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Southern Partisan is aneo-Confederate online magazine based inColumbia, South Carolina,United States. It is focused on theSouthern region and states that were formerly members of theConfederate States of America. Founded in 1979 asSouthern Partisan Quarterly Review, its first editor wasThomas Fleming. From 1999 to 2009 it was edited by Christopher Sullivan. After 2009 it ceased print publication and is now only online. It has been called "arguably the most important neo-Confederate periodical" by theSouthern Poverty Law Center.[1]
The magazine generally espouses a pro-southern perspective on political issues and theAmerican Civil War. The magazine features commentary on southern culture, history, literature, theSouthern Agrarians, the Civil War and Confederacy, and current political issues. Its news section "CSA Today" covers stories from each of the eleven former Confederate states, as well as Missouri and Kentucky, which the Confederate States claimed to have admitted.
The magazine is harshly critical of what it describes as "politically correct" policy-making, such as the removal of Confederate historical monuments. It also gives out a "Scalawag Award" in each issue to Southerners who act contrary to the magazine's editorial position.
Reviews of books about the southern United States appear in each issue, as do general political opinion pieces from conservative andlibertarian perspectives. The magazine has carried columns by syndicated opinion commentators includingWalter Williams,William Murchison,Joseph Sobran, andCharley Reese.
The SPLC dates the earliest contemporary usage of the term "neo-Confederate" to a 1988Southern Partisan article.[1]
The New York Times in 2000 describedSouthern Partisan as "one of the (southern) region's most right-wing magazines," noting its disapproval ofAbraham Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War, and tendency to "venerate the rebel soldiers who fought to secede from the United States." It also noted that the magazine features "high-minded historical reviews in the tradition of the Southern agrarian movement, which glorified the South's slow-paced traditions of farms and small towns."[2]
Ed Sebesta has written thatSouthern Partisan andChronicles are the "major publications" of the Confederate movement.[3]Slate describedSouthern Partisan as a "crypto-racist, pro-Confederate magazine."[4] In 2000, the president of the progressive advocacy groupPeople for the American Way calledSouthern Partisan "racist", pointing to columns that criticizeMartin Luther King Jr. andNelson Mandela, and alleged that it views slavery favorably.[5] TheTimes report noted aSouthern Partisan article describing white slave traders as being better to slaves than African warlords. According to theTimes report,Southern Partisan "takes the position that the Civil War was fought not over slavery, but over the preservation of a Southern way of life that to this day is worth preserving."[2]
Southern Partisan received national attention in 2001 during the confirmation hearings of U.S. Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft, who had praisedRobert E. Lee in a 1998 interview with the magazine.[citation needed]
The magazine's editor Christopher Sullivan has said that critics take "quotes out of context to paint a picture of racial and historical bigotry in thePartisan". Sullivan pointed out that the magazine publishes articles by African-American writers such asWalter E. Williams.[6]
