Marchers at the Charlottesville rally paraded around with Confederate flags and Nazi flags. In a chilling NBC News interview, a rabbi described how the marchers reminded him of Nazi marches under Hitler.
Nazism lost, as did the Confederacy. Why do people who see themselves as strong and proud cling to the symbols of these lost causes?
Lost Cause of Nazism
Just a few months ago, my father-in-law and I visited a local coin dealer. My father-in-law was trying to get some old coins valued. The coin dealer told us that coins and other symbols from the Nazi era were among the most valuable.
It is not just in the United States where people are fascinated, in an unhealthy way, with Nazism. From South Africa to Asia, in the last 12 months alone there have been reports of Nazi …show more content…
This was true in the days of Nazism, the Ku Klux Clan, and the US Civil War.
Academics would rightly argue that slavery was an important --if not the essential -- factor in the Civil War. Many in the Confederacy saw the outlawing of slavery as an attack on the “Southern way of life.”
Even though blacks continued to suffer severe discrimination after the Civil War, they were no longer legally property. A few blacks were able to be educated and prosper. The civil rights struggle and Barack Obama’s election as president challenged many long-held views of white supremacy.
Nostalgia for the lost cause of the Confederacy is one way in which white supremacists can think of the golden days when they ruled the roost. Today, these racists are under threat from all sides. For example, immigrants were found to be more educated than Americans in 26 states.
Donald Trump and the racists around him in the White House and Congress will hopefully be one last gasp of the lost causes of Nazism and