Talk:Dixiecrat/Archive 2

It was Far-Left
The Dixiecrat Party was a far-left party, not a far-right one. -2600:1005:B120:B2A6:1536:1EAC:6EC:AB6B (talk) 05:06, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
 * That assertion is so bizarrely divergent from reality that I don't even know how to address it, except by ignoring it. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  17:22, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not your WP:SOAPBOX. We don't appeal to ridicule or opinion here.  Since no source is cited, it should not have a political alignment until such source is provided.107.77.241.39 (talk) 01:28, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it's time to stop casting WP:ASPERSIONS when you clearly don't show much comprehension as to what Far-right politics means... "Historically used to describe the experiences of fascism and Nazism, far-right politics now include neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, racial supremacism, and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of ultranationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or reactionary views." DN (talk) 02:37, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * racial supremacism
 * ultranationalist
 * chauvinist
 * xenophobic
 * theocratic
 * racist
 * reactionary views
 * Yup. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  03:04, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I would have to claim your opinion there orange Mike as merely that. Your opinion. Your leaving it to be assumed. Which goes against the entire point of the Wikipedia. Cite how it's far right, via a .edu page. Or it's simply your opinion, which your abusing your position to push a narrative. Consigiliere (talk) 05:55, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Democrat

Centre to center-right

How are southern Democrats aka Dixiecrats far right?

If a conservative Democrat is Centre to center-right. Then it's a contradiction for this page to show far right. Consigiliere (talk) 06:00, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_Southern_United_States

Again no mention of far right views. Search page via find on page.

You are purposely trying to push a ideal by leaving it as far right, with a temp lock on page. Consigiliere (talk) 06:13, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * "far right" requires a rejection of the status quo which is false for the Dixiecrats. Segregation and white supremacy was a majority position in the South in the 1940s--Truman wanted to change the status quo and the Dixicrats said "no change".  Rjensen (talk) 20:09, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Dixiecrat AKA "States Rights Party" Political Platform
This may or may not already be included in the article, if not then it may hold some WEIGHT for inclusion The American Presidency Project...DN (talk) 23:38, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

