• The "Good Old Rebel" at the Heart of the Radical Right
• Joseph M. Thompson (bio)

illustrations by Nate Beaty

on july 4, 1867, Augusta, Georgia's newspaper, the Daily Constitutionalist, published the words to a new song that seemed to reflect the bitterness felt by many white southerners following the Confederate defeat. The paper printed the song's title as "O! I'm a Good Old Rebel" above a spiteful dedication to Thaddeus Stevens, the abolitionist congressman from Pennsylvania. It also provided the instructive subtitle "A Chant to the Wild Western Melody 'Joe Bowers,'" letting readers know they should sing the lyrics to the minor-keyed folk tune to give "Good Old Rebel" a mixture of melancholy and menace. The paper did not include an author attribution, but given the first-person perspective, the unpolished vernacular, and the tone, it appeared that a recalcitrant Confederate veteran had penned the lyrics. This anonymous author seemed to cling to his identity as an unrepentant traitor who twists failed rebellion into victimhood. He begins, "O I'm a good old Rebel, / Now that's just what I am; / For this 'Fair Land of Freedom' / I do not care at all," with the italicized "at all" censoring an obviously rhyming but omitted "damn."¹

The next four verses took the denunciations of the United States even further. "Good Old Rebel" inventories all of the nation's founding documents and symbols that he hates, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the US flag, as well as the Freedmen's Bureau, the agency created in 1865 to implement the plans of Reconstruction and help formerly enslaved African Americans transition to liberty. The author casts himself as a victim of postwar [End Page 124]

oppression while claiming he would like to "kill some mo'" US soldiers. In the final verse, he pledges to never accept Reconstruction, claiming, "And I don't want no pardon, / For what I was and am; / I won't be reconstructed. / And I don't care a cent" [another omitted "damn"].²

Flash forward to the twenty-first century. Dozens of YouTube videos of "Good Old Rebel" have logged hundreds of thousands of plays for professional and amateur renditions of the song. Viewers from all over the world often leave pro-Confederate, pro-secession comments. These YouTube users, veiled in the anonymity that social media affords, feel a connection to "Good Old Rebel" and the imagined South that it summons, a South of continual rebellion against an allegedly oppressive federal government. They hear a kinship born of antigovernment resentment, authenticated with grammatical errors and familiar themes of political resistance. The song creates a space and a soundtrack for sympathetic listeners to perform what they imagine as their truest selves without the propriety of normative US patriotism. Hearing their views echoed in such an old song injects a bit of nineteenth-century popular culture into the political framework of the modern radical Right and affirms their politics in the here and now. It validates their feelings.³ [End Page 125]

The irony is that "Good Old Rebel" is not real—not exactly. "Good Old Rebel" started as a joke. Innes Randolph, a journalist, poet, and descendant of a prominent Virginia family, wrote those words, born partly out of his experiences as a Confederate soldier and partly as a means to lampoon poorly educated, working-class white southerners. Yet Randolph's verses leaked into circulation for decades after the war as an anonymous and, some believed, authentic folk song. This process of dissemination largely erased Randolph's attempt at humor and projected his personal rancor onto poor white southerners, many of whom had been reluctant to fight for the slaveholder's secession during the war.⁴

The fact that "Good Old Rebel" blurred the line between satire and sincerity so well meant that generations of audiences found malleability within the song's meaning. Some have taken the lyrics to heart. Some hear the song as a curiosity that seems too over-the-top to be serious. Still others find an attraction to the song's nihilism wrapped in romantic imaginings of the Confederate foot soldier. The...

• 激进权利核心的“好老叛军”
• 约瑟夫·汤普森（生物）

Nate Beaty的插图

1867年7月4日，奥古斯塔，佐治亚州的报纸，每日宪政主义者，将这些词放到一首新歌中，这似乎反映了同盟失败后许多白人南方人所感受到的苦涩。这张纸上印着这首歌的标题“ O！我是个好老叛逆者”，这是对宾夕法尼亚废奴主义者国会议员Thaddeus Stevens的恶意奉献。它还提供了具有指导意义的字幕“对西方狂想曲的颂歌'Joe Bowers'”，让读者知道他们应该为小调的民间曲调演唱歌词，以使“ Good Old Rebel”忧郁而有威胁。该论文没有包括作者的署名，但考虑到第一人称视角，粗俗的话语和语调，看来这位顽强的同盟退伍军人写下了这首歌词。这位匿名作者似乎坚持自己的身份，因为他是一个悔的叛徒，将失败的叛乱变成受害者。他开始说：“哦，我是个好老叛逆者，/现在就是我了； /对于这个'自由的公平土地'/我不在乎在所有”与斜体‘不惜一切’的审查显然押韵，但省略‘该死的。’ ¹

接下来的四节经文进一步宣扬了美国的谴责。“好旧叛逆者”盘点了他讨厌的所有建国文件和标志，包括独立宣言，宪法和美国国旗，以及1865年为实施重建计划而创建的自由民局。并帮助曾经被奴役的非裔美国人过渡到自由。作者自称是战后的受害者。[结束页124]

压迫，同时声称他想“杀死一些”美国士兵。在最后一句话中，他保证永远不接受重建，并声称：“我不希望赦免，/因为我曾经是，现在，我不会被重建。/并且我不在乎一分钱。” [另一个省略的“该死”]。^2个

闪现到二十一世纪。YouTube上数十首“ Good Old Rebel”视频都记录了成千上万首针对专业和业余演出的歌曲。来自世界各地的观众经常会留下赞成同盟，反对分裂的评论。这些YouTube用户在社交媒体提供的匿名性中蒙上了一层面纱，他们感到与“好老叛逆者”和它召唤出来的想象中的南方有联系，这是对所谓的压迫性联邦政府的持续反叛的南方。他们听到因反政府怨恨而产生的亲属关系，这种亲属关系带有语法错误和熟悉的政治抵抗主题。这首歌为富有同情心的听众创造了一个空间和配乐，使他们在没有规范的美国爱国主义的情况下表演他们想象中最真实的自我。听到他们的意见在这样一首古老的歌曲中回响，将十九世纪的大众文化注入了现代激进右翼的政治框架，并在此刻确认了他们的政治。它验证了他们的感受。³ [第125页结束]

具有讽刺意味的是，“ Good Old Rebel”不是真实的，也不完全是真实的。“好老叛逆”开了个玩笑。印第安纳·兰道夫（Innes Randolph）是一名记者，诗人，也是弗吉尼亚州一个著名家庭的后裔，他写下这些话，部分是由于他作为同盟军士兵的经历而诞生的，部分是为了嘲讽受过良好教育的工人阶级白人南方人。战争结束后，伦道夫的经文作为匿名的，甚至有人认为是真实的民歌，在几十年后就流传开来。这种传播过程很大程度上消除了伦道夫的幽默尝试，并将他的个人怨恨投射到贫穷的白人南方人身上，其中许多人在战争期间都不愿为奴隶主的分离而战。⁴

“ Good Old Rebel”很好地模糊了讽刺和诚恳之间的界限，这意味着世代的听众都发现这首歌的含义具有延展性。有些人把歌词牢记在心。有些人听到这首歌是出于好奇，似乎太过严肃而无法严肃了。还有其他人发现这首歌的虚无主义很吸引人，因为它被同盟国步兵的浪漫想象所包裹。这...