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.