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When I visited the hospital a couple of days ago to get my leg plaster changed, I struck up a conversation with the male nurse who was looking at my mending ankle and putting on the new caste. He told me he was a war reenactor as a US Army paratrooper and turned up in Band of Brothers and various history documentary reconstructions as an extra.

And of course he is a Civil War reenactor playing (you guessed it) a Confederate. Despite being British and Jewish, he dislikes the Union and made a feeble excuse about the Deep South's slavery by mentioning that Abraham Lincoln had slave holding relatives, while the Union allowed indentured servants (which sounds more like a harsher form of community service instead of owning humans as livestock for an indefinite amount of time in most cases).

He seemed a nice guy and was a NHS employer that helped people, but his opinions seemed at odds with his actions (but he hates the Wonder Chimp, who will be booted out any month now, so he's not completely out of it).

If you want to explore this mindset, you may want to grab ahold of Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South. It's an alternative history novel set during the Civil War, viewed from the perspective of the Confederates, and it involves time travel. I mention it not because of its historical perspective (it's fairly silly to do that, given its premise), but because it presents your typical rose tinted view on the South as seen through the eyes of an apologist.

I mention it not because of its historical perspective

Harry Turtledove swears he's seen copies of Guns of the South in the Nonfiction - History sections of bookstores in the South. He had all sorts of funny and weird stories about the various responses to that book when it came out, but I can't remember all of them now.

The ones that I do: He was given some honor by some Confederate association, I think for the descendants of Confederate officers, and remembers feels distinctly awkward the whole time he was there, and getting a letter from some Confederate apologist thanking him for showing people that "Southerners are not bad people."

He was made an honorary Kentucky Colonel, but I think that was from a Sci Fi convention.

Wonder what Johnny Reb thinks of Dr. Turtledove after the TL 191 series. That was properly the first time I cheered on the bombing of refugee convoys.

I have friends who were into Civil War re-enacting, Confederate artillery in Southern California.

It's pretty simple; some people like the romanticizable bits of the Confederacy (Southern Honor, mint juleps, colonial architecture, gingham dresses) and so as to not feel bad about wearing gray, they dimly arm's-length rationalize away the unromanticizable stuff (Southern Honor, racism, mosquitoes, slavery, the Klan).

I wonder how much that has to do with sympathizing with the underdog and also because of hero worship like about Lee and Jackson. And also, it might be a personal preference. I am not a reenactor, but I always thought grey looked way cooler than blue.

The same is true for some Nazi reenactors - some of them just think they look way cooler than anybody else so they wear that uniform. Ethics don't really bother them, for them it is just a nice uniform. To anybody else it would be horrible.

I've participated in WWII re-enactments. The guys who come to play German aren't any more ethically-challenged on average, than anyone else. It really mostly *is* about the cool-looking uniforms and hardware.

I still for the life of me cannot fathom why people would want to dress up as the Waffen SS.

Are there any incidences of people dressing up as Imperial Japanese Army personnel? Though it would be rather humiliating to belong to the only major WWII power whose Army was still stuck in World War II.

Kanastrous wrote:I've participated in WWII re-enactments. The guys who come to play German aren't any more ethically-challenged on average, than anyone else. It really mostly *is* about the cool-looking uniforms and hardware.

Some people get the 'football team' mentality, however. It shows up in things like video games, politics and sport - whoever you're 'supporting', you need to 'defend' and 'believe in'. I don't understand this attitude (playing a game as Nazis doesn't require me to rationalise this support to myself or others) but you see it a LOT with some people.

So, if you are on the 'red' team, red is best, red is good and red never really did anything wrong. Otherwise I think they feel they'd be as bad as red themselves.

Pelranius wrote:I still for the life of me cannot fathom why people would want to dress up as the Waffen SS.

Are there any incidences of people dressing up as Imperial Japanese Army personnel? Though it would be rather humiliating to belong to the only major WWII power whose Army was still stuck in World War II.

There are re-enactors in Poland who do the Uprising and some September 1939 battles, and the sides are usually chosen by coin toss, since almost everybody wants to be the Poles

The amount of Wehrmacht apologists here is probably lower than anywhere else besides Russia, though.

Kanastrous wrote:It's pretty simple; some people like the romanticizable bits of the Confederacy (Southern Honor, mint juleps, colonial architecture, gingham dresses) and so as to not feel bad about wearing gray, they dimly arm's-length rationalize away the unromanticizable stuff (Southern Honor, racism, mosquitoes, slavery, the Klan).

By "Southern honor," are you referring to the racists' tendency to lynch any and all black men who even look at a white woman in a "suggestive" way?

Sidewinder wrote: By "Southern honor," are you referring to the racists' tendency to lynch any and all black men who even look at a white woman in a "suggestive" way?

I think that this is usually the bit that gets ignored.

I refer you to people who claim warfare was more honorable in the distant past than now. Because, ya know - knights!

Knight = chivalry = honor = cool. The bits with peasants being forcibly drafted into armies and ground beneath the hooves or charging knights, and burning villages and town and mass rapes don't matter.

Stark wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:I've participated in WWII re-enactments. The guys who come to play German aren't any more ethically-challenged on average, than anyone else. It really mostly *is* about the cool-looking uniforms and hardware.

Some people get the 'football team' mentality, however. It shows up in things like video games, politics and sport - whoever you're 'supporting', you need to 'defend' and 'believe in'. I don't understand this attitude (playing a game as Nazis doesn't require me to rationalise this support to myself or others) but you see it a LOT with some people.

So, if you are on the 'red' team, red is best, red is good and red never really did anything wrong. Otherwise I think they feel they'd be as bad as red themselves.

I've heard that sort of mentality described as being a largely tribal thing. Humans are, after all, pack animals. Modern society doesn't present as many opportunities for belonging to a "pack" as there once were, so there's clubs, sports teams, etc. Add on the whole morals and conscience thing, and you a lot of people feel the need to justify the actions of other members of their pack. They have a hard time separating an attack on character from an actual physical attack. So they protect their pack-members. People are still guided largely by instinct.

Except they're not; they WANT to be. It's childish, not instinctive; it's simply an indication of simplistic and illogical thinking. Most people are pretty damn childish in their attitudes.

Pelranius wrote:I still for the life of me cannot fathom why people would want to dress up as the Waffen SS.

Well, assuming that they don't feel supportive of SS actions and leaving aside the "cool" factor some people may feel about the uniforms, equipment and what not, when you're participating in a re-enactment somebody has to play the bad guy.

Do you fault Ralph Fiennes for wearing that uniform while portraying Amon Goeth in Schindler's List?

As someone who's known a few confederate apologists, even intellectual ones, I'd say that their issue is simply brainwashing. When you hear about how great the south was from just about everyone, its hard to distinguish fact from fiction. Its as bound up in some parts of the south as religion. And its a religion that is attractive to people's pride.

One thing that tends to go together with it is either subtle, or not-so-subtle, racism and class beliefs.

Edited to fix spelling and punctuation.

The Spartan wrote:

Pelranius wrote:I still for the life of me cannot fathom why people would want to dress up as the Waffen SS.

Well, assuming that they don't feel supportive of SS actions and leaving aside the "cool" factor some people may feel about the uniforms, equipment and what not, when you're participating in a re-enactment somebody has to play the bad guy.

Do you fault Ralph Fiennes for wearing that uniform while portraying Amon Goeth in Schindler's List?

Well, there's always the Wehrmacht. One could try one of the other Axis powers, but no self respecting reenactor would dress up as an Italian soldier.

Sidewinder wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:It's pretty simple; some people like the romanticizable bits of the Confederacy (Southern Honor, mint juleps, colonial architecture, gingham dresses) and so as to not feel bad about wearing gray, they dimly arm's-length rationalize away the unromanticizable stuff (Southern Honor, racism, mosquitoes, slavery, the Klan).

By "Southern honor," are you referring to the racists' tendency to lynch any and all black men who even look at a white woman in a "suggestive" way?

Among other things, yes.

Pelranius wrote:

The Spartan wrote:

Pelranius wrote:I still for the life of me cannot fathom why people would want to dress up as the Waffen SS.

Well, assuming that they don't feel supportive of SS actions and leaving aside the "cool" factor some people may feel about the uniforms, equipment and what not, when you're participating in a re-enactment somebody has to play the bad guy.