KKK was practically defunct in 1940s
The KKK was practically defunct after its collapse in the late 1920s. see Ku Klux Klan Does any historian say the Klan supported the Dixiecrats? In Ihe Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 by Kari A. Frederickson (2001) p 77 there is mention of a small KKK rally of under 200 people in Georgia before the Dixicrats were begun. Rjensen (talk) 22:50, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Sources would be even better as that pertains to Dixiecrats, would you mind, or are they listed in the Dixiecrat article about this or is it not related? I see there are different generations of KKK. Would the Third account for the Dixiecrat time period? Either way I don't see the connection.DN (talk) 01:34, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * To answer your question "Does any historian say the Klan supported the Dixiecrats?", quite simply yes...DN (talk) 01:37, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Do you have at least 2-3 sources that explicitly state that the Klan supported the Dixiecrats? If not, we can't use it, as it provides undue weight for one source. This is just what I was saying earlier. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 04:19, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 2 so far, a PhD and a writer for the SPLC. I want to check the SPLC further to see if they explicitly agree/say that Dixiecrats are considered FR. The main evidence for the Dixiecrats being FR is the anti-civil-rights position and KKK affiliation, IMO. They were literally trying to keep LYNCHINGS legal, not to mention Miscegenation laws. Cheers. DN (talk) 01:28, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Your outrage is duly noted, and likely shared by any decent person. That having been said, I am suggesting that you find sources from wider sources that concur on the points you wish to add. For example, the SPLC is an excellent source, but someone on the Right or a white nationalist is likely going to challenge that source as biased and be able to back it up a bit. Add a source that cites the DOJ, FBI or a news media source, and that source becomes unassailable by anyone, as it is defended by two sources with completely different viewpoints. I hope that helps to make my point more clear. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 15:35, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Some extraordinary claims, to say the least, are being made here. Glen Feldman has written on this very topic in his Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South:
 * p. 276 The union that had only been hinted at in the bolt of 1928 actually occurred in 1948 as Alabama's Big Mule/Black Belt alliance of wealthy planters and industrialists merged with the KKK in the Dixiecrat movement...
 * In the late 1940s a KKK that again terrorized Alabamians for infringements of traditional moral conformity locked arms with a Dixiecrat ally. But the Dixiecrats also featured the Bourbon variety of strident economic conservatism.
 * Fledman also wrote in his Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949:
 * p. 294 Overlap between the KKK and the Dixiecrats, at least in terms of ideology, was considerable. In fact, many Alabamians saw the 1940s Klan as the poor  uneducated instruments of Dixiecrat politicians and their patrician allies.
 * The Alabama Klan stood behind the States' Rights Party in letter and in spirit. Klan leaders regularly boasted that the secret order backed the Dixiecrats "100 per cent." "The Dixiecrat movement is a good thing for the protection of the South," Dr. E. P. Pruitt declared. Like his Dixiecrat allies, Will  Morris often blamed "outside meddlers trying to cram social equality down  our throats" for the South's racial woes... Klan-Dixiecrat collusion stretched to other fronts as well...
 * The Civil Rights Congress in 1952 published We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People
 * Green went on to say that "The Dixiecrats are the only ones who are for white supremacy and against social equality—the same principles the Klan has always fought for." He said he was ordering all Klansmen in the U.S. to work for and vote for Dixiecrat nominee Strom Thurmond in the November 2 election.
 * Jarvis Tyner wrote in "The Real Ronald Reagan":
 * Under his watch the Republicans developed their Southern strategy, an alliance with Dixiecrat racists, including the KKK.
 * Carlstak (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks Jack, I wouldn't call it "outrage", but I appreciate the acknowledgement that this has WEIGHT. DN (talk) 18:29, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * "someone on the Right or a white nationalist is likely going to challenge that source as biased"...Of course they would, but their views are WP:FRINGE and so their sources that say otherwise are also likely fringe. To be sure, the consensus of sources is on the side of the mainstream, that Jim Crow laws and "States rights" are essentially Far Right. DN (talk) 18:38, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * , you last source is quite literally a random communist activist for a random communist website. In what universe is this a reliable opinion? Toa Nidhiki05 19:36, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I had a feeling you would respond this way, quite typical misrepresentation. Of course I knew he was a communist; why do you think I linked to his Wikipedia article? The former Executive Vice Chair of the Communist Party USA is not a "random communist activist" and the People's World website, successor to the Daily Worker is not a "random website". Your belief that his being communist makes him an unreliable source is delusional. Show us where it says that in the WP policy. You can't, because it's not WP policy, nor should it be. Carlstak (talk) 19:57, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, he's quite literally a random communist activist and his party was one of many controlled by Moscow during the Cold War. His opinion isn't notable here - next. Toa Nidhiki05 20:24, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Classic misdirection. He's notable enough to have a WP article. You don't have a leg to stand on, and you don't determine what's a reliable source. Jarvis Tyner is a reliable source by WP policy, but it doesn't matter, because the other sources I gave are certainly reliable as well, and you're ignoring those, of course. Now, out of the alternative Fox News emotional universe, and back to the real world and Rjensen's question, "Does any historian say the Klan supported the Dixiecrats?", I'm pretty sure my hero Stetson Kennedy also wrote about this, but I can't find a source. I might have access to his papers, I will have to see. Carlstak (talk) 20:36, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * By your standard (having an article makes you reliable), Alex Jones is a reliable source. Tyner is not a reliable source. Next. Toa Nidhiki05 21:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * At this point you're just trolling. It's immaterial whether he's a reliable source, because I haven't tried to cite him in the article. Doesn't matter a whit, because the other sources I gave, Feldman and The Civil Rights Congress, are indisputably reliable sources. Rjensen asked a question, I responded, and put these sources out here. Based on what I've read on this page, you don't seem to know much about the subject or the sources. Carlstak (talk) 22:16, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I imagine most Klansmen would have voted for Dixiecrats, but I do not see that it is significant, since the KKK was at that time fairly marginal. The Communist Party today supports the Democrats, but there is no mention of that in the article about the Democrats. You have to show significance. While it might be significant to an article about the KKK, it's not significant to this article. Note that the SPLC article was about the KKK, not the Dixiecrats. Les Payne incidentally did not say that the the Dems were "affiliated" with the KKK. He mentions that Robert Byrd had been a Klansman long before he was elected to Congress, but that's it. TFD (talk) 15:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

