Will Vermont Jurisprudence Be Joining The Discussion of Expanding Voir Dire to Include Probing Potential Jurors About Their Feelings Concerning the Confederacy?

There's an important discussion that has begun concerning the biases that attach when a potential juror is sympathetic to the Confederacy, the modern neo-Confederate movement and its ideological sympathizers. While much of the work and research is Southern oriented, it has relevance to Vermont.

Proponents of the Vermont secessionist movement have long had significant ties to the Southern neo-Confederate movement, most particularly the racist League of the South (LoS). Starting in 2007, the leadership of the Second Vermont Republic (SVR) (the still quite dead SVR founder Thomas H. Naylor and his then SVR co-chair and present VTCommons propagandist Rob Williams) launched a purge of members who'd voiced concern about associating with indisputably racist groups. Committed Vermont seceshers have repeatedly and publicly expressed support for the acts of the Confederacy and the modern neo-Confederate movement.

In addition to presenting research on the racial bias of potential jurors, the researchers, Edward H. Sebesta and Dr. Euan Hague, PhD, have a piece published at The Black Commentator entitled The Confederacy and Jury Selection,

"The historical record irrefutably shows that the Confederacy was formed for the purpose of preserving white supremacy and slavery. Such sentiments are expressed is the declaration and resolutions of the seceding states, in the speeches of the leaders of the Confederacy, and in innumerable other sources, typically being expressed in a straight forward manner.

It would be reasonable, therefore, to ‘challenge for cause’ potential jurors identifying with the Confederacy because of their identification with a white supremacist regime that sought to keep (its) African Americans enslaved. These potential jurors identifying with the Confederacy might object that they would not be biased as jurors, but elements of the pro-Confederate Lost Cause mythology inherently lead to bias. One element is that African American slaves were well treated and content as slaves, and that slavery was like being a part of a large family, rather than that it was a grave and often horrific condition. At some psychological level, Lost Cause rationalizations are embraced and accepted because for that individual, an African American’s freedom and humanity are valued less than their own."

Alan Bean at the Friends of Justice blog has a piece, Probing the Subtleties of White Racial Bias, and there's a New York Times Op-Ed piece by a senior editor at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the topic of ingrained racism here.

Vermont has a growing immigrant population, as well as an increasing population of color located in Vermont's small urban areas. Racial profiling has been a recurring issue that has found its way to the courts and that's not likely to end. White Vermonters who have embraced the white, racist neo-Confederate movement, while an admittedly small group, are still eligible for jury duty.

Vermont secessionists have sought to legitimize their endeavor by claiming that (1) Southerners had a "right" to secede and that, similarly, (2) Vermonters do as well because there once existed a Vermont republic. Vermont republic mythology is a staple for Vermont secesher water carriers like Rob Williams, Juliet Buck and two time Vermont secesher legislative candidate in Franklin County, Todd Pritsky. Pritsky was a member of what was thought by the surreptitious group to be a super secret listserv where some Vermont seceshers, including a neo-Nazi, could engage in racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, seditious and abusively misogynistic (sounds redundant but it's not) "chat," while other invited members, like Pritsky, remained largely silent. The racist leader of SVR later referred to this group as "Internet cowboys," with the usual CIA/Mossad paranoid delusions here.

Juror bias is an issue that needs looking at in Vermont where secessionists and their sympathizers, who embrace the neo-Confederate meme, can potentially contaminate the jury with an element of racial bias.

If you believe, as I do, that the Vermont judicial system needs to examine this issue, please consider contacting the Vermont Judiciary Court Administrator Robert Greemore by writing to him at 109 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05609 or calling him at 802-828-3278; contacting the President of the Vermont Bar Association, Amber L. Barber, at abarber@drm.com or by writing to her at P.O. Box 100, Montpelier, VT 05601-0100; and Attorney General William Sorrell at 109 State Street, Montpelier VT 05609-1001 or calling him at 802-828-3171. This is one of those occasions where I would strongly urge you to put your concerns about this issue in writing.

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"The White House Has Answered No to the Secession Petitions."

When right wingers flooded the WhiteHouse.gov We The People petition website with secession petitions created by extremist, fringer elements of the Tea Bagger/Republican sore losers who were unable to accept the fact that the majority of Americans voted to reëlect the United States' first black president, I waited to see how Vermont's own tiny secessionist movement might react.

The person who authored the Vermont petition was a New Yorker and the Vermont petition got barely 10% of the 25,000 required to get a response from the White House, and of that small group a mere 68 of the signators identified themselves as Vemonters.

Vermont seceshers have known for years that because of their early ties to racists that they've maintained through the years, as well as to murderously inclined anti-Semites, misogynists, homophobes and misandrists, including a segregationist as one of their own Vermont Commons blog writers, theirs is probably the most disliked and unsuccessful Vermont fringe groups to come along in decades.

My opinion in November, and it remains today, is that Vermont secesher propagandist, pseudo-historian, faux journalist, and who also suffers from

a chronic case of Lincoln derangement syndrome, Rob Williams, as well as his sidekick, the sham radical and anti-Vermont Army and Air National guard activist, Juliet Buck, have, inspite of their usual stoopid in such matters, somehow managed to correctly assess that the time wasn't exactly ripe for such an unconstitutional challenge to the Union and kept their big mouths shut, sparing Vermonters another embarrassment at their expense from the unhinged secesher camp. That's probably the only thing that they've gotten remotely right in years. Perhaps it's because the handful of secesher candidates that Williams has backed normally finish last and poll in the single digit (or less) percentile; or that none of the one hundred and eighty (150 representatives and 30 senators) members of the Vermont General Assembly's two houses supports even the discussion of secession; or that no statewide office holder or local legislative official supports their call for such a secesher discussion; or that no member of Vermont's congressional delegation will give them the time of day, let alone engage in such an "absurd" discussion; or maybe it's the utter lack of success in getting even one town, let alone the two hundred that they've promised to have by 2015, to put a secession article on a Town Meeting warrant for discussion. You'd think it might have dawned on these clowns that after 10 years of pitching their ridiculous secesher plan that Vermonters (other than their own self-described "small community) aren't buying what the seceshers are trying to sell. Now comes the White House to set back the secesher plans much, much further.

On Saturday the White House responded and the news ain't great for the barely existent Vermont secesher movement. I'd intended to post about the White House response, the constitutional references contained therein and what it was likely to mean for the local secesher dingbats but I don't think I could have said it better than anti-neo-Confederate expert and activist, Ed Sebesta, did in this post. Ed was kind enough to authorize reproduction of his essay from his blog - he said there:

The white house has answered no to the secession petitions. You can read the White House reply here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/our-states-remain-united

The reply to the petition quotes Lincoln from both his 1st inaugural address and his "Gettysburg Address," refers to the Civil War and secession in 1861, asserts that the Union is indestructible. These issues are brought up in two paragraphs in the White House reply. Links are provided to Lincoln's "1st Inaugural Address," "Gettysburg Address," and the Supreme Court ruling on Texas vs. White in which the court rules that secession violated the U.S. Constitution. In this blog I will discuss the response after the quotation of these two paragraphs with historical references which follows:

Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States "in order to form a more perfect union" through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot -- a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, "in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual." In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that "[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States."

Although the founders established a perpetual union, they also provided for a government that is, as President Lincoln would later describe it, "of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- all of the people. Participation in, and engagement with, government is the cornerstone of our democracy. And because every American who wants to participate deserves a government that is accessible and responsive, the Obama Administration has created a host of new tools and channels to connect concerned citizens with White House. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics.

It should be noted that the White House could have given a reply that didn't have historical references or just limit it to the Supreme Court decision Texas vs. White, but they choose to anchor the reply historically, and specifically in Lincoln's speeches, the Civil War and the secession of slave states in 1861 and one of the most emotionally charged events in American history both then and now.

I don't know if this response will get much coverage in the media, but it is in some ways very historic. I did a study in 2011 and 2012 of presidential statements regarding the Civil War and associated issues, such as the terminology they used, for example "War Between the States" versus "Civil War" back to Herbert Hoover.

