Videos: Confederates Are Cool Again!

Courtesy <a href="http://www.scv.org/whatis.php">Sons of Confederate Veterans</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Are you fed up with the feds? Do you think that 1) Obama is a modern-day Abe Lincoln, and 2) that’s a horrible thing?

Are you into celebrating eugenics your heritage, defending slavery your homeland, and denouncing the US Constitution unfair tariffs on your exports?

You might be a neo-Confederate! And brothers and sisters, do we have a club for you! Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the shots that started the Civil War, one longtime Southern—ahem—heritage society, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is celebrating with a huge membership drive and a bevy of TV commercials…some of which had been airing on the History Channel. Until Monday, that is, when the History Channel figured their ads should probably reflect some basic understanding of, you know, history. (Watch three of the ads, embedded below.)

Now, Civil War revisionism is nothing new. For generations, Southern apologists have argued that the stars and bars and rebel gray are about “heritage,” not hate; that the war was fought over “states’ rights,” not slavery. But the SCV’s new ads are custom-tailored to our post-Obama tea party zeitgeist. The code words have changed from “states’ rights” to “federal taxation.” The war was “really about money and control,” we learn, not long after hearing how the aggressive radical Abraham Lincoln had no qualms about throwing waves of Northern soldiers to their deaths to extract a tribute from the poor, put-upon men of Dixie who “stood courageously for liberty.” Says the sing-songy female narrator who delivers these historical “truths”:

Don’t let others do your thinking for you! Don’t allow them to rob you of your heritage while they celebrate their own! Be proud of your Southern history and heritage!

As a trained political scientist and longtime history buff—and, of course, a journalist—I’m quite into the idea of more and better historical education for the citizenry. It’s just that in America, the loudest challenges to the historical record tend to come from crackpot populists, right-wing ax-grinders, and adherents of sham scholarship. The longstanding Confederacy rehab agenda is the classic example. Great revisionist scholarship is being done on Civil War history today, notably in Stephanie McCurry’s excellent book Confederate Reckoning and the work of other historians like James Loewen, Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, and Edward Sebesta. But that new research is proving what most of us already suspected: The Southern secession was all about slavery and racism. The Confederate government was at odds with the interests of most of its women, minorities, and poor whites. It was a grand failure in virtually every sense.

Except it wasn’t conquered.

And here’s what remains:

Also, this:

Oh, and also:

Want to learn more about the Sons of Confederate Veterans? Just ask this guy in Congress: He’s a member!

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate