Wikipedia talk:No Confederates

Endorsers

The following editors endorse the contents of this essay:

1. Sundostund (talk) 05:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
2. Andre🚐 21:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
3. I think this is covered by WP:NONAZIS but I still endorse it Loki (talk) 04:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
4. Ibid. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 14:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
5. Grayfell (talk) 21:09, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
6. Dronebogus (talk) 21:12, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
7. Jaydenwithay (talk) 14:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
8. סשס Grimmchild. He/him, probably 13:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
9. I proudly endorse this essay. Great work! PoliticallyPassionateGamer (talk) 14:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
10. SnoopyBird (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
11. I emphatically endorse this essay! There's no room for hate. Aficionado538 (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
12. I endorse this essay. Confederates should be blocked on sight. Great job outlining the reasons why! -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 21:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
13. If confederates try promoting their views or existence in a public arena, the only acceptable response is to run them out of town by any means necessary. The digital commons is no different. Even though open confederacy worship is tolerated in the U.S, there's no reason we should do the same. John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on! TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 21:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)TheTranarchist
14. Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 01:01, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Non-Endorsers

The following editors do not endorse the contents of this essay:

1. I can't get behind this. WP:NONAZIS is pretty clear-cut in that the very existence of Nazism is predicated upon massacre and slaughter. I'm also not a fan of this phrase: This does not mean that supporters of the Confederacy during the American Civil War were necessarily defending the principle of slavery, any more than Germans who fought in the Wehrmacht in World War II were supporting Nazism. This invokes the clean Wehrmacht myth by implying the German rank-and-file who served in the war were merely fellow travelers, when in fact the majority of them were just as equally perpetrators of genocide just as much as the SS. The people who lied at the Nuremberg Trials, that they were just following orders, knew damn well what was going on. So NONAZIS is extremely unequivocal. This here is not such a clear-cut issue; the support of Confederates and Confederate heritage in the United States is far more complicated than that. I do think that many of those who support this ideology tend to be misled as to the meaning of their symbols, but at that point, the worst thing they have done is display ignorance. I think they have a right to be able to display userboxes on their user page just as much as anyone else who displays political userboxes. The handful of users who show up at WP:MFD to hunt down these symbols cannot and should not be the arbiter of what opinions are valid and allowed to be displayed, much less who is allowed to participate in editing Wikipedia. If there are those that step out of line, we address each issue as it comes about. --🌈WaltCip-(talk) 15:00, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
2. What an editor believes is irrelevant, as long as they're not trying to push it into articles or promote it on talkpages. GoodDay (talk) 22:43, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
3. Absolutely not. Displaying the confederacy in a positive light is wrong, but I don't think it should warrant a block. While all Southern racists fly the confederate flag, not all people who fly the flag are racist. I don't think we should block people for being misinformed. Scorpions13256 (talk) 11:51, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
4. We don't need this garbage. It is acceptable to be a Confederate and will always be, just like there are Communists and Socialists, and many other leftist ideologies which are present in Wikipedia.--Madame Necker (talk) 19:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

   They are specifically questioning the Confederacy in this essay. Furthermore they do not (yet) apply the same standard to indigenous tribes, even if those tribes stood for things near identical to the Confederacy or fought directly for the Confederacy. It is fine to disagree with the Confederacy as there are a buffet of reasons to do so, but to deny individuals the right to appreciate their heritage and display it in a way which is factual is disgusting and abysmal, as an indigenous person it is frightening and horrific, I see what is happening to the Confederates who challenged the Americans, and I think to myself, they will come for my ancestors too because they also fought against the Americans. ANE was Nordic (talk) 03:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

5. no ----modern_primat ඞඞඞ ^TALK 00:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
6. WP:NONAZIS and WP:NORACISTS already cover the racist ideologies of the CSA. I'm not sure this essay provides anything useful. - ZLEA _T\^C 00:40, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Wary of methodology, if not ideology

1. Yeah, I mean... of course, no confederates. It's disruptive. So, I don't think I have anything against the essay ideologically, but I'm a little spooked by a talk page strawpoll about this kind of thing; a strawpoll that has been subject to canvassing, no less. I'm not overly involved in vandal-fighting, but is this a debate that needs to be happening? Is there a real rash of confederates causing problems? I feel like we're taking what's already an implicit consensus and making it vulnerable to people who want to squabble on flash-points. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 21:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   This came out of the discussion on the NONAZIS page and the discussion that happened involving the block of User:Bedford Andre🚐 21:31, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Just for clarification – my only intention was (and will be) to draw the attention of users to this essay and its existence, having in mind those users who might possibly be interested in its content and topic, nothing more than that. I am sorry if it may appear as canvassing, since it certainly isn't my intention. I see it as a simple "invitation" and suggestion, and, if you want, as a way to "advertise" the essay. — Sundostund mppria ^{(talk / contribs)} 08:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Support of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was, by definition, support of the principle of slavery

This does not mean that supporters of the Confederacy during the American Civil War were necessarily defending the principle of slavery, any more than Germans who fought in the Wehrmacht in World War II were supporting Nazism. But we should not honor those defeated causes.

We certainly should not honor those causes, but this paragraph seems counterproductive at best. The Confederacy was intentionally created to defend the existence of institutional racial slavery. Any support of the Confederacy, then or now, is support of slavery, by definition. Dancing around this simple fact is accommodating a dangerous myth. Yes, some people use these symbols out of ignorance (and some people just use that as an excuse when called out) but that (supposed) ignorance only serves to legitimize the neo-confederate ideology. That's not an accident.

