Believing in Dixie Identity

For several reasons, last week I spoke to a woman in a small town (pop. 14K) in Northern Alabama to learn more about the local community. The Catholic church there is almost 90% Hispanic with most of the neighboring Catholic churches having a similar demographic. The remaining 10% Anglos are all old. The woman said the Baptist church had “gone woke” too and people were drifting away from services but with hardly anyone replacing them. 

“Where are all the kids?” Turns out, the school district’s effort to teach tech skills and promote a college track for the last decade has been “successful.” All the White kids are leaving their small hometown with Latinos and the soon-to-be-retired urbanites and out-of-staters moving in. 

This normie center-right woman said that the good old boy network was “finally” dying off, too. The local family-owned grocery store with three locations had successfully fought off chain stores coming in but was finally losing the battle as the dastardly good ol’ boys’ influence was dying away, along with the church goers. But, she said, “Our future growth is going to be dependent on embracing the New South.” Apparently, this means keeping the BBQ and twang, but little else. 

Sure enough, on the town’s website the usual sterile nonsense language confirmed that they look forward to the future, one with more economic opportunity, attracting outside business investment, and a welcoming attitude for all newcomers…while of course respecting the past, y’all.

Recent trips to Nashville and Huntsville highlighted the fatal shift from authentically Southern to “Southern schtick.”  Just beneath this gross veneer is a thoroughly modern creature, one that exchanged its soul in return for a prosperity that demands acceptance of corporate America’s rules and sensibilities. These traitorous urban centers set the tone for the smaller satellite towns surrounding them: become a bedroom community or perish and be ridiculed. Upsetting flags, scary monuments, days of remembrance, and good old boy networks simply are no longer compatible. 

In a recent interview with Martin O’ Toole of the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans concerning the future of National Confederate Memorial Day and the preservation of Southern heritage in general, he candidly stated that fewer and fewer are turning out mostly because it just seems irrelevant and unimportant. You should read his remarks.  

Much of the South has lost the unifying narrative of what it means to be from a place with a history and purpose. Will the South, like other regions around the world, simply be absorbed by the global urban commercial monoculture? 

It seems overwhelming and unstoppable. But the truth is, the South can be saved.  

Don’t you dare give up and let the sun go down on Dixie.

The War of Art

Burying history and a people’s attachments to their ancestors is a well understood and essential part of the process of conquest. On day one, after the defeat of any native population, the task becomes to destroy their remembered past. The Ancient World did it, America does it, authoritarian regimes do it. 

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, local dialects, songs, street names, and religious celebrations were changed or banned. Even converting to the loathsome metric system was part of the purging of the past. 

The German and Soviet occupation of Poland outlawed specific plays, the stirring novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, and the music of Chopin, labeling them all as subversive and capable of stirring the passions of the unruly Poles. They were right: these things flourished in the underground and were key to the identity of resistance. 

The erasure of Dixie’s past is, of course, well documented and approaching the final phase. 

But marching in the streets, flag drops on overpasses, and edgy memes are fleeting and move the dial not at all. The proof that this is not the winning strategy is to simply visit your large and increasingly small Southern towns and honestly look at the institutional scale of the forces that shape and enforce the daily lived culture. This infrastructure is not only impervious to activism, but skillfully turns these outbursts against us. 

The key to understanding what to do is to again understand why conquerors suppress and revise the arts, storytelling, and myth making. Art as warfare to further our cause and damage our enemies’ cause is the most effective weapon any arsenal can have.   

Like a centuries-long power cord, this connection to the past via story, art, music, and heroic exploits, is needed to electrify the present. People don’t show up for Confederate Memorial Day because we’ve lost the plot.

Calling the Story Tellers

We don’t need any more revenge fantasy novels like the Turner Diaries. That shelf is full. 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn single handedly lit the fuse that destroyed the gulag system and shattered the Soviet Union’s propaganda in the West with two books. The first was his short novel published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about a single day of an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labor camp. The second book was, The Gulag Archipelago, published in 1973 but with parts of it circulating in the Soviet underground in the late 1960s. These books did more to awaken both the world and the people behind the Iron Curtain to the murderous reality of the Soviet Union than any political effort.  

I remember growing up in Texas and how powerful the Alamo story was. It still is. It was reinforced with books, movies, and day-to-day cultural references. Crockett, Bowie, and Sam Houston were larger than life heroes and, even today, I have a protective affection for these men made larger than life and with the immortal significance created around them.  

There are a hundred other Alamo stories about the South waiting to be told to fire the imagination of young and old alike, both fiction and nonfiction. You will do more lasting good to rescue the past and change the future by authoring a series of books for kids that tell these stories than almost anything else you can do.  

Where is Dixie’s Soltshentisyn, J.K. Rowling, and Dr. Seuss? Where are our contemporary storytellers?

Calling the Independent Filmmakers

For under $15,000 you can get two perfectly acceptable 4K cameras, lenses, microphones, and lights. For free, you can use professional software to edit a movie in your bedroom at a quality level that surpasses what was possible twenty years ago. 

While documentaries are important, it is the power of story on screen that can’t be matched. It is why the enemy captured this high ground. Understanding how to craft a professional script is not complicated. I’ve worked with several A-list writers, and this is as good a place to begin as any. 

There are good Civil War movies already out there, and doubtless more that could be made. But let’s also create stories that will inspire us about life in the South today. While big budgets aren’t necessary to make a good independent movie, The Chosen series proves that crowd funding is a very real path forward for the right project. 

Where is Dixie’s Braveheart, Rocky, and Hotel Rwanda? For that matter, why not a Dixie-loyal Anchorman or Pulp Fiction?

Calling the Musicians

This is the one art that is mostly holding the line. The concern here is that much of the contemporary rock and country music is either a cartoonish portrayal of the South or edgy and therefore inaccessible for normal people.  

I’ve written before about the unique influence Ronnie Van Zant’s Lynyrd Skynyrd has had on Southern identity. This was possible because nothing was affected. 

Support those who are unflinchingly making honest music about the South. Likewise, you need to show up and support the bluegrass, fiddle, and clogging festivals.

Calling the Artists

Reflect for a moment on the iconic popular art of Americana and the Empire at war. Norman Rockwell, Washington Crossing the Delaware, even the Iraq War generation art, with the Punisher skulls and the U.S. flag in moody lighting, all of it by design is emotionally evocative. 

We need to go beyond Bible quote art in the home. If not you, there are many local artists who need to be encouraged not to paint or photograph what they think will appeal to tourists and the spirit of the New South, but what captures the unspoiled landscape, the great moments, the small town, the ethos of place and our deep roots.

Calling You!

Everyone has a story to tell, and the God-given means to express it. No child feels embarrassed to sing, dance, and draw. It was the system and schooling that made you feel self-conscious about your creativity. It’s still in you. Your activism isn’t going to save Dixie. The divine creative spark inside you can. Rekindle it. 

Southern author Walker Percy didn’t publish his first novel until he was 45. It’s not too late. Grab your notepad, paintbrush, or the guitar in the corner. 

Help us to fall in love, to be excited, and inspired. Help us to give a damn again.