Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

“Old Rebel,” writing at the League of the South’s Rebellion blog, highlights Dead Confederates along with Kevin’s Civil War Memory, Corey Meyer’s Blood of My Kindred and Edward Sebesta as “anti-Southern cyberstalkers” who hold a “seething hatred against an entire people and their culture” and who lead a “a shallow, unfulfilled life.”

These people remind me of the creepy serial killers from a Patricia Cornwell thriller. Cornwell’s villains can’t have meaningful human relationships, so they stalk and murder those who do. Young couples are the usual victims of these ghouls because the couples possess something the stalkers can’t have. My guess is that anti-Southern cyber-stalkers resent a living, vibrant culture with rich traditions and a sense of belonging and meaning that’s been denied them, so they snipe at those who do. If they can’t have cultural moorings, no one else can, either.

There’s no point in trying to refute this sort of name-calling, since there’s no actual substance to it. But I would like to make a few points of my own.

1. Getting denounced by the official blog of the League of the South after being online for only nine days is indescribably awesome.
2. That my dinky little blog should be mentioned in the same breath as Kevin’s, Corey’s and Ed Sebesta’s work is just staggering. I am genuinely humbled.
3. Getting linked by the League of the South’s blog has really bounced my web traffic over the last couple of days — Dead Confederates isn’t exactly burnin’ up the Intertubes (yet), but I’m getting more referrals from Rebellion than from all other sources combined. Thanks, Old Rebel!

Kidding aside, Corey Meyer highlights a much more serious problem, one that speaks to the lengths some people will go to denounce their detractors. Some time back, Corey sent the Rebellion blog a photo he’d found online of someone wiping a commode with a Confederate Battle Flag. Snarky? Yep. And in retrospect, probably not a good idea, because instead of ignoring it — which Old Rebel argues that “that’s what the “Delete” key is for” — it seems Old Rebel or one of his/her confederates subsequently Photoshopped a p*rn magazine into the picture, and is now distributing the altered image as actually having originated with Corey.

This is dishonest. This is lying.

Old Rebel — who unlike Corey, Kevin, Ed Sebesta and me, seems unwilling to blog under his or her real name — and the League of the South are welcome to their views, both of current politics and historical events. They’re welcome to express those views, and have proved to be passionate and energetic in doing so. But neither they nor anyone else has the right to use this sort of dishonest, childish and shameful tactic to smear those they perceive as their opponents. In doing so, they forfeit the right to be taken seriously, about this or anything else.