Wikipedia talk:No Confederates

Endorsement proposal

Endorsers

The following editors endorse the contents of this essay:

1. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 05:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
2. Andre🚐 21:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
3. I think this is covered by WP:NONAZIS but I still endorse it Loki (talk) 04:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
4. Ibid. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 14:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
5. Grayfell (talk) 21:09, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
6. Dronebogus (talk) 21:12, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
7. Jaydenwithay (talk) 14:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
8. סשס Grimmchild. He/him, probably 13:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
9. I proudly endorse this essay. Great work! PoliticallyPassionateGamer (talk) 14:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
10. SnoopyBird (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
11. I emphatically endorse this essay! There's no room for hate. Aficionado538 (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
12. I endorse this essay. Confederates should be blocked on sight. Great job outlining the reasons why! -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 21:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
13. If confederates try promoting their views or existence in a public arena, the only acceptable response is to run them out of town by any means necessary. The digital commons is no different. Even though open confederacy worship is tolerated in the U.S, there's no reason we should do the same. John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on! TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 21:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)TheTranarchist
14. Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 01:01, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
15. a!rado🦈 (C✙T) 06:08, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
16. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
17. MarnetteD|Talk 01:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
18. Obviously, even though I suspect that the essay is redundant to WP:NONAZIS. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:40, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
19. Well duh! Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 14:15, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
20. Didn't realise this was such a new essay when I came across it just now. Genocide denialism, whatever form it takes, is not conducive to producing an encyclopedia that is meant to be read by everyone, and contributes to a hostile atmosphere. --Licks-rocks (talk) 22:32, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
21. Should go without saying. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!} 22:39, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
22. Hate is disruptive. NONAZIS, NOCONFED. WindTempos ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:14, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
23. I agree with the contents of this essay and I don't mind the potential overlap with WP:NONAZIS and WP:NORACISTS. I still believe there's value in specifically highlighting the issue of neo-confederates. There's always value in taking additional steps to combat the promotion of hateful and historically revisionist worldviews incompatible with the goal of building an encyclopedia. I can understand some of the criticisms of individual sentences highlighted in the non-endorsers section and the other talk sections, but I believe the contents are overall agreeable enough that it deserves an endorsement. Much thanks to Sundostund, Robert McClenon, and everyone else who worked on it!  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:56, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Non-Endorsers

The following editors do not endorse the contents of this essay:

1. I can't get behind this. WP:NONAZIS is pretty clear-cut in that the very existence of Nazism is predicated upon massacre and slaughter. I'm also not a fan of this phrase: This does not mean that supporters of the Confederacy during the American Civil War were necessarily defending the principle of slavery, any more than Germans who fought in the Wehrmacht in World War II were supporting Nazism. This invokes the clean Wehrmacht myth by implying the German rank-and-file who served in the war were merely fellow travelers, when in fact the majority of them were just as equally perpetrators of genocide just as much as the SS. The people who lied at the Nuremberg Trials, that they were just following orders, knew damn well what was going on. So NONAZIS is extremely unequivocal. This here is not such a clear-cut issue; the support of Confederates and Confederate heritage in the United States is far more complicated than that. I do think that many of those who support this ideology tend to be misled as to the meaning of their symbols, but at that point, the worst thing they have done is display ignorance. I think they have a right to be able to display userboxes on their user page just as much as anyone else who displays political userboxes. The handful of users who show up at WP:MFD to hunt down these symbols cannot and should not be the arbiter of what opinions are valid and allowed to be displayed, much less who is allowed to participate in editing Wikipedia. If there are those that step out of line, we address each issue as it comes about. --🌈WaltCip-(talk) 15:00, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
2. What an editor believes is irrelevant, as long as they're not trying to push it into articles or promote it on talkpages. GoodDay (talk) 22:43, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
3. Absolutely not. Displaying the confederacy in a positive light is wrong, but I don't think it should warrant a block. While all Southern racists fly the confederate flag, not all people who fly the flag are racist. I don't think we should block people for being misinformed. Scorpions13256 (talk) 11:51, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

   We don't need this garbage. It is acceptable to be a Confederate and will always be, just like there are Communists and Socialists, and many other leftist ideologies which are present in Wikipedia. --Madame Necker (talk) 19:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

   The above editor has been indeffed as a WP:NOTHERE troll. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

4. They are specifically questioning the Confederacy in this essay. Furthermore they do not (yet) apply the same standard to indigenous tribes, even if those tribes stood for things near identical to the Confederacy or fought directly for the Confederacy. It is fine to disagree with the Confederacy as there are a buffet of reasons to do so, but to deny individuals the right to appreciate their heritage and display it in a way which is factual is disgusting and abysmal, as an indigenous person it is frightening and horrific, I see what is happening to the Confederates who challenged the Americans, and I think to myself, they will come for my ancestors too because they also fought against the Americans. ANE was Nordic (talk) 03:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
5. no ----modern_primat ඞඞඞ ^TALK 00:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
6. WP:NONAZIS and WP:NORACISTS already cover the racist ideologies of the CSA. I'm not sure this essay provides anything helpful. - ZLEA _T\^C 00:40, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
7. This bothers me greatly. There's a lot of political opinions being denounced as unacceptable "Neo-Confederate" positions that are fairly innocuous (e.g., supporting states' rights and traditional gender roles). I personally know some decent people who have expressed qualified support for the Confederacy on certain issues. The idea that an otherwise productive editor could (and should) be tossed out for having a minority political view on a complicated topic like the Confederacy is alarming. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 00:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

   They are not innocuous. Ask yourself, "States' rights" to do what exactly? The Confederate Constitution mostly just copied the US Constitution. The main significant difference was allowances for slavery. Among other things, the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibited states from interfering with slavery. This shows that it wasn't about "states' rights" even at the time, so making it about that now is misrepresenting history.

   If your decent people don't know this, they are ignorant of Southern history. Wikipedia's goal is to inform people, so that isn't a free pass. If they do know this history, they are knowingly spreading misinformation by repeating this bit of myth-making. This is an encyclopedia, so this causes specific harm to the project. Whether or not they are decent to you, personally, is irrelevant to the project. That's why essays like this are useful.

   For gender roles, "traditional" is put in scare quotes in the essay because the term is loaded. The term "tradition" implies a lot but is not, by itself, informative. So it's a thought-terminating cliché when used as a defense of neoconfederacy. Grayfell (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

   You are allowing personal bias and personal research to affect your ability to participate in a neutral fashion, another affront to the rules, regulations, and codes of this site, you should get in touch with the U.S. Civil War Museum or the American Battlefield Trust, two credited institutions with unimpeachably good character regarding nuanced socio-political issues in American history. They unpack these profoundly complex issues with great detail, you would benefit from partaking in their auspices.

   Not everyone in the Confederacy was holder of enslaved peoples. Not every soldier in the Confederacy was a die-hard Southern patriot, many were conscripts. The notion enslaved peoples were supporting their own enslavement by resisting invading armies and on pain of death serving the war machine of their enslavement is not only laughable its borderline slander of a people who have already been through enough.

   Maybe your heart is in the right place, maybe it's not, I won't judge you, but you should at least give more of an effort to be non-biased, especially on such a widely used site, and making such generalizations to disparage people, whom I suspect you just don't like because of their politics, is unacceptable. ANE was Nordic (talk) 11:12, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

   Many people were conscripted to fight against their will. That is a tragedy. It doesn't change that they were conscripted to preserve slavery. Pretending that this wasn't about slavery is an insult to those who were forced against their will to fight and die. Grayfell (talk) 21:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

   Most of what you wrote is true but also misses my point. Some people have embraced the Confederacy as a symbol not of slavery but of other, modern political issues: the struggle against federal overreach, traditional understandings of gentlemanly etiquette, conservative social roles. Asking whether or not the Confederacy is a good symbol for these things is about as pointless as asking whether cowboys ever actually existed as depicted in Western movies; the underlying historical reality has little bearing on something's symbolic function. I agree that any white-washed views of the Confederacy are inappropriate for articles and any editors who cannot leave the issue alone should be sanctioned. But this essay suggests that merely using the Confederacy as a symbol should be grounds for an immediate block, regardless of the point actually being made or the merits of that editor's other contributions. That I cannot endorse. Is it tactless? Yes. Would it be wise for an experienced editor to caution them about how other editors might perceive what they are saying? Yes. But jumping straight to sanctions? That goes too far. While many who invoke the Confederacy are vile racists, not all are, and people should be judged by what they are actually claiming rather than the props they gesture at. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 16:23, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

