Second Vermont Republic's Racist Ally in Northern Italy Fakes a Secession "Referendum"

For the past two days the European tabloid press and the always reliable (heh) RT website have been a twitter over a stunt orchestrated by the Lega Nord (Northern League of Italy), a racist, homophobic and anti-immigrant group that was long an ally of the essentially defunct (if we're believe the anti-Semitic, segregationist hate blogger, Waco conspiracy theorist nutjob and Wikipedia coatracking specialist at Vermont Commons, Carol Moore). The white separatists at the Lega Nord are promoting the idea of secession for Venice and the surrounding Veneto region from Italy's browner southern part. In a move reminiscent of Vermont secesher leader Gary Flomenhoft's unconstitutional, seditious and illegitimate reconstitution of the long disbanded Vermont Council of Censors, the racist Lega Nord is conducting a "referendum" this week that has no legal authority; more a methodologically challenged poll really. It's online for crissakes! The Italian constitution only permits referendums to abrogate existing laws or to accept/reject constitutional reforms or to adjust provincial/state borders.

As readers of this blog know, the Second Vermont Republic advisory board was riddled with racists, neo-Confederates, anti-Semites, homophobes and immigrant bashers from its inception. I exposed that fact in early 2007. One of those bigoted assholes on the SVR advisory board was the Lega Nord's Marco Bassini. As the SVR began to unravel, the bass of SVR, the still dead Thomas H. Naylor and his Renfield, Rob Williams, sacked the board, although Williams had never seemed to have been able to give two shits about whether his allies were racists.

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

I expect to hear some crowing soon from Vermont seceshers about the Lega Nord fake vote (much like Williams/Flomenhoft/Hallsmith's fake statewide consensus on the public bank proposal of theirs) that inflates the importance of an illegitimate "referendum" a la their touting the results of a non-binding vote by fewer than 5% of this state's town meeting voters. It's all they got so it's what they do.

We Are All Italian Now!

Just to test the value of the results of such a "referendum" I conducted a little test. With the assistance of Google Translate it took about 7 minutes to complete the referendum voter registration process at Plebiscito.eu. Any kind of eight digit identification number will do. Pick any community in the Veneto region for your own and have fun making up your own Italian sounding street (via) name. Come up with an age that you'd like to be for the moment and you're done. I wonder if they'll appreciate the irony of a Giuseppe Garibaldi voting in their referendum. This process hasn't even the integrity of Survey Monkey. I got such a kick out of my sudden enfranchisement in a far off land's secesher referendum that I dumped my cookies and registered a new fake identity to vote again. This show "referendum" should produce the results any secesher would love. Too bad I didn't get to check out this option for the Crimea referendum.

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

Thomas H. Naylor: The Dog-whistler

Wikipedia: Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. [1] [2]

According to Thomas Naylor, he'd been entranced with the vision of a secessionist state of Vermont for more than a score of years. He'd said that in the first dozen or so years that his was a lone voice, and, like much of what he'd like Vermonters to believe, that isn't true. However, it is true that in this period, and likely before, he had associates who were up to their eyeballs in the South Will Rise Again movement. This association would reveal itself when Naylor launched his own movement that he'd call (despite the very real question that there'd ever been a first one) the Second Vermont Republic (SVR).

In putting together his advisory board he included very few Vermonters but instead he packed the group with neo-Confederate ideologues and white supremacists like Franklin Sanders, a convicted felon and a League of the South (LOS) member of LOS's board of directors; the Lincoln hating, Union hating, unions hating, as well as the hater ofthe Constitution's pesky 14th Amendment with its due process clause that applied the Bill of Rights to the states and its citizenship clause and its equal protection clause that was used to dismantle institutional segregation practiced in Southern states, and Big Tobacco whore, Thomas DiLorenzo; the present day South Carolina delegate to the white supremacist Southern National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale; the former first director of LOS's historical revisionist Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History before founding the "Lincoln loath(ing)" (Time, 2005) Abbeville Institute, so named for the plantation of John C. Calhoun, a mid-19th century slavery and "states rights" (white supremacy dog-whistle), Donald Livingston. There were others including a member of Italy's racist Lega Nord. [3] Naylor's ties to the national secession movement (an oxymoron?) elements that are the most racist, most committed would be restorers of institutional segregation in the states, and most committed to patriarchy and homophobia is indisputable.

Naylor, just like Teabaggers and racists would do when their world caved in on the evening of November 6, wrote another of his essays titled Obamaland: Vision Free, But Very Cool that was intended to demean his better, President Obama.

You see, in Naylor's alternative universe, the president merely strives to be "cool."  Nevermind the conflicts in the Middle East, the fiscal cliff, congressional pissing contests, real terrorist threats against Americans at home and abroad, nah, he's just into a nigga thing about being "cool."

Don't believe it?  Just consider Naylor's racist, dog-whistle close to his essay:

"Above all, what Obama was about was being “cool.” And it worked in spades."

Truly pathetic, even for a self-described scholar and Dixie singer like Naylor.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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