In his latest opinion piece for the Washington Post, Dana Milbank talks about similarities between the historical revisionism of Lost Cause confederates and January 6 insurrectionists. The only thing I disagree with is the likely consequences.

History, the adage goes, is written by the victors.

Would that it were true.

In the Civil War, the U.S. Army, at a staggering human cost, eventually crushed the traitors who took up arms against their own country. But Lost Cause mythology rewrote the rebellion as a conflict over states’ rights, portrayed Confederates as gallant heroes fighting impossible odds, romanticized plantation life and sanitized slavery. The fictions, taught to generations of southerners, fueled Jim Crow and white supremacy.
In the retelling of Jan. 6, we see an echo of Lost Cause mythology. On that terrible day, terrorists took up arms against the United States, sacking the seat of the U.S. government in a deadly rampage. White supremacists marauded through the Capitol. It was a coup attempt, aimed at overturning the will of the people with brute force, encouraged by a defeated president and his allies. The Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police, badly outnumbered, ultimately prevailed in putting down the insurrection.

But now the losers are trying to rewrite the history of that day. The terrorists were “patriots.” Theirs was a “normal tourist visit.” They weren’t armed. They were “hugging and kissing” the police. A woman, shot as she breached the last barrier keeping elected representatives from the mob, was a martyr shot in cold blood. The Capitol Police were ill-trained. It was Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

The losers, again, are trying to write the history. They must not be allowed to succeed — for if they do, they will certainly try again to attack democracy.

I don’t think the danger is that, left unchallenged, the right-wing version of January 6 will lead to more anti-Democratic behavior. That danger will exist in the short term regardless of what anyone does in response to historical revisionism. The more compelling risk is that the Republicans will pay no political cost and win back control of the House and Senate. Remember, they don’t riot after winning elections.

And that’s a better parallel to the Lost Cause, too, because the South never took up arms against the federal government again after Appomattox. At least, they didn’t in any systematic way that threatened a coup. Obviously, they waged a low-grade war of attrition and terror against the feds at the local level, and against the political rights of the newly freed slaves. The South avoided the full consequences of their rebellion not by waging another one, but by recasting their “way of life” as virtuous and then having a lot of success in getting the rest of the country to go along for the ride.

They reestablished an uncompromising one-party rule, for a century with the Democrats and now with the Republicans. This was another way of enforcing their version of history. What they couldn’t win on the battlefield, they won instead at the ballot box, in part by severely restricting who could cast a ballot.

So, since we can hear the echos of this history in our current situation, we should insist on telling the January 6 story on the victors’ terms. It might sound more noble to argue that this isn’t politically motivated, but it is. The important thing is that it isn’t narrowly political. It’s not urgent that the Democrats win elections because of any specific policy differences they have with the Republicans. It’s urgent because they’re the only party that still supports accepting election results even when they are unfavorable.

If the Republicans win, it’s a threat to our representative system of government, and there’s no bigger threat than that.