   I hope you understand that the "symbolic meaning" of the confederacy has a very different meaning to, say, a black American, for example? Anyway, I think you're overselling the text of this essay a bit when it comes to Indefinite blocks and all that. It just says that expressing racist ideas on-wiki will usually lead to a a rapid indef block.( I sure hope it does!) Just like on WP:NONAZIS, the only thing said about displaying racist symbols is that it should be treated as disruptive, which is what is already the norm. Licks-rocks (talk) 17:05, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

   I would ask you to consider why some people embraced this symbol of a racist military movement as a symbol of "modern" issues. There is nothing "gentlemanly" about it. Whether it's out of ignorance or out of malice, the underlying message of that symbol is the same. It's not just about someone's ill-defined idea of "pride", it's about what that flag conveys to everyone else. That is, after all, the entire purpose of flags. They exist to broadcast a simple message to other people. The battle flag was created in defense of slavery and was later popularized as opposition to civil rights.

   As for banning, I agree that you're over-stating the essay. This is an encyclopedia, and user pages and similar are for writing that encyclopedia. Sharing hate symbols, whether "intentional" or not, interferes with that goal. If good faith editors use that symbol while editing, they absolutely need to be cautioned that it's not appropriate for a collaborative environment. At a bare minimum, they are not following WP:CIVIL and that means they cannot edit. Grayfell (talk) 05:27, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

8. I concur with GoodDay. Of course, if someone is using Wikipedia to promote the Confederacy, they should be blocked indefinitely, but if they can not be too biased based on their beliefs, there's no reason for them to not be able to help our project. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) ^Clyde!_Franklin! 00:26, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
9. I agree with Nordic on this one among others. If we were going by arguments rather than "Yes of course I agree" votes then there are some issues here that clearly need looking into. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
10. Giving the admins the option to ban people for a PoV pushing they might hypothetically do at some unspecified point in the future is just asking for abuse--Trade (talk) 09:23, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
11. There's something akin to arrogance about deciding for other wikipedians what thought is appropriate and what thought is not, based on personal bias, however justified. I urge those throwing stones not to stand in glass houses themselves, because ricochets are inevitable. For my part I contend the WP:MfD process has been used frequently in the last year or so to police the thought of former wikipedians, when a mere courtesy blanking with a strongly worded edit summary would have sufficed and drawn less attention to the "offending" material. With respect to those who differ with me on the merits, it takes little moral courage or energy to remove from public view material of those former editors whose beliefs may deviate from the norm. My primary concern as a wikipedian is just who gets to draw those lines. A secondary concern is that when we choose to remove user thought (what people have said about themselves) from public view, wikipedians who come after us will be starting with a misimpression of how consensus was achieved in the most gruesome cases. The recent exhumation of long dead User:Bedford, his three fingers removed, and body then thrown in the Tiber, was a disgusting display of how to kick a person after they were down and no longer a threat. All this over opinions he had rendered and clearly identified years before. At some point the deciders get around to everybody. One day WP:NOIDIOTS will be policy and I will be liable to indef. BusterD (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Wary of methodology, if not ideology

1. Yeah, I mean... of course, no confederates. It's disruptive. So, I don't think I have anything against the essay ideologically, but I'm a little spooked by a talk page strawpoll about this kind of thing; a strawpoll that has been subject to canvassing, no less. I'm not overly involved in vandal-fighting, but is this a debate that needs to be happening? Is there a real rash of confederates causing problems? I feel like we're taking what's already an implicit consensus and making it vulnerable to people who want to squabble on flash-points. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 21:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   This came out of the discussion on the NONAZIS page and the discussion that happened involving the block of User:Bedford Andre🚐 21:31, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Just for clarification – my only intention was (and will be) to draw the attention of users to this essay and its existence, having in mind those users who might possibly be interested in its content and topic, nothing more than that. I am sorry if it may appear as canvassing, since it certainly isn't my intention. I see it as a simple "invitation" and suggestion, and, if you want, as a way to "advertise" the essay. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 08:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   In Sundostund's defense, while he did notify me about this discussion and I did in fact endorse the essay, I feel that their invitations have been sufficiently random for it to not seem like canvassing as I haven't really encountered Sundostund on the encyclopedia in quite a long time; I'm honestly a little surprised to have been on the list of people they thought to contact. And of course, it was always possible for me to have opposed the essay, as I did find that some of the oppose votes had fairly understandable reasons. I believe he was acting in good faith here.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 20:14, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

   Similarly to Vanilla Wizard, I myself was notified of this essay on my talk page, but have never had any contact with Sundostund in the past...and honestly, I found it to be a good read. I've always thought of Wikipedia as a place for learning, and I see this essay as that, just with the added ability to sign on in support of the message. Born of Iron (talk) 15:50, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Comments

Interestingly, a July 2021 Politico-Morning Consult poll of 1,996 registered voters reported that 47% viewed the confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride while 36% viewed it as a symbol of racism.[1][2] You can read into this any way you want though, as past polls have showed a majority see it as a symbol of racism. The point I have is that this continues to be a very divisive issue which Wikipedia is wading into. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think acknowledging an existing issue is fairly characterized as 'wading into' it. Disruptive neoconfederate editing isn't new, even if the essay is. The modern history of the flag isn't decided by a poll of registered voters. For one thing, the history itself is clear, regardless of opinion. For another, registered voters are not a random sample in this situation. For another, Southern pride is another euphemism; is the battle flag commonly used as a symbol of Black southern pride? Clearly not, so calling this "Southern pride" is at best incomplete. Finally, the survey's actual question is "Do you, yourself, see the displaying of the Confederate flag as more of a..." This specifically frames it as personal, not general. "You, yourself" is ambiguous here, as this isn't necessarily asking people what they think other people mean by the flag. I strongly suspect that a different phrasing would prompt a dramatically different result, which is common with surveys like this. Grayfell (talk) 01:51, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Aditionally, the question also presents this as a binary when it isn't. It can be both a racist symbol and a symbol of southern pride. Licks-rocks (talk) 10:58, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Support of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was, by definition, support of the principle of slavery

This does not mean that supporters of the Confederacy during the American Civil War were necessarily defending the principle of slavery, any more than Germans who fought in the Wehrmacht in World War II were supporting Nazism. But we should not honor those defeated causes.

We certainly should not honor those causes, but this paragraph seems counterproductive at best. The Confederacy was intentionally created to defend the existence of institutional racial slavery. Any support of the Confederacy, then or now, is support of slavery, by definition. Dancing around this simple fact is accommodating a dangerous myth. Yes, some people use these symbols out of ignorance (and some people just use that as an excuse when called out) but that (supposed) ignorance only serves to legitimize the neo-confederate ideology. That's not an accident.

Since it seems like the point of this essay is to say that people shouldn't be allowed to use Wikipedia to support pro-slavery politics like neo-confederacy, including this bit of neo-confederate myth-making undercuts that message.

Likewise, Germans who fought in the Nazi Wehrmacht were physically supporting Nazism, by definition. That some of them were pressured or forced into supporting Nazism doesn't invalidate that support. At best this comparison is a distraction. Grayfell (talk) 21:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I can understand why you see the quoted paragraph as something controversial, and I can agree that it needs some changes, or to be removed. Its never positive nor desirable to whitewash the Confederacy and its supporters, in any way. Same goes for all those who fed the Nazi war machinery. Of course, the creator of the essay, Robert McClenon, should say his opinion before any changes to the text, IMHO. —Sundostund (talk) 17:49, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand why there is a concern about this paragraph. I am avoiding condemnation of the dead. War is a tragedy, and people fight for nations for any reason or no reason. Specific causes of wars may be atrocities. There is a difference between the Confederate politicians who seceded, and those who fought under them. If someone wants to change it, they can go ahead, as long as they do not make it an actual condemnation of the (long-dead) who fought in the Confederate uniform. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:31, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the sentiment of this essay, but I ask you to consider why this point is important. Part of the tragedy is that people were forced to support these racist ideologies, whether they wanted to or not, and for many it cost them their lives. Again, they were forced to support and defend these causes. To say otherwise is incorrect.

Not to be too confrontational, but another way to put it is this: neo-confederacy is condemning the dead by mockery. To include this in this essay would is to repeat that mockery. Tacky bumper stickers trivialize this racist ideology by reducing it to evasive euphemisms. This is far less respectful than an honest explanation of why they fought and died.

Part of the lost cause myth, and the clean Wehrmacht myth also, is to downplay these racist causes and present these wars as tragic abstractions that were outside of their control. This dehumanizes these solders and simultaneously makes the causes seem vaguely 'noble'. All those bland monuments to confederate soldiers in confederate uniforms, mostly put up in response to civil rights movements, were put up to honor "the uniform" as a proxy for slavery itself. There are rarely designed to honor any specific dead person, even if they bear that person's name and superficial likeness. The goal of neo-confederacy is to ignore those individuals and instead try and make their death seem justified as part of this euphemistic lost cause of slavery. Grayfell (talk) 02:26, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I appreciate your thoughts on this, and I have no desire to see an condemnation of the long-dead ordinary Confederate soldiers. We just need to make this essay acceptable to as many users as possible, avoiding elements that can be interpreted (correctly or wrongly) as whitewashing the Confederacy or Nazi Germany and their war aims, which had slavery and racism as their cornerstones, without any doubt.

@Grayfell: This essay is a rather new one, and can certainly be seen as something that is still under construction – things will be added/changed/removed, not just when it comes to the paragraph you see as controversial. As for that paragraph, I would say that you are free to change it into something more acceptable to you, just without turning it into some kind of condemnation, as per the creator's thoughts.

Sundostund (talk) 07:45, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought that the comment would make it more acceptable. If other editors disagree, I do not object to removing it. I would rather not try to revise it. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:21, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Grayfell and Robert McClenon: I pretty much neutralized the controversial paragraph, with the latest change of the text. Of course, the new text/paragraph can be further changed, if its necessary in your opinion. —Sundostund (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate that. Grayfell (talk) 21:11, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Support under duress is not a tacit admission of support, especially in the case of conscripts, of which there were innumerable in the case of both The Wehrmacht and The Confederacy. To demand someone face prison or worse for the actions of a country they had no hand in producing or else be punished for the crimes of said country is utterly repugnant and you only give credence to racists and bigots who see this type of binary thinking and imagine themselves in good company. This also suggests you claim to know their hearts and thoughts, for those I have mentioned you have no idea what they thought, German or Southerner, all we have are actions and voiced opinions, many of which as I said were under extreme duress and the demands of the time. Wikipedia should be neutral and fact based, not you speculating what the actions of those with no choice 'really' reveal about their thoughts. Total nonsense!

You seem to know a lot about these 'groups' of various bigots, you're not one yourself right? You made a post which is about as ignorant as they are, I am sure you were only speaking out of turn. ANE was Nordic (talk) 03:37, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

You either did not understand what I was saying at all, or you chose to misinterpret it to prove a point, and in doing so, violated no personal attacks. Grayfell (talk) 19:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Presuming good faith and misunderstanding is not in violation. Your tone is aggressive because you feel I stepped on your toes. Your efforts to do better are appreciated. ANE was Nordic (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I think what is "aggressive" here is your use of pseudo-civil language to accuse me of bigotry while ignoring most of what I actually said. Grayfell (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

This is getting off-topic, therefore my last reply.

Nothing I said was factually incorrect.

Your efforts to do better are appreciated. ANE was Nordic (talk) 17:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes

@Robert McClenon: I have done some changes in recent days, especially by modifying some aspects of the lead section, and adding some material to it (and to some other paragraphs). I hope that you, as the creator of the essay, support those changes. I am certainly interested in hearing your input on this – I wouldn't perform those changes, without asking for your opinion about the results. —Sundostund (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused by this line (and some other thoughts on this essay)

• They falsely claim that the conclusion of the Civil War signaled the start of the "Yankee occupation" of the Confederacy by the United States/Union and its military, personified by "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags". Some neo-Confederates claim that the "occupation" continues to the present day.

Perhaps it's just a lack of precision here, but the above doesn't make much sense to me. The South was indeed occupied by U.S. military after the Civil War (except Tennessee), and this statement seems to imply that that did not happen. Calling it a "Yankee occupation" is a derisive and reductionist assessment (and I'm sure a good handful of people who would unironically call it that these days probably have some a few unenlightened views on Reconstruction) but isn't exactly an objectively false statement, especially when considering that most of the federal forces were non-Southerners at the end of the war and that politically the federal government was controlled by non-Southern states for several years since most Southern states had to pass the 14th Amendment before they were allowed to send their own delegations back to Congress. Also "scalawags" were by definition non-Yankees... Maybe the above could be reworded or just removed, because it seems to imply that someone who acknowledges the basic historic reality that federal troops were stationed in the South for about 10 years after the war is somehow supporting a neo-Confederate ideal (these troops who were, among other important things, arresting the KKK and protecting the rights of freedmen to vote on election day, we wouldn't want to not recognize that would we?).

• They falsely claim to be protecting culture and heritage of the Southern United States and White Southerners, supposedly endangered by the values of the New South.

This one is perhaps more idiosyncratic, but I recommend removing the word "falsely" here. This issue of "heritage" and whatnot essentially cuts into personal identity, and to say someone is "falsely claiming" to be protecting one's own culture and heritage would be to imply that they are being insincere, which I do not think is an accurate description of this phenomenon. Neo-Confeds or just one group of Southerners don't get to claim a monopoly on determining what is objectively culture and heritage for all other Southerners, but likewise, Wikipedia editors don't get to claim a monopoly on deciding what objectively constitutes a culture and heritage either. Neo-Confeds and other misguided souls like to shout "Heritage, not hate" and others argue with them "It's not heritage, it is hate." In my white Southern mind, NeoConfeds are indeed defending a certain part of our heritage: the hateful aspect of it. Racism and hate and other negatives can be and are parts of cultures and heritages. "Culture" and "bad/toxic stuff" are not mutually exclusive categories. It's not all banjo music and collard greens down here, much as I wish it was.

• I'm not sure how to include it, but I feel like one of the real troubling tell-tale signs of the worst of NeoConfed ideals is the complete lack of consideration for what black Southerners thought and did during these times or writing them off with things like the happy, loyal slave narratives (similarly, the ignoring of the fact that there were quite a few white Southern Unionists). That goes more directly after the NORACISTS crux this seems to be aiming for, so maybe something should be said along those lines. Things like showing the Confederate battle flag or opposing monument removals have become so banal that there are many Southerners who do this but do not think that they are being racist. Ignorance and active hate are good partners for each other, but they are not always the same. So I think there is a variability in problematic views among people who are ok with the Confederate flag whereas people who are cool with the Nazi flags are 99.99% of the time going to be anti-Semites. I say this to suggest that NOCONFED and NONAZIS aren't quite the same; it might be worth asking someone with a Confederate flag userbox why they put it there, if they might consider how offensive it can be, and if they'd take it down. -Indy beetle (talk) 17:56, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

For the first, "occupation" pretty strongly implies that the north's presence was illegitimate. There are other ways to interpret that word, but the claim as presented by neoconfederates is that northerners were (and still are) somehow foreign, and therefor had no legitimate right to "occupy" the south. The underlying assumption here is that the Civil War was not a civil war, it was a revolution. This is propaganda. It's possible to frame this in just the right way so that it is technically accurate, but this is playing a rigged game. The goal of neoconfederate propaganda isn't historical accuracy or precision, instead superficial accuracy and precision are tools which are used and abused to lead people to an emotional goal. In the same way that scientific racism is pseudoscience, this is pseudo-history. It seems plausible, but it's built on misconceptions and lies, so calling it "false" is appropriate.

