Ten Years of Blogging: League of the South President Says Being a White Supremacist is Just Fine

I write about neo-Confederate groups which I describe as organizations which have members who wish the south would have won the Civil War. Most also  can be described as white supremacist or segregationist groups. Their numbers are small but they may play a role in radicalizing peripheral members of their movement (including disturbed ones like Charleston shooter Dylann Roof) to acts of violence (and acknowledged by a League of the South leader here). I have followed the League of the South most closely because of the involvement of Michael Peroutka and his Institute on the Constitution. Peroutka is a former board member of the League and current senior instructor David Whitney is the chaplain of the MD/VA state branch.
The League was mentioned briefly in the Washington Post article on the South Carolina shootings. While the group doesn’t figure in the tragedy directly, their materials are easily available on the web and they have moved toward more public demonstrations.
In one representative post, the League’s president Michael Hill reflects on how good it is to be a white supremacist:

In what is probably one of the clearest statements of the white supremacist views of the League of the South, organization president Michael Hill penned an article calling on League members to relish the white supremacist views of their Southern heroes. Anne Arundel County Council candidate and proud League of the South member Michael Peroutka told a news conference audience that he repudiated racists in the League and would pray for them. Well, he does know Michael Hill amd so he has some repudiating and praying to do. After reading the essay, I think Hill would just laugh at Peroutka’s prayers.

Hill reminds his readers that historically Confederates and their sympathizers saw the South as “white man’s country.”

“in 1928, historian Ulrich B. Phillips called the South “a white man’s country.” [“The Central Theme of Southern History,” American Historical Review 34 (October 1928), p. 31.] From the beginning of their history in the early 17th century, Southerners had taken this statement as an unchallenged fact, and the presence of an alien race in their midst drove it home with added emphasis. Few if any Southerners, or for that matter Northerners, believed in racial equality at the time of the War for Southern Independence nor in the decades to follow. That Phillips made his non-controversial (at the time) statement more than six decades after the end of that war speaks volumes about the stubbornness of what is now vilified as “white supremacy.” Thus, I think it is safe to say that our Confederate ancestors and their descendants for at least two generations would qualify as “racists” and “white supremacists” by today’s definitions of the terms.”

That is just fine with Hill, and as it should be.

It is easy to imagine an impressionable young person adopting their ideology and then figuring out how to put it all into practice.  Read the rest of the post here.

The Institute on the Constitution Posts Another Incorrect Quote Attribution – This Time They Get Thomas Paine Wrong

The Institute on the Constitution claims to be an educational outreach of Michael Peroutka’s law firm. Miseducational outreach would be a better term. They claim to teach about the founders but they often are sloppy and attribute things to the founders they didn’t say.
Once, they claimed Jefferson said something he didn’t say and then they botched George Washington as well.  Now, the target of false quotation is Thomas Paine.
Paine IOTC False Quote
Paine never said it; it most likely originated with Edward Abbey.
Note that it has been shared 1600 times. That’s a lot of ignorance for which IOTC is responsible.
For those keeping track, IOTC’s senior instructor is still listed as chaplain of the Maryland/Virginia chapter of the League of the South, a white supremacist organization.
Whitney MD chapter of LOS
How many churches who host IOTC courses know they are involved with an organization which is run by a former board member of a white supremacist group and which promotes the teaching of a current chaplain of a state chapter of that same white supremacist group?
 

Maryland Investigating Robocalls Made in Support of Michael Peroutka's Campaign for County Council

Who made the potentially illegal robocalls? Watch this investigative report by WUSA:

Another interesting aspect of this report is Michael Peroutka’s spokesperson: Peter Waldron.

“Councilman Peroutka’s policy is not to comment on ongoing investigations,” said Peroutka spokesman Peter Waldron in an email to WUSA9.

Could this be the same Peter Waldron that worked for Michele Bachmann’s failed run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012?
 

League of the South Plans April Celebration of Lincoln's Assassination

As I reported recently, the League of the South president Michael Hill announced their plan to celebrate the life of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. Plans are apparently coming together for an April celebration in Maryland. According to Hunter Wallace:

We’ve been getting a lot of publicity from the media for announcing that we are going to hold a public celebration of Lincoln’s assassination, but it is something that many of us have done privately for years now.
Note: This event will be held in Baltimore on April 11th. It is pretty much our equivalent of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Contact me for details.

Maryland is home to the Institute on the Constitution and former League of the South board member Michael Peroutka. In addition, IOTC senior instructor David Whitney is chaplain of the Maryland/Virginia branch of the League. I wonder if Rev. Whitney will offer prayers at the event.
Michael Peroutka once said the Institute on the Constitution led him to involvement in the League of the South.  Perhaps the IOTC could offer a session on the constitutional basis for assassination.
 
 
 

The League of the South Honors John Wilkes Booth

On the League of the South website, League president Michael Hill wrote today:

The League of the South looks to the present and future. However, from time to time we do look back at our past.

This 14th of April will mark the 150th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s execution of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. The League will, in some form or fashion, celebrate this event. We remember Booth’s diary entry: “Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.” A century and a half after the fact, The League of the South thanks Mr. Booth for his service to the South and to humanity.

Stay tuned . . .

Michael Hill

Booth considered slavery to be a blessing.

Currently, the senior instructor of the Institute on the Constitution, David Whitney, is the chaplain of the Maryland/Virginia branch of the League of the South. The founder of the IOTC, Michael Peroutka says he is no longer a member but thanked Hill for the League’s support in Peroutka’s November election to the Anne Arundel County (MD) Council.