Lost Cause 
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SOURCE: Substack
1/18/2023
Bemoaning Alabama's King-Lee Holiday Misses a Bigger Point
by Kevin M. Levin
While white Alabama still embraces the "lost cause" mythology embodied by Robert E. Lee, outrage about the holiday he shares with Martin Luther King, Jr. shouldn't blind the public to the ongoing struggle to change the commemorative landscape—in Montgomery and nationwide.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/11/2022
The Lost Cause is Alive and Well in Textbooks for JROTC Programs
Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps texts offer information on a wide variety of subjects, including military history, without the kind of oversight that mainstream textbooks receive. The result is a curriculum shot through with right-wing ideology and historical myth.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
9/5/2022
Ty Seidule: Confederates Were Traitors
The naming of military facilties for Confederates was not a project of post-Civil War reconciliation; it was about valorizing and defending segregation in the 20th century, as with
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SOURCE: New Statesman
8/17/2022
Sarah Churchwell on the Lies of "Gone With the Wind"
by Adam Hochshild
Does a 500 page book on the historical distortions of the novel and film seem like beating a dead horse? What if the horse is still alive and threatening to trample people?
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SOURCE: Washington Post
7/15/2022
Youngkin's Appointee to VA Board of Historical Resources has Opinions about Robert E. Lee and Confederacy
Ann McLean called secession legally valid and compared the Union army to the Russian forces invading Ukraine, while lamenting that Confederate monuments would no longer "tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/23/2022
Facing the Truth in the Land of Lee
by Laura Brodie
The controversy over removing Robert E. Lee's portrait from diplomas at Washington and Lee University points to an uncomfortable truth: Lee's historical depiction as handsome has been a visual symbol of the Lost Cause that has contributed to acceptance of the pro-Confederate mythology.
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SOURCE: Baptist News
5/13/2022
The Religion of the "Lost Cause" Is Back, and It May be Winning
by Bill Leonard
The weaponization of Southern Christianity around perceived threats to cultural integrity today adapts the playbook of the Lost Cause to the present.
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SOURCE: Nashville Tennessean
2/8/2022
Confronting Confederate Heritage is Necessary to Understand White Supremacy
by David Barber
Everyday social life in the Confederacy required white Southerners to close their eyes and hearts to terrible cruelty. No reconciliation today is possible without acknowledging it.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/23/2022
Confederate Groups are Keeping the Lost Cause Myth on Life Support
by Erin L. Thompson
"Confederate heritage" groups have used their financial resources to bring lawsuits before sympathetic judges to thwart the public's desire to remove monuments to the white supremacist pro-slavery government in public spaces.
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SOURCE: AL.com
1/12/2022
Alabama's Capitol is a Crime Scene, with a 120 Year Coverup
The Alabama Capitol in Montgomery was the first seat of the Confederate government and the place where white Democrats ratified a Jim Crow constitution in 1901. You'd learn little of this by touring the museum-like building.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/8/2022
We Must Fight the New Lost Cause Myth Trump has Birthed
by David Blight
"Yes, disinformation has to be fought with good information. But it must also be fought with fierce politics, with organization, and if necessary with bodies, non-violently."
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SOURCE: New York Magazine
12/14/2021
The Right's 1877 Project
Helen Andrews's recent "American Conservative" column revives the myths that Reconstruction was a "tragic era" and that Black disenfranchisement was a force for progress, troubling indicators of the current right's views of democracy.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
10/18/2021
The Lost Cause Resonance of Pledging Allegiance to Flag from January 6 Capitol Attack
A rally in support of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin pledged allegiance to a flag carried at the January 6 seige of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Is the day turning into the Lost Cause of the far right?
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SOURCE: University of Virginia Batten School
10/11/2021
New Research: More Lynchings in Places with More Confederate Monuments
Empirical research supports what activists have been saying for decades: Confederate memorials encourage violence in the name of white supremacy.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/24/2021
Like the Confederates, it's Dangerous to Let the January 6th Losers Rewrite History
by Shira Lurie
The right's effort to recast the events of January 6 as a peaceful protest is a dangerous attempt at rewriting history. The ongoing mythology of the Confederacy shows it needs to be nipped in the bud.
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8/1/2021
Charlottesville's Lee Statue Belongs in a Museum
by John Troast
"Charlottesville’s recently removed statue of Robert E. Lee is not a statue of a man, it is a statue of a myth," and the history of that dangerous myth needs to be preserved.
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SOURCE: New York Times
7/28/2021
Charles Blow: ‘The Lost Cause’ Is Back
by Charles M. Blow
"Republicans are on a political crusade to protect lore and lies. They know that many Americans, many of them their voters, will take a lie over guilt and atonement, every day of the week."
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SOURCE: Charlotte News & Observer
7/12/2021
Far-Right Activists Protest with Confederate Flags at UNC’s Unsung Founders Memorial
Two white supremacists picketed the University of North Carolina's memorial to the free and enslaved Black workers who built the university, the latest incident of racial tension on the campus.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
7/4/2021
Manual Advises how to Stop Removal of Confederate Statues: Don’t Mention Race
"The document is attributed to the highest level of SCV leadership at that time and buttresses its defense of monuments with a detailed account of the civil war which falsely denies the centrality of slavery in the conflict."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/10/2021
Why Confederate Lies Live On
by Clint Smith
Throughout the south, and in the minds of Americans, aesthetics and idealized depictions of valor continue to obscure the fact that the Confederacy fought to maintain a social order based on the ownership of human beings and white supremacy.
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