Thomas H. Naylor: The Dog-whistler
Wikipedia: Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. [1] [2]
According to Thomas Naylor, he'd been entranced with the vision of a secessionist state of Vermont for more than a score of years. He'd said that in the first dozen or so years that his was a lone voice, and, like much of what he'd like Vermonters to believe, that isn't true. However, it is true that in this period, and likely before, he had associates who were up to their eyeballs in the South Will Rise Again movement. This association would reveal itself when Naylor launched his own movement that he'd call (despite the very real question that there'd ever been a first one) the Second Vermont Republic (SVR).
In putting together his advisory board he included very few Vermonters but instead he packed the group with neo-Confederate ideologues and white supremacists like Franklin Sanders, a convicted felon and a League of the South (LOS) member of LOS's board of directors; the Lincoln hating, Union hating, unions hating, as well as the hater ofthe Constitution's pesky 14th Amendment with its due process clause that applied the Bill of Rights to the states and its citizenship clause and its equal protection clause that was used to dismantle institutional segregation practiced in Southern states, and Big Tobacco whore, Thomas DiLorenzo; the present day South Carolina delegate to the white supremacist Southern National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale; the former first director of LOS's historical revisionist Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History before founding the "Lincoln loath(ing)" (Time, 2005) Abbeville Institute, so named for the plantation of John C. Calhoun, a mid-19th century slavery and "states rights" (white supremacy dog-whistle), Donald Livingston. There were others including a member of Italy's racist Lega Nord. [3] Naylor's ties to the national secession movement (an oxymoron?) elements that are the most racist, most committed would be restorers of institutional segregation in the states, and most committed to patriarchy and homophobia is indisputable.
Naylor, just like Teabaggers and racists would do when their world caved in on the evening of November 6, wrote another of his essays titled Obamaland: Vision Free, But Very Cool that was intended to demean his better, President Obama.
You see, in Naylor's alternative universe, the president merely strives to be "cool." Nevermind the conflicts in the Middle East, the fiscal cliff, congressional pissing contests, real terrorist threats against Americans at home and abroad, nah, he's just into a nigga thing about being "cool."
Don't believe it? Just consider Naylor's racist, dog-whistle close to his essay:
"Above all, what Obama was about was being “cool.” And it worked in spades."
Truly pathetic, even for a self-described scholar and Dixie singer like Naylor.
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Labels: League of the South, Lega Nord, President Obama, racism, Thomas Naylor
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