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Contrary to what many seem to believe, it just may be that Donald Trump is not so much the man who personifies what is Faustian, but in the first place the resurgence of the old American South, the Confederacy. Trump’s fight to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again can be interpreted as symbolic for an act of revenge by the Confederacy against the North. A long overdue revenge for the hardship imposed on the South by a victorious North in 1865.
Although Trump is from the North, as are his American-born ancestors, he has a predilection for marriage partners from places with a strong and deeply rooted historical consciousness. This is in itself quite significant since, to say the least, historical consciousness is less pronounced in the North than in the rest of the Americas, Europe and the rest of the world. Moreover, Trump lives in the South, surrounded by people hailing from Latin America. He even appointed one of them to Secretary of State, the first Latino ever in that position.
In other words, there are strong indications that Trump has closer ties—certainly on a cultural and intellectual level—with the South than any president since 1865, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, Yet like most presidents, he surrounded himself with Northerners. Although Bush I and Bush II were seemingly Texans, they were in fact no more than transplanted Northerners.
The South is the only part of the United States with a quintessential European feel. This is because it has lost a war, during which it suffered widespread destruction, followed by a foreign occupation. Indeed, at some point in their history, often still vividly present in collective memory, most European nations have had similar experiences. This shared fundamental historical experience makes that Europeans tend to feel very much at home in what once was the Confederacy.
That part of the modern US has also proven surprisingly impervious to various influences emanating from the Northeast, which has been the cultural center of the US since the second half of the 19th century. If there was any competition in the cultural field, it tended to come from the West Coast, such as in the case of the movie industry. Additionally, there were also contributions from the Great Lakes (Chicago), but not from the South.
Since essentially, the major American contribution to world culture has been in the field of (popular) music, dwarfing any and all of its contributions in other fields such as literature, fine arts, architecture, cinema and so on.
Few people pause to reflect on the fact that modern music in the US and the US empire such as it took shape from 1898 onward, was essentially Southern, or Confederate, if you will. In the 1910s, Jazz and Dixieland took the world by storm, followed by Swing and since the 1950s by Rock and Roll, while Country and Western and Appalachian music also gained great numbers of enthusiasts worldwide. Thus, for more than a century the world has come to embrace music styles from the Southern US. It is crucial to understand that these various music styles were essentially multi-ethnic, in the sense that they emerged from a musical landscape where whites, blacks, native Americans and all the various race mixtures learned and borrowed from each other. It is not an exaggeration to state that American musical styles have been the mainstay of the US “soft power” for more than a century now.
When the South seceded in 1861 it was, on account of its population of nine million in the top ten of European and European successor states. Russia was number one (75 million), while the remainder of the US shared the fifth position with Italy, since both had about 20 million people. Although some 40% of the Confederate population were slaves, it is undeniable that, like in other typical American slave societies such as Cuba, Brazil, Santo Domingo, Haiti and Venezuela, miscegenation was widespread. Actually, in all of Latin America miscegenation was the norm, to the point that until the 1880s even in Buenos Aires, most elite families racially mixed. Whitening there only began with the advent of millions of white European and Levantine settlers.
Actually, regarding the physical aspect of its people, the Confederacy had more in common with the racially mixed and intricately layered societies (according to racial criteria) in Latin America. Of course, like in Latin America and everywhere else, racism was part of life. Yet it was not of the rigid kind so often found in the 20th century, or of the kind hiding behind apparent anti-racism. Racism in multi-ethnic societies is more general and less ideologically rigid, for the simple reason that race mixture in multiracial societies tends to be rather common.
Therefore, the War Between the States, commonly known as “Civil War,” was also a cultural war between a multi-ethnic country and a mostly white, extended sort of “New England,” or “New Britain.”
It may also be useful to bear in mind that before 1865 the Southern states boasted a highly sophisticated literary and intellectual culture, which was at least as refined, if not more so, than much that could be found in the North. This is what Vernon L. Parrington demonstrated with his solidly researched and elegantly argued classic Main Currents of American Thought (1927).
This is another important characteristic shared with Latin America where at the same time as in Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans, cultural life in Caracas, Santiago de Chile and Bogota was at least as sophisticated.
