Confederacy = Hitler?

You’ve probably seen this stupid argument before: The Confederacy was a proto-fascist society

Moreover, John C. Calhoun was the precursor to Hitler.

It’s not just leftist dopes who come up with this nonsense. Neoconservatives like to spout this stupidity and even some non-Straussian conservatives have been fooled into becoming American Nazis because they believe it, too.

This is the problem with American education. It produces a host of fools.

You know who wouldn’t have been a Nazi? John C. Calhoun.

You know who else? Just about anyone who fought for the Confederacy.

You know what is the opposite of fascism? The Southern tradition.

As Richard Weaver pointed out, the South was the first to reject fascism because it was the enemy of tradition. Why? Because fascism needs a centralized State to work, and Southerners correctly realized that centralization does not allow traditions–real, tangible community driven traditions–to exist.

It is a bulldozer and the end result is the messianic mob worship of a single individual and the State, i.e. Hitler.

Nothing like this happened in the South between 1861-1865, and no Southern leader who fought for independence sought this kind of attention when the war was over. Southerners–nay, all Americans by the 1880s–admired Lee because of his character and devotion to a cause, not because he wanted power.

The tradition would not allow it.

The Nazi’s professed to admire “traditions” but real aristocratic Germans often opposed Hitler. They knew he was the enemy to traditional Germany. See Claus von Stauffenberg for example.

And don’t forget that European soil is littered with Southerners who fought against Nazis, many while carrying Confederate flags.

As Clyde Wilson points out in this great piece, Lincoln’s North is more accurately proto-Nazi that Davis’s South.

This had to be said, and I discuss the issue on Episode 593 of The Brion McClanahan Show.