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.

Provided research for CNN story aboutSecretary of Veteran Affairs Robert Wilkie's neo-Confederate views

The link to the story is here.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/va-secretary-confederate-president/index.html

The title is "VA secretary praised Confederate president as a "martyr to 'The Lost Cause'" in 1995 speech."

The transcript of Wilkie's speech about Jefferson Davis is online here.

https://www.scribd.com/document/395176156/UDC-Magazine-Aug-1995-Pp-12?campaign=VigLink&ad_group=xxc1xx&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate

The link to the Robert E. Lee article mentioned in the article is this.

https://www.scribd.com/document/395176070/Confederate-Veteran-March-April-Pp-10?campaign=VigLink&ad_group=xxc1xx&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate

Wilkie sees the ideology of the Confederacy applicable to the present. From the conclusion of the article

"We have resisted Leviathan before but this time we face an almost irrestible combination of cultural standardization; utopian multiculturalism; political exhaustion; and militant drumbeats demanding Orewellian conformity."

Alternet ran an article based on the CNN article. This is the link.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/robert-wilkie-praised-jefferson-davis-martyr-exceptional-man

The neo-Confederates actions from 15 to 25 years ago continue to revealed in the present. I am so glad to be able to do this.

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

The posting of interest is:

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


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

http://www.kennedytwins.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://fivethirtyeight.com/

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe this is where the Sons of Confederate Veterans is going to get the money to finish their musuem

From what I can tell the Sons of Confederate Veterans have progressed slowly on their museum.

This is a website for  the museum. http://www.theconfederatemuseum.com/

Originally there was talk about it being open this summer. This Facebook posting shows where it is now. (Almost a day ago. Sept. 10, 2018)

https://www.facebook.com/SCVOfficialPage//2569315683082401

They are making some progress, but it looks like to me they are just beginning.

I am guessing that they don't have the money. I think though they found a way to get the money.

There is a settlement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and they are getting a little over $30 million dollars in the settlement with the city of Memphis.

https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/local/the-901/2018/09/10/9-01-sons-confederate-veterans-offers-settle-memphis-suit/1199804002/

That should cover the costs of the museum unless a lot of money is spent on investigating heritage violations some place with really expensive meals for meetings. Not that I know that they would do that.

What about the $acred memory of Forre$t, Their great $outhern hero. Well $30 million is a lot of money and if you are short of money it can be sort of handy.

Chemtrail history at the Abbeville Institute

When you are just delusional and mentally just flailing.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Texas Secession and the mid-term elections of 2018

The Texas secessionists are beginning to hope that the mid-term elections will get their movement started again.

This is their latest Texian Partisan article on the mid-term elections.

https://texianpartisan.com/democrats-favored-for-a-midterm-victory/


I don't know if the mid-term elections will really boost their fortunes. If the Democrats gain control of the U.S. House I am sure they will find many ways of bedeviling Donald Trump. I am sure there will be all sorts of hearings. So some conservatives will likely despair and look at secession as an option to realize their agenda.

However, others might decide that they need to stand with Trump more than ever and not desert him.

The Texas Republican Party might have a secession plank in their platform in 2020.

I do think that if the Democrats gain control of the U.S. House we are in for a real storm of political conflict.

We  are witnessing the neoliberal establishment fighting for control against this new establishment being formed by Donald Trump.  This not some struggle between neoliberals and neoconservatives, the Democratic Party establishment versus the Republican establishment. These factions were just teams in the same franchise. The struggle with Trump is a struggle whether the old regime will survive.

I am expect that when the Democrats take over the U.S. House there will be dozens of investigations started into anything and everything which the Democrats might think will work for them in the struggle. I think that things will be ferocious. There is already cases where people are run out of restaurants because of groups harassing them. We could have a situation of public disorder.

The Democrats might move to impeach. I think that might prove to be the start of revolutionary disorder. I blogged on this before.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/search?q=impeachment#.W3HBjeg2qiM

The neoliberals if they in the end do win in 2020 and restore the Ancien Regime I think will, to paraphrase a famous saying, will have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

The economic situations which had lead to wide spread discontent will still be there. A large part of the population will not see any hope in national politics. Trump maybe gone, but the discontent will still be present looking for a path to follow.

What is disturbing is that support for secession in polling is now high with many different demographic groups and across the nation.

So I think that if Trump falls secession movements will rise and they will face an opposition that is incompetent.

What am I doing currently?

I am doing an intensive excavation of Dallas' Confederate built landscape. Streets, parks, schools, monuments.

I am writing up papers on two topics and then will make PowerPoint presentations based on them. I am scheduled to speak at one place early Sept.

I am involved helping out groups so people while know who I am and what I can do.

I will be back to do postings occasionally, and when I get my research into Dallas accomplished I will post more often.

Being retired I have the opportunity to be more involved locally. Additionally,  I want to develop a practical politics around the built landscape. It is one thing to do a series of academic papers, but it is another thing to get involved directly. I am also developing my own methods of field work. I hope to develop an activist tool kit also. What I learn from De-Confederating Dallas I want to make available as a training and tool kit for others in other cities.

I am also identifying gaps in what needs to be done to have an effective action plan and so working to fill those gaps.

I haven't forgotten the other projects I have had with a national scope and I have one of those started up again.

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

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

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


This is the Kennedy twin's website.

http://www.kennedytwins.com/

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

http://www.lochlainnseabrook.com/

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

Maybe Frank Conner will be a contributor?

Alternative History and the survival of slavery into the 20th century

There have been various alternative histories which imagine what the present would be like if the Confederacy had won. With a Confederate victory these fictions focus on the persistence of slavery into the present day.

To have a Confederate victory they pose that a Confederate military victory at some battle, or the entry of a European power makes a Confederate victory possible.

The persistence of slavery into the 20th or 21st century is always imagined as being possible through Confederate victory.

However, there is one way slavery could have persisted into the 20th century. It very likely would have made it into the 20th century easily IF THERE HAD BEEN NO CIVIL WAR.

The Civil War started because a lot of slave owners in the slave states panicked and reacted and choose the path of secession.  There is really nothing like war to bring down a slave society.

In general slaves will support the enemy belligerent of a slave society and often enlist in their armies and help in many other ways. In the Civil War many African Americans enlisted in the American Army.  Also, during a war you have an enemy at the front and essentially an enemy at home waiting for the right opportunity to flee or take revenge or both.

There was no possibility of a constitutional amendment being passed to abolish slavery as long as the slave states didn't secede. Yes, there could have been legislative actions making slavery more difficult to sustain. Over time as new states were admitted and as some states became free states, there might have been the opportunity for a constitutional amendment but that would have been fairly far in the future. For a 3/4th majority there would have had to have been 44 to 48 states depending on how many slave states remained and every, each and every, none-slave state would have had to been supporting the effort.

Even then emancipation could have been very gradual and would very likely been on the terms dictated by the slave states.

In alternative history it needs to be imagined that slavery would have happened with no Civil War and not with a Confederate victory. I think why this isn't imagined is because the American historical imagination is in the thralls of the ideas of American exceptionalism.

Speaking in Austin, Texas this Saturday about the Hood Brigade Monument. It is about white supremacy.

This Saturday I will be in Austin, Texas speaking about the Hood Brigade Monument and how it is about white supremacy.

This is the event.

https://www.facebook.com/events/240412070082742/

They are getting some fairly significant speakers at the event. 

I have copies of all the dedication speeches for all the Confederate monuments on the Texas Capitol grounds. 

My speech will explain how this monument, and others like it are erected for the purpose of supporting a system of white supremacy. My analysis of the dedication speeches for this monument would apply to most any Confederate monument in the nation. 

I am hoping that once people understand how to analyze the dedication speeches for this monument they will realize it applies to nearly every Confederate monument. 

For the Hood Brigade I also have this book. I will be showing it at the rally.  Chock a block full of stuff. I have some quotes following the picture. 

This is an extract from the ANNUAL ADDRESS OF COLONEL R. J. HARDING, President of Hood's Texas Brigade Association, AT CORSICANA, TEXAS, Reunion, Wednesday, June 28, 1905, starting on page 176 of the above book. 