Presidents have avoided the issue of the constitutionality of secession since the 19th century as far as I have been able to find. Presidents have avoided saying anything that can be construed as a rejection of the Confederacy in the 20th century since President Hoover who used the term "War Between the States" in the fall before he lost his bid to be re-elected.

However, President Obama White House response directly rejects the constitutionality of secession or any justification for it and thus directly rejects a key argument of the neo-Confederates and the Lost Cause historical mythology. It is a direct rejection of a core belief of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans and millions of Americans many of concentrated in the region of the former Confederate states. It is indirectly a rejection of the Confederacy, the leaders of secession and the supporters of secession in 1861. It directly rejects the very phrase "War Between the States." Though presidents haven't used this term since President Clinton used it once in 2000. Importantly it isn't just a rejection on some general reasoned principles, but a rejection based on the arguments used in the Civil War against secession by Lincoln the president who defeated the Confederacy. Obama is using specifically the historical narrative of the Union in the Civil War to reject these petitions.

Lincoln's 1st Inaugural Address contains a lengthy argument of secession which though is an argument that would apply to any effort at secession, is specifically applied by Lincoln to the secession of slave states in 1861. It is a rejection of the secessionists, such as Jefferson Davis, secession convention delegates, and many others.

The response with its reference to the "Gettysburg Address" implies that the defeat of the Confederacy was a great and heroic thing for the world and not just America, for as Lincoln said in that address:

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

In an earlier post I referred to some opinion polls taken about the issues of secession. http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2012/12/tagging-republicans-as-secessionists.html

It refers to an opinion poll that were taken on secession in Georgia. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/12/georgia-miscellany.html

I also had an early post on another opinion poll on secession. http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2013/01/charles-m-blow-new-york-times-columnist.html

Which referred to the following Pew opinion poll result.

http://www.people-press.org/2011/04/08/civil-war-at-150-still-relevant-still-divisive/

The Georgia opinion poll said that 42% of Georgia Republicans would be willing to secede.

When you look at who identifies with the Confederacy in the Pew opinion poll you see that they are primarily white people who identify themselves as Southerners and they mostly live in a former Confederate state. I would hazard to guess that what white votes Obama got in the former Confederate states were largely not from whites who identify themselves with the Confederacy. In short those Obama might antagonize are very unlikely to vote for him anyways.

I blogged on how Obama would respond to these secession petitions at:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-will-obama-respond-to-these.html

Basically I predicted that Obama would make a response that was provocative without seeming to be provocative. His hope would be to provoke the Republicans to respond in a way that would identify them with secession and the Confederacy. I don't know for a fact that Obama's response had this intent. However, if you wanted to get a reaction that would identify your opponents with secession and the Confederacy without seeming to provoke, Obama's reply would be the way to do it.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy will certainly have response to this White House reply. Whether Obama's rejection of secession gets a wider response it remains to be seen.

Incidentally the link on the Politico reporting of the response goes to the wrong petition and response.

To keep a record of this White House reply I quote the entire reply following:

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government. and 8 other petitions Our States Remain United By Jon Carson Thank you for using the White House's online petitions platform to participate in your government. In a nation of 300 million people -- each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs -- democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that's a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted. But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don't let that debate tear us apart. Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States "in order to form a more perfect union" through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot -- a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, "in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual." In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that "[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States." Although the founders established a perpetual union, they also provided for a government that is, as President Lincoln would later describe it, "of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- all of the people. Participation in, and engagement with, government is the cornerstone of our democracy. And because every American who wants to participate deserves a government that is accessible and responsive, the Obama Administration has created a host of new tools and channels to connect concerned citizens with White House. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics. So let's be clear: No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed. As President Obama said the night he won re-election, "We may have battled fiercely, but it's only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future." Whether it's figuring out how to strengthen our economy, reduce our deficit in a responsible way, or protect our country, we will need to work together -- and hear from one another -- in order to find the best way to move forward. I hope you'll take a few minutes to learn more about the President's ideasand share more of your own. Jon Carson is Director of the Office of Public Engagement.

The Huffington Post has more on the secessionist, "petulant, tantrum-throwing children" here.

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Roger Pion, Hero of the Vermont Secessionist Movement, Found by the Vermont Superior Court to be Incompetent

Late last summer what passes for the brain trust at the remains of the Vermont Commons (VC) news journal blog was all atwitter about the convict and would be domestic terrorist, Roger Pion.

In a post promoted by the Vermont Commons web editor, sham

radical, anti-Vermont Army and Air National Guard (VTANG) activist
and trusty sidekick of the Vermont secesher mouthpiece, faux journalist and Lincoln hater Rob Williams, Juliet Buck promoted an absurd piece by another relatively unknown radical, Jasna Brown:

What do Roger Pion, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King have in common? a Guest Post by Jasna Brown, promoted by VC web editor Juliet Buck
Fri, 08/17/2012 - 2:23pm

"I can’t seem to stop believing that Pion, most probably in all of his ignorance, may have started a movement. Could his act, of crushing the whole fleet of Police Cruisers with a giant tractor be a wake-up call for VT farmers..."

[snip]

"The question is when will our farmers get sick of being messed with? When will they get tired of seeing their land stolen by the banks, by Monsanto and the gang? Will Roger Pion be remembered as the first farmer who ignited the spark with his foolish and impulsive act? Maybe not, but I’ll sure remember how big and powerful his tractor was."

The [snip] was of a completely and utterly irrelevant comparison of Pion's violent act of the destruction of $300,000 worth of taxpayer owned property, motivated by his peevish reaction to the local Deputy Sheriff's doing their jobs, to the protests of European farmers over prices. Only a delusional secesher fool would compare Roger Pion's focused act of violence to two of the greatest martyred promoters of non-violent protest, Martin Luther King and Mahatmas Gandhi.

Like the Vermont seceshers at VC, another like minded group that has a reputation for promoting anti-Semitism, anti-miscegenation, segregation, homophobia and racism, the neo-Nazi website known as the Vanguard News Network (No Jews, Just Right) got some serious wood over Pion's terroristic (note that I don't say "alleged" since his supporters and family don't really dispute the known facts of his actions) attack here.

Vermont Commons blogger, fringe activist and self-anointed media critic, William Boardman also prattled on about Pion's terroristic act at VC, noting that one Vermont Senate candidate called Pion a political prisoner. One needn't wonder for long why the self-anointed critic of Vermont's media didn't name the senate candidate since it might have further derailed the "Senator's" already doomed campaign. You see, Boardman is a little regarded activist whose media critiques are only taken seriously by the unhinged crew at VC.  He chronically whines on and on about what he perceives to be conflicts of interest in Vermont media, with little regard for his own crass promotion of the radical, fringe politics of Vermont seceshers while writing about them and their various hobby horses.

This week we learn via the Burlington Free Press here that Pion appeared in Superior Court sporting a new "Travis Bickle" look this Tuesday rather than his late summer, post arrest, "tweaker," ah, ambiance.

Man Accused of Crushing Cruisers Found Incompetent for Trial Prosecutors seek another evaluation in 90 days 5:57 PM, Jan 9, 2013

Pion’s attorney, David Sleigh, said a hospitalization hearing should be held, and that should lead to the dismissal of the charges against his client.

State’s Attorney Alan Franklin said he could not assume Pion’s incompetency is permanent. “The state is not going to dismiss at this time,” Franklin said.

He asked Superior Court Judge Howard VanBenthuysen to order another evaluation in 90 days.

VanBenthuysen said the court will schedule a hospitalization hearing, where the court will determine how and where Pion will receive treatment.

In September, documents filed with the court stated Pion was suffering from mental instability and was being driven to action by voices in his head.

At that time, both the state and Pion’s father and court-ordered custodian, Armond Pion, asked for an emergency mental health evaluation.

Deputy State’s Attorney Jim Lillicrap wrote at the time that he’d obtained information that Pion was being “told by god to harm someone by noon today,” referring to Sept. 14, 2012.