It’s not far-right, it’s far left.
The Dixiecrats were far-left, not far-right.-174.199.234.91 (talk) 00:33, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Provide references to reliable sources that support that ludicrous claim. Cullen328 (talk) 01:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't even know if it was far right, except in relation to the U.S. mainstream. Basically they opposed the Democratic Party's attempt to desegregate. But 37 senators would vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including Robert Byrd, Sam Erwin, William Fullbright and Al Gore, Sr. TFD (talk) 01:51, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what a Senate vote 16 years later has to do with this article about a political party in 1948. None of the four senators you mentioned were prominent Dixiecrats. Byrd probably voted for Strom Thurmond but his political career was in its infancy in 1948. The fact of the matter is that the Dixiecrats were the farthest right US political party in 1948. The left wing parties were the Progressive Party with former vice president Henry A. Wallace heading the ticket, the Socialist Party with Norman Thomas heading the ticket and the Socialist Workers Party, with Farrell Dobbs heading the ticket. Again, what reliable sources call the 1948 Dixiecrats far left or left wing? Cullen328 (talk) 02:37, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The relevance of the Senate vote 16 years later is that the Dixiecrats were a single issue party whose single issue continued to be supported by mainstream Southern Democrats at least 16 years later. Political parties generally aren't categorized according to current attitudes, but what they were at the time, otherwise any politician before the 21st century would be far right. Most literature on them do not refer to them as far right.
 * And no, they were not left-wing. Their presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, would later move to the Republican Party, becoming president pro tem of the Senate. While today, no one supports segregation except the far right, at one time it was supported by moderate Democrats in the South. Note that 4 of the 7 members of the Watergate Committee had supported segregation as politicians, but that didn't make it a far right conspiracy. TFD (talk) 03:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC, )
 * How is it “ludicrous?” They split from the Democrat Party. -24.227.34.10 (talk) 04:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * At that time in 1948, the Democrats had many conservative voters in their base, especially in the south. It was not until 1972 that most conservatives left the Democratic Party. It is ludicrous because no reliable sources that I am aware of describe the Dixiecrats as far left. Cullen328 (talk) 06:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I don’t need reliable sources. That’s your job. -24.227.34.10 (talk) 15:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually you do to get an article changed if the content is sourced. Slatersteven (talk) 15:11, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Party flag?
Following from these edits (@EvergreenFir), was the Confederate battle flag the party flag of the States' Rights Democratic Party? And if so, which version of the battle flag?

My edit substituted the text "Flag (representative example)" for "Party flag" because I could not find a source saying that the party officially recognized this flag, only that they adopted it as a symbol. So by way of analogy, is this a situation like the Gadsden flag and either the U.S. Libertarian Party or Republican Party—where members/factions of those parties have clearly adopted the symbol, even if the organization (I assume) formally has not—or is this like the BJP where the party actually refers to something as the party flag? Although there are probably more sources that we haven't found, PBS said "In 1948, the newly-formed segregationist Dixiecrat party adopted the flag as a symbol of resistance to the federal government." and NPR said "It was also the symbol of the States' Rights Democratic Party, or "Dixiecrats," that formed in 1948 to oppose civil-rights platforms of the Democratic Party.". Was the symbol used only used in the context of opposing the federal government, or generically to identify the party itself? To me, this isn't clear, so I went with the most conservative reading of the text. (Note also that "party" has multiple meanings that can refer to the members collectively, or the organization singularly—I read either as possible in this instance, because it isn't clear whether the party had coalesced into a formal organization with strictly defined rules, or was still nascent and generating norms based on individuals' own expressive choices.)

