1,286 words
In biology, convergent evolution explains how different species can develop genetic traits with similar form or function, yet be evolutionarily quite distinct. Such analogous structures are acquired independently rather than inherited from a common ancestor. One classic example is the sugar glider and the flying squirrel. These two small mammalian species developed the trait of gliding through the air by way of a skin membrane stretching from foreleg to hindleg called a patagium. From a distance, these animals can appear almost identical.
Sugar glider (left), flying squirrel (right).
Of course, these two animals are very different. Since the sugar glider is a marsupial and the flying squirrel a rodent, the glider has more in common genetically with a kangaroo than it does with any squirrel. Equating these two species is certainly understandable, but not a mistake a biologist trained in zoology or taxonomy would likely make.
I was reminded of this phenomenon after watching Victor Davis Hanson’s recent Daily Signal podcast called “Meet the ‘The New Confederates’ in America’s Blue Cities.” In it, he equates the recent spate of mayoral and gubernatorial intransigence against federally authorized ICE deportations with the South Carolina secessionists of 1861. According to Hanson, since both sought to nullify federal authority through the organized use of force, these actors are closely related in character and purpose and can be painted with the same broad strokes when looking back through the lens of history.
There’s been a lot of news lately about the efforts of the Border Patrol and the Immigration Customs Enforcement, ICE, their efforts to round up illegal aliens. And they are prioritizing two groups—those who have criminal records and those who have already been processed for deportation and have evaded apprehension. But in many cities in blue states, or at least in blue cities, there is organized resistance. Sometimes it’s very violent by Antifa. Sometimes it’s sponsored or encouraged by the Democratic Party. Gavin Newsom in California, our governor, or Karen Bass, a mayor of Los Angeles, openly calling for resistance, or Governor Pritzker of Chicago. But what’s really disturbing is we’re starting to see a new, I would call it, a neo-Confederate successionist ideology in these cities. In these blue cities, the officials who run them, the mayors or the police chiefs, believe there are a law unto themselves. In other words, within the confines of Chicago or within the confines of Portland, they can nullify all federal laws. Just in the way that South Carolina said it could on the eve of the Civil War. ‘The Union does not apply to us. We are morally superior.’
As far as superficial analyses goes, VDH is absolutely correct. One can draw parallels from today’s anti-ICE riots to 1861 South Carolina in the same way one can draw parallels between the sugar glider and the flying squirrel. After recalling how Alabama governor George Wallace unsuccessfully tried to keep his state’s schools segregated in the face of federal authority in 1963, Hanson goes on to detail the very real threat that Antifa and their Democratic enablers pose to law and order today. He correctly concludes that if this continues, civil war may once again be on the horizon.
So far, so good.
Hanson goes wrong, however, when he makes the same category error that many conservatives make when assessing current events vis-à-vis history. See if you can spot it below:
So I would like to remind the Left, you’re on the side of George Wallace resisting federal law, and ICE that you despise is on the right side of history trying to enforce laws that have been broken for the protection of all citizens all citizens in this United States including those in Chicago and including those in Portland who are having their civil rights endangered if they live next to an ICE facility or if they’re an ICE agent in general. They are endangered and the federal government has a right to protect them. And so I would urge you all to stop what you’re doing and get back to the right side of history.
According to VDH, it seems the modern, militant, anti-federal Left are the inheritors of the pre-modern, militant, anti-federal Right. It follows then that because the latter was supposedly on the wrong side of history, so is the former. After all, both are essentially part of the same movement. In truth, they are not. The South Carolina secessionists and present-day Antifa possess antithetical worldviews, and any similarities they share regarding anti-federal militancy is purely incidental, not categorical—just like the patagia shared between the sugar glider and the flying squirrel. The South Carolina secessionists were race realist, pro-white, inegalitarian, deeply religious, deeply traditional agrarians who were bound to the land. When firing upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, they were challenging the forces of “universal progress”, a term Thomas Nelson Page used to describe the 1860s Republican Party and its fanatical abolitionist core in his 1899 bestseller Red Rock. These were the early progressives from whom present-day Antifa and their Democratic enablers descend. Such people are race-denying, anti-white, egalitarian, anti-religious, anti-traditional, urbanite globalists who prefer political intimidation and acts of terror to honest declarations of war or secession. The differences could not be starker.
Thus, sophistic conservative commentary like Hanson’s amounts to nothing because any Leftist would be able to see through it immediately. They know they have much more in common with abolitionists such as John Brown, Charles Sumner, and William Lloyd Garrison than they do with any Confederate of the period, regardless of how moral or honorable he was. Remember, these are people who tear down Confederate statues and vilify the antebellum South as a haven for slavery-abiding racists which deserved to be invaded. The very idea of calling them “neo-Confederates” is ridiculous, and the Left will react to Hanson’s admonishment about being on the wrong side of history with the scorn it deserves. Despite being logically consistent, his argument has no persuasive value because it conflates incidental similarities across history with deeper, categorical ones.
So why is it then that everyone can see this except conservatives? It basically boils down to conservatives lacking the will to resist the prevailing historical narrative, which brands what we call today “the Right” as the architects of the most hateful and destructive movements in the past 200 years. Top of the list appear Nazi Germany and the American Confederacy. In not challenging this like they should and simply owning the Right of the past, today’s conservative faces an existential problem: How to resist leftist abuse without appearing like a supporter of the Nazis or the Confederates? It’s a very thin needle to thread, and conservatives have done so by disavowing these historical villains and claiming that they were leftists all along. The Nazis couldn’t have been on the Right because they were socialists, don’t you know? And the Southerners were Democrats, just like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And today’s Antifa, well, they’re nothing more than neo-Confederates. Look what’s happening in Portland and Chicago. They’re committing violence against the federal government! It’s like 1861 South Carolina all over again. What more proof do you need?
Sadly, Victor Davis Hanson cannot see the manifest weakness of his own argument. Despite being a conservative, he tends not to challenge mainstream historical narratives, which are in most cases anti-conservative to say the least—not to mention false. If he did, he’d certainly realize that progressives—and not neo-Confederates—are the ones resisting federal authority today. He’d also realize that American Confederacy was indeed the most hateful and destructive movement in the history of the United States of America—except when compared to the forces of universal progress which killed over 600,000 men while smashing it into oblivion in 1865.
13 comments
In his heart of hearts I have to believe that Victor Davis Hanson knows that his argument doesn’t match the ideologies of the two sides he’s comparing. He just can’t choose the same side of George Wallace or the Confederacy or he stands to lose both financially and in credibility. Like Sam Francis said, there’s only so much I can say and still remain mainstream.
It’s true that he couldn’t get away with supporting the Confederacy, but that doesn’t give him a pass because he’s under no obligation to bring up the comparison at all. Like most Boomer conservatives, I think the “Democrats are the real racists” is kind of a default position for him.
During the first Trump administration “the Squad” wore all white to a state of the union in protest. A popular Boomer take on social media was “That’s the same uniform they wear when they’re with the Klan!” Obviously, none of these people are white and they endlessly talk about hating whites, but in the minds of Boomercons that did nothing to dampen the Squad’s secret white supremacy.
Hanson is just getting a paycheck and saying what is required to keep getting it. He is always prattling on about how America is a multi-racial empire and democracy … …
I mean it is, but he says it saying that is what it was meant to be. This guy is a horrific traitor.
Ten bucks says VDH will walk back this folderol within six months. He knows he’s on The Wrong Side of History.😇
Once again, props to Spencer for threading the needle of the sloppy hypocrisy still endemic among “conservative” solons: Victor knows his argument doesn’t hold up, and most likely also realizes the Lefties will spot it as a plug nickel.
Conservatives who come up with arguments like that think they’re delivering a knockout blow, but it never scores points. It only makes them look silly.
…they were challenging the forces of “universal progress”…
Where, and when these forces appear, no matter what guise they operate under—white people die. Great article! 🙃
Great article and analysis. VDH is one of those anodyne, good enough for High School, Court Historians that I really dislike.
Here he is just following the playbook of Kosher Conservatives and Libertarians who think that the only difference between George Washington and Ho Chi Minh is taxes and the size of the gubbamint.
🙂
I never cared for Victor Davis Hanson, the multi-millionaire writer who gets a lot of face time as a “contributor” on Fox News. Incidentally, he fathered three mixed-race dependents with his Negress former wife. Hanson’s analogy here is beyond ridiculous.
Our great writer Andrew Hamilton mentioned Hanson in this piiece from 11 years ago, “The Landmark Ancient Histories” in the History and Heritage section of whitebiocentrism.com
Arrian wrote his classic account of the 11-year Macedonian campaign against the Persian Empire, beginning with the invasion of Persian Ionia and ending 3,000 miles to the East at the Indus River in India, nearly five hundred years after the death of the conqueror. In a review of The Landmark Arrian, the fanatically pro-Israel, neoconservative, philo-Semitic professor Victor Davis Hanson (also a contributor to the Landmark series) wrote:
Alexander posed as the emissary of a civilizing Hellenism as he killed more Greeks—whether besieged Thebans or mercenaries in the service of Darius III—than had perished in the earlier invasions [during the Persian Wars described by Herodotus] of Darius I and Xerxes combined. Yet, as proof of his literary flair, he spared the house of the poet Pindar, while killing 6,000 Thebans, enslaving another 30,000, and leveling the great city of Oedipus.