The son of our glorious Hood got up a regiment of immunes. Anyone eligible that had ever had a contagious disease, yellow fever, smallpox, mumps or itch. Mississippi sent her quota promptly and McKinley insulted them by appointing the most despised negro in the State—John Lynch—their paymaster. Our boys would never receive their pay
from him.

I will say nothing about Teddy, except that he is rather coon-flavored. He seems to be trying to reform. [Bold face added.]

The book has other pungent racist items.

You can view or download the book at this direct link in several formats.

https://archive.org/details/unveilingdedicat01chil

Once you download the book, search words to use would be "coon" "negro" "inferior" 

What will be interesting is to show that the dedication speakers are a bunch of lying scammers. This is what John Bell Hood thought the War of the Rebellion was about. In fact the dedication speeches really show a bunch of scam artists engaged in all sorts of nonsense to push a political agenda. CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE THE WHOLE THING. 

O.R. Ser. 1 V. 39 Bk. 2 Page 419-422.

I am also planning on driving down early the day before and taking photo documentation of all the Confederate stuff on the Capitol grounds. 

I hope to have a set of photos like I did in Dallas of the Confederate War Memorial.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/dallas-convention-reflections.html

Texas Secession movement seems rather dead.

In 2016 a secession item almost became part of the Texas State Republican Party Platform. It was voted down by 16 to 14 with one abstention.

This year in 2018 secession as an issue it was missing at the Texas State Republican Party convention. There was no reporting of anything related to secession at the convention by either the press or the self-titled, Texas Nationalism Movement. https://tnm.me/.

With Trump in the White House any impetus behind Texas secession or as they like to call it, Texit, has largely evaporated except for a few die hard supporters.

The Texas Nationalist Movement, or perhaps is should be called the Daniel Miller Movement, is desperate in their publication Texas Partisan to find fault with Donald Trump from a right wing perspective.

https://texianpartisan.com/

The Texas Nationalist movement is really straining to wipe up resentment against the policies of Donald Trump. There is this attempt.

https://texianpartisan.com/washington-to-grab-up-texas-land-in-the-rio-grande-valley/

The potential base for Texas secession movement is the very group that would love a Wall with Mexico.

For any government to build a wall with another nation would involve eminent domain, that is government would acquire the land and would pay for it. If you were going to build something like this you would have to acquire land by eminent domain. Not saying that this wall is desirable or not, but any such wall over a long distance would require eminent domain.

The article is confused and lacking logic and somehow Trump is like Obama.

Persons who want a wall with Mexico will understand that eminent domain is necessary. I don't see how a Trump supporter or wall supporter would see this article as being a legitimate criticism of Trump or Trump's effort to build a wall with Mexico.

The Texas secession movement is going to be fading out unless the Republican Party's  fortunes decline dramatically.

Right now the best they can hope for is that there is the "blue wave" in the 2018 mid-term elections and the Republicans lose the U.S. House. Whether that happens is subject to discussion and I am not sure that there is really a sure guide I can find. Special elections tend to indicate the Republicans are indeed in real trouble.

This analysis indicates that the "Blue Wave" is still likely.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/analysis-house-blue-wave-alive-well

However, the economy is improving and unemployment seems to be dropping. That may reduce any Blue Wave. Also, the election is still some months away. Something unforeseen might develop.

Even if the Democrats somehow capture the U.S. House I don't think that Trump's supporters will be all that disillusions. The Republicans will still have the U.S. Senate and Trump will still be in the White House. Trump supporters will be preoccupied with supporting Trump which Texit would undermine.

If there is no blue wave the Texit movement is going to be moribund until at least 2020.

At some point in the future Texas may not be a "Red State" in which case the ultimate reason for Texas secession, to create some reactionary nation, will no longer exist. The window of Texas secession is closing.

Further the Texas secession movement itself might be a reason for many Texas Republicans to vote for the Democrats. The business interests and professional societies and others who understand how the Texas economy is integrated with the American economy will be dead set against it. 

A Texas secession movement that actually gets something into the Republican Party state platform might be the thing to make Texas a "Blue" state with a Democratic governor, and majorities in both houses of the Texas legislature.

The best is that the Texit movement can hope for a rural movement of crankiness.