Wikipedia:No Confederates

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WP:NOCONFED

This page in a nutshell: Confederate or neo-Confederate symbols and viewpoints are unacceptable in Wikipedia.

Members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement marching, carrying a neo-Confederate flag among others. Knoxville, Tennessee, 14 August 2010.

Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy) and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light.

The Confederacy was formed by eleven slave-holding, planter-dominated U.S. states (nicknamed Dixie) that seceded from the United States in 1860 and 1861, in the aftermath of the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. The secession primarily occurred over the issue of slavery, and directly resulted in the Civil War. Claims that the secession had some other fundamental cause (or cornerstone) than slavery are a historical whitewash.

Slavery is a grave violation of peremptory norms of international law, leading to hostis humani generis status for the slaver.

Various neo-Confederate organizations are designated as hate groups by the SPLC, while the Confederate battle flag is designated as a hate symbol by the ADL.

Neo-Confederate beliefs

The main (but not only) aspects of the neo-Confederate worldview are:

They exalt (glorify, idealize and even sanctify) the Confederate political and military leadership, personified by Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
They often call the American Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression", implying that the United States (the Union) started a war of aggression against the Confederacy.^[a]
They 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" and opposed by the "Redeemers". Some neo-Confederates claim that the "occupation" continues to the present day. The actual U.S. Army control in the South, along with the Reconstruction era, ended with the Compromise of 1877.
They interpret states' rights by accepting the failed theory of nullification, and continue to advocate the secession of the former Confederate States.^[b]
They espouse nostalgia for the Old South/Antebellum South, typically romanticizing and praising the "culture of honor and chivalry" of the period, as well as socially conservative ("traditional") gender roles.
They claim to be protecting culture and heritage of the Southern United States and White Southerners (supposedly endangered by the values of the New South), while essentially ignoring Black Southerners and African-American culture.
They oppose removal of Confederate monuments and memorials, and support modern display of the Confederate battle flag.
They typically believe in the white genocide conspiracy theory and the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, and explain white demographic decline by invoking those theories.

States' rights to do what, exactly?

Neo-Confederates and Wikipedia

In Wikipedia, neo-Confederate editors overtly display symbols of the Confederacy, typically portraying it as the "noble Lost Cause". They push pro-Confederate POV in editing and discussions. The Wikipedia community should have no place for neo-Confederates, for the same reasons that there is no place for Nazis or neo-Nazis. Most of what is said in the No Nazis and No racists essays is directly applicable also to neo-Confederates. The display of Confederate symbols in Wikipedia, like the display of Nazi symbols such as the swastika, is incompatible with the core Wikipedia policy WP:NPOV, because it asserts a racist ideology of white supremacy.

Confederate symbols in Wikipedia should be treated in the same manner as Nazi symbols. They should be condemned and rejected by the community. They should be kept only for use in related articles, and used for educational purposes only. There is no more place in Wikipedia for neo-Confederate views than for neo-Nazi views.

Neo-Confederates (and other inappropriate discriminatory groups) are disruptive to the community, and not only unwelcome here on Wikipedia; they are usually indefinitely blocked on sight if they express their racist ideas on-wiki.

Neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis

Two great atrocities of modern European history were the Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust. Neo-Confederates are denying or whitewashing the horror of the Atlantic slave trade and of Western Hemisphere slavery, just as neo-Nazis are denying or whitewashing the horror of the Holocaust.

There are many similarities between the Confederacy and Nazi Germany in terms of their ideological foundations as racist ethnostates and their war aims, as well as neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi narratives of the Lost Cause and the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, respectively. We should not honor those defeated causes in any way.

Notes

^ This revisionist narrative from the Jim Crow era completely disregards the fact that the Confederacy started the war by initiating combat at Fort Sumter.^[1]
^ The theory of nullification is essentially rejected under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,^[2] while any secession would be unconstitutional and an open defiance of the 1869 Texas v. White ruling of the United States Supreme Court.^[3]

References

^ James M. McPherson (January 19, 1989). "The War of Southern Aggression". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on March 17, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2022. [T]he South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag.
^ "Supremacy Clause". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved June 4, 2023.
^ "Texas v. White 74 U.S. 700 {1868}". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved October 26, 2022.

[2] This revisionist narrative from the Jim Crow era completely disregards the fact that the Confederacy started the war by initiating combat at Fort Sumter.^[1]

[5] The theory of nullification is essentially rejected under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,^[2] while any secession would be unconstitutional and an open defiance of the 1869 Texas v. White ruling of the United States Supreme Court.^[3]

[1] James M. McPherson (January 19, 1989). "The War of Southern Aggression". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on March 17, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2022. [T]he South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag.

[3] "Supremacy Clause". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved June 4, 2023.

[4] "Texas v. White 74 U.S. 700 {1868}". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved October 26, 2022.

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