Sunday, December 11, 2005

Edward Sebesta's blog returns: "Tracking the Neo-Confederates"

More good news in the blogosphere.  Edward Sebesta, a specialist in debunking neo-Confederate pseudohistory and analyzing their political movement, has resumed blogging at his Temple of Democracy Web site.  His blog is called Tracking the Neo-Confederates.

The neo-Confederate movement is one of those far-right movements that is currently being mainstreamed into the Republican Party.  David Neiwert at his Orcinus blog often discusses the ways in which this process works with far-right groups, like the anti-immigrant nativist groups at the moment.

The Temple of Democracy Website featured a Confederate Heritage Month series with a daily entry debunking this or that white-supremicist/neo-Confederate myth.  That inspired me to start my own version of the feature here at Old Hickory's Weblog, which ran first in 2004 with a second edition in 2005. I'm already thinking of how to approach the April 2006 edition.

Be sure to check the Tracking the neo-Confederates blog. It's definitely of interest for anyone following the influence of the hardcore radical right in the Republican Party and the ways in which popular understanding of history can be influenced by dedicated crackpots.  And, unfortunately, both are bigger problems than even a lot of liberals would like to think.

Some of the resources he references in recent posts include:

Lobbyist for the Lost Cause by Max Blumenthal The Nation 08/16/05.

The Keeping Faith in Jubilee Website

Enlisting In The American (Confederate) Army by Ed Sebesta Touchstone April 2005, on the neo-Confederate subculture in the US Army.

The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South by Edward H. Sebesta and Euan Hague Canadian Review of American Studies (32:3; 2002)

KFC's Sweet Home Alabama Ads Ignore The Racist Backdrop of the Song by David Kiley Business Week 02/25/05

Confederate museum's budget not 'honest' by Christina Bellantoni Washington Times 12/09/05

The House That Dr. Calhoun Built by Constance Adler: How – and why – Pelican Publishing became both a local New Orleans success story and a leading source of Neo-Confederate literature Gambit Weekly 02/27/01.  (It's probably too much to hope that Katrina would have ruined their stock of books.)

Breaking the White Nation: Or a Tour of the Red and Blue States by Ed Sebesta Temple of Democracy Website 9/18/05.

It's good to see his blog back up and running.

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