Meet "The League of the South"

[UTUSN]

The local radio wingnut talkshow host e-mailed asking whether I had heard of The League of the South, since I'm always yakking against the Minutemen. He hadn't, and wondered what they are like. Luckily, the wonderful Southern Poverty Law Center HAS heard of them.

I'm sorry, but every time I see a thread about WAR-on-the-U.S./MX-border, or INVASION, a ding-ding-ding goes off in my head.

I'll say it again, we Dems are behind the curve on the so-called immigration issue. The wingnuts (O'LOOFAH, MALKIN, HANNITY, TANCREDO, the Minutemen) have been framing it their way for a couple of three years now, claiming their interest is only on curbing "illegality" and in ensuring "national security".

We are being blindsided by this and will have to face it with the rising tide of nativism. We have to focus it like the pro-CHOICE issue: We are NOT for "abortion," we are pro-CHOICE, and "they" are NOT pro-LIFE, they are anti-CHOICE. Similarly, we are NOT for "illegality" and we ARE for "national security" but we are also for civil rights, humane treatment, and social justice.

So the League wants a Southern secession, where minorities MAY exist if they know their place---kinda/sorta like Clarence, Condo, Tony GARZA, GONZALES, and POWELL. HEY!---they've got four potential citizens already!

I told the local wingnut that as soon as I saw the Stars'n'Bars I smelled the racism with my eyes.

Oh, the chockfuls of Stars'n'Bars are all over the LOS websites (states, too). And then there's a site for "Sons of Confederate Veterans".
http://www.dixienet.org/

http://cbearhamrick.tripod.com/

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=250
A League of Their Own
The League of the South, a group at the center of the neo-Confederate movement, says it's not racist, but the evidence shows otherwise.

.... Hill is no aberration in the 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. ....

Academics Set the Tone
The League of the South, first known as the Southern League, was founded in 1994 by Hill and a group of 40 other people. At first, the LOS appeared to be concerned primarily with questions of Southern culture, threatening to push for secession, at least rhetorically, as a final resort if what were seen as the rights and dignity of the South were not respected. ....

By 2000, two years later, that number had more than doubled to approximately 9,000 members. LOS's academic veneer, coupled with its insistence that it was not racist despite its keen interest in matters like the Confederate battle flag, helped draw in thousands who might otherwise have stayed away.

It didn't hurt that Hill was then a history professor at historically black Stillman College in Tuscaloosa. (He has since left that job.) ....

He says people other than white Christians would be allowed to live in his South, but only if they bow to "the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions." Where the goal of secession was once largely rhetorical, it is now a seriously stated aim.

And, in a June posting on AlaReb, Hill called slavery a "God-ordained" institution. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

[reality based]

1. I smell treason n/t

[PurpleChez]

5. Yeah! Isn't it treason to advocate the overthrow of the US Gov't?

Sure, if we raised a fuss the boys in the hoods and sheets would howl that we were violating their first amendment rights, but they've made a cottage industry out of forcing the rest of us march in lock step with their ultra-narrow view of the law. The RW needs a taste of its own medicine.

[PurpleChez]

2. 9000 crackers might be the fringe of the fringe, but

this is the mindset that the bushies aim for. Thanks for exposing a regressive, racist organization, which I had previously been unaware of.

[bryant69]

3. Well nice that they are being more open about their goals

On the other hand, you'd need to correlate this openness against membership figures to see if their new open racism were actually making inroads into the south.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[PurpleChez]

12. I'm a native Pennsylvanian who moved to Georgia in 1997.

I've been here throughout all of the recent flag controversies, which have exposed a lot of nastiness. I'm no sociologist, but I think modern racism is very complex. Sure, there are pockets of virulent racism out there (and they're not necessarily all up in the hills), but I think most folks have no desire to return to the days of Jim Crow and separate water fountains. They don't think twice about working or shopping alongside members of other races. Even if a minority family OF EQUAL ECONOMIC STATUS were to move in next door they might not mind too much. Their kids go to school, join clubs, and play on teams with minority kids, and they don't bat an eye. But there is still the almost genetic fascination with the Civil War. They talk about "Southern Heritage," but for a lot of folks their interest in said heritage is limited to the years 1861-1865. They quietly embrace "Lost Cause" mythology like a second religion, and sincerely believe that "coming in second in a two-sided war" (as a local editorialist once wrote) represents one of the highpoints of human achievement. When topics like the Confederate flag come up they'll write letters telling "loudmouth Blacks" to "get over it," even though THEY are unable to "get over" a war that ended 131 years ago. They don't want to RETURN to Jim Crow, but just below the surface they nurture a lingering resentment that their daddies were forced to give it up in the first place, that the dreaded Outsiders and hated Northerners had violated their imagined soveriegnty. There may be far fewer people today than there were two generations ago who would feel compelled to lynch a Black man because he registered to vote, but there is still a lot of darkness just below the surface. And perhaps the most problematic aspect of it is that so many southern sympathizers believe that their intollerance can be justified because it is a part of their culture -- and should even be celebrated as such.

Well...I've rambled on long enough. Do I get my PhD now or what? ;)

[underpants]

4. This is going to big their BIG issue this year

They have already framed it and they are going to try to paint Dems into a corner with it. SCREAMING and all.

One problem. W is doing nothing that they like. Maybe this will give candidates some room from him but it seems to me that they are just being dragged down another issue path like abortion and Schiavo-there will never be any resolution it is just kicking up dust and screaming about it being dusty.

Still it is worth keeping an eye open for it. Thanks. I will listen for it too.

[sharp_stick]

6. And Shrub wanted to bomb al-jazeera

This is a meeting hall that just screams for a couple of bunker-busters

[acmejack]

7. I would seriously seek political asylum in a sane Northern State

"Curiouser and curiouser" said Alice...

[UTUSN]

11. Funny how these dudes attempt to immunize themselves

on the racist angle by citing their being related to minorities.

This dude HILL was a professor at a majority-Black college.

GILCHRIST, of the Minutemen, running for Congress, boasts he couldn't possibly be racist because he has a Mexican immigrant (legal) son-in-law.

And then the eminent Professor Victor Davis HANSON, CHEENEE's Classics guru who war-mongered for the Iraq attack. He coined the term "Mexifornia" and has a few Mexican in-laws.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. You can paint up a hog and add a long silky tail

and call it a pony, but it's still a hog. This is the same old same old racisim and hatred disguised as something else.

As for aliens coming into this country--when anyone asks me this, my reply is "And what tribe are you from? If you're not full blooded Native American, your ancestors were immigrants."

[n2doc]

9. Seems like we had a big dust up over this about 150 years ago.

So all I have to say to them is "You LOST- Get OVER it"

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Ha ha

that's right!

[RB TexLa]

13. Anglo-Celtic people ?????

I can't begin to describe how offensive this term is. There is no such thing as Anglo-Celtic people. And even the way it's worded, why not "Celtic-Anglo people"? Guess a few more convents would have to be burned to the ground if people tried to say it that way.

It's just like when someone tries to refer to me as an "American" in reference to the Country instead of the content, I am not an "American" I am an Irish-American, at least we get the placement of the words right on that.