Essentially therefore, apart of course from the language, the Confederacy had more in common with what is now known as Latin America (a term invented by a courtier of French Emperor Napoleon III) than with the Northern US.
According to this logic, the subjection and absorption of the Confederacy after its defeat in 1865 was only a first step in a continental expansion of Northern culture and values, which essentially is unmitigated Anglo-Saxon culture with the historical frame of reference left out (because it was to be decidedly not connected with the British Isles, but “American”). The conquest of the South was followed by the Caribbean and Central America, Northern South America, and the rest of the continent till today.
Currently, as evidenced by the electoral success and policies of President Javier Milei, even Argentina now seems to wish to be part of the US empire.
Besides reconnecting with the history and traditions of the old Confederacy, Trump also seems to tie in to a now often forgotten element of the Northern US cultural frame of reference, namely the Frontier. Before the end of the 19th century, the US, now under Northern cultural dominance, reached a crucial psychological milestone, when the Frontier, regarded as the very essence of American (Northern) culture and Weltanschauung, ceased to exist. It was historian Frederick Jackson Turner who in 1893 pointed this out in a speech to the American Historical Association.
Now that the dividing line between civilization and barbarism had vanished, where was the US to direct its energies? In other words, in accordance with its Faustian spirit, the US needed the Frontier and now had to find something else to replace it. Central America and Cuba (as well as other Spanish colonial possessions such as the Philippines) seemed quite attractive as the new frontier. Without further ado America (actually the North, at least it was the North that dominated the US) gave its traditional frontier a more modern colonial meaning, joining the select group of traditional European colonial powers.
Originally American traditions have since been obscured by a new Northeastern intellectual elite that has come to dominate education, academia, civil service, politics and big business. Its most distinguishable feature is a paternalistic, condescending kind of racism hiding behind a screen of political correctness and human kindness. In other words, ordinary racism dressed in apparently anti-racist terminology and phrases.
The North today is evidently not what it was immediately after the War Between the States. In the course of the 20th century the North, centered around New York City, has opened its doors to huddled masses that included so many Jewish settlers from Eastern Europe that after three generations their descendants have managed to gain the upper hand in all areas of human endeavor, constituting a new American elite.
As a result of a significant change brought about by mass immigration, the US brand of colonialism soon began to operate under radically different criteria, that were quite unlike those of the traditional European colonial powers.
If anything distinguishes this new American elite and its world view, it is a more pernicious and sinister kind of racism, or rather ethnic exclusivism, hiding behind a smoke screen of allegedly humanist and beneficial values. Actually, it is just misanthropy disguised as philanthropy, finding its supreme expression in outfits such as the ACLU and ADL. The vacuity of its false anti-racist and anti-discrimination discourse and the tenacity of its underlying racism has recently been uncovered by Matt Walsh (Am I a Racist?). To the extent it has become a kind of official, state-sponsored ideology, especially under the Obama and Biden administrations, it is also that of the Deep State. Thus it could become a kind of Holy Trinity of Lunacy, composed of Woke, LGBTQ and the belief in anthropogenic climate change.
Since he returned to power, Trump has been begun carrying out three important actions. In the first place he is bringing the Confederacy, its culture and its values back into the US mainstream. Secondly, he has reinstated the frontier as a fundamental American value, by focusing not so much on consolidating and extending the US empire, as on defining or reinstating the space frontier. Thirdly, and this may be the most important action in the long term, Trump is trying to reconcile the US with its own history and in doing so, making it like all the other nations in the world, where history is an essential element of culture.
If only for this, the US deserves a warm welcome!
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Of course, those Southern Presidents (surrounded by Northerners) also include Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Unfortunately, I suspect that you are projecting onto Trump that which you wish he would be representing.
As we can tell quite clearly from his cabinet picks, his daily ‘no more wars’ military threats, his crypto/tariffs/market manipulation and insider trading, that he is solely owned by and in hock to the ruling elite aka the deep state.
But no worries, as the world is but a stage and the show must go on.
