Why This Strange Appeal to the Civil War?

An insurgent, tentatively identified as Jake Angeli,
during Wednesday's attack on the Capitol (source)

I can say one good thing about Wednesday’s insurgent attack on the U.S. Capitol Building: it was incompetent. As horrific as it was watching ravening crowds surge into the Capitol, its first physical breach since 1814, carrying General Lee’s battle flag into the building for the first time ever, it could’ve been far worse. The insurgents clearly had no strategy to hold the building. They also, despite fine-sounding promises, didn’t have the President’s support.

Many hard-right extremists have long believed we require only one significant violent display, to push America into a second Civil War. Besides isolated events from individual bigots, this belief plays large into many violent groups’ principles, including the Boogaloo Movement and The Turner Diaries. Some of Wednesday’s attackers, if their rhetoric is correct, believed they’d start such an uprising. Many violent traitors believe Civil War is one good hard push away, like a bowel movement.

This Civil War rhetoric isn’t new. Us news junkies remember July 2018, when tinfoil hat wearer Alex Jones claimed “Democrats Plan To Launch Civil War On July 4th.” Please, the Democrats have proven we can’t organize a two-car funeral, much less a violent uprising. But by priming his audience that war is inevitable, Jones helped justify his audience preparing for violence. Conservatives apparently believe, if another Civil War happens, they’ll somehow win this time around.

It seems counterintuitive. When Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, they presumably believed they were striking a blow for regional autonomy. But the first Civil War resulted in consolidating federal authority. As historian James McPherson writes, every Constitutional amendment before the Civil War placed limits on federal authority; almost every amendment after the Civil War expanded federal authority. The war didn’t protect slaveholders, grant Southern autonomy, or accomplish anything its fomenters intended. (Bear with me, don’t nitpick.)

The first Civil War was arguably a rear-guard action. Growing mechanization of farming made slavery an increasing financial burden, besides its inherent injustice, and Northern industry had moved money into a handful of cities. Cotton feudalism simply lacked further funds. The Solid South needed to either modernize, or revolt against modernity. Like today’s coal miners, demanding protections for their increasingly obsolete trade, Southern plantation farmers chose rebellion, rather than be dragged into the 19th Century.

Alex Jones' ineffective 2018 scare

We see the same happen time and again in American history. Racists would rather bomb the 16th Street Baptist Church than admit their philosophy was odious and antidemocratic. The White Power movement would rather blow up the Oklahoma City federal building than admit America was moving on without them. Defenders of the status quo always think killing people and destroying property will stop America’s slippery slide into modernity. Civil War is an alternative to retreat.

Alex Jones’ 2018 Civil War scaremongering served the same purpose. Jones prepped his audience for violence so he wouldn’t have to admit the President he admired was corrupt, philandering, and inept. The Boogaloo Bois would rather shoot people than admit Americans, in the aggregate, reject their backward, racist philosophy. Wednesday’s insurgents had to attack the Capitol, or admit America voted against their guy. In every case, diehards think violence will prevent the ignominy of retreat.

I used to wonder whether arch-conservatives believed their Civil War rhetoric. Did they really believe the stories of threadbare Confederates around a campfire, cooking their meager rations of beans while Jebediah strums a plangent hymn on his guitar? Their ongoing embrace of Confederate regalia would suggest it. But now I see, they aren’t embracing the myth of delayed victory. Like the Chicago Cubs, the Confederacy exists specifically to lose; victory means relinquishing a lucrative story.

Therefore, American conservatives love Confederate mythology to the exact extent they know they’re losing. Like their grey-clad forebears, these reactionaries hope defeat will transform them from dirt farmers and White trash, into noble heroes of a Lost Cause. Maybe that’s why these antimodern relics love costumes so much, because they’re attempting to curate how they’ll be remembered in defeat. They don’t want Civil War because they’ll win; they just want to control the narrative later.

Wednesday’s fleeting triumph helped secure their noble defeat. Senators who’d planned to object to the election, reversed themselves quickly, and President-Elect Biden was certified just hours after the insurgency ended. The administration immediately pledged “an orderly transition.” The attackers got what they wanted: history will soon forget the elected officials. Going forward, the shared public narrative will be about the angry, pulsing mob of ordinary people, who temporarily brought the American government to its knees.