I know, I know, most of you could probably care less about Glenn Beck’s new best friend, Thomas Naylor, the leader of the now-discredited seccesionist group, Second Vermont Republic. But like the teabaggers, there’s that “gotta-stare-at-a-car-wreck” thing that unhinged lunatics just make me get.
It was a big story on here a few years ago when we publicized his organization’s ties to racist groups like the League of the South. This got the anti-hate organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center interested, and they did a big report about them a while ago, which Naylor dismissed, but soon after, he supposedly broke ties with the LoS, decrying their racism.
But Naylor, when it comes down to it, is “obviously a good Confederate”, as he was once told when appearing on a white-supremacist’s radio talk show last year, obviously an unreconstructed one, as, yes, he’s back in bed with the LoS, as this new report from the SPLC reveals:
The divorce didn’t last long, however. Naylor and a close ally, prominent New York leftist writer and editor Kirkpatrick Sale, are now scheduled to speak at a conference on secession being organized by the Abbeville Institute. They will share the stage at the Charleston, S.C., conference in February with neo-Confederate scholars such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Clyde Wilson and Livingston, the Abbeville Institute founder. All three have current or past links with the League of the South. (Go here for profiles of DiLorenzo, Livingston and Wilson.)
Defiant as ever, Naylor, echoing the same sentiments about the SPLC that one would usually read on white supremacist sites such as Stormfront and VNN (no links, if you want it, look for it), had this to say:
Reached by telephone at his home in Vermont, Naylor declined to discuss the state of his relations with the neo-Confederates. “This has nothing to do with race,” he said. “It’s the SPLC that’s the hate group. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?“
Class act, that Naylor. No word yet from his cohort at VT Commons, Rob Williams. He’d probably say he doesn’t care, as he’s said in the past, all in support of the lost cause.
Naylor’s defenders justifying this latest development. Marek?
‘Way to marginalize yourself, Tommy-Boy!
I am reminded of what a Scottish friend said many years ago about the Scottish Nationalist Movement: “You’d think it was a good idea until you see the people promoting it.”
Maybe those differences weren’t so irreconcilable after all.