President Donald Trump has regularly endorsed the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern heritage -- and now one historian is arguing that Trump himself could become a new Southern icon should he lose the election this November.
Writing in the Washington Post, American Civil War historian Caroline E. Janney argues that Trump's loss in November would fit right in with the South's traditional understanding of the Confederacy as a "noble" failure to preserve their way of life.
"His defenders are already laboring to cast him as a righteous, noble warrior martyred by traitors and insurmountable forces," argues Janney, who is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. "They rely on the same tools that were used to promulgate Confederate myths: manipulating facts, claiming persecution, demonizing enemies and rewriting history."
Janney doesn't believe the "Lost Cause" narrative around Trump won't have the same historical impact that the narrative around the Confederacy had, as "Trump and his followers do not have such a coherent ideology, nor do they enjoy the kind of geographical monopoly that the Confederates possessed."
That said, she believes that both narratives share the same essential DNA that make them highly appealing to a significant faction of American voters.
"It’s easy to imagine Trump supporters looking backward at his presidency as a golden era, touting efforts to forestall illegal immigration, protect White suburbs and battle China — not unlike the ways Lost Cause boosters reimagined the antebellum South," she writes.
