I'm very passionate about the Civil war history, and i admire greatly, the resolve of Confederate soldiers who held on to the bitter end, while outnumber 4 to 1, surrounded, and blockaded.
I also acknowledge that the war was far more complex than simply one side wanting slavery, and the other doesn't want it. Nonetheless, I've been accused of supporting the Nazi regime, for my admiration of the Confederates who fought and died to defend their families.
I take great offense to this, as the Nazi regime murdered tens of millions of innocent people, exterminated countless bloodlines of people. They put entire families into a sealed off building, before putting zyklon B crystals into the room, and murdering everyone in the building, before throwing them out like garbage, and creamating their bodies to destroy evidence.
The fact that anyone would equate that to the Confederacy is a giant farce and insult to me. I was born in Connecticut, and I moved to Texas, later in life. I don't support slavery at all, I view it to be the most horrible institution in American history, but the civil war was about more than that. The north had 4 slave states, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland.
And the emancipation proclamation didn't free any slaves, it was just a dishonest PR stunt from Lincoln. Lincoln was always against slavery, but, you know what? Actions speak louder than words, and he didn't do a damned thing about slavery. It wasn't until after he was murdered, that the 13 amendment was passed, ending slavery.
As for the Confederacy, I admire the stone cold resolve of the brave men who fought 4 men by himself, and fought until the bitter end for 4 whole years. But comparing them to the N@zis offends me greatly, and is very shortsighted. The only thing they have in common, is that they are both reviled by American history. One deserves to be reviled (N@zis) and the other doesn't, so why the hell else would anyone equate them two?
I agree, they shouldn't be equated
I disagree, they should be equated
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Why would people equate the Confederates with the N@zis?
So. This questions has two part answers, to me. Part I: First, why would people equate them? Well, it’s a 50/50 split behind people know very, very, little about history. The majority of people form their foundation of history off brief documentaries and maybe residual knowledge from school. Second, and more importantly the equating between Nazi’s and The Confederacy is because both political ideologies we’re dependent on the oppression of another people along racial/ethnic lines. There is no side stepping this and no other optic to view it through.
Point II: While I absolutely recognize there are many people who will argue the South was fighting for States Rights and against a Federal Government imposing a decision or mandate against them (and people now have little understanding of how weak the federal government was back then AND how passionate states rights were as an issue) the undeniable fact is Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone Address Speech laid bare the sole singular motive behind declaring secession was the idea that men were not created equal. There is no misinterpretation possible when he says “…the N**** is not equal.” THIS is the parallel to the Nazi regime people make.
Now, because history is unbelievably complex it is also true there were good men and women who were Southerners or Germans that were NOT Confederate Rebels or Nazis. History is very clear these groups brutalized many of their very own people who didn’t subscribe to the required ideology. Both governments drafted people into military service so many of those who fought & died on the wrong side of history were not adherents to the causes they died for. It is also clear there were many good men & women who were helpless against the momentum of history and served in some capacity of these governments that were excellent military leaders, brave soldiers or sailors, and history is not always defined as clearly as “good guys” and “bad guys”.
Having said that, any people who take up arms against their own nation and fight to preserve the practices of slavery, or any other oppression of a people, will have to accept that they will not be viewed as hero’s and liberators in the textbooks of future generations. It’s just how it is and, usually the victors get to write the history books.
Well, perhaps we should change that, then. Starting with me letting people know the truth about Lincoln and the Union’s cause in the war, which had nothing to do with slavery, and everything to do with imposing their will on other people who live different lives than them
You clearly are a passionate historian. I am as well, although the Civil War was not my passion necessarily. I know more than most, but probably a lot less than you.
You miss the point entirely if you think people are simply misinformed. The depth and complexity of history is usually lost, well, to history. The foundational reasons for the Civil War were the succession of southern states. Which was the spark of that Great War is debatable, but the fuel is not and that fuel was slavery.
Additionally, the imposition of will against those who do not wish to submit to it is the absolute existential reason for warfare. Compelling by force what words will not achieve. “War is simply politics by other means.” I can tell you are a educated man and don’t even have to quote who said that phrase. You already know it. I’d bet on that any day.
People are nuts now. Basically woke, victim culture is being preached non stop by activists on college campuses now.
Race relationships were good in the 90s
The Confederate Flag? No one has cared about that. Lynyrd Skynyrd displayed it at concerts, the Dukes of Hazzard car had the flag. It was just a historical flag from the Civil War. Now in the 2000s people that have no real problems in their lives have find made up BS evils to fight.
They are actively segregating races again and teaching racial identity is a person's most important factor and that all of these old historical things are some danger. Some dude in a dress and make up with his deep voice and 5-o'clock shadow being called sir instead of mam is supposed to be some major "evil" to fight.
