilized to defend the Confederacy and abolish the Police Review Board for the City of Dallas.

They have raging maniacs with paranoid fears of Muslims.

The Dallas Observer has a recent article about them.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/real-question-in-police-review-board-debate-is-race-11523932

I couldn't design a better group to be the supporters of the Confederacy to give neo-Confederacy a bad name.

Crazed groups like this is the natural evolution of neo-Confederacy as more and more people decide to give up the Confederacy the residual of supporters will be people such as Citizens Matter.

The head of Heritage Defense is Walter Donald Kennedy of the Kennedy twins. This is again a sign that neo-Confederate groups are shifting to ever more overt radicalism.

2020 Sons of Confederate Veterans Reunion is in St. Augustine, Florida.

The  2020 Sons of Confederate Veterans Reunion is in St. Augustine, Florida.

http://scv2020reunion.com/


We are going to be having a counter presence at each of their events. The momentum built by the counter efforts in Mobile, Alabama will lead to St. Augustine in 2020.

This is the Mobile(ize) Resistance Against Neo-Confederacy for Mobile, Alabama.

https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/

Mobile(ize) Resistance Against Neo-Confederacy has both a Facebook page and a Google blog

The effort to have a counter event in Mobile, Alabama at the 2019 reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has been started.

This is the blog for the counter activity. Sign up for the email updates. We have it as a backup for the Facebook page.

https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/

This is the first posting with all the information.

https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/2019/01/

I am going to include a copy of this posting at the end of this posting to share all the information.

This is the Facebook group for the Mobile(ize) against Neo-Conffederacy event.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/295303354512827/

What you can do. Let as many people know about this event and have them like the Facebook Page and IMPORTANTLY sign up for the emails from this blog. You can see on the right side of this page where you can sign up.

More details will be forthcoming.

Additionally this web page will have postings of updates of this effort and other information.

The posting of Jan. 16, 2019 at the blog Mobile(ize) Resistance Against Neo-Confederacy. 

The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) are having their 2019 Reunion in Mobile, Alabama, July 10-13, 2019.

They have a web page for the reunion here:

https://www.scvsemmes.org/2019-scv-reunion.html

Very likely local government entities provided incentives to bring the Sons of Confederate Veterans to Mobile, Alabama. Local camps of the SCV do bidding to host the SCV national reunion. The hotel may have also given incentives to get the SCV to have the convention at their hotel.

In this case it is the Renaissance Riverview Hotel and the convention itself will be at the Mobile Convention Center located on Water Street at the Mobile River.

Our plan is to have peaceful protests, counter-events of an educational nature which will inform the public and people in Mobile, Alabama what the Sons of Confederate Veterans is really about.

This blog will be updated with information about our efforts and we will provide some information about Alabama and Mobile, Alabama neo-Confederacy.

Incidentally you can read about the SCV at Black Commentator.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/526/526_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

This was written in 2013. There is a lot more stuff since then and updated information will be provided.

Additionally, we will be writing the local churches asking them not to host the SCV. Last time the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception let the cathedral for a Confederate event in 2007.

You can see photos of Confederate flags flying in the cathedral at these links.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140601142935/http://www.scvsemmes.org/uploads/3/1/7/8/3178401/229119_orig.jpg

and

https://web.archive.org/web/20140601142935/http://www.scvsemmes.org/uploads/3/1/7/8/3178401/6386330_orig.jpg

Whoever took these pictures pulled them off the internet and only these Archive.org pictures remain.

There will be a Facebook Page for the counter effort as well as a Facebook Event. However, make sure you book mark this page incase Facebook takes down our pages. They have so far pulled down one anti-Confederate event page and refused to give an explanation.

FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/295303354512827/

Who is Ed Sebesta? My curriculum vitae is here:

http://templeofdemocracy.com/curriculum-vitae.html

I am the co-editor of two university press books, author of peer-reviewed academic articles, last one at a journal published at Cambridge Univ. I have had several articles published at Black Commentator.

