{"id":1926,"date":"2019-02-28T10:53:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T18:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2019-02-28T16:43:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T00:43:39","slug":"hbos-confederate-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/hbos-confederate-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"HBO\u2019s Confederate Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my post about <\/a>Green Book<\/a><\/em>, I outlined how I thought mainstream Hollywood, as represented by the Academy Award voters, is often content to congratulate itself for its liberalism on racial issues rather than move the discussion forward. Another sign that Hollywood still has much to learn is that the two very talented but very white guys behind Game of Thrones<\/em> are developing a new project for HBO called Confederate<\/em>, an alternate-history series in which the Confederacy survives the Civil War and lasts into the Civil Rights era with slavery still intact. Personally, I hope that Benioff and Weiss have so much fun making their Star Wars<\/em> film trilogy that they forget to circle back to this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Some people, many of the same people who were dismayed by Green Book<\/em>\u2019s Best Picture Win, are equally dismayed by the announcement of Confederate<\/em>, worried that the premise alone might give the alt-right a collective erection. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the biggest problem with the project, as I doubt there\u2019s much worry that Benioff and Weiss, would come down on the \u201cslavery wasn\u2019t so bad after all\u201d side of the debate. I\u2019m confident that, had they been enthusiastic at first, Breitbart\u2019s reader base would be bitterly disappointed in the finished product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am worried that, because television tends to soften the\nharsher edges of reality, even on a mostly uncensored outlet like HBO, there\u2019s\na risk that softening the portrayal of slavery in Confederate<\/em>\nfor mass audiences might accidentally play into the Fox News narrative that\nslavery wasn\u2019t as bad as people say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My primary objection to Confederate<\/em> has\nnothing to do with the racial makeup of its production team or the possible\nreaction of Rep. Steve King\u2019s constituency. \nMy problem is that the premise itself is uninteresting because it\u2019s\ncompletely ludicrous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you allow for the possibility that the Civil War\nended with the Confederate States of America still intact, the idea that it would\nsurvive the nineteenth century, much less into the 1960s, is laughable.\nAllowing the possibility that the war ends before a huge swath of the South\u2019s\nyoung white male population were either killed or maimed, there are still\neconomic and political realities that would have doomed the Confederacy to be a\nfailed state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath of Confederate<\/em>\u2019s\nalternate Civil War, the value of Southern cotton, already depressed by war,\nwould fall like a stone as the twentieth century approaches and international\nrevulsion at slavery escalated. Southern planters would find their crops\nunsellable at any price, unless they went through middlemen who would mask the\norigin of the cotton while taking a large cut for the service. With the British\nEmpire, which abolished slavery in the 1830s, and France, which abolished\nslavery multiple times, as their largest former customers, the South would have\nto sell to smaller, less lucrative markets, which would get increasingly less\nlucrative as other sources of \u201cslave-free\u201d cotton came on the market. In short,\n\u201cslave cotton\u201d would become the blood diamond of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more fatal to the chances for long-term survival was\nthe basic flaw at the heart of the Confederacy (other than slavery). The\nConfederate States of America became a thing because several American states\ndecided they were free to leave the Union if they didn\u2019t like the policies\ncoming out of the central government. Without the war to unify them against the\ndevil that was Abe Lincoln, that attitude toward central government would\nquickly transfer itself to Richmond and Jefferson Davis. This isn\u2019t\nspeculation, either, as some Southern states did threaten to secede from the\nConfederacy during the war over some of Davis\u2019 policies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A nation founded on this principle would be completely ungovernable.\nEventually, without the war to unite them, one faction would openly rebel at\npolicies coming from the Confederate capitol, and the Confederacy would\nexperience its own paroxysm of secession and civil war. I believe the result would\nbe the former Confederate states limping one-by-one back into the Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another possible outcome might make more for a far more\ninteresting story than the one Benioff and Weiss are working on. What if the\nConfederacy still existed, but was governed by the descendants of slaves freed\nin a mass uprising?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll elaborate, if you\u2019ll indulge me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the South might awaken to the reality that\ntheir slave-based economy was unsustainable. They almost reached that decision\nonce before Eli Whitney made slavery profitable again. Pushed to the breaking\npoint, the powers-that-be in the South might conclude that freeing the slaves\nwas the only way to economically save the Confederacy. Others would certainly be\nhorrified at the very thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the South announced that they were ending slavery, that\nmight provoke the open rebellion, secession, and civil war I mentioned, but it\nmight also inspire something even more terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three specific racist beliefs sustained slavery in the\nSouth. One was the belief that they had the God-given right to hold other human\nbeings in bondage. The second was that the human beings they held in bondage\nweren\u2019t human. The third belief was that, even if the whites didn\u2019t have the\nright to hold slaves, even if the slaves were just as human as any white person,\nonce freed the former slaves would turn around and slaughter every white man,\nwoman, and child in the South. Even then, conservative whites were fond of\nprojecting their darkest fantasies onto the objects of those fantasies, and\nthis projection could spark a bloody response from some Southern whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Militias very much like the Klan might form for the\nexpress purpose of massacring slaves before they could be freed. This violence,\ncombined with the government\u2019s reaction, could throw the white South into civil\nwar at the same time the enslaved black population realized that their own\nsurvival was at stake even more than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if the white Confederate government collapsed just as\nthe slaves rose up as one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The implications are certainly interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n