Identity Dixie and the Expanded Grievance Infrastructures of the Lost Cause
摘要
This chapter consists of an in-depth case study of Identity Dixie, a Southern nationalist organization that cares deeply about the core concerns of the Lost Cause but also typifies a new departure from the old orthodoxy. One of this book’s core arguments is that groups originally animated by the Lost Cause can expand their grievance infrastructures, responding to the shifting tides of inclusion in modernity with the same sense of victimhood that originally animated them. I collected, read, and qualitatively analyzed five years of Identity Dixie’s blog posts—in total, 1839 of them. I found that, without losing sight of the animating grievances of the Lost Cause and Southern nationalism, the writers perceive that an expansive set of traditionally marginalized communities that have become politicized over the last century-plus are also victimizing them. Identity Dixie represents versions of the core features of the Lost Cause—victimhood, Christianity, and ethnonationalism—and the writers sense that progress for ethnonational others and minorities of all stripes threatens their traditional hegemony.