I was awarded the Spirit of Freedom medal by the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C.

For useful information to combate neo-Confederate mythology I suggest my curriculum vitae for information and the following web page. It is the material that couldn't fit into the book, "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader," which documents how it is about white supremacy.

http://confederateneoconfederatereader.com/

I am back. Ready to start activism. Both for Dallas and nationally. The Confederacy is going to start coming down.

Start coming down more than it has I suppose I should say.

I have been pouring a lot of time into researching the built landscape of the city of Dallas. Also, helping the people in Austin a little on their stuff. They took my material on the Children of the Confederacy to the right people and the plaque is down.

I have also done a lot of thinking about how the landscape is imagined. How the build landscape is named.

Yesterday was my last planned visit to an archive. It will be a few days to organize the materials I collected last week. And I expect as I start writing and producing I will find gaps and will be visiting a library or archive again.

But sometime next week activism starts and research as an activity will be a minor component of my time.

I am going to be writing up my Dallas research findings, then creating powerpoints, which will be story boards for the production of videos. I am excited to get into video production.

Being retired I have been able to spend 40 hours a week doing research, digging in archives. I have made amazing discoveries. Also, my research has been assisted by the digitization of resources. I am able to do searches and find things that previously I would have only found if I had been doing research over decades and was luck.

Who would expect that former Dallas Morning News columnist Lynn Landrum would reference Van Evrie as a legitimate source to understand African Americans in an article? I would have never looked for this, and even if I thought it might have existed, it would takes months of research to find it. With digitized data and searching I found it.

So I hope not only to reshape how the Dallas built environment is understood, but also show how modern technology can enable comprehending a build environment of a locality.

This blog will be more general anti-Confederate stuff. For Dallas follow my other blog.

https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/

Kevin Levin is afraid that the narrative will escape the League of Distinguished Civil War Historians UPDATE Kevin Levin paper published

Kevin Levin is back at it again.

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.

Sons of Confederate Veterans going down the drain of madness. Make Dixie Great Again website.

Some time ago in a blog posting on former Sons of Confederate Veterans Commander-in-Chief Ron Wilson going to jail for running a ponzi scheme I made the following observation:

Along with some other things I have observed, which I am not going to go into here, I wonder if the SCV hasn't reached a certain stage in its history. 

This would be a stage in which normal people tend to avoid the SCV and the SCV instead more and more attracts persons who are extremists or mentally a little off or both. As the SCV becomes more explicit in its agenda SCV members who are Confederate enthusiasts but not wanting to secede or support the neo-Confederate agenda feel uncomfortable belonging, but this more explicit agenda tends to at the same time attract more extremist elements. This further shifts the SCV to a more extremist agenda and the process repeats. Perhaps this process is already underway in the SCV. 

Also, the SCV has a fair quantity of assets in terms of money and real estate. Some scammer might even now be planning to be Commander-in-Chief to get at the assets of the SCV.

Again this is a speculative thought. However, if you organized a flat earth society what type of members do you think you would attract?

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2014/12/convicted-former-sons-of-confederate.html#.XDoB-Vw2qiM

I don't think that the idea that the SCV is going down the well of madness is that speculative anymore. The Sons of Confederate Veterans has appointed as the head of its Heritage defense Walter Donald Kennedy.

They have also started this website titled "Make Dixie Great Again."

https://www.makedixiegreatagain.com/

Nothing like mimicking Donald Trump to alienate young people. If I had to dream up a website name to help bring down the Confederacy I couldn't do better than this.

Before I discuss this further, I want to say that I couldn't be more delighted that Walter Donald Kennedy was selected to head up this effort. I couldn't ask for anything better to help bring down the Confederacy.

So who is Walter Donald Kennedy? These are the bios of the neo-Confederate Kennedy twins.

http://kennedytwins.com/bio.htm

These are their books. http://kennedytwins.com/books.htm

There is this book defending slavery and attacking the Southern Baptist Conference for apologizing for slavery.