If the Confederacy is back, what happened to all our statues and monuments? Trump has merely paused Reconstruction 2.0.
Americans are very ahistorical and most know or care very little about it whether it’s their own or that of America or elsewhere in the world. They’re into the here and now, engaging in celebrity watching, sports addiction, popular culture and believe most of what the lying MSM feed them. They’re deracinated and unmoored. TPTB like an ignorant, malleable population and prefer to keep it that way. Just do your job and leave the thinking to us. Trump has done a magnificent job by demolishing these rat nests like USAID, NED, checking into the goings on of all the various NGOs, all of which were stealthily engaged in subverting traditional cultures all around the world as well as domestically. He doesn’t have much time. Previous governments like Biden flooded the country with millions of culturally alien migrants. One out of three residents of the US are black-brown who are a cultural dead weight and contribute nothing to science, medicine, literature or anything at a higher mental level. The South may have lost the Civil War but since then have been overrepresented in the US military, ending up being cannon fodder and spear carriers for the North operating out of Washington DC. That’s ironic.
Please don’t conflate the Confederacy with the South. Many people, then and now, love their country while detesting the government that occupies it. And if you’re going to talk about the Confederacy you should at least display a national flag and not an Army of Tennessee battle flag.
Yes I knew that, and it just serves to prove my point that the South was profoundly traumatized and subverted by the War Between the States and its aftermath.
Fuck this moronic shit
This writer, I think, is very young. That is, besides not knowing much about culture or history.
Hollywood, anyone?
This is the dumbest post . Trump is a NYC big money no taxes fraud deal con man who will hire blacks Mexicans Americans Indians whoever and cater to tribals whites racial instincts and savagery for popularity and votes.
You guys are all being had by a trashy NY real Estate shark . He is a Jew adjacent Protestant Northern European venal corrupt autocrat .
That’s the flag 99% of people living today think is the national flag (or the only flag).
How many Southerners are in Trump’s cabinet other that “openly gay” Scott Bessent? Rubio, Walz and Bondi don’t count, most Southerners don’t consider Florida part of the South.
Many, most (?) statues of Confederate leaders/heroes/figures have been torn down, the Confederate flag cannot be displayed anywhere, so how is the Confederacy making a comeback? What am I missing…?
You lost me at the whole miscegenation was common thing; it was NOT common among the White folk! Indians and Africans, yes. South Americans and africans, yes. White, Southern founding stock absolutely not. It was and still is avoided by and greatly frowned upon by our people, as it should be.
Plus, sorry, but the Donald aint no Southron, nor does he even embrace our values or culture – just look at the jews and damnyankees he listens to and appoints.
We are, as always, on our own.
Deo Vindice
Well, those honorable Southern young men who are over-represented in the military should say NO to Americans wars for ISRAEL. But these folks (I’d like to to use a more pejorative term, but I won’t) won’t ever do that. If they (Southerns especially), if they were more connected to their Southern roots, they would reject all the wars we’ve been having since I became of age in 1980. But they have this Christo-Zionist thing going on down there – and many other places as well. I just think they is no splaining to do with them.
Eloquent, concise. Also profoundly willfully ignorant.
Except for Woodrow Wilson, who was born in Virginia and grew up in Georgia and South Carolina during the bloody horror show we call the Civil War. He was eight years old when the rebel regime fled Richmond. He lived in the ruins of the burnt-out capital of South Carolina, Columbia, where his father served as a minister in the Reconstruction era. This might explain why he was so taken with the falsified history of the film Birth of a Nation, and fired all black federal employees soon after winning the presidency.
It also explains why he was the first chief executive to violate the USA’s traditional policy of not taking sides in Europe’s endless petty power struggles. Lost in the moonlight-and-magnolias version of southern history is that its slave barons were as fiercely expansionist as they were contemptuous of what we call popular democracy. Radical southern theorists repeatedly boasted of using the nation’s military might to extend the slave system by conquest into Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, with the Stars and Stripes to fly over a republic of suffering from the Mason Dixon Line to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. That the American electorate had no interest in this mad scheme is one of the now forgotten main causes of the War for the Union.
Make America little again!