They were essentially fighting to keep slavery... Whether the men knew it or not. That was the overarching goal. There's been a huge misinformation taught in schools that they were fighting to keep their state rights and blah blah. But in every states declaration of succession there's multiple references to slavery such as “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the N**** is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition,”.
The stars and bars flag isn't actually the confederate flag either, it's the battle flag of the army of northern Virginia. Troops under that flag took arms against the US, and regularly kidnapped free black citizens and sold them as slaves. They also killed union prisoners of war and committed many other atrocious acts. It's a banner of traitors, slave owners and war criminals.
You think I didn't know that the stars and bars flag represents the Confederacy?
And Sheridan, Sherman, and Custer are fine people to talk about murdering prisoners of war, given that Custer had Rangers murdered right in front of their mothers, as they begged them to spare his life, they told her that they'd kill her as well, if she kept pestering them.
30,000 Confederate prisoners of war died in custody throughout the war. And as for being traitors, we're all traitors, as we betrayed the British crown to form our own country, you'll have to go further than just "oh, well, you're traitors" to get points from me.
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the N**** is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition,”.
Sheridan, Sherman, and Custer collectively murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the Shenandoah Valley and Georgia, they raped millions, and burned their homes to the ground, and Lincoln did nothing but shrug his shoulders
THAT is why John Wilkes Booth put a ball in the back of Lincoln's head, and that is why Lincoln, and his cronies, are burning in the pit of abomination and are still screaming 160 years later from the flames they feel. They deserve every bit of it, and I'm glad there will be no end to their suffering
I read your response, but I don't believe you read mine, and you aren't going to, why? Because you can't handle the truth, and the truth is that Lincoln was a tyrant who got what he deserved, and the Confederates were brave warriors who fought to the bitter end for what was right
Defending their families from hostile invaders who decided that the constitution didn't mean a damn thing, and upholding the principle of states rights
Yeah sorry, I don't care what slavers went through and every war has fucked up things happen. World war II had the Allies do some pretty messed up things and the Israelis are said to do some pretty messed up things in their current war. The United States has done a ton of fucked up things.
1% of the southern population owned slaves at the time, yet the Union murdered and raped civilians by the millions and burned their homes to the ground
Slavery was legal in 4 northern states, and it remained legal throughout the war
As I said. That's what they were fighting for whether they knew it or not. The similarities with Nazi Germany was the brainwashing. Heck people still to this day believe the nazi party was actually socialist just because it's in its name.
As I said, actions speak louder than words, Lincoln didn't free 1 slave throughout the war in the north or south.
Their concern was preserving the Union, as they saw it in their best economic interest to do so.
They took slaves as contraband and made them work for the union. One word of insubordination, and the Yankees would kill them on the spot, and dump their bodies into a lake.
They did so by the thousands, along with raping and murdering anyone who showed so much as a token resistance to the federal government. THAT is why Booth put a ball right in Lincoln's head, that is why him and his cronies are covered in the flames of hades, and that is why anyone who supported him has the same fate waiting for them down in hell
Many on the left love to virtue signal but they lack real information to respond with intelligent arguments, so their preferred tactic to to attack the speaker, rather than the idea. And their Pavlovian reflex for attacking the speaker is to engage in name calling.
Why wouldn't they? The Confederates came from the Democrat party. The Democrat party founded the KKK primarily from former Confederate soldiers who acted as political and social terrorists attacking minorities that joined the Republican party during reconstruction. KKK rituals are rooted in Freemasonry/Satanism/Gnostism/Sufi Islam. Hitler studied Islam and admired the ideology. Hitler's SS integrated many occult Satanic rituals into their organization. Hitler was a National Socialist. Hamas whos sprung out of the Muslim Brotherhood (which are Islamic Freemasons) are Islamic Socialist. Democrats in America are also Socialists that support groups like Hamas and Azov (Nazis) in Ukraine. Neo-Nazis in America are Socialists. The modern Democrat party fully supports the platform of the World Economic Forum which is the modern day Nazi Party. I don't see how you don't see it. Not every southerner that was drawn into the Civil War is associated with that, but the Democrats have a long history of being associated with the same groups the Nazis are associated with and they have shared common ideologies and worked hand in hand on the same world vision. Democrats are the Nazi Party.
How's that? Albert Pike was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. He was Freemason and Satanist just like the Nazis. He laid out the plan for WWI, WII, and WIII in his writings as they were planned and executed by Freemason Satanists.
Our cultural leaders are generally leftist who regard everyone to the right of Joe Stalin to be a NAZI that includes confederates but also if they knew any better everyone else including nearly everyone else living then and now.
The Confederates were an entirely different highly decentralized ideology similar to contemporary southern believes in many ways for the same geographic and economic reasons.
