Was the Confederacy a right-wing institution?

Taken from this thread.

Basically, one poster was commenting on how banning meat was something that an extreme left-wing US government may seek to do. The comment is thoroughly silly, I commented on how right-wingers went to war to protect slavery, and might they go to war again to protect hamburgers?

This has provoked a mini-debate, in which Scumpup, XT, and perhaps WillFarnaby took some degree of umbrage at the association of the Confederacy with being right-wing. It’s unclear from their comments as to whether they have a substantive objection (“Nuh-uuh! They were all DemocRATs!!!”) or a procedural one (“I agree with you, but you haven’t proven your assertion with cites and so forth, so I object!!!”).

Mind you, I didn’t say the Confederacy was Republican, or Tea Party, or Trumpist, or Christian Conservatives, or whatever. I said it was right-wing. To me, this seems patently obvious, as I said, just like how it is obvious that water is damp.

So have I lost my marbles? Does anyone actually dispute this? What’s the counter-case?

One thing to add because the truth always has a hard time catching up, the fake ‘meat banning’ point is coming from the right wing.

Carry on…

It wouldn’t have been described as such at the time (“The people of English-speaking countries did not apply the terms “right” and “left” to their own politics until the 20th century”). But the description of “right-wing politics” that I read in the Wikipedia article seems to me to fit the Confederacy fairly well.

Economically, the Confederacy seems closer to Nazi Germany than Soviet Russia, so… yes, right wing by 20th- and 21st-century standards, for what that’s worth.

Generally, right wing is considered to be synonymous with conservative, and conservatives tend to advocate maintaining the status quo. So since the Confederacy wished to maintain slavery as the status quo, yes they were right wing. Possibly, some people may be interpreting your statement as asserting that support for slavery was a fundamental value of all American conservatives in 1861? That much would be disputable. I’d speculate that most northern industrialists and the leadership of the Union army were conservative on non-slavery issues.

Well, since the “fake meat banning point” is coming from me, and I don’t read right-wing American commentary, you’re wrong. It’s a talking point that comes up in the UK every couple of months or so. The most recent time I recall it was a vegan protest at a turkey farm before Christmas.

Can we please drop this for this thread? If you really care that much about it start a new thread.

I think there is a fundamental problem with trying to exactly match the 21st Century American “left” and “right” political spectrum to political movements in the past and/or different parts of the world. As it’s current incarnation is a recent American invention. Specifically in the 19th century the spectrum in the Americas (both US and Latin America) generally was much more strong central federal government vs weak decentralized government.

I know of no coherent political philosophy that actually advocates “Don’t change anything!” Certainly not conservatives, and most certainly not right-wingers. I really thought people were disabused of this idea of “conservatives = conserve the status quo.” The reality is that conservatives as much as any political orientation want to change things in certain ways, such as for example, lowering taxes, shrinking government, etc.

But even by that measure, very surely the Confederacy sought to further empower states’ rights, lower taxes, and much more.

Well, it’s exclusively modern conservatives who glorify the Confederacy. You’d kind of think that we’d be past that by now… but, well, we’re not.

Libertarians have the same tendency, too… boggles my mind how “non-coercion” principles could possibly apply to a libertarian’s view of the Confederacy, but I cannot explain much of libertarian dogma.

What part of ‘Carry on’ you missed? In any case the hypothetical was about banning meat in the USA in the context of the Green New Deal, that banning of meat was not there in the proposal. Also, I was not referring to you at all, but to what the right in the USA is doing right now.

Just for the record, since I was dragged into this even if I’m only peripherally engaged in the debate in the other thread, my own point is that calling the Confederacy ‘right wing’ is on par with calling the various Communist/Socialist cluster fucks in history ‘left wing’ or ‘leftist’, and that I thought the point WillFarnaby was making wrt starvation being a left wing tool was in reference to that. I’m still convinced it is, unless he wants to come forth and tell me I’m reading it wrong. The point, however, is to basically use an example of something horrific that will paint the other side in a bad light. It’s why Nazi Germany and Hitler are often used…or Stalin or Mao.

