It Seems That Another League of the South Sycophant Is Miffed With This Blog

In a rather overwrought post that he titled "PC hit squad attacks The Ohio Republic" the blog's author, Harold Thomas, gets his panties in a knot over a change that I recently made in my Links column. I wrote here:

"On a more personally disappointing note, I've moving the Ohio Republic blog to the same column as Wagner's and Tuggle's, not so much because its author, Harold Thomas, espouses the sort of virulent hatred that oozes from sites like Wagner's, Tuggle's and, of course, Naylor's, but because of the open support he offers Tuggle's vile LOS website.

From that rather direct statement, that Harold is a supporter of much of what goes on in the LOS and thus enables the white supremacist League of the South blog called Rebellion, Thomas contorts reason to synthesize several untrue representations of my positions, opinions and "real agenda." Harold even goes so far as to fetch from the right-wing toolbox of baseless charges that are de rigueur for attacks by a paleoconservative (as he chooses to identify himself) that is the very essence of an allegation intended to eliminate all question as to who is right in a discussion while at the same time donning the mantle of supposed victimhood. Funny but I thought Harold was smart enough to know that use of the term is itself an attempt at to use political correctness and that is why most people with any sense have long ago stopped using it. Here's a definition of political correctness that would seem to leave me out. I've been accused of a lot but never as being a "whining pussy." I leave that to libertarians.

It's much like the old joke, "Libertarians don't want the government telling you what to do; that's what libertarians are there to do."

Cognitive dissonance is often a feature of Harold's posts on this, that and every other friggin' thing under the sun. The post in which he complains about his proper placement among enablers of white supremacism contains this gem:

"The League of the South really is a controversial organization, and does include some avowed white supremacists among its leadership. However, the League does not openly espouse racism in its policy statements..."

Earth to Harold: LOS and Rebellion regularly serve up the same repast of race-baiting gruel, including twisted rationales for race separation. What part of the "espous(al of) racism in its policy statements" don't you get?

Harold's sympathies are not so far removed from the "dog-whistle racism" of Mike Tuggle as he might have us believe. Two years ago today, when Harold mistakenly believed that the white supremacist blog Rebellion was shutting down, he wrote this love letter farewell to an old friend that included one of the premier racist touchstones of the 19th and 20th centuries, "Dixie":

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010.

Farewell to an old friend
"Longtime readers of The Ohio Republic know that one of my favorite sources of information was the blog Rebellion. I was notified last week that it had ceased publication. It was unquestionably a Southern blog, with its continuing guerrilla war against the Southern Poverty Law Center and its peculiar attitude toward Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We made a gentlemen's agreement to disagree over the latter issue. A unique feature in recent months was the "Southern music break."

"However, Rebellion contained interesting news and comment about federal follies and secessionism that was not readily available elsewhere – so they were the largest single recipient of virtual buckeyes* from The Ohio Republic. Rebellion was more than a weblog – it was a forum, with some of the most interesting and spirited discussion to appear anywhere in the blogosphere. For many Southrons and this writer, it will be sorely missed."

"Its blogger, Mike Tuggle ("Old Rebel") will remain active, concentrating on growing his organization and working on its quarterly newspaper, Free Magnolia."

"We'll send it off by striking up the band with a rendition of an old Ohio show tune by Daniel Emmett, originally known as In Dixie's Land."

Show tune? "Gentlemen's agreement?" Really???

For any of readers of this blog who may be unfamiliar with the "In Dixie's Land" history, it's straight out of our country's racist past. It was a New York "show tune" long before Ohioans claimed this racist crap as their own. The "show tune" writer that Harold refers to, Daniel Emmett, is the "founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition" who wrote extensively for and performed with Bryant's Minstrel's, a troupe that was a hit with both Northern and Southern racists in that troubled time before, during and after the Civil War, also known as the War to Preserve Slavery. Even Emmett, who was reknown for his black-face caricatures of African-Americans (or "slaves" as they were then known) complained that "If I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it."

Oh, and Harold, I never "advised" you of shit, no more than you, say, advised me of your new book (I hope you do better than Thomas H. Naylor's who usually ranks in the umpteenth million percentile). I just made the Links change along with a few others in a housekeeping post and you went batshit crazy over it.

