Dixie Under Siege

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Civil War, confederate, confederate flag, confederate flag debate and scandal, confederate flag represents, cultural transformation, dixie, dylann roof, Dylann Storm Roof, Facebook, florida, Georgia, Glenn Beck, heritage not hate, Obama, Peace, racial change in america, racism, south, South Africa, southern american, sweet home alabama, the south, white america

It’s been over a month since the Charleston church massacre and the debate over the Confederate flag continues to scale the virgin peaks of public anger and politico-philosophical absurdity.

“It’s a symbol of White supremacism!” – The Leftists are yelling – incorrectly.

“It’s a symbol of White heritage!” – White people from Oregon, Idaho, Ohio, Wyoming and Michigan are retorting – also incorrectly.

Only a rational (and it would seem, silent) minority correctly identify the confederate flag as being a symbol, not of ‘White America’, but of a limited, poor, neglected, derided (and multiracial) district of America – Dixie, or the ‘South’.

This cultural blanket (although subject to frequent redefinition) is generally said to cover the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi (thank you, spell check!), Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida (minus Miami), Kentucky and (occasionally) Missouri. A considerable slice of America, and a very influential force in its history.

Of course, it is no secret that this cultural domain once fought a war to uphold the moral abomination of slavery, and nor is it taboo to acknowledge that the flag under dispute was used as battle regalia in that war. But as times change, so does the meaning of symbols. Over the past 100 years, the Confederate flag has been slowly transformed into a symbol almost devoid of racial connotation. Indeed, before the Charleston massacre so horribly re-politicised it, the Southern Cross was broadly recognised as a symbol of cultural continuity and self-respect, of working class pride in the face of a sneering middle and upper class establishment and media.

That last point needs some detail. How many times have you heard a joke like the following –

Q. “How do you circumcise a Redneck?” A: “Kick his sister in the chin.”

Q: “What’s the last thing you usually hear before a redneck dies?” A: “Hey y’all.. Watch this!”

Q. “How did the redneck die from drinking milk?” A. “The cow fell on him!”

I have heard a hundred similar jokes and I’m an Englishman. One simply cannot avoid them. If you watch the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Friends, the West Wing, Dexter, the Sopranos or any other mainstream US production, you will at some point hear a cruel and bigoted jibe at the ‘South’ and at the disadvantaged folk who reside there.

This bigotry has a long and complicated history. The most disadvantaged sub-region of the South has always been the region of Appalachia – a long broad zone of mountains running up from the Deep South to the southern tip of New York State. For centuries, the denizens of this region were defamed with the most horrible speculation in the developing American press. Indeed, so prevalent was this popular cruelty that it now has the character of a national tradition. The ‘Hillbillies’ (as they have long been known) are said to be habitually incestuous, illiterate, violent, alcoholic and reactionary. Over time the Hillbilly stereotype merged with that of the Redneck, and has since become the singular source of hatred against poor White Americans.

Hatred of poor Whites is the last acceptable prejudice in American life. You can no longer make unkind comments about Blacks, Mexicans and Asians without inviting a storm of condemnation. Poor White have no such protection.

I understand that the Confederate flag has a long and infamous history, chequered with moral whiteness and blackness, heroism and sadism, aspiration and poverty. But it is simple-mined and lazy to imagine only the negative meanings are represented by it today.

D, LDN.

United in Hypocrisy: The Left-Right Reaction to Mandela’s Death.

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Africa, Christianity and Islam, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Dutch, Dutch people, Multiculturalism, Nelson Mandela, Netherlands, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, Rotterdam, South Africa, Zulu

In both the liberal and right-wing reaction to and subsequent commentary on the passing of Nelson Mandela, there has been (perhaps predictably) no shortage of hypocrisy.

Of these uncountable strands, there are two dominant fallacies which themselves give momentum to all the rest:

The first is found on the right-wing, and in particular amongst its White Nationalist faction. Members of this tendency seem to find no logical problem in defending the right of Dutch people to settle in the ancestral lands of the Zulu, while at the same time protesting the right of Zulu (and any other kind of Sub-Saharan African) to settle in Rotterdam. For such people it would seem, the mere fact of being European serves as a kind of universal passport; a transcendent liberty to settle, disperse, re-arrange, conquer and roam, without moral regard for any other tribe or hue.

On the Left meanwhile, a strange hypocrisy of the opposite kind can be felt, namely the idea that Dutch people have no business asserting themselves in Johannesburg, but that the Africanisation/Islamisation of the Netherlands is perfectly OK. Zulu and Nguni men and woman should not only be free to settle in Amsterdam, but should be allowed to feel as Dutch as the people who have always lived there, and furthermore, if their birth-rates condemn the Dutch to the dispossession of their ancestral land then well… if you snooze you lose…

Both of these points of view involve ridiculous errors of logic. Neither of them, hemmed in by self-contradiction, can move an inch either side. We shouldn’t argue with them therefore, but we can and should replace them with sound alternatives:

The only consistent and honest positions on South Africa are the following:

1. The White race is so crushingly superior that they can do whatever they damn well please. Therefore South Africa should be governed and organized by Afrikaners.

2. The White race is inherently demonic and therefore should not be allowed to settle in Africa, but (given the innate evil of the honky) all Africans have the right to settle in Europe just to make sure Whites behave themselves.

3. The Dutch people are not indigenous to South Africa and should return to the Netherlands. By the same principle, the Africans currently in the Netherlands should return to Africa.

4. The exchange of peoples from Europe to Africa and vice versa is a fact of history. Both Europeans and Africans have the right to settle in either continent insofar as their presence is consented to by the native population. People should be free to live in voluntary segregation, or to inter-mix. The issue should be left to human (not political) agency.

Personally, I would pick number 4. You might choose differently. But whatever your view, hypocrisy demeans us all. We’d do well to avoid it.

D, LDN.