Faulkner and the Neo-Confederates
Submitted by Fecund Stench on Tue, 01/15/2008 - 12:30pm
I put this on Daily Kos today and didn't get my hat handed to me, so maybe I'm safe here.
I've been investigating the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens. These appear to be the largest neo-confederate groups operating publicly today. What are their commonalities of leadership?
From an article on rebel hunter, Ed Sebesta, in the 2003 Dallas Observer:
The third rail powering this train of thought is a deep-seated and bitterly resentful rejectionism--the belief that everything in America since midcentury has been wrong-headed and a tragedy for white males...
What Sebesta has gathered, he believes, is evidence of a serious movement among educated people who are racist advocates of secession and a second civil war.
I haven't read Sartoris since a teenager, but it seems to me that the current neo-confederate movement is run by a group of men who came of age steeped in the South as lamented by William Faulkner. Many more words have been written about Yoknapatawpha County than ever penned by Faulkner. Perhaps somewhere, there exist great thoughts on Faulkner and his effect on the depression era. Can you imagine the one, two punch and being a child of the Depression and weened on the tragic novels of William Faulkner? Why, it's no wonder these fellows sought to secede.
If I am right, the current neo-confederate movement will wane as Thomas E. Woods Jr., founder of the League of the South and senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and his peers in this silly enterprise settle into their dotage.
Ironically, the same can be said of their main detractor, Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Until such time, Ed Sebesta will be on guard.
ARGH!
For crying out loud, Fecund Stench! Don't lump Faulkner readers in with these neoconfederate lunies!
I'm a huge fan of Faulkner's, I'm a Southerner born and bred and steeped in history, and it is with utter consistency that I am also opposed to these racist, aggressively ignorant bastards of SCV, CCC and League of the South.
Faulkner portrayed the South with LOTS of hairy warts and oozing gleet by the way. He wasn't exactly following the Thomas Dixon/Margaret Mitchell school of romance.
Maybe you need to reread Faulkner.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
As I die reading
Not such a fan of Faulkner -- however, it has nothing to do with yearning for the confederacy or not. I just couldn't get through the swampy "my mother is a fish" stuff. That was a lot of years ago though.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Mother was a fish?
I have to confess I don't remember that allusion. If it was from *As I Lay Dying,* that explains it, since I never read that one (which is kind of embarrassing).
I haven't read him for years either, but was one of those nerds who loved, loved, loved his writing, and still do. Favorite novel was Absalom Absalom, and short story, "That Evening Sun Go Down."
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
It is a reference to As I Lay Dying.
One chapter consists entirely of the sentence: "My mother is a fish." I had to read it in college. I got through it, but to this day, I don't remember how.
I suppose it's an acquired taste. I am a voracious reader, more than avid - and I read all kinds of literature (and junk food for the mind as well), and I just couldn't get into Faulkner. But now that I think about it, I'm not much on the 20th century American authors. Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald - none of them do much for me.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Thanks.
Indeed, I should re-read Faulkner. I am trying to link Sebesta's educated white male with one of the major literary forces from the South in their day - albeit without much success.
I am beginning to understand that Faulkner, himself being enlightened, produced like literature - probably unread by the fellows I'm describing.
Next up: Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee and Truman Capote.
Just kidding. Thanks for your comments.
OTOH
Perhaps the nascent neo-confederate leader, being unenlightened, knew Faulkner only so much, mostly by myth, as to despise him. And combined with the Great Southern Writers, some of whom I've name above, these disaffected men felt marginalized by mainstream American thought.
I like it.
Remember Thomas Dixon
Dixon helped spur the revival of the KKK. "The Birth of a Nation" was based on one of his novels, The Clansman.
Now he would be a hero to these neo-confederates. Truly. I actually found a co-worker (not a dumb guy, either, an attorney who has always been quite bright) reading one of Dixon's novels recently. He wasn't doing it for a class or a project. He was reading it because someone told him it was good. That anybody in this day and age could read Thomas Dixon for the pleasure of it is nothing short of astonishing. (And even without his despicable agenda, his writing was awful, awful, awful)
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
They're all good, too.
Don't forget Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, James Agee and so on . . .
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke