Facing the financial burden following the conclusion of the Sines v. But while neo-Confederates have failed to gain a noticeable uptick in recruits across 2021, flashpoints around Lost Cause memorials and public institutions named for Confederate military officers may provide opportunities for neo-Confederates to engage in violence during 2022. SPLC’s analysts have worked to recognize whether this debate may present a way forward for the neo-Confederate movement through the leveraging of local, decentralized monument protests within the broader right-wing’s weaponizing of public discourse.Įnergized online and among its ranks, the movement has nonetheless failed to organize and mobilize widely across the South, as The New York Times reported that, by July 3, 2020, 15 to 25 million people attended protests against the killing of George Floyd. In recent years, ongoing debates around public memorials to the Lost Cause galvanized small groups that have promoted neo-Confederate ideology and spawned pro-monument groups relatively new to the neo-Confederate hate movement. The Southern Cultural Center hosted Dixie Republic several times in 2021, while the League of the South hosted extremists David Duke and Jason Edwards at its annual conference. As their numbers drop, coordination between neo-Confederate groups continues. The jury ordered the League of the South to pay $1 million in punitive damages, and Hill and Tubbs to pay another $500,000. Kessler civil case against the organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally found the League of the South and two of its leaders, Michael Hill and Michael Tubbs, liable on charges of a civil conspiracy under Virginia state law. In November 2021, the jury in the long-running Sines v. The referendum passed with 73% of voters favoring a new flag, while 27% of voters did not. The change followed a referendum on the flag’s design that took place in November 2020 that asked voters whether the state should adopt a few flag, or retain the old flag that used Confederate symbolism. In January 2021, Mississippi introduced a new state flag, which did not include the Confederate battle flag symbol. A dedicated and loyal following of neo-Confederate extremists continue to plot online and will use efforts to remove Confederate monuments, rename parks, schools and other public spaces as a way to rally other extremists to their ideology, recruit new members and fundraise from the larger radical right movement.

In addition, without significant protests from the Left to rally against, the neo-Confederate groups that newly appeared in 2020 have been sidelined. The decrease occurred, in part, from the financial challenges facing neo-Confederate groups in the wake of a civil lawsuit brought against group leaders by Integrity First for America. Analysts documented 31 groups in 2020, with a steep drop to 16 groups in 2021. In 2021, SPLC’s analysts documented a significant decrease with the Neo-Confederate category. Today, Identity Dixie is down to one chapter. Neo-Confederate group Identity Dixie also faltered in 2020, still reeling from revelations about the group’s leaders that the SPLC exposed in 2019. Long the central organization within this branch of white nationalism, the League of the South has not rebounded from fallout from its attendance at the deadly riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Neo-Confederate group numbers declined between 20, when the largest neo-Confederate hate group, the League of the South, lost several chapters.

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