Regarding the second point, again I think "falsely" is accurate and important in this context. It is at best misleading to call slavery and white supremacy "culture and heritage". The neoconfederate use of the term "heritage" has become a euphemism. It's become kind of a cliche, as in the jingoistic claim the flag is about "heritage not hate". Who's "heritage"? Why is a previously obscure pro-slavery battle flag part of anyone's heritage and why is this heritage worth killing other people over? How is it respectful to anyone's "heritage" to whitewash a symbol which is still actively used for intimidation and violence? This essay should not legitimizing this idiosyncratic definition of the term heritage.

As for the third, content on the Black southerner's perspective would be very welcome. As for white ignorance and white defensiveness, even setting aside the pragmatic issues, this is an encyclopedia. Our starting position has to be facts, such as the fact that the confederate battle flag is a hate symbol originally used by people who killed and died in defense of racism and slavery. It has since become closely associated with multiple very high profile terrorist murders. If people want to claim ignorance of this history, they have to *actually* claim ignorance of this history. We shouldn't bend over backwards to assume that people don't know what they are doing. Wikipedia already provides many, many resources for people who wish to learn this history, including this essay itself.

Grayfell (talk) 23:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

With regards to For the first, "occupation" pretty strongly implies that the north's presence was illegitimate. This view stands in opposition to the fact that the U.S. Army and modern historians ([3][4][5]) seem perfectly fine with calling it an occupation. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:17, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

The current wording mentions the "Yankee occupation" of the Confederacy. The confederacy was dissolved by then. A dead government cannot be occupied, so this neoconfederate claim is wrong. It is accurate to call that claim false.

To expand on this, obviously Federal forces physically occupied the South, but that's not really what's being said. The claim made by neoconfederates is that northern outsiders were illegitimately occupying territory that politically belonged to a separate government of white southerners. This only works if we accept the neoconfederate position that the Confederacy had legitimate control of that territory, and also that it remained a legitimate political entity that could logically be militarily occupied after the Civil War ended. Both of these assumptions are false in different ways. Even accepting the modern take that Reconstruction was a terrorist insurgence which lead to eventual capitulation from the US government, the Confederacy itself was dead as a political entity. Grayfell (talk) 06:32, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

To more clearly illustrate your point, I'd recommend changing "Yankee occupation" of the Confederacy to "Yankee occupation of the Confederacy". -Indy beetle (talk) 21:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and updated it to use that quotation format and I also added a note that the US army occupation of the Southern states ended in 1877 with the Compromise of 1876 Andre🚐 01:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Well... During the Civil War, the Confederacy was illegitimate even when it was in power. How is it possible to "occupy" a fake country? I'm concerned that this wording still implies that non-confederates 'invaded' and that the confederacy formed out of self defense, which is another part of the neoconfederate myth. Grayfell (talk) 21:47, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I share your view and concern about this; the Confederacy must not be presented as a legitimate entity, in any possible way. At the same time, as can be seen, I have done some purely "cosmetic" changes to the current wording, namely added some wikilinks. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 22:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Am in no way trying to imply the Confederacy was real, that's why it's in scare quotes, but the troops did "occupy" the Southern states until 1877. Please feel free to change the wording. Andre🚐 22:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I did not mean to imply anything about your motives. It's tricky because 'occupy' has multiple meanings, and neoconfederates are happy to exploit that ambiguity. The current wording isn't technically correct. Obviously the US military is still present in the South. That's very relevant to this issue, even.

I guess "control" could replace "presence" but this is still implying that the US government lost control of the South. There's some historical truth to that but it seems too simplistic. Grayfell (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, the article says the withdrawal of federal troops from the Southern states. So we could just say that. Andre🚐 23:41, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I replaced "presence" with "control". Of course, this could be subjected to some further changes, if deemed necessary. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 02:09, 4 February 2023 (UTC)