Recovering ex-member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans?
Kevin Levin writes an excellent Substack column called Civil War Memory dealing with the history of the Civil War, competing interpretations of it, and the contemporary politics around Confederate monuments and symbols. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in that range of topics.
Kevin, who has spent years debunking Lost Cause nonsense around the Confederacy1, writes about a man he knows who he calls Scott, who is apparently a serious amateur student of the Civil War.
Scott is also a self-described recovering Lost Causer and a former member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans [SCV], but some might be surprised that he still proudly wears a Confederate kepi, specifically a Louisiana "Washington Artillery" officer's kepi.
There is not a trace of the Lost Cause’s denial of slavery as the Confederacy’s “cornerstone” in Scott nor does he believe that the Confederacy should be celebrated, but he does speak with conviction about the importance of acknowledging the sacrifices and the many hardships that these men experienced during the war.
His understanding of the war is clearly informed by sound scholarship as well as a strong emotional attachment to these men.2
This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The SCV is a hard-right, white-supremacist group that specializes in defending the Lost Cause pseudohistory and segregation.
What Kevin tells of Scott's story reminds me of other people's stories about "recovering" from far-right fanaticism. Sometimes it just comes from getting older and having more life and family experience. And Scott seems to also have developed critical thinking skills from taking the study of history seriously. Kevin uses his story as a reflection on how politicized history seems to be in the US right now and how it's important not to jump to conclusions based solely on Scott's Confederate cap.
But he adds, "I don’t know anything about Scott’s political views or his position on any of the hot button cultural, religious and legal issues of the day." And that would make me cautious. More literate rightwingers are often attracted to more "highbrow" - or maybe "middlebrow" - types of rightwing narrative and can become capable of carrying on a fact-based discussion about history. And Lost Cause views are common as dirt among Trumpistas in general.
But anyone wearing a piece of identifiable Confederate paraphernalia would be a sign to me that they may not have fully "recovered" from their former politics and views of history. Confederate symbols are generally understood as representing white supremacy, far-right politics, and glorification of anti-democracy treason.
In Germany and Austria where publicly displaying a swastika is illegal, far-right groups often use a Confederate flag as a substitute. And not because they think it's just a fond, sentimental gesture to Heritage and to their great-great-great grandpappies who fought for Home and Honor back in the 19th century.
In Scott’s case, it does sound like he has made a real effort to reflect on his past far-right political positions and used his former symbolic interest in a mythical Confederacy of Honor and Family Devotion to move on to a much better understanding of history and more sensible general perspective.
In another column, Kevin talks about how he gets criticism from both left and right.3 The left versions he runs up against sound mainly like they are part of the liberal identity-politics perspective associated with the 1619 Project and the reparations-for-slavery advocacy.
History is always in some kind of dialogue with contemporary politics. Not always polite dialogue.
See, for example, his book Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Levin, Kevin (2023): Finding Common Ground With a Former Member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Civil War Memory/Substack 06/13/2023. (Accessed: 2023-21-06).
Levin, Kevin (2023): A Juneteenth For All Americans. Civil War Memory/Substack 06/19/2023. (Accessed: 2023-21-06).