I don’t think that the Confederacy really fits into a modern left/right wing…just as the fact that the South was mainly Democrat until only 40 or 50 years ago…so I don’t think it’s a perfect analogy. But then I’m sure there are 'dopers getting ready to argue the no-true-Scotsman about Communist or Socialist not really being like modern ‘left wing’ or progressive parties, so it’s all about gores and oxes IMHO. Personally, I think both Left and Right have some fairly horrific history, and I’m not seriously miffed about calling the Confederacy a ‘right wing’ organization. They were certainly nationalistic and reactionary, which I think sort of works. But it wasn’t my point to argue one way or the other about this, just giving my thoughts as you dragged me in and grouped me with others who might be arguing against it.

“Right wing” has no precise match to the politics of the antebellum USA. If either side was right wing, it was the Confederacy; the primary issue was slavery, and the expansion of civil rights is generally a left wing cause, while the imposition of discipline and avoidance of progress is generally a right wing position. Originally, right wing derives from the position of aristocrats in France; the Southern cause was certainly more aristocratic than the Northern cause.

That’s a really rough application of those terms though.

I don’t think it’s rough at all. The 18th-century left wing wanted to expand rights to an underclass that had fewer rights, by nature of birth, than the more privileged. The right wing advocated the then-current, intensely hierarchical system in which a few wealthy folks at the top ruled over vast swaths of land worked by an unwilling and resentful underclass.

Those were pretty much the defining characteristics of the left and right wings, historically speaking. And the Confederacy was 100% in the tradition of the European right wing.

If the point is that they didn’t call themselves the right wing, okay. But the Confederacy was more in keeping with the term’s original meaning than Jerry Falwell is.

As to this–it should be uncontroversial that Stalin was a left-wing tyrant and murderer, as was Mao, as was Lenin, as was Robespierre. And Hitler and Mussolini and Pinochet were right-wing tyrants and murderers.

There’s nothing in being leftist that automatically makes you a good person.

Well if we look at right and left wing as Communist and right wing as government in the service of capitalism, I think given that the strongest pro-slavery proponents were rich plantation owners who feared the federal government coming for their “property” I think that the confederacy certainly seems more right-wing than left-wing.

There are three different ways to address this question, I think:

  1. Was the Confederacy right-wing, as the term was understood at the time? I think I’ve made the case that it was.
  2. Was the Confederacy right-wing, as the term is understood today? I mean, today the term basically means, “Does whatever Trump wants,” so that’s hard to explain; but if you can come up with a coherent and simple definition for today’s right-wing that is applicable to any entity before the year 1900, we can talk.
  3. Was the Confederacy commonly called right-wing at the time? I think the answer to that is “no,” assuming folks are right that the term wasn’t used in the English-speaking world much before 1900.

There may be other questions people mean by the OP’s title; but if folks are arguing while using different interpretations of the question, it’s gonna be confusing :).

Right wing and left wing are subjective terms whose meanings have shifted over time and continue to shift. They don’t make sense when speaking of 19th century American politics. In the 19th century, left and right generally referred to commoners vs aristocrats respectively. As such, it is probably more accurate to analogize the south as the left since they represented a reaction against a better funded, wealthier and more powerful north, but again, it’s an imperfect analogy.

Not at all. The powerful slavers repeatedly analogized themselves to Camelot, saw themselves as a benevolent aristocracy. Union leaders like Sherman were disgusted at the Confederacy’s mythologizing of themselves in this respect, and sought to show the slavers how inaccurate their self-perception was.

In Europe, the aristocracy were done in by the merchant class. The wealthy northerners were much closer to those merchant guilds than they were to nobility.

XT has it about right.

What confused me is how you,Ravenman,came back implying Lincoln was a lefty. He was an elitist railroad lawyer, nationalist, and white supremacist and supporter of Illinois Black Codes. There are different flavors of right wing. You have Hamiltonian - Henry Clay right wing repped by Lincoln and you have Southern traditionalist (I.e. slaver) right wing repped by CSA. Both were involved with the maintenance of a certain order. Even Lincoln wanted to continue slavery (Corwin amendment) in order to maintain the order. Ultimately, he went to war to preserve the order.