It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
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In Wikipedia, neo-Confederate editors overtly display symbols of the Confederacy, typically portraying it as the "noble
Lost Cause". They push pro-Confederate
POV in editing and discussions. The
Wikipedia community should have no place for neo-Confederates, for the same reasons that there is no place for
Nazis or
neo-Nazis. Most of what is said in the
No Nazis and
No racists essays is directly applicable also to neo-Confederates. The display of Confederate symbols in Wikipedia, like the display of
Nazi symbols such as the
swastika, is incompatible with the core Wikipedia policy
WP:NPOV, because it asserts a racist ideology of
white supremacy.
Confederate symbols in Wikipedia should be treated in the same manner as Nazi symbols. They should be condemned and rejected by the community. They should be kept only for use in related articles, and used for educational purposes only. There is no more place in Wikipedia for neo-Confederate views than for neo-Nazi views.
Neo-Confederates (and other inappropriate discriminatory groups) are
disruptive to the community, and not only unwelcome here on Wikipedia; they are usually
indefinitely blocked on sight if they express their racist ideas on-wiki.
Neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis
Two great atrocities of modern European history were the
Atlantic slave trade and
the Holocaust. Neo-Confederates are
denying or whitewashing the horror of the Atlantic slave trade and of Western Hemisphere slavery, just as neo-Nazis are
denying or whitewashing the horror of the Holocaust.
There are many similarities between the Confederacy and
Nazi Germany in terms of their ideological foundations as racist
ethnostates and their war aims, as well as neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi narratives of the Lost Cause and the
myth of the clean Wehrmacht, respectively. We should not honor those defeated causes in any way.
Message to the readers
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^James M. McPherson (January 19, 1989).
"The War of Southern Aggression". The New York Review of Books. Archived from
the original on March 17, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2022. [T]he South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag.