Despite the perishability of his reputation as a writer, H.W. Mencken is being resurrected as an idol by some ultraconservatives. Among those heralding him are members of the neo-Confederate movement. They admire his elitism and contempt for democracy. Mencken shared their belief in superiority of the elite of Old South.
Gail Jarvis penned a column explaining why he considers Mencken a neo-Confederate, titled "H.L.Mencken, Neo-Confederate," for Lew Rockwell.com. Jarvis states, correctly in my opinion, that Mencken's reputation as a critic of the South, mainly because of its lack of high culture, was directed at the post-Civil War South, not its slave-holding, wealth-generating antecedent.
H.L. Mencken's criticisms were leveled at the South of the early 1900s, a region still recovering from the devastation of the War and Reconstruction. But his opinion of the pre-War South was quite different. Born in Baltimore, Mencken always considered himself a Southerner and from his father he had inherited a strong sympathy for the Confederacy. The Old Confederacy, Mencken felt, was a land "with men of delicate fancy, urbane instinct and aristocratic manner — in brief, superior men. It was there, above all, that some attention was given to the art of living — a certain noble spaciousness was in the ancient southern scheme of things."
In his 1930 essay, "The Calamity of Appomattox," Mencken addresses that unresolved question: What if the South had won the War Between the States? This is a very thoughtful analysis of the subject, especially since it was written decades before journalists were constrained by political correctness. Mencken poses all the pertinent questions and provides reasoned responses to each. Interestingly, he concludes that in the long run, a victory by the Confederates would have been more advantageous to the United States.
Like many members of the 'heritage' movement, Jarvis believes that, in the absence of a government similar to that of the Old South, the region should secede from the Union. Jarvis' secessionist viewpoint coheres with the perspective of Mencken. In fact, Mencken would share the beliefs of the racist and secessionist League of the South, but for their reliance on religion as a moral compass. Ideally, the would-be secessionists would limit electoral participation to white, educated Christian white men who own property.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
One reason he would have favored the Confederacy holding victorious is that he thought it would have avoided the rise of such "vermin" as the Klan. From the "The Calamity of Appomattox" essay you referenced above:
"If the war had gone with the Confederates no such vermin would be in the saddle, nor would there be any sign below the Potomac of their chief contributions to American Kultur -- Ku Kluxry, political ecclesiasticism, nigger-baiting, and the more homicidal variety of wowserism. Such things might have arisen in America, but they would not have arisen in the South. The old aristocracy, however degenerate it might have become, would have at least retained sufficient decency to see to that."
2 - Mac Diva
Horsefeathers and pigs' wings aside, H.L. Mencken is, again, oft misrepresented in regard to his views on racial segregation. Mencken expressed disapproval of lynching, i.e., locating people, usually African-American, and hanging them, sometimes with a fire thrown in for extrasensory excitement. Throughout the South and some of the Midwest, lynchings were a favored form of entertainment for whites. People would come from miles around and make a day, or maybe two or three, of a lynching. There would be music and good eatin.' They would take home souvenirs, such as ears or toes of the victim. Mencken considered such behavior uncouth. Furthermore, he deemed blacks a childlike, non-violent, inherently inferior race that should not be subjected to such brutality.
How did Mencken's opposition to lynching become transmogrified into opposition to racial segregation in some quarters? Wishful thinking. You will not find this big mistake among the writings of Mencken and his contemporaries. Many of them opposed the murderous mayhem of lynchings while being comfortable with segregation. (Though the degree of segregation supported varied. Some would favor integrating street cars, but not schools. Or department stores, but not restaurants. And, so on.) In fact, Jim Crow was perceived as protection of the Negro. The reasoning was that if white people were not incited by having to be around blacks, they would be less likely to harm them. So, again, opposing lynching, and opposing segregation were not the same thing. If one Google's 'Mencken and segregation' one will find many remarks suggesting Mencken was an early integrationist, invariably posted by neo-conservatives. They are revising reality to clean up their man.
Mencken, who lived well into the civil rights era, never changed his mind about people of African descent being hopelessly inferior. He did not favor racial equality in the least. Efforts to claim he did are lies.
3 - Al Barger
Diva seems determined to smear Mencken as favoring slavery, or at least the mistreatment of blacks, which is not supported by Mencken's writings. His actual thinking about this vis a vis the Confederacy can be seen, again from this same column she cited above:
"No doubt the Confederates, victorious, would have abolished slavery by the middle of the 80s. They were headed that way before the war, and the more sagacious of them were all in favor of it. But they were in favor of it on sound economic grounds, and not on the brummagem moral grounds which persuaded the North. The difference here is immense. In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished."
I don't know enough to judge his idea that the South was working rapidly toward abolishing slavery. However, the logic of Mencken's statement here makes sense.
In any case, Mencken was far too much a student of Nietzche (again, he literally wrote the book on Nietzche) to be a racist in any serious way.
He might talk about the behavior of different groups, because there are patterns of behavior between different groups. Mencken, however, would have distinguished between general observations about a group versus the behavior of a given individual.
Mencken was a benevolent figure. He spoke sharply, and did not suffer fools gladly. He did not have hatred in his heart, however, for black folks or any other ethnic group.
As to Mencken's personal attitudes, I note again that as a magazine editor, Mencken went out of his way to find and publish black writers. Again, I'm no expert on this scene, but Mencken is considered in some quarters to have been an important supporting figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
This goes to what I would have expected from Mencken. He wouldn't have been on some self-aggrandizing moral crusade, nor engaging in social work. In his own sphere of influence, however, he would discreetly reach out to anyone who exhibited the talent.
Perhaps we shouldn't emphasize this, though. Doubtless Mencken himself would rather have been thought of as an evil racist rather than being mistaken for some PC do-gooder.
4 - Mac Diva
I read Terry Teachout's authoritative biography of H.L. Mencken as a graduate student, along with other resources on the writer. I do not recall any suggestion that Mencken was a believer in racial equality. Just the opposite. He was an elitist who believed a tiny segment of the population, those he considered natural aristocrats, should control societies. Mencken would have been pleased to remove the electoral franchise from the common white man. The Negro? Please. The greatest sympathy Mencken was capable of toward a group he considered inferior beyond 'repair,' was a desire that Negroes not be snatched from their (in his opinion) miserable lives and lynched. It is true that opposition to lynching is much more than one would have gotten from many Southerners of his era. But, opposition to lynching is a long way from believing in racial equality.
I do not know if Mencken made any statements explicitly supporting the longterm continuation of slavery. However, his support for the Confederacy is, of course, support for the continuation of slavery. The slaves would not have been freed if the South had won the Civil War. Claims to the contrary are easy to make. But, the evidence of what to expect from people is what they have done in the past. The Confederates would not have fought a war to continue slavery so that they could then turn around and free those slaves. Nor is it impossible to have continued extreme race discrimination into contemporary times. We know that from Rhodesia and South Africa.
A few African-Americans with Right Wing predilections wrote for Mencken's publications from time to time. Invariably, their writing was about the one area he felt them competent to discuss -- race. George Schuyler, often cited as a black friend of Mencken's, eventually lost his mind, becoming more and more paranoid and obsessed with the Communists he thought were lurking beneath his bed. Richard Wright is sometimes mistakenly cited as sympathetic to Mencken. That is an error. Wright admired Mencken's style of writing, not his beliefs. Those beliefs were embedded in stone. Mencken, a mama's boy who rarely left Baltimore, was not given to change. His views about race and class were those of the pre-Civil War Southern aristocracy right up until the day he died.
Contemporary biographers of Mencken, particularly Teachout, have produced scholarship that credits the writer with having one of the most vigorous styles of any American journalist. They also applaud Mencken's discovery of many writers who were much more talented than he was. But, they do not engage in coverups of Mencken's beliefs -- misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism and support of Nazi Germany. Some folks on the far Right may consider mainstream criticism of Mencken "smearing" him. But, I believe most people familiar with the scholarship consider it merely telling the truth.
I would encourage persons interested in the real H.L. Mencken, not the imaginary one, read this discussion of the writer in the Columbia Journalism Review. It is true and balanced. I hope to eventually post a listing of mainstream analysis of Mencken to the Internet.
5 - Mac Diva
Amazon's take on Teachout's book can be read by clicking the link to the book in the entry. Read other reviews at Barnes & Noble.
6 - Al Barger
Diva, you don't seem to get the basic idea of where Mencken was coming from, even when you spell it out. I suspect that it is simply so philosophically alien to you as to escape your understanding.
I do not recall any suggestion that Mencken was a believer in racial equality. Just the opposite. He was an elitist who believed a tiny segment of the population, those he considered natural aristocrats, should control societies. Mencken would have been pleased to remove the electoral franchise from the common white man. The Negro? Please.
He would believe in "equality" of rights- though not equality of outcome, ie socialism. Yes, aristocratic elites will rise to the top. That's not racism, however. The talented and achieving elite who work their way to the top might not be white.
YOU might not believe the Confederacy would have done away with slavery, but that's not what Mencken thought. Read the Appomattox piece again. There are good economic reasons to think as he did. He may even have been mistaken, but that was in fact what he believed.
Again, YOU think that the South seceded and fought a war for the primary purpose of protecting slavery, despite the historical record. The fact that Mencken and others did not interpret that complex situation in the same way as you does NOT constitute proof that they are "racists."
You tend to lump together a whole very broad range of people, behaviors and attitudes, labeling and vilifying them all as "racist." By the broadest reach of your net, anyone who notices the existence of differential behavior patterns between groups risks getting labeled and discredited as a "racist." When I worked in a convenience store, I couldn't help but notice that black customers were several times more likely than white to smoke menthol cigarettes. Does that make ME a racist for noticing the fact?
As to understanding the "real" Mencken, I would again suggest actually reading Mencken, not the critics- including MD or Al Barger.
7 - Mac Diva
The definition of racism is simple: A person who believes a 'race' is superior to others is a racist. Wrapping a belief in racism in shiny words and tying a bow on the package does not get around the definition. For example:
By the broadest reach of your net, anyone who notices the existence of differential behavior patterns between groups risks getting labeled and discredited as a "racist."
Unless one can establish a genetic basis for differing behaviors among people, and no one has, he is being racist if he claims behaviors (which tend to be grossly exaggerated anyway) are race based.
H.L. Mencken believed that white people were superior to people of color, so he was a racist. In addition, he was an elitist. He believed that white people born into the societal elite of the Old South and Germany were superior to other white people. In short, only a small part of the population was worthy of anything other than contempt to Mencken.
Mencken's reputation is settled among people who study and read literature. He was a small-minded, repressed man who wrote snappy prose. Mencken was wrong about just about every political or cultural matter he expressed an opinion on. His importance to literature is mainly as someone who first noticed other writers who have endured. The efforts to promote him as a thinker and role model come from elsewhere, largely the far Right on the Internet. I've read enough of Mencken to have a reasonble understanding of who he was and what he wrote. I am pleased to defer to the experts who have examined every shred of his writing for additional insight.
8 - daisy
suggestion,idiocy of babble at it's finest?