The Confederates would have hated the NAZI's like modern southerns do on the grounds of how collectivist they were. The only thing Civil war era conservatives agreed with the NAZI's on were some of their race believes. But then again so did almost everyone else on earth at the time.
Because they are ignorant of history. Southern Planters were not fascists. They were agricultural entrepreneurs and related groups trying to control direct costs. Government did not control or regulate industry or agriculture in the South. And they did not hate, blame or want to exterminate Black slaves for their own failures.
My external view: Since the introduction of Bush simplicity/populism and definitely since the introduction of Trumpism the United States develops less and less common sense, discourse culture and ability to compromise. Everything has to be driven to its extremes, so of course also in political accusations. So the same way that extreme Republicans scream at Democrats for being Marxists traitors, the left-wing Democrats will accuse Republicans (or here Southern traditionalists) of being xenophobic fascists.
It is retarded. The only thing they have in common is having a hierarchy based on race which was an extremely common thing all around the world up until within the past 60 years and we have idiots who still think that way, they just use a slightly different justification.
Confederates might not have called for wholesale slaughter of African Americans ala the Nazis re. Jews, but Johnny and Janie Reb certainly believed we were inferior beings fit only to be their slaves like my great-grandparents.(Later, after manumission, Confederates joined numrous white supremacist groups, notably the Klan, and killed thousands of blacks largely with inpunity. )
Thus, both Confederates and Nazis were evil hate mongers who, especially in the Nazis' case, used hate to justifly attempting to wipe out a whole group of people.
That reply didn’t even pretend to answer the question but just wanted to somehow bring Trump into a conversation where he’s not even remotely relevant. Lefties are absolutely obsessed.
It was the cause for secession, but it was a decision that the government made, not the people, and it was far more complex than just Northern hostility to slavery.
Whether they liked secession, or not, hostile soldiers were coming to bring war into their homes, and they could either sit and watch as they sacked their homes, had their way with their mothers and sisters, and burned it to the ground, or fight those soldiers.
And they fought, they fought well, inflicting far more casualties than they suffered, despite being outnumbered 2 to 1 in almost every engagement. And being outnumbered 4 to 1 overall.
They filled hundreds of thousands of graves with their resolve against the powers that sought to destroy them, and use slavery as an excuse. Despite the fact that they didn't care about slavery, and didn't free a single one, throughout the war.
Slaves were confiscated, and put on trains to northern slave states, to be sold as government property. Or made to work for the Union war effort, and were killed, if they showed the slightest bit of insubordination.
But you won't hear about that in history class, because the powers that be don't want people to know the truth. But that's just too damn bad, cause I know the truth, and I will never apologize for that.
I won't apologize for waving the Confederate flag, I won't apologize for doing the rebel yell, I won't apologize for admiring the brave men who fought until the bitter end for what was right.
So then, why don't you tell me about how they rounded people up by the millions, forced them into a sealed building, and threw poison in there to kill all of them in the Confederacy?
Confederate law mirrored US law entirely, but they just didn't want to be under federal jurisdiction anymore. They saw the federal government as hostile to them, and broke away from them.
Until you show me the papers that talk about the 11,000,000 people they murdered in cold blood, for no reason other than they were viewed as inferior, equating the two is nothing less than outright insanity
Those children were indoctrinated and tyrannized by fanatical "Endsieg"-type Nazis, what a complete craziness to describe anything about that as "admirable".
I agree completely, Hitler youth groups forced children to submit to his insane beliefs from a young age.
It was like Boy Scouts, except it was forced, and taught them horrible things, like the idea that Jews were the bitter enemies of Germany, and had to be exterminated.
At the same time, if a child decided to fight when the Soviets were coming, I do admire, at least a little bit, the desire to fight them even when they were impossibly outnumbered and faced certain death, if they didn't fight.
I would not, however, admire them the same as Confederates, as Confederates were not indoctrinated like that, and everything was boiled down to it's very essence.
Hostile soldiers were coming to their homes, and they either stood there and hoped they'd be nice, or they fought to keep them out. Those who fought to keep them out deserve my respect, in my opinion
Jesus Christ, man, what is wrong with you? The children soldiers decided NOTHING!!! They were in the same position as the mobilized Russian peasants, with NKWD commissars aiming at them and sending them into the fire, again and again.
Very few people in the south owned slaves. It is true that in the documents justifying secession, slavery was mentioned quite a bit, but so was the principle of states rights
4 northern states were slave states, and remained slave states throughout the war
Slavery would've ended soon enough, had the Confederates won. It no longer made any sense, from an economic standpoint, to own slaves by 1850, and slavery was dying out quickly
The average Confederate fought to defend their families from hostile invaders who came not to free slaves, but to rape their mothers and sisters, loot their homes, and burn it to the ground
And they fought well, much better than those snobby Yankees did
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