LOL
A NY Yankee owned by jews is doing what for the south?
Charleston, Savannah & New Orleans have nothing in common with Raleigh, Mr Vogel. Raleigh’s a mini-Atlanta, teeming with Yankee & Cali transplants.
– very true (and interesting) – but your list stops with rock and roll – and that’s a long time ago. Much more recently, hip hop/rap is the new world music – and that is usually taken to be northern US urban art form – though, in fact it was a Caribbean import taken by Caribbean migrants to those cities. and then taken up by locals.
I think I saw a vid here of an African migrant in Paris stopping traffic in order to create a stage for his ill-performed hip hop ditty. World music.
The Orange One is very much into fisting and believes that is called “Faustian”, is all.
Man, what have you been smoking . He is a prime arrogant and boarish example of self important New York City Yankees. Those scum have come down to the south and attacked every southern tradition or belief or our historical monuments to meet their version of history and proper behavior. Have you actually watched what he and his merry team of Zionist, neo cons and deep staters have actually been doing or not doing not just listening to the MIGA MESSIAH pontificate on just how GREAT he is?
His FBI savior Patel just put the J6 Deep state witch hunt leader in charge of the DC bureau.
What happened to the president for peace?
Jesus, there are no words I can use in a public forum for how total bullshit this article is.
Rap Music isn’t the “new world music” where do you people get this stuff from?
Rap music is absolute garbage.
that is to compensate for his tiny hands.
This is the sort of nonsense that we’ve been hearing from progressives since 2000 when Republicans won all the South and Democrats won all the Northeast, or maybe since 1964, the first time the Deep South broke its 100 years of voting Democrat. Of course, it’s nonsense. Trump shows that Republicans can win in the old industrial states of the “rust belt” and even have some strength in New York. His administration isn’t as Southern-driven as the younger Bush’s was and it’s not all driven by Confederate thinking. It’s those “rust belt” states of the Great Lakes region and the idea of an industrial America that influence current policy, not the Confederacies free trade agrarianism. It’s foolish to think that Trump is more “Southern” than Johnson, or Truman, or Wilson, or even Clinton.
You’re really reaching.
WTF???
It’s Jews, stupid.
That’s it.
Northeastern?
What kind of stupid cover is that.
This has NOTHING to do with North v South.
The bastards RULE all.
State it plain, from word One.
I repeat…
It’s Jews, stupid.
If only you were right.
In point of fact, it’s not music at all; but go ahead and do a search of number one songs per year from 1950 until now.
It is the New world music, because all of the music production companies, producers and promoters have something in common but I just can’t quite put my finger on the nose of it.
It’s all Frankfurt School trash specifically designed and promoted to denigrate the cultures it is inflicted on like a bio weapon.
A lot of you guys seem to be very negative, the author of the article is at least looking for reasons to find strength in white identity and history.
He is indeed, however we are not going to get that strength from the halls of power, anywhere.
This article is utter nonsense. Donald Trump is a cipher, a blank slate on which the universalist-egalitarian Zionist forces of financial capitalism may write whatever they want. Yes, Trump has a base which consists, in part, of the ruins of the Confederacy— and not only of the Confederacy, but of those elements of the Union which, when they recognized that Emancipation would be the historical purpose of the War of Northern Aggression, withdrew from the Union cause. But like all modern politicians, Donald Trump is hopelessly embroiled in the cynical game of entrapping his base in the war on extremism.
If you want to read the words of a true Confederate, read the Banner of the South by Fr. Abram Joseph Ryan: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn85034229/. That newspaper flourished for only three years before being censored by the Catholic hierarchy of its day. Generations before Fr. Coughlin, the United States and its Catholic hierarchy could not stomach a genuine Catholic-Christian Confederate publication.
If you want to read the words of a true Confederate…. but you do not, Hans Vogel. You are, rather, as I suspect part of that trans-national army of shills whose lightly edited and carelessly crafted pieces aim only to catch out extremists. I infer this partly on the basis of your strange histories and partly on the basis of the fact that your PhD was completed in Florida, that hotbed of convicted felons and intelligence operatives (not that we need to distinguish too sharply between them!).