(Re-Bumped to the top, as the issue seems to be gaining steam again – promoted by odum)
A few weeks back, I received email from an anonymous blogger asking if I’d ever looked closely at Vermont’s small but high profile secession movement, the Second Vermont Republic (and its companion publication, VT Commons). Despite the fact that many high-profile Vermont activists have associated themselves with the organization, I had dismissed them largely over sentiments I thought brushed into anti-immigrant territory. This particular blogger, however, had a deeper concern.
He (or she) had just heard SVR spokesperson Rob Williams on Switchboard passing on a revisionist historical portrait of Abraham Lincoln which the blogger (who follows hate groups) recognized as part and parcel of what the Southern Poverty Law Center (the premier anti-hate group advocacy and tracking organization in the country) refers to as the Neo-Confederate Movement. The blogger considered the possibility of a connection and looked into the SVR and VC websites.
What he found was shocking for two reasons; one, that there seem to be no degrees of seperation between SVR and leading neo-confederate thinkers and activists specifically discussed on the Southern Poverty Law Center website. These people are serving on SVR’s advisory board.
And two; that there seems to be no effort to hide the fact, given that groups such as the flagship neo-confederate organization The League of the South are linked to prominently, and the work of LOS activists cited and praised repeatedly.
The anonymous blogger has posted the first of his findings at vermontsecession.blogspot.com, and the work he’s done is prodigious. It is as well cited and linked as any research document, and as such virtually impossible to refute. From the anonymous blogger who is using the psuedonym Thomas Rowley after one of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys:
As I’ve read and learned more about the group at Second Vermont Republic and its publication, Vermont Commons, I’ve become concerned about some of what they say and even more so about things that they aren’t saying. My purpose in this blog won’t be to gevaltize about the various people and their connections to organizations that promote ideas (or as they would have it, “Truths”) that are inimical to generally accepted Vermont values of inclusion and respect for others. I’d simply like for my neighbors to have additional facts not being presented by those who are proposing secession.
I strongly suggest a visit to vermontsecession to review what is only the beginnings of his case (there is much more coming). In the meantime, I’ll try to provide some highlights below the fold, including the results of some of my own digging.
There are some names that might raise eyebrows on the Advisory Board. Marco Bassani is associated with Italy’s Northern League, a fracturous political entity that has faced charges of xenophobia, and Jason Sorens is the founder of the Right-Libertarian Free State Movement that settled in New Hampshire – a movement that has also dealt with charges of xenophobia and racism. Interesting, but there’s hardly enough out there to make for any kind of indictment, frankly.
There are, however, several people connected with the League of the South (LOS) who are either directly involved with or promoted by SVR. In fact, the LOS is directly linked to from the SVR site here. This is just some of what the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has to say about LOS:
a group that has grown to include 9,000 people organized into 96 chapters in 20 states. Despite the group’s claims that it will brook no racists, the League is rife with white supremacists and racist ideology.
One key LOS figure … a man who is the former head of the LOS chapter in Tuscaloosa (Ala.) County where the League got its start, was even blunter than his leader in his own AlaReb posting about black-on-white crime.
“You see the day is coming when we will NEED a new type of Klan,” G. David Cooksey wrote after the Central Park incidents in June. “Yes I said Klan!! If push comes to shove I’m for it! … Time has come to stop this crap now!
“Or would you all like to see your daughters raped???”
And J Michael Hill, the group’s founder is a veritable font of such statements as:
Let us not flinch when our enemies call us ‘racists’; rather, just reply with, ‘So, what’s your point?'”
And the SPLC goes on:
And the League runs the Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, an organization headed by Donald Livingston that offers seminars “dedicated to combating the demonisation of the South.” It is supported by members’ dues and an LOS foundation.
The name Donald Livingston may look familiar if you’ve been clicking on the links earlier in this diary. That would be the same Donald Livingston on the advisory board of the Second Vermont Republic. Here’s a screenshot:
The vermontsecession blog spends a lot of time on Donald Livingston, whose SPLC profile can be found here. Rowley is actually far more kind to Livingston at the blog than SPLC is.
If you checked the link to Livingston’s profile, you may have noticed this:
At a 2003 “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference (see also profile of Thomas DiLorenzo), he said that “evil is habit-forming” and no habit is as evil as believing that Lincoln acted out of good motives.
This, of course, a reference to the Lincoln revisionism that permeates the neo-Confederate movement. What you also may notice is another name from the SVR Advisory Board – Thomas DiLorenzo.
At this point, Rowley doesn’t discuss DiLorenzo – but that’s only because there is so much to digest and process on the man, he is still working on it. Like Livingston, DiLorenzo is specifically highlighted on the SPLC site. His name is not merely attached to the SVR, but his work is repeatedly promoted (here under VTCommons’ “essential readings” and here, in a book review by Rob Williams as two examples).
Rowley’s DiLorenzo entry will likely dwarf the others in quantity and impact, as he is a big player in the hate group circuit. DiLorenzo is an enthusiastic proponent of radically unrestrained markets. For example:
One of the oldest myths about capitalism is the notion that factories that offer the poor higher wages to lure them off the streets (and away from lives of begging, stealing, prostitution, or worse) or away from back-breaking farm labor somehow impoverishes and exploits them. They
are said to work in “sweatshops” for “subsistence wages.” That was the claim made by socialists and unionists in the early days of the industrial revolution, and it is still made today by the same category of malcontents – usually by people who have never themselves performed manual labor and experienced breaking a sweat while working. (I am not referring here to the red herring claim that most foreign “sweatshops” utilize some kind of slave labor. This is an outrageous propaganda ploy designed to portray defenders of free markets as being in favor of slavery).
Finally, perhaps one of the strongest virtues of foreign “sweatshops” is that they weaken the hand of American labor unions. With few exceptions, American unions have long been at the forefront of anti-capitalist ideology and have supported virtually all the destructive tax and regulatory policies that have been so poisonous to American capitalism. Unions believe that they cannot exist unless workers can be convinced that employers are the enemies of the working class, if not society, and that they (the workers) need unions to protect them from these exploiters.
DiLorenzo, whom even far-right absolutists like Randian Libertarian activist Timothy Sandefur calls “an unusually bad scholar, whose incompetence at history is only exceeded by his poor grasp of basic Constitutional theory” is the source of much of the Lincoln revisionism, and as such a key source for the rhetoric of these groups. From SPLC again:
A recent headline on
WorldNetDaily, a far-right Web site, showed what neo-Confederate and white supremacist groups believe is at stake: “‘Taking America Back’ Starts with Taking Lincoln Down.” The anti-Lincoln campaign is not simply another series of shopworn arguments about the past. Instead, Lincoln is blamed for everything far right-wingers believe is amiss in the America of 2003: big centralized government, welfare giveaways, rampant capitalist greed, shrinking civil liberties and reckless imperialism.
Rowley even forwarded to me the following Google search link which shows DiLorenzo’s multiple postings on a neo-nazi website with the heading “No Jews, Just Right” No doubt Rowley’s far more extensive work on DiLorenzo over the next couple days will be damning.
But returning to the quote above, “reckless imperialism” is a key phrase. The neo-confederate movement represents a marriage of sorts between old-line, traditional white supremicists and the fringe of the paleoconservative movement. Rowley believes that suporters of SVR are not secret racists, but have rather been duped by carefully presented rhetoric. The paleocons passionately hate the neocons, whose statist, imperialistic visions they find anathema. As such, the conversation with genuinely progressive or left-libertarian activists can stay on common ground if carefully nuanced.
His view is reinforced by the appearence of so many genuinely progressive activists on both the Vermont Commons site as well as the Second Vermont Republic site. People like Dan DeWalt, Bill McKibben, Will Linder- these folks are clearly the good guys. I did give the ones I knew a heads up to what Rowley had discovered. DeWalt responded immediately that he had no idea of these connections, and would certainly take a look and re-evaluate, depending on what the results are. Rob Williams himself seems like a very genuine, progressive activist, and it’s hard after meeting him to imagine that he would have any part in this.