In multicultural fashion, Alexander arranged mass marriages between his Macedonian soldiers and Iranian women, incorporated Persian elites in his administration, and deferred to the conquered by wearing native dress—even as he had executed or murdered his closest associates, Parmenio, Philotas, Cleitus, and the philosopher Callisthenes, and wiped out entire villages in serial fashion while pacifying Afghanistan…
“the fanatically pro-Israel, neoconservative, philo-Semitic professor Victor Davis Hanson” What more does one need to know about Hanson than that description by Mr. Hamilton?
Hamilton admired Dr. William Pierce so much that this essay by him opened like this:
These first three paragraphs are from Dr. William L. Pierce’s essay, “Why National Vanguard Books?” from the National Vanguard Books catalogue.
No group of people can hope to regain control of their destiny unless they possess two essential things: the will to survive as a people, and knowledge. The reader who seeks to have a well-guided will must have an unshakable sense of identity: an understanding of who he is and his relationship to the world around him.
This can come only from a broad knowledgein of the history of his people. He needs to know their most distant origins, their characteristics, their strengths and weaknesses, and the ways in which they differ from other peoples.
Choosing books that provide such information presents problems of choice and evaluation. Is a given book about history or race or politics worth reading? When several choices are available, which is the best? Some books are essential to a basic understanding of the task facing us as a people. Others are important, but primarily for filling in details.
Hamilton mentioned this in a comment about Pierce’s NVB catalog under his article when published on C-C in 2014:
The first time I saw the catalogue, I thought “That’s the old college syllabus—radicalized!”
What Dr. Pierce recommended beyond the first three paragraphs is found here: “A Guide for Readers” at nationalvanguard.org — the full text of which is available as a tri-fold flier for handing or mailing to students and others who will read: Recommended Reading List.pdf
Will Williams: October 18, 2025 … Victor Davis Hanson, the multi-millionaire writer who gets a lot of face time as a “contributor” on Fox News. Incidentally, he fathered three mixed-race dependents with his Negress former wife. Hanson’s analogy here is beyond ridiculous.
[…]
“the fanatically pro-Israel, neoconservative, philo-Semitic professor Victor Davis Hanson” What more does one need to know about Hanson than that description by Mr. Hamilton?
—
So much for the professor.
Spencer, I just read your informative review of Gordon Thomas’s 1999 An Authorized History of the Mossad (updated 2015) in the Fall issue of The Occidental Quarterly. Learned many new facts, but agree with you that being an authorized history, Thomas only wrote what Mossod allowed him to publish. Your conclusion is good:
Israel is not and never was an ally of the United States. From the very beginning, it was monitoring Americans and stealing from Americana…
Some ally that “shitty little nation” has been!
The first wife doesn’t look Negroid. What is your source that indicates that she is?
MBlanc46: November 15, 2025 The first wife doesn’t look Negroid. What is your source that indicates that she is?
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I don’t remember the source. That was written nearly a month ago. Here are sources that indicate his kids with wife Cara are/were not Negroidal: Victor Davis Hanson is Married to Wife: Cara Hanson. Kids. – wifebio.com
Susannah Merry Hanson: Obituary – VDH’s Blade of Perseus
Great article. VDH’s thesis is embarrassingly superficial.
Victor Davis Hanson spends too much of his time time complaining about the ascendancy of the Left and otherwise demoralizing his audience. Look, we get it, the Long March Through the Institutions, Decline of the West, and all that sort of thing.
But he has a platform: his podcasts, his articles in mainstream publications, and his connections especially at the university echelon. He could do any or all of the following:
Set up a legal defense fund for dissidents targeted by lawfare.
Back up conservative/rightist students and profs at Stanford University.
Interview political activists who can show his audience how to push back against the regime.
Get his connections to contribute some big buck$ to anti-Leftist organizations.
Pull some strings to get a Short March through nearby Silicon Valley.
Do any or all of these things, and you might just see the rising tide of wokeness pushed back. And end the doom and gloom.
So how about it, VDH, let’s see some leadership here!
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