Do you fault Ralph Fiennes for wearing that uniform while portraying Amon Goeth in Schindler's List?

Well, there's always the Wehrmacht. One could try one of the other Axis powers, but no self respecting reenactor would dress up as an Italian soldier.

At least you know that when you dress up as an SS officer that you get to leave a good looking corpse on the ground for your victorious opponents. I'd have few issues dressing up in any group's uniform for a faux battle, so long as if I was the 'bad guys,' I got to die at the end of it. Wearing the Gray of a filthy traitor, and dying like the traitorous dog I am dressed as, doesn't mean I'm glorifying the treason that's the reason for the... season... or whatever.

I assume these reenactments are Southern battles in which the South wins? I would find that distasteful, in a fashion. You want to let people move on and not bear that kind of shame forever, since shaming people in eternity is a lousy way to treat the descendents who had no fault in the matter. Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes--I don't know of any other group of equal size who continues to defend such an embarassingly disreputable history.

Covenant wrote:Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes--I don't know of any other group of equal size who continues to defend such an embarassingly disreputable history.

Japan in regards to WWII; Japanese books (including textbooks) usually tell the history of that war from the Attack on Pearl Harbor onwards, ignoring the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the invasion of China, the Rape of Nanking, testing biological and chemical weapons on Chinese citizens (see Unit 731), and the Japanese military's brutality towards Filipinos, Okinawans, and Allied POWs.

Hell, one Japanese lawmaker even equated the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Holocaust!

Oh Lord, the Japanese in recent decades have been absolutely abhorrent in regards to facing up to their warcrimes and even relatively likable PMs like Junichiro Koizumi have not fully apologized.

The Deep South overall has a more 'cozy' and 'charming' image than the Third Reich and while they imprisoned human beings within enclosures, they were not systematically eradicating entire populations with purpose built murder factories.

Big Orange wrote:Oh Lord, the Japanese in recent decades have been absolutely abhorrent in regards to facing up to their warcrimes and even relatively likable PMs like Junichiro Koizumi have not fully apologized.

They simply had no balls to defy the extremely conservative elements, many of whom are just outright racists. The Yakusuni memorial is a bloody tribute Japanese militarism.

Covenant wrote:I assume these reenactments are Southern battles in which the South wins? I would find that distasteful, in a fashion.

Civil War Man can answer this better than me but I'm pretty sure they do both. Some are reenactments of Southern victories and some are Northern.

There's a large streak of the sore loser amongst Confederate apologists, I've often noticed. Confederate worship usually goes hand-in-hand with Union bashing.

But really, a lot of it comes from the "Southern culture" that was built tightly around slavery starting in the early 1800s. The entire society was dependent upon it and became more tightly bound as the years went on. Whereas people in the north and west U.S. could base their lives on all sorts of different things (farming, business enterprises, pioneering, etc.), in the south everything came back to slavery. The rhetoric got stronger and stronger and so did the beliefs.

This society and its believers were not broken by the war, since the plantation owners who were the strongest proponents of their society (and the biggest advertisers and the ones with the power, wealth, and influence to promote it) still kept their land and weren't hung as traitors as they should have been. They still had the power to bring life in their areas back to some semblance of the old days while holding back progress. Basically, their society became even more entrenched. And had nothing else to talk about.

So they talked and talked and talked and brainwashed and rewrote history and kept doing it because they had nothing else to do and their society was stuck on that one thing and refused to change. Meanwhile, everybody elsewhere has better things to do than harp on it continuously. As advertisers (and chain email senders) have shown, if you repeat something enough, even if you say that it's not true, people will eventually believe it. And people hear Confederate apologists a lot, but not so much about how rotten and vile the southern culture truly was.

I have always been kind of flummoxed by the popularity of and virtual reverence toward Gone With the Wind. From a historic perspective I recognize its landmark status with regard to technical film making, and from an artistic standpoint I can see some merit to the execution, but basically it's about a vicious self-centered spoiled brat produced by an oppressive decadent slaver society whose destruction is all I have to root for, while watching the film. By presenting a story centered around characters representative of all that was worst about the Old South, they've lost me coming out of the gate.