Then there's the issue of which battle flag, since it comes in different versions. Did the party care which one? Was there a specification or consensus, or was it that anything with the general appearance was sufficient to get the message across? If the latter, then the particular SVG in this article really is just a representative example (and not a definitive version). TheFeds 00:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)


 * A brief search suggests you're correct that it was never the offical symbol. Pages 173-174 (link) here say that explicitly. But it does appear to be the de facto symbol. I don't think we need go as far as to say the image is a "representative symbol". Maybe just label it the de facto one?  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 04:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)


 * "Party flag (de facto)" is fine with me because it expresses that this apparently was not directly specified by the organization itself, while clearly noting that it was used as a symbol of what the party stood for; I'll edit accordingly. TheFeds  21:06, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * @TheFeds Sounds great! Thank you for doing that.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 15:16, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

To quote historian John M. Coski's The Confederate Battle Flag: The battle flag was not the official symbol of the National States' Rights Democratic Party—which the headline writers dubbed the "Dixiecrat Party". In fact, party leaders shunned symbols that implied a strictly regional identity. Significantly, it was party supporters, primarily young men, who most often waved the flag for the Dixiecrats. He goes on to note that Confederate flags appeared frequently during the party's formation and at rallies etc. and mentions Ralph McGill's critque before saying (p. 104) Instead [of the flag], the party's campaign materials featured bust portraits of candidates Thurmond and Wright with the legend 'states' rights'. One fundraising brochure carried an image of the Statue of Liberty with [various slogans about state's rights]... He goes on to note that some state executive committees of the party, namely the one for Alabama, did use the battle flag on their own materials, and that flags were to be found in many places Thurmond and Wright campaigned, despite their attempts to appeal to a more national audience.

I think it might be worth more fully discussing the party's use of symbols in the body text of the article. I also recommend removing the PBS News Hour article as a source with the quote "the newly-formed segregationist Dixiecrat party adopted the flag as a symbol of resistance to the federal government" which, in light of the scholarship, is misleadingly simplistic. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:16, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Your citation goes on to say..."Significantly, it was party supporters, primarily young men, who most often waved the flag for Dixiecrats. The same young people who made the flag more visible as a symbol of collegiate high jinks and regional pride were the ones who thrust it into an increasingly ideological political arena. This coincidence inevitably tainted the ostensibly innocent uses of the flag and established a well-defined pattern for subsequent decades." page 101 (second paragraph) The Birmingham convention nominated Strom Thurmond for president and Fielding Wright for vice president. Thurmond reportedly strode to the dais to deliver his acceptance speech escorted by the Stars and Stripes and by the Confederate battle flag"...DN (talk) 02:29, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I know, I summarized that with saying "flags appeared frequently during the party's formation and at rallies etc." -Indy beetle (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Dixiecrat article likely falls under the umbrella of right wing populism
After noticing a recent edit, I did some searching... Atlantic, Wapo. It seems likely the Dixiecrat party falls under the definition of Right wing populism, as Strom Thurmond is clearly listed on Wiki's Right wing populism page. Populism is defined as "a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite" and is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment". Political Science Professor Joe Lowndes "traces conservative populism, as we know it, back to the post–World War II Dixiecrat revolt against the New Deal" in the book "Populism's Power" by associate professor Laura Grattan... DN (talk) 06:39, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Politico " In Trump, many of the kind of white working-class voters once called Reagan Democrats have found a tribune who represents their views and values more consistently than conservative populists like the Dixiecrat George Wallace, the Old Right paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan or the “theo-conservative” Pat Robertson, all of whom faltered in their bids for the presidency...DN (talk) 07:59, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Campaigning for president in America 1788-2016 page 237 "Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat revolt both exhibited populist strains;"...DN (talk) 08:08, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

"Sixty-eight years ago, the public watched a dynamic similar to the Trump-Sanders moment play out as Harry Truman sought the Presidency, an office he had held since Franklin Roosevelt’s death, in 1945. Truman was pitted against the Republican Thomas Dewey but faced additional challenges from Henry Wallace, whom he had replaced as F.D.R.’s Vice-President, in 1941, and Strom Thurmond, the populist segregationist and South Carolina governor." The New Yorker - Jelani Cobb...DN (talk) 18:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)