But as a historian himself, it’s also hard not to give him some responsibility for promoting the neo-confederate propoganda that passes as “history.” Or for giving VT Commons print space to the likes of Franklin Sanders, whose work appeared in the copy of VT Commons recently included in Seven Days. From vermontsecession:
Like a number of members of Second Vermont Republic’s advisory board, Sanders has a long association with the League of the South [1] , a hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. [2] He serves on the LoS Board of Directors. [3] He spoke at the First North American Secessionist Convention in Burlington that was sponsored last fall by Kirkpatrick Sale’s (also an SVR advisory board member) Middlebury Institute
Sanders has a criminal record, as well as having attempted a foray into writing:
a fictional account set in the now near future of a Christian Pol Pot-like character who decimated the non-Christian, city folk/population with a neutron bomb/device or some such nonsense. If you like your action heroes white, preachy and definitely not Jewish then Heiland is for you. Customer reviews at the Amazon link included the mention of “a few good reviews of the book” from two (surprise!) fellow LoS board members, although that fact isn’t noted in the customer review. One is from the racist president of the LoS, Michael Hill:
“Heiland presents a chilling portrait of what could be in store for America should the secular-statist agenda become reality. A death-dealing, anti-Christian Establishment holds sway over a blighted urban landscape, while Christian patriots control the countryside. The epic showdown between the forces of light and darkness is not to be missed.”
Dr. Michael Hill
Montgomery, Alabama
Disturbed yet? And there is more, more, more. Rowley has amassed sources – including YouTubed video recordings – and with much more to come. It runs so deep and the connections are so omnipresent, it’s hard to imagine that the SVR is truly salvageable, and that truly progressive secession advocates might want to consider dumping the organization and starting over.
But just as disturbing as these contacts themselves are the fact that it took so long to notice them, despite the fact that they have been on display for all to see. As overwhelmingly white as Vermont is, I can’t help but see this as a result of our pronounced lack of diversity. African Americans, Jews – any minority group with a history of being oppressed – have a culturally imbedded radar for bigotry that we in the majority lack. I can’t help but wonder if we were a more diverse state, if this sort of mischief wouldn’t have been spotted immediately and nipped in the bud.
Whatever the case, some very ugly tendrils have infiltrated themselves into the progressive community right under our noses, and Rowley should be given a medal for bringing it out into the sunlight before it spreads any further. I strongly urge readers to check out the definitive record at vermontsecession.blogspot.com and return frequently over the next couple weeks. It’s time we called it out.
UPDATE 2/10, 9:40 PM: Well. I guess people do read this site.
Quick notes:
1. Those defending the inclusion of the radical right wing, white supremicist element are probably wasting their time doing so by attempting to attack the reputation of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are super-credible. The Nation cites them all the time. It’s possible to disagree with anyone, but when, instead of disagreeing, you try a smear without any backup, it doesn’t look good.
2. To everyone reading – this post was not about the concept of secession. I have mixed feelings on the issue myself. It appeals to my left-libertarian streak in theory, but I do worry about the practice. In any event, I’m not touching the merits of secession and don’t intend to.
3. On the “guilt by association” thing, setting aside that we take politicians to task for much looser connections to shady interests, if proponents feel that these alliances don’t matter – that it’s really okay with you and you’re comfortable with it – hey, just say so. Heck, say it proudly. I disagree, and said so. Others may disagree with me. Everybody’s different. It’s my opinion that most people will be as shocked as I was – certainly most in the GMD community will be. Some people will feel very threatened. What’s important is that it’s out there for discussion and there are no secrets.
4. As to the charge that the vermontsecession.blogspot.com poster and myself are simply wrong, again, make your case. I’ve mea culpa’d before, and have no problem doing so again. But just saying it’s wrong or calling me names is not a case.