Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor Clumsily Attempts to Co-opt the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The first hint that the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, was about to make his move to begin his attempt at co-opting what he can of the Occupy Wall Street movement came in a screed pissing on virtually every New Yorker now living in NYC (except for, of course, Brooklynite secessionist flack, Christopher Ketcham). Kind of like Naylor's repeated past condemnation of all Vermonters that I wrote about here.

A week later Naylor showed where he was heading in a post at his website titled, The Wall Street Occupation Gets It, Almost, where he wrote:

"I view myself as an enthusiastic supporter of the Wall Street Occupation (WSO) movement."

Thing is, Tom, that isn't what the movement is called, nor is that the acronym universally used. It's much like the same problem you've had here with Vermonters - you arrogantly label everyone as you wish and then blow a gasket when someone objects, even minutely. Naylor then immediately undermines his claim of being an "enthusiastic supporter" when he notes that the "WSO"(sic) falls short of his own nihilistic standard:

"Unfortunately, many WSO(sic) supporters seem to believe that the United States Government is still fixable. They fail to realize that because of its size, the United States is unsustainable, ungovernable, and, therefore, unfixable."

and

"Regrettably, many of those in the WSO(sic) movement subscribe to the view that campaign finance reform will solve all of our problems."

And then in possibly one of Naylor's most cynically obvious, opportunistic flimflam attempts at co-option, he writes:

"But a word of caution to these idealistic revolutionaries. Avoid like the plague allowing your movement to be co-opted by the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, George Soros’s moveon.com(s/be .org), or political opportunists such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Also, resist the temptation to get in bed with some particular political ideology. No political ideology can save America from itself.

The Wall Street Occupation(sic) movement could be onto something very big – a paradigm shift in the way Americans view the political process. Is it possible to create a window of opportunity which might be open to heretofore unimaginable political options such as... secession..."

Too bad Naylor hasn't the honesty to tell the OWS movement that he hates Bernie Sanders because Bernie failed to resign his US Senate seat to run as Naylor's handpicked secesher candidate for Vermont governor, as Naylor had demanded years earlier.

Naylor also failed to disclose to OWS and Occupy Vermont (his real intended target audience) of his Vermont secesher movement's longtime association with white supremacists (League of the South), homophobes (Christian Exodus) and his promotion of virulent anti-Semites (like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to name just one), including past SVR board of advisor members like Franklin Sanders (neo-Confederate executive board member of the LOS), Thomas DiLorenzo (neo-Confederate, anti-union, anti-14th Amendment and whose work has been published in a Holocaust Denial journal), Jason Sorens (who's done work for the Koch brothers, founded the Free State Project and then has failed to New Hampshire as he requires of his followers, and favors limiting the voting rights of public employees) etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Even now, full blown Vermont secessionists like Matt Cropp (Vermont secesher ideologue and former campaign manager for the supremely failed secesher gubernatorial run of fringer, Dennis Steele) have embedded themselves into the Occupy Vermont-Burlington group.

It'll be interesting to see how the secesher crowd will do at co-opting the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Vermont movements. Given the Vermont secesher track record for failure, from elections to print publications like the soon to be defunct Vermont Commons journal, the OWS and OVB movements seem to be safe for the moment.

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

Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Endorses Violence Against The Government Officials

Not our government at this point - yet.

Second Vermont Republic advisory board member and assistant professor of political science, State University of New York, Buffalo, as well as founder of the floundering New Hampshire Free State Project, Jason Sorens, wrote in a piece he entitled Why Isn't Violence The Answer?:

"U.S. government officials continue to lecture the Egyptian demonstrators on how to go about their business."

"(President Obama) said he had told Mr Mubarak to respect the rights of the Egyptian people and refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters – but he said the protesters also had a responsibility to express themselves peacefully."

"But why?"

"...Surely many of us of feeling around the world recognize that if the protestors find it prudential or useful at some point to storm the presidential palace and dispense street justice to Mubarak and his minions, there is no conceivable ethical reason for them to shrink from the task. Isn’t it on one of our state flags?"

"Sic semper tyrannis."
Why Isn’t Violence the Answer?
January 28, 2011 by Jason Sorens

Whew! Where to start on this one? Probably right there at the end of his piece. While it's true that Sic Semper Tyrannis is on the Commonwealth of Virginia flag, he wasn't writing about flag heraldry, he was writing about "dispen(ing) street justice to Mubarak."

The last time I heard of the words Sic Semper Tyrannis being used
while dispensing "justice" was when an ardent secessionist, John Wilkes Booth, had leapt to the Ford Theatre stage and shouted them at the audience after having just shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head.

Lincoln hatred has a long and deep connection with the Vermont seceshers. Sorens fellow SVR advisory board member is Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a secesher scholar bullshitter with past ties to League of the South's Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, and who has worked for Big Tobacco. DiLorenzo, in addition to his disdain for the bedrock of civil rights in America, the 14th Amendment, as well as organized labor, has made a business of pedaling Lincoln hatred for the secesher community.

Similarly, "Vermont Commons" publisher, Rob Williams, has repeatedly echoed the Lincoln hatred of these extremists. Eighteen months ago, in a Slate.com piece Williams was quoted as saying "Abraham Lincoln did a number on us". Since the seceshers Lincoln opposed were the ones who sought to preserve slavery by seceeding, one needs to ask just who Williams' "us" is?

Whatever the circumstances, assassinations and dispensing street justice are illegal acts. This isn't the first time that someone associated with the Vermont secession movement has advocated for or solicited lawbreaking. As recently as this past fall (12.09.10 - 5:21 AM), Vermont secesher and a leader of the Free Vermont group of misfits, Gary Flomenhoft, put out a call for "someone to... hack their websites," a direct violation of Vermont law. Such a solicitation is a felony.

The Free Vermont group, who Thomas Naylor calls his "twenty internet cowboys," have advocated for confiscation of private property, population caps, income and asset caps, making certain acts by legislators capital offenses; the complete list is quite long and equally shocking.

One has to wonder how this squares with Naylor's claim
to be leading a "Genteel Revolution." His repetitive, muddled, demagogic rants about Vermonters who fall short of his secesher ideal (meaning: Everyone in Vermont not named Thomas H. Naylor); his latching onto imagery of a self-proclaimed murderer (which Naylor and his candidate, Dennis Steele, dumped one day after it was revealed on this blog); his paranoid delusions about conspiracies aimed at his "revolution," also another quite long and equally shocking list that has been subject of many posts on this blog. Oddly, an earlier "genteel evolution," so-named nearly 70 years ago by Time magazine, was that of Fulgencio Batista, who was himself overthown in part by the man whose image Naylor co-opted onto the flag that he co-opted from the Vermont National Guard.

In one of Naylor's most recent rants, The Politics of Violence in America, Naylor wrote:

"Since violence is inextricably linked to the Empire, there may be no escape from violence in America... "

Nor, it would seem, will violence or the criminal mindset be escaped in the brave new world of the Second Vermont Republic - they'll just apply it more hubristically.

Yeah, I know, confusing rationales and coincidences from the mind, ravings and actions of the SVR baas, Thomas H. Naylor and his minions.

Will Naylor, Williams, Flomenhoft and the rest of the nutters that comprise the Free Vermont "movement" renounce their advisor Jason Sorens' call for violence?

The more I learn of and hear from these secesher clowns, the more concerned I grow for my fellow Vermonters should these people ever get close to the levers of power.

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