This book sees some type of communist conspiracy during the Civil War. It is for sale by the SCV. https://scv-online-store.myshopify.com/products/books-myths-of-american-slavery-213

It has been republished with a new cover.  They offered it for sale on their website.

A lot of books seem to have disappeared from their website after I started reporting on the contents. It might be they are getting out of the book business and are selling out their inventory.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170402004358/https://scv-online-store.myshopify.com/products/books-lincolns-marxists-997

Walter Donald Kennedy has in the Confederate Veteran, official publication of the SCV, Nov./Dec. 2012, an article where Lincoln and Hitler are somehow connected. The title is "Lincoln's Band of Tyrants."

The Kennedy  twins have the perfect biographical background to bring down the Confederacy. Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, did a biographical article on them for Chronicles Magazine. They "Rolled with Ross." This doesn't mean much to modern readers, but this means they were part of a campaign in which the objective was to defect civil rights.

It might be asked by the Sons of Confederate Veterans would select such a person to be their front person in defending the Confederacy and monument to them.  You would think they would select someone without such a background who would mumble vague statements relying heavily on the words "heritage" "preservation" "political correctness" etc.

They actually believe that the public will accept their undrerstanding of history if they just have the opportunity to bring their message to the public.  They believe that the public will believe and support their understanding of history, but don't because of the media and others who have misled them. In short they are inside their delusions.

Popular culture continues to reject the Confederacy: Gary Clark Jr has video and musical piece which among other things attacks the Lost Cause

Texas Monthly has this articcle about musician Gary Clark Jr. and his piece, "This Land."

What strikes me is that Gary Clark Jr. may not be an academic cultural geographer but he sees things like a cultural geographer. He imagines the landscape.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/gary-clark-jr-this-land-music-video/

This is the link to the video.  https://youtu.be/9KgNaRQ_J-c

CLICK ON THE VIDEO TO SEE THE WHOLE THING.



What is also interesting is that popular culture is decisively moving against the Confederacy. Also, interesting is that Texas Monthly gave Gary Clark Jr. a big billing. People aren't worried about that one member of the editorial board who hasn't let go of the Confederacy and would be whining about this article.

This video will lead to some more Confederate monuments coming down and likely support a broader agenda of deracializing the landscape.

Texas Republicans along with Democrats take down Confederate plaque in Austin

A Children of the Confederacy plaque with its neo-Confederate propaganda has been taken down from the Capitol building in Austin, Texas. The following is a photo of the plaque that I took.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE THE FULL THING.

These are some news stories about it being voted to be taken down.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/01/11/texas-confederate-plaque-vote-greg-abbott-dan-patrick/

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190111/preservation-board-votes-to-remove-confederate-plaque-at-capitol

I had sent elected officials background information, but I don't know if they paid it any attention.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/10/letter-to-texas-rep-eric-johnson-about.html#.XDnugFw2qiM

I told them about the Children of the Confederacy essay published a few months later after the plaques installation in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine gleefully describing the massacre of African American soldiers in Reconstruction Florida.

What is important in this story is that both the Republicans and Democrats decided it had to go and among the leadership of both parties they decided it had to go.

It wasn't the story where an African American Democrat was wanting to get rid of the plaque but white Democrats representing whiter districts were making up excuses.

It wasn't the story in which the Democrats wanted to take down the plaque but the Republicans were defending it.

Both Democrats and Republicans wanted the plaque gone, and it didn't take a big campaign to convince them.  Granted that the plaque was in the Capitol building and the plaque had inanitites that were particularly offensive, but still it is a major change in the politics of deConfederating the landscape.

This sends out a message to all of Texas that glorification of the Confederacy is much less acceptable than it was. That doesn't mean that the battle is over,or that all glorification of the Confederacy is going to be rejected.

What it means is that if your town wants to keep its Confederate monument it will be seen as backward and out of touch and aberrant. Industries wanting to locate there will see your Confederate monument and think twice. People thinking of accepting a job offer there will have second thoughts.

As I have pointed out before one removal leads to another.