In an attached affidavit, State Police Lt. Kirk Cooper wrote that Pion had told an employee of his family that he was “advised by the gods to start shooting people.”

The man, Josh Hall, told Roger Gagnon, who told sheriff’s deputy Kyle Ingalls that he was getting nervous around Pion because he was “going off the deep end again.”

Why does it come as little surprise that an seemingly unhinged domestic terrorist is a hero to a wide array of Vermont's unhinged secesher movement, not to mention neo-Nazis who've in the past have praised VC's dead godfather and baas of the just about dead Vermont secesher movement, Thomas H. Naylor?

The Vermont secessionist movement has a long history of advocating violence against those they dislike; Vermont secessionist candidate for a 2010 Rutland County state senate seat, Dennis Morrisseau, in addition to advocating shipping Vermont's homeless out of state while repeatedly expressing anti-Semitic sentiments, has also proposed a hit list of Jews; Vermont secessionist candidate for a 2010 Washington County state senate seat, Gaelen Brown, advocated for capital punishment for Vermont legislators presumed guilty of a non-violent crime; Vermont secessionist candidate for a 2010 Addison County state senate seat, Robert Wagner, who although he's never been elected to any Vermont office prefers to call himself "Senator," has outrageously proclaimed that an African-American mother with a substance abuse problem who'd committed a robbery "Needed Killin'" while at the same time ignoring a similar crime committed by a white male. You get the idea.

Williams likes to promote the crap that he spews as "journalism" but don't expect much from his blog or his new venture, Vermont Independence Press, to get anywhere near the whole or even partial truth on this case.  It's not what he or his clown journalists/bloggers/nutjobs do.  I mean by that that Williams, VC's publisher cum journalist, hasn't ever broken a story himself that I can find.  His forté seems to be journalistic and historical fiction.

Much like Pion, Williams' secesher movement seems "incompetent."

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UPDATE: Vermont Secession Petition Submitted to the White House Is a Bust

For anyone still following this nonsense, the so-called petition to consider a request for secession of Vermont from the Union submitted by a New York resident utterly failed to achieve the 25,000 signatures required for consideration and response by the White House.

Despite the repeated claim by the baas of the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor that his Second Vermont Republic had the love of 60,000 Vermont voters, the petition received barely more signatures than his ridiculous secesher gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, in 2010. But that isn't the worst of it; of the 2,600+ signators of the New Yorker's petition for Vermont separatism, a mere 68 identified themselves as Vermonters. The rest of the team came from red states and, primarily, former slave states.

And the 68 figure corresponds roughly to the number of people that secessionist leader Juliet Buck was able to turnout for her anti-Vermont Air National Guard and anti-F35 thug feast at Sen. Patrick Leahy's Burlington, VT office yesterday. Go figure.

My guess would be that Buck'll get the meeting that she's demanded with Sen. Leahy the day after Vermont secedes from the Union, and that'd be like never.

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To Paraphrase Franz Kafka...

... only a lawyer could write a 20,000+ character document and call it a brief.

I've been following the Vermont secession movement leader Juliet Buck's ongoing campaign to protect her investment in her gamble on a home within earshot of the Vermont Air National Guard's sole airbase for awhile now and the wrinkles in this case grow curiouser and curiouser.

In what is seemingly unintended to be a legally amateurish, last ditch effort at a coup de grâce by the anti-F35 group legal team, and in what appears to be an attempt to impose a less than overwhelming argument directed at Vermont's elected representatives by way of a shitty (a Juliet Buck style term) argumentation, this may be l'extrémité de la ligne, or the end of the line, for this latest secesher effort.

Naturally, Buck, who as an secesher extremist opposes all efforts by real elected Vermont representatives to protect Vermont interests beyond those of the "small community" she is a primary so-called "delegate"/representative of, the Vermont secessionist community. One has to wonder why Vermont's media has as yet failed to disclose this fact about Buck's agenda. VTDigger has deleted references to Buck's longstanding programme, while WCAX has showcased Buck's spurious claim that,

"The F-35 program is just sick on every level,"

without ever disclosing that Buck was an opening speaker at the Vermont secessionist confab in Montpelier three months ago, an event that the vast majority of Vermonters (if the breathtakingly underwhelming election results by 2010 and 2012 seceshers are to be considered) feels is sick on a whole bunch of levels as well, if not only for embracing what has been in terms described both here and in Europe as anti-Semitism, in its manifesto. Buck's lack of transparency in disclosing her serious interest in secession from the Union while at the same time trashing her fellow Vermonters would likely strike a whole lot of people as "sick" were it to be generally known.

One, like Buck, who would be in the forefront of leading Vermont out of the Union might be on more solid ground to claim that the Vermont secesher movement has a better read on the F-35 issue if that same movement hadn't repeatedly allied itself with racists, Holocaust deniers, homophobes and anti-Semites. It's a stink that just hasn't gone away and isn't apt to just because Buck and her ilk are pointing to their latest personally rewarding shiny thing.

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Thomas H. Naylor Sticks A Shiv Into A Longtime Ally

Over the past five years and nine months I've seen Thomas Naylor do some pretty despicable things - repeatedly consorting with racists, Holocaust deniers and like minded anti-Semites. Obviously, this has always been a path that he'd like for Vermonters to join him on.

He has repeatedly denounced the vast majority of Vermonters - the more than 99% of Vermonters who'd voted for someone other than his handpicked candidate for governor; the Vermont National Guard; virtually every statewide elected official that he's written about on his website; all of Vermont's congressional delegation; Vermont's clergy & churches, including his own in Charlotte; Vermont's non-profits who do more in a single afternoon for Vermonters than Naylor's ever done in his whole miserable life; Vermont's schools and institutions of higher education; the Vermont Occupy movement (except for his toadying embed, the notably ineffectual Matt Cropp), anti-war activists (except for the frothing ragers like his also unsuccessful handpicked candidate for Lt. guv, Peter Garritano and the chronically pissed off, sham radical Juliet Buck), the entire environmental community, and anyone else who doesn't get serious wood when they hear the word "secession."

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd thought that with my last post about the significantly poor showing at Naylor's repetitively contrived, yet-one-more-time Secesher Statehouse Stunt last Friday on behalf of his foundering Second Vermont Republic, that I was done with the prattling old fool.

Nuh-uh. Yesterday I opened the old email inbox to find another of Naylor's tedious, deranged screeds. He titled it, "La-La Land Liberalism in Vermont and Elsewhere."

You see, Vermont's problem is that it's too liberal; it's agenda is too liberal; and he's identified the sources of the problem which he takes great care to enumerate in his bad-tempered piece.

In a harangue that only omits the usual conservative complaint about "latte drinking, sushi eating, Volvo driving, New York Times reading" liberals, Naylor identifies the "six factors which have contributed to the demise of Vermont liberalism" in his estimation:

1. Senator Bernie Sanders
2. Ben & Jerry's
3. Phish
4. Bill McKibben
5. Bread & Puppet Theater

and, drumroll please...

6. Marijuana

Apparently, the the Dixie singin' Naylor, baas of SVR feels that Bread & Puppet event schedule and act don't meet his high standard of success. Never mind that he's never gotten a single secesher elected to office in any of their abysmal runs or that he was unsuccessful in getting even one of the "200 Towns in 2012" that his group promised to get to put articles for consideration on their Town Meeting warrants or, and you don't need to be a psychic to predict this one, that his plan to have Articles of Secession before the General Assembly by 2015 is, uh, on hold.

Nope, Peter Schumann, who founded and directed the successful Bread and Puppet over the past 50 years, and who has, even if reluctantly, stood by Naylor even as Naylor deepened his ties with racists, Holocaust deniers, homophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites and neo-Confederates, is one of the six sources of Naylor's problem in failing to sell more than 99% of Vermonters on his bigoted bullshit. It's not hard to figure out why; Naylor's sought to piggyback his lame secession movement on those whose efforts have been demonstrably more successful than he is ever likely to be.

And, as if he couldn't get any slimier, here's what a low-life Naylor can be; he waited until after Bread and Puppet had appeared as a part of his tiny turnout of around 50 (of which B&P accounted for about 20%) for his most recent Secesher Statehouse Stunt, where he and his cronies passed a manifesto that formalized his brand of racism in the Green Mountain state, to publish his attack on Bread and Puppet.

What. A. Duplicitous. Scumbag.

If I were Thomas Naylor, I wouldn't be expecting anyone in Vermont to be sharing a bong for the forseseeable future. As a friend who's read Naylor's latest dump said, "...we're all just a caricature, apparently, too stupid for our own good."

I'm thinking that it's true to the extent that it's really all just projection on Naylor's part. Maybe the shrink in his house can help him with that.

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Vermont Seceshers Throw a Party to Promote Bigotry

When I first heard that the Second Vermont Republic and Vermont Commons honchos, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, Rob Williams and anti-Vermont Army and Air National Guard doyenne Juliet Buck were throwing a party in the Vermont Statehouse, I wondered so how come they didn't invite me? I mean, Williams has been proposing late night trysts at various bars over the years and here's a chance for us to get it on really in public and I didn't make the list.

Perhaps the reason why is that they knew I wouldn't approve of their intent to formalize their bigotry in the seat of Vermont government, the General Assembly chamber of the Vermont Statehouse, let alone anywhere else.

For years the baas of SVR, Naylor, has promoted the lie that Jews control the U.S. government, "having a hammerlock hold over American foreign policy." You see, in Naylor's squirrelly view it's Jews that need a little push back, not the Holocaust denying scumbags that he's repeatedly agreed to be interviewed by like Victor Thorn, James Edwards and the talking heads at Iran's propaganda ministry.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Naylor and three other tired old white guys got together and crafted a "Montpelier Manifesto" comprised primarily of Naylor's repetitive, cliché ridden, excessively anti-American crap. It's a lot of the same old same old that they've been unable to get traction on in Vermont since they began their campaign nearly 10 years ago. Naylor's lied repeatedly about the actual support in Vermont for his secession plan for years, first telling us that 8%, then 13% of Vermonters were buying into secesher nonsense - fact is, when Vermonters got a chance to vote on his handpicked, angry, "Israeli Mafia" hating surrogate for the governor's office, 99.24% of them voted for someone else.

Now Naylor and his "small community," as SVR co-founder Ian Baldwin calls them, of alienated clones intend to lead Vermonters into a mixed nut bag of Ron Paultardism, Jew hatred and a rainbow of conspiracies while being anti-virtually every Vermonter who isn't with them in their dogpatch of irrelevance called the "Montpelier Manifesto."

No, I'm not going to link to it but here's what these old farts, Thomas Naylor, Kirkpartrick Sale (a South Carolina delegate to the racist League of the South" front group, Southern National Congress, ), James Starkey and Charles Keil, have to say about "the Jews" within its "Document of Grievances and Abuses":

Foreign Policy
4. "The hammerlock hold of the Israeli Lobby over American foreign policy that forces us to support an Israeli-inspired war on terror against Muslims and keeps us from any real commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace process."

Sure, and playing footsie with outspoken racists like Edwards or Thorn will make you a player in the peace process, eh, Tommy Boy?

Although two thirds of Israelis oppose any attack on Iran, and tensions continue to rise between the U.S. government, and while Netanyahu's minority viewpoint continues to be marginalized, and while Americans are being murdered in the Middle East for no good reason, Naylor and his other old cranks (NB: two others unworthy of note have now signed on to the Manifesto, probably because they'd like their own failing secesher operations to get some recognition) continue to promote the (and I never use ALL CAPS) LIE that Jews control the U.S. government.

But, never to worry, tomorrow's KKKonference will approve the racist libel proposed by Naylor and the other old white men since, after all, Williams "agrees with Thomas" about the Jews and Buck is pissed at everybody.

In their press releases Williams and Buck have made a big deal out of holding their stunt in the Vermont Statehouse. Like them, Fred Phelp's gay hating Westboro Baptist Church or the reputed Vermont Ku Klux Klan would be as eligible to use the the General Assembly chamber. Yeah, the standards are that low.

Since they're having music at their anti-Vermonter klavern, here's mine:



Look for me there tomorrow. I may just "shed my skin."

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Sometimes I Wonder If Vermont Secessionists Truly Believe That Their Sleazy Hypocrisy Is Invisible to Vermonters

Last week the Vermont secessionist sponsors of yet another of their lame "conventions" blasted out press releases about the event.

The thing is being run by the usual host of secesher losers - Rob Williams, the sham radical and NIMBY queen Juliet Buck, as well as the baas of the Second Vermont Republic himself, the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor - with the same ol' same ol' list of boneheads that have been the foundation of (as it's been called by a secesher founder, Ian Baldwin) their "small community" for years. What I found interesting is that they're going to propose to vote on institutionalizing Naylor's nasty, deluded, hateful, racist obsession - the Jewish control of American goverment - but more on that next week.

Two years ago the misogynist, anti-Semitic Vermont Senate then candidate from Rutland County, Dennis Morrisseau, a hateful proposer of hit lists of Jews to be eliminated and Rob Williams traded shots at VT Digger editor, Anne Galloway:

"Most reporters regurgitate press release as "fact," and call it objective journalism, friends."
"When they dare to have an opinion, they put it on the OP/ED pages."
"It ain't right, and we need to challenge it (as everything else...)"
Rob Williams, June 1, 2010

You can read the entire vile, hateful exchange here.

So here's where the hypocrisy comes in. Williams sent in a press release to Galloway's VT Digger in an effort to promote attendance to his sideshow. No, I'm not gonna provide a link since it would only serve to provide exposure to their umpteenth effort to hoodwink Vermonters.

But ya gotta wonder why someone like Williams, who so clearly despises Galloway for being what he called the "CIA spook that she is...", would so further debase his personal honor by submitting a press release to Galloway given his criticism of her handling of such releases. Maybe it's because he already sets his personal bar so low that he's unconcerned about the expressed and dog-whistle racism, the misogynist outbursts, homophobia or the blatant anti-Semitism of so many of his secesher associates and colleagues.

Yeah, that must be it.

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Secessionists Mount an Ill Fated Write-in Campaign for the August 28 Primary

As followers of this blog are aware, I've been baiting the Vermont secessionists for a little bit now, urging at least one to consider mounting a write-in campaign for his indisputably loser candidacy for the Addison County Vermont Senate seat, wannabe "Senator" Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner.

Last week the seceshers associated with the anti-Vermont Army and Air National Guard sham radical dirtbag and Vermont Commons web, content editor and airbase nimby queen, Juliet Buck, announced a belated write-in campaign by the "constantly pissed off," in-vehicle screamer Peter Garritano; the fact challenged South Burlington pol Rosanne Greco and (I'm not quite why she'd want to squander her environmental cred by getting in bed with'em) Annette Smith, for U.S. Senator, U.S. congressional representative and governor respectively on their ineffectual websites here, here but not yet at the primary anti-VTANG website maintained by Buck. Maybe she hasn't had the time or thoroughness yet to do so. It's clear though that this write-in effort was hastily thrown together. The MSM is also reporting that Annette Smith is a write-in candidate but, you see, the thing is that the proponents of her candidacy are saying that they haven't bothered to get her official okey dokey for the effort.

"We have not cleared our use of Annette's name as a write-in with her.  Given her public comments about a write-in campaign, we did not think that was necessary. The primary is upon us so this all has to happen fast."
Write In Annette Smith for Governor website

The proponents of this write-in scheme admit that their effort is devoted to their desire to "simply... cause a disturbance in the process for the Democrats and the Republicans" and to gain a spot in the debates to ride their various hobbyhorses by "get(ting) enough votes to be included in the debates." Hunh?

That'd be a first for a Vermont debate where a write-in candidate who was unsuccessful in getting enough votes to become a candidate for any party, major or minor, would then be included in a debate because they'd met some threshold of "enough votes" that I'm guessing will be determined by the write-in proponents and be awfully low like, say, "any votes." Certainly a last minute stealth write-in attempt to hijack the credibilty of the Progressive Party will deservedly be viewed with contempt by most. In 2010 a remarkably unsuccessful Vermont secessionist candidate for governor tried to crash one party's candidate forum and got his ass arrested. This setup promises the same potential - much political theater on behalf of goals that have yet to gain traction in a meaningful way with Vermont voters. The tiny anti-VTANG group has, according to press reports, proven itself capable of "turning out dozens of vocal, attention-grabbing protesters with little advance notice." The write-in tally for Smith may be a double edge sword for the seceshers in that it may serve to re-confirm the utter lack of interest among Vermont voters for the fringe issues that excite the wingnuts.

Having successfully achieved the goals of a write-in campaign myself where the candidate couldn't possibly win or even serve, the one thing I can pass along to these amateurs is that you don't start a write-in a week or two before a primary date unless it's your intention to establish your renown as losers with no clue about how to make a real statement work.

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Vermont Secession Leader Levies A Unsubstantiated Charge That Seemingly Implicates The Vermont's Air National Guard's Supporters In Vandalism

Vermont secessionists have a long history of flinging absurd, wildly unhinged charges against their neighbors and those who aren't lapping up the secesher Kool-Aid. The method usually entails an allusion to responsibility of some kind for those that they hate for not slavishly sucking up to their life view in their invariably imprecise fashion. Over the weekend the Vermont Commons web and content editor, sham radical, nimby queen and anti-Vermont Army and Air National Guard activist, Juliet Buck, has made just such a slimy, flimsy, unfounded and weaselly charge by way of her most recent demand of the VTANG.

This cheesy tactic is of a type normally associated with weak campaigns that seek to undermine the perceived opposition (VTANG) by making a demand that they accept some kind of, no matter how much unwarranted, responsibility for unsubstantiated, iffy charges. Here's the schmuck's, er, Buck's specious charge:

"I think it would be entirely appropriate for the VTANG to issue a press release expressly condemning the acts of vandalism that have been committed against the personal property of certain persons opposed to the F-35. Not doing so implicitly condones this kind of cowardly intimidation.

"Implicitly?"

How 'bout Buck issue her own apology for her VTCommons website having promote the hateful anti-Semitism, white supremacism, collaboration with, both inside and outside of its membership, of racists, misogynists and homophobes. The toxic nature of the members of her group is a fact. All she's presented against the VTANG that she hates so much is an completely evidenceless smear.

Figures.

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Prince Thomas H. Naylor I?

I just got through reading one of the most ludicrous, poorly thought through posts by a secession advocate in Vermont that's of a type I've written about before.

For years the Vermont seceshers have been naming themselves and each other as ministers of this or that. The repeatedly unsuccessful in his various runs for office over the past few decades, Dennis Morrisseau, likes to call himself the Second Vermont Republic's "Very Foreign Minister." Despite their never having had a candidate that achieved a percentage of the vote higher than a low single digit, the Vermont seceshers illegally reconstituted what had formerly been an elected body before being disbanded by the Vermont legislature in the nineteenth century called the Council of Censors, to which they self-appointed themselves, threatening to issue a report in 2010 (which they never got around to) on all of the unconstitutional acts of the legislature and/or statewide office holders. You know, play acting at being a government that none of them are ever likely to gain enough support to be a part of by stroking their Ruritanian fantasies. Now one of these seceshers seems to intimate that the baas of the SVR, Thomas H. Naylor, might be Vermont's future prince. Really.

So now comes Ethan Bishop, an occasional dishwasher cum kitchen staffer (that is when he isn't holding down the fort as a costume shop clerk) to offer Vermonters a chance to become a part of the burgeoning world of principalities through slavishly accepting of the guidance of Thomas H. Naylor. Never mind that Naylor's alienated virtually every office holder - federal, state or local - as well as nationally known Vermont peace and environmental activists, all of Vermont's schools and institutions of higher learning, a variety of the state's most respected non-profits, Vermont's clergy and, perhaps most significantly, he's condemned the Vermont electorate for not embracing his 2010 effort to put forward a team of dunces for governor, lt. governor, senators and a representative. Naylor has sandbagged his now unnotable effort so much that in the first vaguely news type piece to mention him and his group since the 2010 election, a local freelancer commenting of the state of Vermont activism referred to "the perennial but low-key campaign for a Second Vermont Republic."

Let me give you a taste of Bishop's anodyne essay about secession - it's gonna make him the lead contender to be Naylor's Royal Minister of Bootlicking. Bishop first prattles on about the principality of Lichtenstein:

"Through the strength of this small country’s ideals, they have taken a historically insignificant piece of alpine territory and turned it into the poster child for life and governance on a human scale. “Small” is not only “beautiful”, but it works too."

"It appears that in many ways Vermont has forgotten its similar love, and indeed its aptitude, for such independence..."

Not so fast there, Ethan. The differences between Vermonters and Prince Hans-Adams II's subjects are substantial. First, Vermonters are engaged, involved, questioning and independent; Vermonters don't kowtow to their leaders and representatives, and will pushback when needed. Lichtensteiners are much more dronelike and, frankly, obeisant, servile and bow to the Prince in a way that Vermonters never would or could. Far from being more independent than Vermonters, Lichtensteiners have shown themselves to be unwilling to further their own independence.

Prince Hans-Adam II has spent the last decade trying to avoid economic ruin for the princedom over its tax haven status for the 1% and its money laundering. With as many balls in the air that he has going, it's only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.

From Wikipedia:

"In a national referendum in March 2003, nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted in support of Hans-Adam II's proposed new constitution to replace the 1921 one. The proposed constitution was criticised by many, including the Council of Europe, as expanding the powers of the monarchy (continuing the power to veto any law, and allowing the Prince to dismiss the government or any minister). The Prince threatened that if the constitution failed, he would, among other things, convert some of the royal property for commercial use and move to Austria. The royal family and the Prince enjoy tremendous public support inside the nation, and the resolution passed with about 64% in favour. A proposal to revoke the Prince's veto powers was rejected by 76% of voters in a 2012 referendum."

Some model for decidedly much more independent Vermonters, although quite the model for the oligarch of the Second Vermont Republic, it's autocratic ruler who expels dissenters to his racist and dictatorial allies and policies, Thomas Naylor.

And, oh yeah, there's this:

"On 1 July 1984, Liechtenstein became the last country in Europe to grant women the right to vote. The referendum on women's suffrage, in which only men were allowed to participate, passed with 51.3% in favor."

Now this is where I'd normally say "Such a wide margin" or "'Nuff said," but Bishop also wrote:

"Prince Hans-Adam’s Liechtenstein is now a disproportionately bright beacon of freedom, independence, and self-determination."

Oh really, Ethan?

"So, does Vermont need a modern-day prince to offer similar independence and influence in the wider world? Or do we already have the makings of something equally, if not more powerful? Because of its founder, Thomas H. Naylor, at least SVR exists as one organization proposing such a vision. Perhaps through more discussion between this former Professor and communities of our own small corner of the globe, Vermont could lead by example in pursuit of its own values of freedom, unity, and independence."

[snip]

"Who amongst our wealth of people is ready to lead us on to such a future? Who else is waiting to be inspired with enough courage and hope to do so?"

Jeezum crow, Ethan. Naylor is possibly the least capable person in Vermont to orchestrate such a "discussion," given that he's condemned virtually every person that you propose he'd have this discourse with over the past five years. Maybe you've confused Vermonters with the racists at the League of the South or the numerous anti-Semites that Naylor's promoted at his SVR website or the Holocaust denying "journalists" at Iran's Press TV or the racist Political Cesspool's James Edwards that he's so often given interviews to.

Oh, and Ethan Bishop is a college student. (Insert favorite diety here) help us.

Naturally, Ethan's dopey essay is being promoted by Naylor and his bloated ego, as well as by the content editor, sham radical and anti-Vermont Air National Guard activist, Juliet Buck, at the failed and no longer in print secesher journal, Vermont Commons. VTCommons is now just a haven for out-of-state, conspiracy addled nutjobs, as well as a few local, remarkably unsuccessful wannabes and a rocket scientist, who write on a veritable rainbow of topics pertaining to so-called 9/11 "Truth," gold, economic pablum, Jews/Israel controlling the government, media and Hollywood, and virtually every Internet spawned alternative theory imaginable. Something tells me that Ethan's princely pining is gonna fit in just fine amongst the paranoid nutters at SVR and VTCommons.

"We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well."
- Richard Hofstadter

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Thomas Naylor Continues His Role As An Anti-American, Anti-Semitic Tool of Iran's Propaganda Ministry

Back in December of 2011 I wrote about the Second Vermont Republic's founder, Thomas H. Naylor's repeated attacks on the U.S. via Iran's propaganda website Press TV, the 24-hour English language news network owned by the state-owned media corporation Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. When Press TV was first created in July of 2007 it made a short lived pretense at offering news broadcasts that, while often amateurish, utilized presenters with real news backgrounds. That soon came to an end during Iran's 2009 election and the resulting demonstrations. In its short, five year existence Press TV has been mired in controversy, not the least of which has been its reliance on U.S. writers and bloggers with strong ties to the American anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying and, at times, neo-Nazi associated website community like CounterPunch, Veterans Today and American Free Press.

Thus far this year Naylor's done two more self-important, bloviating interviews with Press TV, one last week here and this one in January that played to Press TV's virulently anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying audience:

"The problem is that President Obama... and his foreign policy is effectively under the control of the rightwing Likud of Israel with the complete compliance of the United States media."

(Note that crack Press TV staff uses a Charlotte, NC (pop. 751,000) skyline graphic for Charlotte, VT (pop. 3,500) resident Thomas Naylor)

That's right, Naylor repeated the long discredited anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the U.S. government and that the media is in cahoots with Jews. And in what was probably meant to be a secesher twofer, Thomas Naylor's longtime ally and co-founder of his misbegotten attempt at establishing his personal Empire in the Green Mountain state, Kirkpatrick Sale, made his own pitch later that day that there is a viable secession movement in the U.S. Sale's hatred of Israel is so deep seated that he has even said in his awful, despotic essay, "Time to End the Israel 'Experiment'" :

"I am arguing that the original idea of a Jewish state, from the Balfour Declaration on down, was a mistake..."

"It is of course not so easy to know what to do to undo that mistake, but I would argue that a world that can make a state can unmake it."

It's long past time for what remains of the Vermont secessionist leadership - VT Commons publisher Rob Williams, VTC content editor and anti-Vermont National Guard activist Juliet Buck and VTC's quack medicine contributor Jennifer Stella - to disown Naylor and his Second Vermont Republic co-founder Sale's vile, unabashed anti-Semitism or own it.

Wait, we already have former SVR co-chair Williams' statement on the matter:

"(T)he thing is - I agree with Thomas re: Israel."

So, Juliet and Jennifer, what's it to be?

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Second Vermont Republic Honcho Thomas H. Naylor Issues a "Call For Action" to the Southern Poverty Law Center

Or as the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor, one of the best known anti-Semitic leaders of the white secessionist movement calls it,
the "Southern Policy Law Center":

"Since 1971 the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC) has fought racism and hate crimes in America..."

"Forty years later the SPLC has evolved into the cash cow of the civil rights movement and behaves as though it were the left-wing equivalent of the John Birch Society..."

"Today anyone with whom the SPLC happens to disagree is assumed to be either a racist or guilty of a hate crime."

- from Naylor's essay in the July 13-15 weekend edition at the anti-Semitic website CounterPunch

Now, Naylor has been spouting inane, useless crap for years but I think his comparison of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that has litigated at no charge in civil rights cases, for which it receives no part of any of the millions that have been awarded, for decades to a hateful Patriot organization, not so dissimilar to Naylor's own Second Vermont Republic, the John Birch Society, is at the very least laughable.

Naylor's SVR and the JBS are much more similar than would first appear; Naylor runs his group in much the same iron-fisted manner that Robert W. Welch Jr. ran the JBS when he was alive; Naylor and Welch both have railed incessantly against the U.S. government by invoking constitutional nonsense; much like Welch's JBS, Naylor has called for the removal of a litany of government elected and appointed officials for no other reason than they are not adherents to his screwy secesher dictums and beliefs. In short, Thomas H. Naylor and his SVR are the moral equivalent of the constitutionally deranged John Birch Society and his comparison to a reputable, community oriented, civil rights advocacy group like the SPLC is intellectually dishonest and specious. (Full disclosure: Naylor's supporters have claimed that I am a SPLC operative, as though a little know outside of Vermont blog could do better to expose Naylor and his bigoted troupe than merely writing in the pages of the much, much better known and trafficked SPLC Intelligence Report. Ha!)

Naylor's claim that a disagreement with the SPLC leads to the assumption that one is "a racist or guilty of a hate crime" is an absurd slur of an order that Naylor customarily makes about the vast majority of Vermonters .

In Naylor's piece at the anti-Semitic website CounterPunch he maligns the Vermont National Guard, the President, all of Vermont's congressional delegation with a double-dose for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who'd turned down Naylor's entreaties years ago to run as his handpicked secesher gubernatorial candidate (Tommy Boy never forgives a snub), Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director, all of Wall Street and "Corporate America", as well as every military academy and the R.O.T.C. He concludes by saying,

"Lastly, the SPLC could initiate impeachment proceedings against some of our fearless leaders."

Never mind that the SPLC is constitutionally precluded from initiating impeachment proceedings since that isn't what really's got the hair across Naylor's ass.

You see, last month the SPLC revealed more on the blatant racism of Naylor's longtime asshole buddy, Michael Hill, founder and baas of the League of the South from this recent racist essay of his with much of the truly inane ecclesiastic junk redacted to a few choice quotes:

"Michael Hill, we hardly knew ye.

"Sure, we remember how, as early as 2000, you already were denigrating your black former students at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., to your friends, mocking their “humorous” names and offering up sensitive jokes like this one: “A quote from a recent affirmative action hire: ‘Yesta-day I could not spell secretary.’ Today I is one.’” Ha! We know all about your 2007 essay, aimed at members of the League of the South hate group you started in 1994, saying that they should quit being afraid of being called “racist” and other, as you put it, “meaningless epithets.”

"But, heck, we were still thinking you were just a garden-variety bigot, a rude jerk who’s too dumb to keep his diarrhea-spouting mouth shut."

"But now here you come, Mike, and make it all plain for us. We just read the essay you published Tuesday, and we see you’re finally displaying the courage of your convictions. You’re an intellectual, and you’ve got an entire system of thought that explains the failings of black people. By gum, you’re not afraid to tell it like it is!"

"White people are endowed with a “God-ordained superiority.” Whites of “honor, genius and principle” left us with a “glorious heritage,” while black people “have never created anything approximating a civilization.” It’s a “monumental lie” that all men are created equal. The very word “racism” was “coined by the Communists.” Slavery was “successfully defended from a Biblical standpoint” until “the institution’s legitimacy was systematically undermined in the name of ‘equality’ and misappropriated ‘Christian ethics’” by the Civil War and all that followed. Emancipating the slaves was “a disaster for whites and blacks alike.” “[I]nstead of whites owing black reparations for slavery and its alleged attendant ills … blacks in reality owe white America (especially the South) a debt that likely will be neither acknowledged nor paid.” After all, slaves had “cradle to grave security.”

"All great points, Mike! We can see how you were once a college professor."

"And then there’s your cool take on Reconstruction. “During the period from 1865-77, whites in the South had seen enough of Negro rule to understand that their (i.e., white) civilization would perish should blacks be given the vote and thus be permitted to control the political system. … Therefore, postbellum Southern blacks were disenfranchised and ‘Jim Crow’ law resulted in a segregated South (today, ‘Jim Crow’ has been replaced by what might be called ‘Jim Snow’ policies that discriminate against whites).” And, as you point out, freed blacks suffered from problems like “family disintegration.” Good point, no matter what those Yankee multiculturalists claim about slavery really tearing apart black families."

SOURCE

Michael Hill's racism has been a well known fact since the 90s but that didn't prevent Naylor and his then co-chair at SVR, Rob Williams, from hopping into the sack with this dirt bag nearly ten years ago and using similarly racist LoS board members as advisory board members to SVR.

Naylor's flagrantly defensive attack on the SPLC a month after they'd exposed Hill's most recent racist crap should be an embarrassment to every Vermont secesher but don't look for that. The "new" Vermont secesher leaders like Juliet Buck and Jennifer Stella are too busy attacking their Vermont neighbors and churning out phony "medical" garbage to pay much attention to the continuing racist associations and ball carrying of their Great White Father, Thomas H. Naylor. No doubt Buck and Stella have been inspired by Naylor's hateful, noxious attacks and the toadying over the years by Williams. There's very little surprise then that Naylor's, Williams', Buck's, 2010 secesher gubernatorial candidate Dennis Steele's whacky worldview, as well as those of other ardent Vermont seceshers, coincides with that of those at the new League of the South website "Get Us Off of the U.S.S. Titanic.". Will someone please tell these idiots that there's never been a time in all of history when it didn't seem as though the world might be going to hell in some kind of a Titanic hand basket?

Naylor's greasy form of racism was exquisitely dissected here more than five years ago.

Yesterday, the racialist ideologue, "President" Michael Hill, wrote at the Southern Nationalist Network a similarly blatant racist essay, doubling down on his kith-and-kin horse shit:

"The League of the South wants to see a South where our borders are sealed against massive immigration; a South where the interests of the Southern people (read: White folks) are protected from the ravages of multiculturalism and so-called diversity; a South where a prosperous, self-confident, and distinct people—our people–can welcome into its ranks by its own choice and on its own terms productive and sympathetic immigrants; a South that will be a beacon to those nations that wish to defend a traditional way of life against the purveyors of abstract ideologies and a new world order..."

Ah, a racist slimeball laying down terms for people willing to sign on to second class status in a new slaver society. Let me know how many takers you get for that one, Mikey.

Oh, and for extra fun credit, try this Google search:
racist vermont secessionists

"Southern Policy Law Center" - what a moron. Some loving family member needs to get this aging, hateful, idiotic fool to cap his famed green felt tipped pens before he loses what little remains of his respectability. Oh, wait, too late.

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Current Affairs

Today's email Inbox contained a query regarding when this blog will get back to blogging about the state of the Vermont secession movement and its supporters here or have they simply become so irrelevant that there's little that needs to be said any longer about them.

In answer to the second question first; while it's true that the Second Vermont Republic and its sister website at "Vermont Commons" have become nothing more than an e-bumper sticker movement, they're still trying to come up with a plan for their eventual takeover of Vermont's government and many of its public institutions. Much of their activity amounts to little more than repeating the same old tired, uncompelling talking points that have yet to sweep Vermonters up into their movement. One change has been that the seceshers no longer use the word secession, preferring instead euphemisms like being geared toward "emerging independence" (patently untrue) and "decentralization."

The mathematically challenged "Senator" Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner is engaged in a weak kneed campaign to enlist similarly deluded nutbars into running for a Vermont senate seat under the banner of secession and the Ron Paultard Revolution.  Someone should tell the "Senator" that for more than two weeks the Paultard campaign has been in a state of full retreat, suspending operations, dropping out of primaries and is financially belly up.  I'll have more on the success, or lack thereof, of Wagner's effort to takeover the entire Vermont Senate later next month.

Also, there's a scheduled meeting of Vermont secesher bigwigs in the late summer where the "rebels" plan to marinate in a daylong celebration of hatred, Jew-baiting, self-delusion, Glenn Beck style gold peddling and windmill tilting, featuring a lecture from noted South Carolinian, neo-Confederate-American delegate (read: windbag) to the Southron National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale, who once famously said that Israel was a "mistake" and that the "mistake" of Israel can be undone. It should prove to be as boring, poorly attended and insignificant as their previous "conventions" - remember them? Not to worry; no one else does either. Thomas Naylor, the the Dixie singin' baas and founder of the nonexistent Second Vermont Republic plans to take a backseat role at the meeting and focus his energies on his function as the Dr. Kevorkian for the Vermont body politic while running the sideshow will be Vermont Commons' douchenozzle publisher, Rob Williams, who'll co-chair the the secesher dog and pony event with Vermont Commons' web and content editor, Vermont's F35 NYMBY queen and sham radical, Juliet Buck. Political theatre vs. substantive action being their schtick, I'm sure that a clown car has been reserved to chauffeur the out of state revelers. Sounds like oodles of fun.

As for the email sender's first point, it'll be a pleasure to kick sand in the face of one of the most unsuccessful and ineffectual movements to be brought to the Green Mountains by carpetbagging allies of the racist League of the South in a generation over the summer.  In March of 2010 I warned the seceshers that I'd be reviewing their campaign materials later that year and they know how that turned out; whilst they were laying the groundwork for the most disastrous collective electoral effort in recent memory, I was reading their plans that they'd left for all to see on the Intertubes (here).  The secesher machinations were a laugh riot that garnered election results in the single digits or less.  Even Vermont's own Magnolia Vermonter, Tommy Naylor, felt moved to comment when it was over about the complete failure of his handpicked candidates,

"In spite of the paucity of votes attracted by (secesher gubernatorial) candidate (Dennis) Steele, his campaign seems to have been perceived as a major threat to someone."

"During the four weeks before the election, Steele and the entire Vermont independence movement were the object of a vicious, CIA-style, cybersmear campaign. Three websites and a well-organized network of anti-secessionists bombarded cyberspace with charges of racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism. The exact nature of the relationship between the smear network and the hostile websites was unclear. What was clear was that the entire effort was extremely well organized and well financed."

If by "well organized" Naylor meant blogging about the abundantly available facts then I'd plead guilty, but as for "well financed" Naylor's yet to present evidence rather than innuendo regarding that assertion since facts aren't Tommy's strong suit. He's also said,

"...Both the Second Vermont Republic and the Texas Nationalist Movement, the two most high-profile secession movements in the United States, have recently been the object of WikiLeaks-like cyber attacks."

"For over a year twenty Vermont Internet cowboys engaged in an intense Internet debate about secession on a private network known as the Free Vermont Framework. All participants thought the network was confidential and secure. They were mistaken. Six weeks before the November 2nd election the content of the network, including all Internet conversations over the past year, was released to three Vermont Technofascist Truth Squad websites which were hostile to the Second Vermont Republic and its election candidates. The leaked information was then used to wage a vitriolic CIA-like smear campaign against SVR and its candidates."

Source

This year's slate of potential secesher candidates promises to prove to be equally feckless, so let me repeat my earlier warning to these idiots:



More to come.

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

Rob Williams Continues to Maintain His Ties to League of the South White Supremacists

Since the Vermont Commons newsletter folded last fall we've heard little from its former publisher, Rob Williams. A couple of movie reviews or some such (I keep expecting to see his various recipes for the crow he's been munching on throughout this winter) but little more.

Williams is a part of the Associate Faculty at Champlain College in Burlington, VT. He has something to do with "Creative Media" at the college. That figures. He's been "creatively" making shit up for years. You know, like the Vermont secesher movement is doing better than being on life support since its inception.

It was in February of 2010 that Williams made his intellectual hajj to the center for restoration of the Confederacy, The Abbeville Institute, to become a contributor to the eventual output of a conference entitled, "State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order," a book about the alternative historical universe inhabited by Vermont secessionists and their neo-Confederate allies.

A little history at this point will be beneficial:

Yankee Secessionist Back in Cahoots with Neo-Confederates
Posted in Neo-Confederate by Rob Waters on October 1, 2009

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed an unsavory collaboration between the Second Vermont Republic (SVR), a quirky left-leaning band of New England secessionists, and the white supremacist League of the South, long categorized by the SPLC as a hate group. Their shared goal was to build a national secession movement.

The SPLC report, titled “North Meets South,” also documented links between SVR founder and leader Thomas H. Naylor and other extremist organizations. Naylor has appeared on the hate radio program “The Political Cesspool,” which is run by white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens board member James Edwards. He is also an associate scholar at the Atlanta-based Abbeville Institute, which is run by former League of the South leader Donald Livingston and is devoted to the ignored “achievements of white people in the South.”

Naylor initially denounced the SPLC story, calling it “a vicious attack spearheaded by the well-financed, hate-mongering, witch-hunting, left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.” He cited no factual errors. But a few weeks later, he had second thoughts. In a letter that appeared to signal an end to the alliance, he called on the League to distance itself from racism and hatred. In the July 4, 2008, letter, he wrote, “So long as the albatross of racism hangs around its neck, the LOS can never be a truly effective partner for SVR.” His own group, he said, “risks being tainted by the scourge of racism simply by associating with the LOS.” He provided a few helpful suggestions for the League: Renounce racism, recruit black members, bring in black speakers, and promote Southern racial unity. And one more thing: “the Confederate flag has got to go!”

The divorce didn’t last long, however. Naylor and a close ally, prominent New York leftist writer and editor Kirkpatrick Sale, are now scheduled to speak at a conference on secession being organized by the Abbeville Institute. They will share the stage at the Charleston, S.C., conference in February with neo-Confederate scholars such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Clyde Wilson and Livingston, the Abbeville Institute founder. All three have current or past links with the League of the South. (Go here for profiles of DiLorenzo, Livingston and Wilson.)

The title of the conference is “State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order.”

Reached by telephone at his home in Vermont, Naylor declined to discuss the state of his relations with the neo-Confederates. “This has nothing to do with race,” he said. “It’s the SPLC that’s the hate group. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

SOURCE

At the 2010 conference a plot was hatched to compile yet another group of essays by secesher "scholars" called Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century that forecasts yet more light at the end of the secesher tunnel and rehashes the various rationales for their thinking. You know, like "it's an 'emerging' movement that's poised to take off at any moment." You just wait and see. No, no, not this very minute but they're getting really, really close. Just you wait. And wait. And wait...

The reality that escapes the SVR deadenders like founder Thomas H. Naylor (an "associate scholar" at the "old times there are not forgotten" Abbeville Institute) and Williams, his former co-chairman at SVR , is that secession in Vermont is as dead as "the Lost Cause." In the book Williams' contribution elevates a bumper sticker he created (no, really!) to the status of a "scholarly essay" that is nothing more than a part of Williams' lame try a creating an Internet meme. His collaboration with the neo-Confederates on this project, "Chapter 7: Most Likely to Secede: U.S. Empire and the Emerging Vermont Independence Effort”, is just one more nail in the self-inflicted coffin of his movement's reputation. Their efforts to get secession articles on even one of Vermont's Town Meeting warnings over the past 5 years have been completely unsuccessful due to Vermonter's disdain for Williams and his fellow secesher's ties to white supremacists, racists, anti-Semites and homophobes. In not one Vermont town are voters buying into their nonsense. The handful of seceshers that ran as candidates in 2010 for various top of the statewide ticket offices squeaked into the low single digits, usually coming in last as the sesechers on the ballot (in Rutland County two seceshers came in last and next to last); the top of the ticket barely made three quarters of 1% of the vote (roughly the same amount that occurs as spoilt ballots in any election). Secesher Robert Wagner's sneaky attempt to introduce a secession ordinance at this past Monday's Town Meeting in Ripton, VT went down in flames.

And so we come to the book. Finally, one of the sham radicals at the Vermont Commons blog, Juliet Buck, a fairly recent addition to Williams kickline of dullards, conspiracy theorists, 9/11 Truthers, anti-Semites and white supremacists that have contributed to his publishing endeavors, wrote a blog post plug for the book, that was a complete cut and paste from the book publisher's website. The publisher, Pelican Publishing Company or Pelican Press, has been an institution of the neo-Confederate community since 1926:

"(A)lthough neo-Confederacy is reactionary and contains racist, sexist, elitist and antidemocratic positions, these are glossed over with a scholarly veneer of closely argued rationales, references to legislative precedents and philosophical treatises. "
[snip]
"(W)hen examining the proposals forwarded in neo-Confederate publications, it is evident that race is central to this ideology. The 1950s and 1960s are regularly invoked as the decades in which American society spiraled into terminal decline. Integration of schools is lamented, desegregation is derided as "social engineering" and policies like school busing and affirmative action are depicted as vindictive attempts to merge whites and African-Americans together to produce a single, ethnically homogenous and racially undefined identity. Leading neo-Confederate authors argue that racial animosities are now greater than ever in U.S. history and that the periods of slavery and Jim Crow segregation were eras of harmonious race relations."

"Advocates of neo-Confederacy articulate their arguments in numerous books, magazines and websites. One common practice is to reprint copies of pro-Confederate nineteenth century texts, such as those by Confederate Army Chaplain Robert Louis Dabney (1820-1898) and Mathematics Professor and Slavery Apologist Albert Bledsoe (1809-1877). Another is to produce new materials that advocate neo-Confederacy. Often written in a breathless style that makes the reader feel as if they are becoming privy to long-suppressed truths, the most prominent publisher of neo-Confederate texts is Pelican Books of Gretna, La. Its catalogue, which has important books outlining neo-Confederate sentiments, also contains several overwrought polemics including Michael Andrew Grissom's Southern by the Grace of God; James and Walter Kennedy's Was Jefferson Davis Right? and The South Was Right!; Walter Kennedy's Myths of American Slavery and Gordon Thornton's The Southern Nation: The New Rise of the Old South. Other significant neo-Confederate books include Frank Conner's The South Under Siege (1830-2000) which argues that Jews from northern states instigated and funded the African-American civil rights movement and used Martin Luther King, Jr., as a puppet in an effort to "destroy Christianity" and Southern Slavery As It Was by Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson, which selectively interprets slave narratives and rehashes pro-slavery arguments of the mid-nineteenth century to argue that the practice was benign, sanctioned by God and was used as a "pretext" by Unionists to prosecute a war fought over the "biblical meaning of constitutional government" in an effort to suppress Christianity."

SOURCE

For those of you who don't know or may have forgotten, the editor of the book of essays that Rob Williams contributed to is none other than a former early board member of the League of the South, Donald Livingston, who,

"Shortly after the formation of the League of the South in 1994, Livingston became the first director of the League of the South Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, which was organized to further the group's revisionist takes on American history."

SOURCE

and about whom Williams once famously said,

"Is (Livingston) a racist? I don't know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level."

SOURCE

Livingston was once famously quoted as having said,

"the North created segregation"

SOURCE

I wrote at length last fall about Williams and Livingston's essay compilation regarding their "historical alternative universe" here. Juliet Buck, Williams' book flogging toady, has gotten around to her own cheap promotion of that predictable collection of revisionist thought by reprinting in toto the publisher's promotion. She didn't mention much else about the other contributors who include a North Carolina delegate to the neo-Confederate Southern National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale; "League of the South" bigwig, Pres. Abraham Lincoln basher and contributor to the anti-Semitic, Holocaust denial publication, The Journal of Historical Review, Thomas DiLorenzo; a minor figure in the neo-Confederate movement who was on the masthead as an advisor of the now defunct neo-Confederate Journal of Confederate History, Kent Masterson Brown; and perhaps even more absurdly, an essay from a wingnut who has claimed that Southern secessionists did not do so with the intent to preserve slavery and that therefore the Confederate flag is not a symbol of oppression and hatred but merely one that honors heritage and pride, one Marshall DeRosa.

One can only wonder what was going through Williams' head when he agreed to go all in with these nutters on a book edited by a founder of the "League of the South."

More on the neo-Confederates that Williams has thrown in with may be found at Ed Sebesta's excellent website here.

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