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This is an essay.
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 | This page in a nutshell: Confederate or neo-Confederate symbols and viewpoints are unacceptable in Wikipedia. |
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 electionofAbraham 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 (orcornerstone) than slavery are a historical whitewash.
Various neo-Confederate organizations are designated as hate groups by the SPLC, while the Confederate battle flagisdesignated as a hate symbol by the ADL.
The main (but not only) aspects of the neo-Confederate worldview are:
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 Nazisorneo-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.
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.
Related pages
Background information
Essays
[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.