I did notice in your Comments in that "whiny" post of yours that you're getting support from an anti-Semitic proponent of "homogeneous communities" (read: "segregated"), as well as one who has a particularly odious castration fantasy, Carol Moore. Figures. No doubt Carol considers you to be a sufficiently neutered libertarian that she now deigns to comment at you blog despite your having once said,

"I also agree with you about Carol Moore, and yes, I have learned to handle her with caution. She has rather heavily colored a couple of comments about me with her worldview, which I do not share."

[and]

"I think Carol Moore's sunspot theory is loony."

Harold engages in "gentlemen's agreements," attracts "loony" bigots to his blog, lauds racist tropes like minstrel shows and hides behind the shield of supposed "political correctness attacks" of others because he can't quite come to terms with his own internal bigotry.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Second Vermont Republic Founder Thomas Naylor Is Now Down to "Just Whistlin' Dixie"

Second Vermont Republic founder, Thomas Naylor, was the largest financial backer of what ended up being an abysmal showing by Vermont secesher candidates in the 2010 election cycle due to "the paucity of votes attracted by candidate (Dennis) Steele." Steele, the head of the secesher ticket did so poorly that he came within a few votes of having his 0.79% finish bested by a perennial kook candidate who alleges discrimination because of a purported disability that supposedly arises from an STD, and secession supporter, natch.

For those who have followed the saga of the Second Vermont Republic's baas, Thomas Naylor, he has continued to try to separate the modern day secession movement from its deeply troubling racist history. That effort that's been made all the more difficult for him by his longtime association with the League of the South and its perverted view of the Land of Dixie as it supposedly was.

Naylor swerves from distancing himself (sort of) from the LoS types when speaking to media, to then embracing the Lost Causers and their various tropes at secesher meetings.

"Vermont Commons" has a new Spring issue out. In addition to all the usual sky-is-falling, doom and gloom prophecy that permeates its pages, there's an unexpected disclosure of an about-face by the Magnolia Vermonter.

It has to do with one of those symbols so important to Southern (or
Southron, as they prefer to say) seceshers - the singing of the song known as "Dixie".

The song "Dixie" is usually attributed to blackface ministrel show creator and impresario, Ohioan Dan Emmett, and is considered to be a racist view of antebellum Southern black culture.

Sung in an affected style meant to mimic how the white, racist ear hears blacks, the lyrics confirm that fact:

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land whar I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

"The remaining verses drift into the common minstrel idiom of a comical plantation scenario, "supposedly [depicting] the gayer side of life for slaves on Southern plantations:"

Old Missus marry "Will-de-weaber,"
Willium was a gay deceaber;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
But when he put his arm around'er,
He smiled as fierce as a forty-pound'er,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Dar's buck-wheat cakes an 'Ingen' batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Den hoe it down an scratch your grabble,
To Dixie land I'm bound to trabble.
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

"In short, ["Dixie"] made the case, more strongly than any previous minstrel tune had, that slaves belonged in bondage."

Source (The 1916 rendition of "Dixie" may be heard here; click the play button when the window opens.)

Those who have flacked for Naylor in the past usually bring up an unconfirmed assertion by Naylor that he would refuse to stand for the playing of "Dixie" when he was at University of Mississippi, as though that assures that he couldn't possibly be racist. This bit of literary legerdemain from Bill Kauffman, author of "Bye Bye, Miss American Empire":

"Thomas Naylor, who as a young Mississippi liberal took pride in refusing to stand for “Dixie” when his beloved Ole Miss Rebels played, told me that he was so disarmed upon attending the 2006 League of the South convention that for the first time since before the civil rights movement he actually sang the words to that tuneful ode to the land where old times are not forgotten."

Sources [1] [2]

Finally, another fiction of the Naylor image goes "bye, bye."

While inadvertently lifting the veil on Naylor, Kauffman jumps the shark with his whitewashing, Michael Hill entry. Hill, leader of the admittedly white supremacist League of the South "call(s) antebellum slavery "God-ordained," oppos(es) racial intermarriage, and defend(s) segregation as a policy designed to protect the integrity of both races," served at a black college, notes Kauffman - which means what? Kaufmann failed to say in his written sleight of hand that,

"Michael Hill was always on oddity at (Stillman College), roaming the campus wearing a Confederate flag pin and waxing nostalgic to his mostly black students about the so-called "War Between the States."

"...In 1998, Hill finally left Stillman, which had been badly embarrassed by his efforts. ...(T)he (L)eague (of the South) grew quickly, as racist white Southerners sought the respectability of a group led by a professor..."

Source

It's truly a toss up as to who is the unseemlier - the seceshers or their flacks.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.