Since it seems like the point of this essay is to say that people shouldn't be allowed to use Wikipedia to support pro-slavery politics like neo-confederacy, including this bit of neo-confederate myth-making undercuts that message.

Likewise, Germans who fought in the Nazi Wehrmacht were physically supporting Nazism, by definition. That some of them were pressured or forced into supporting Nazism doesn't invalidate that support. At best this comparison is a distraction. Grayfell (talk) 21:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I can understand why you see the quoted paragraph as something controversial, and I can agree that it needs some changes, or to be removed. Its never positive nor desirable to whitewash the Confederacy and its supporters, in any way. Same goes for all those who fed the Nazi war machinery. Of course, the creator of the essay, Robert McClenon, should say his opinion before any changes to the text, IMHO. —Sundostund (talk) 17:49, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand why there is a concern about this paragraph. I am avoiding condemnation of the dead. War is a tragedy, and people fight for nations for any reason or no reason. Specific causes of wars may be atrocities. There is a difference between the Confederate politicians who seceded, and those who fought under them. If someone wants to change it, they can go ahead, as long as they do not make it an actual condemnation of the (long-dead) who fought in the Confederate uniform. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:31, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the sentiment of this essay, but I ask you to consider why this point is important. Part of the tragedy is that people were forced to support these racist ideologies, whether they wanted to or not, and for many it cost them their lives. Again, they were forced to support and defend these causes. To say otherwise is incorrect.

Not to be too confrontational, but another way to put it is this: neo-confederacy is condemning the dead by mockery. To include this in this essay would is to repeat that mockery. Tacky bumper stickers trivialize this racist ideology by reducing it to evasive euphemisms. This is far less respectful than an honest explanation of why they fought and died.

Part of the lost cause myth, and the clean Wehrmacht myth also, is to downplay these racist causes and present these wars as tragic abstractions that were outside of their control. This dehumanizes these solders and simultaneously makes the causes seem vaguely 'noble'. All those bland monuments to confederate soldiers in confederate uniforms, mostly put up in response to civil rights movements, were put up to honor "the uniform" as a proxy for slavery itself. There are rarely designed to honor any specific dead person, even if they bear that person's name and superficial likeness. The goal of neo-confederacy is to ignore those individuals and instead try and make their death seem justified as part of this euphemistic lost cause of slavery. Grayfell (talk) 02:26, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I appreciate your thoughts on this, and I have no desire to see an condemnation of the long-dead ordinary Confederate soldiers. We just need to make this essay acceptable to as many users as possible, avoiding elements that can be interpreted (correctly or wrongly) as whitewashing the Confederacy or Nazi Germany and their war aims, which had slavery and racism as their cornerstones, without any doubt.

@Grayfell: This essay is a rather new one, and can certainly be seen as something that is still under construction – things will be added/changed/removed, not just when it comes to the paragraph you see as controversial. As for that paragraph, I would say that you are free to change it into something more acceptable to you, just without turning it into some kind of condemnation, as per the creator's thoughts.

Sundostund (talk) 07:45, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought that the comment would make it more acceptable. If other editors disagree, I do not object to removing it. I would rather not try to revise it. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:21, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Grayfell and Robert McClenon: I pretty much neutralized the controversial paragraph, with the latest change of the text. Of course, the new text/paragraph can be further changed, if its necessary in your opinion. —Sundostund (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate that. Grayfell (talk) 21:11, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Support under duress is not a tacit admission of support, especially in the case of conscripts, of which there were innumerable in the case of both The Wehrmacht and The Confederacy. To demand someone face prison or worse for the actions of a country they had no hand in producing or else be punished for the crimes of said country is utterly repugnant and you only give credence to racists and bigots who see this type of binary thinking and imagine themselves in good company. This also suggests you claim to know their hearts and thoughts, for those I have mentioned you have no idea what they thought, German or Southerner, all we have are actions and voiced opinions, many of which as I said were under extreme duress and the demands of the time. Wikipedia should be neutral and fact based, not you speculating what the actions of those with no choice 'really' reveal about their thoughts. Total nonsense!

You seem to know a lot about these 'groups' of various bigots, you're not one yourself right? You made a post which is about as ignorant as they are, I am sure you were only speaking out of turn. ANE was Nordic (talk) 03:37, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

You either did not understand what I was saying at all, or you chose to misinterpret it to prove a point, and in doing so, violated no personal attacks. Grayfell (talk) 19:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Presuming good faith and misunderstanding is not in violation. Your tone is aggressive because you feel I stepped on your toes. Your efforts to do better are appreciated. ANE was Nordic (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I think what is "aggressive" here is your use of pseudo-civil language to accuse me of bigotry while ignoring most of what I actually said. Grayfell (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

This is getting off-topic, therefore my last reply.

Nothing I said was factually incorrect.

Your efforts to do better are appreciated. ANE was Nordic (talk) 17:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes

@Robert McClenon: I have done some changes in recent days, especially by modifying some aspects of the lead section, and adding some material to it (and to some other paragraphs). I hope that you, as the creator of the essay, support those changes. I am certainly interested in hearing your input on this – I wouldn't perform those changes, without asking for your opinion about the results. —Sundostund (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2022 (UTC)