As The Second Vermont Republic Sputters to Its End...

... apparently the new plan to attain relevance in our time by the secesher brain trust is a concerted anti-Bernie Sanders campaign by Vermont's flailing secessionists.

The publisher of SVR's hate blog, Rob Williams, points us to this piece by longtime secesher flack, Bill Kauffman, as though it isn't a piece of transparent, partisan "analysis." Kauffman "analysis" relies entirely on the musings of, at one time or another, three of Vermont's best known crackpots. (I've written before about Kauffman here. Kauffman is also a contributor to the notoriously anti-Semitic, neo-Confederate and racist Chronicles magazine. Williams suggests to us that he has a relationship with Bernie - that's a laugh since Bernie has a short fuse around assholes like Williams. Although he is well aware about his Dixie singing founder of SVR, the quite dead Thomas H. Naylor,, Kauffman never discloses what he also knows about the SVR-Williams'-Naylor's many, many ties to racists and homophobes like the declared anti-Semites and racist League of the South, delegates from the racist Southern National Congress, and Williams past publication of the ravings of racist UVM prof. Robert S. Griffin, anti-Semites like Carol Moore and Dennis Morrisseau (too name only two of his Jew loathers), the racist LoSer board of director and convicted felon Franklin Sanders (no relation to Bernie), as well as the particularly nasty homophobes at South Carolina's Christian Exodus who Rob invited to Vermont because they like him.

In short, with no successes that he in the more than ten years that he's been fluffing the secesher hog - a failed publication; a rejected distribution deal; the goal of distribution throughout Vermont never even came close; although he promised them in all towns there has been no meaningful effort to get Vermonters to vote for secession at town meetings; despite his saying seceshers would be in the legislature and proposing legislative articles of secession by 2015, no secesher has come even remotely close to something exceeding a single digit showing when people knew it was a dyed in the wool secessionist running - Williams is now apparently orchestrating anti-Bernie campaign aided by a tiny group of usual suspects (former Bernie friends and/or allies Peter Diamondstone, Greg Guma, Robin Lloyd, Ben Dangle, to name just a few - all seceshers and lifelong losers.

The biggest laugh I got from the piece is that Williams might possibly believe that Bernie Sanders might see him as something better than (as in advisor) the neo-Confederate, anti-Semitic, racist enabler that he is. Next time you see him remember that Bernie sees you for exactly what you are.

"... support for the Pentagon’s F-35 Burlington-based joint strike fighter baffles and infuriates me. I find his cozying up to Lockheed and Sandia Labs perplexing, and his support for Israel maddening.”

“Bernie knows I am a secessionist,” says Williams. “I have often suggested he run for president of the 2nd Vermont Republic. I’m not sure he appreciates this.”

Right, Rob. Anyone is bound to be sweeped away by the pleadings of a neo-Confederate, racist and anti-Semitic enabler rather than the platform for the presidency. Williams really is a completely delusional, narcissistic asshole, and Bernie knows it. What Williams didn't say was that more than five years ago Thomas Naylor sought to get Bernie to run as the secesher gubernatorial candidate but who they eventually got to stick his neck out was Dennis Steele, a bad caricature of the Brawny Towel Guy. Although conventional wisdom has long held that Bernie hasn't a chance in the Democratic 2016 primary, the seceshers own track record for failure may push Bernie over the top. Wouldn't that be a trip?

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A Secessionist Neo-Nazi Calls Rob Williams Hate Site a Place of "Friends and Fellow Secessionists"

While doing some research connected to the topic in the previous post, "Secession Alliances and Cross Pollination," I came across one of the connections that shows how close those ties can be in the minds of seceshers.

The website operated by a League of the South member with past ties to the largely defunct neo-Nazi group called the National Alliance (a group that has "produced assassins, bombers and bank robbers, among other things"; membership #C0127), Michael Cushman's Southern Nationalist Network, has a post by Cushman from a little over a year and a half ago where he writes,

"Our friends and fellow secessionists in Vermont have posted an excellent poem with which many Southern nationalists will surely identify. Below is one part that stands out as being particularly relevant in this age when US hegemony stretches far and wide and crushes all that is unique beneath its bland boot of universalism..." Source

Right. Unique like neo-Nazism. What follows in Cushman's post is an excerpt from a now dead link to the now out of commission secesher publication once published by - wait for it - Rob Williams. (For any newcomers to this blog, you can learn more about 9/11 Truther Williams' anti-Semitism and his cavalier attitude towards the racism of his secesher allies here and here.). The poem is such dreck that I can't bring myself post any of it, not even the excerpt, by a Kentucky secesher named Wendell Berry. Williams is so taken by Berry's lyric flotsam that it found its way into Wiiliams' anthology rehash of things once published in his bygone rag. What Williams didn't include was some of the racist writers and bloggers that have contributed to his hate site and wood stove paper kindling supply (that I missed so much this winter), like UVM's white supremacist prof, Robert S. Griffin[1] [2], frothing anti-Semites like Thomas H. Naylor, Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau, Carol "Jew Loather" Moore, or anti-race mixing contributor to Dennis Steele's utterly failed secesher gubernatorial candidacy, James Duncan. [1] [2]Williams' book has an Amazon Best Sellers rank of #770,243 - heh.

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Secession Myths & Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Thomas J. DiLorenzo

In a piece by Corey Meyer entitled "Secession: It’s All the Rave These Days", Meyer does a spot on job of refuting some of the historic untruths routinely repeated by secession scholars bullshit artists like Thomas DiLorenzo, Second Vermont Republic baas Thomas Naylor, "Vermont Commons" publisher Rob Williams, Kirkpatrick Sale and their associates at the "old times there are not forgotten," neo-Confederate, Abbeville Institute.


Here's a sample:

“(This) letter is one written by George Washington in 1783 to John Hancock,"

“There are four things, which I humbly conceive are essential to the well being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States, as an Independent Power–

•1st An indissoluble Union of the States under one fœderal Head.
•2dly A sacred regard to public Justice.
•3dly The adoption of a proper Peace Establishment, and
•4thly The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forgit their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrafice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.

These are the Pillars on which the glorious Fabrick of our Independency and National Character must be supported–Liberty is the Basis, and whoever should dare to sap the foundation or overturn the Structure, under whatever specious pretexts he may attempt it, will merit the bitterest execration, and the severest punishment which can be inflicted by his injured Country.”

You can read Meyer's entire piece here. I especially liked the "D'oh!" moment in Meyer's description of his gotcha of Thomas DiLorenzo, the perpetrator of the Lincoln historical revisionist history fraud so loved by VTCommons' (and then SVR co-chair) Williams and his early VTCommons contributor, white supremacist and UVM professor, Robert S. Griffin. (More on that sorry chapter at VTCommons and SVR here.)

(h/t to a regular reader)

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A Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member's Paean to the Neo-Confederate Cause Was Published in a Holocaust Denial Publication

Before Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board member Thomas J. DiLorenzo seriously started his Lincoln historical revision shtick, he was a denialist for the Confederacy. Little surprise then that in all the coverage surrounding DiLorenzo's dog and pony act for Ron Paul's (R-TX) committee this bit of info came out, thanks to the good folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"DiLorenzo has other extremist connections. He has spoken at events that included other hate group members, and has been published by neo-Confederate outfits. In 1995, he wrote an essay entitled “A Defense of the Confederate Cause” published in the Journal for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial publication. It argues that “slavery was not one of the rationales” for the Civil War. “Since the battle flag represents a fight against high taxes and centralized government, every freedom-loving American should honor it,” DiLorenzo’s essay concludes."

Source

The Southern Poverty Law Center also revealed that DiLorenzo, despite denials, maintains a continuing relationship with the League of the South white supremacists, lecturing for the knuckledraggers as recently as the summer of 2009.

Here's the cover from the Holocaust denial rag:


The entire issue can be seen on this PDF, with DiLorenzo's Confederate love letter starting on page 36. You'll want to wash your eyes when you're done.

And, yes, you'll find that DiLorenzo is considered "essentially reading" according to the seceshers at "Vermont Commons". Dilorenzo's book of Lincoln historical revisionism was pimped by none other than VTCommons publisher, Rob Williams, as well as VTCommons' white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

Loyola University is conducting an investigation of DiLorenzo's possible ties to the extremist, white supremacist, hate group called the League of the South.

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Invites Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member to Congress

Rep. Ron Paul invited Thomas DiLorenzo, a well known Lincoln historical revisionist whackjob, to the first meeting of the House Financial Services Committee's Domestic Monetary Policy and Trade subcommittee and the shit hit the congressional fan:

"At one point, when Paul opened up the hearing to questions from committee members, Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) directly took on DiLorenzo for his membership in the League of the South, an organization that has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "neo-Confederate" hate group advocating for Southern secession."

"Clay then rattled off a list of some of DiLorenzo's articles, including "More Lies about the Civil War," "In Defense of Sedition," and "The First Dictator-President," which examines "how Lincoln's myth has corrupted America."

"'After reviewing your work and the so-called methods you employ, I still cannot understand you being invited to testify today on the unemployment crisis, but I do know that I have no questions for you,' Clay concluded."

The Washington Post

DiLorenzo is a longtime member of the Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board.

Little surprise then that his work has also been lauded by "Vermont Commons" publisher Rob Williams and VTCommons white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

Even less of a surprise is Rep. Paul's own bigoted history documented in The New Republic's piece, Angry White Man, here.

Update 2.11.11, 1:00 PM: DiLorenzo apparently had a hissy fit over what Rep. Clay (D-MO) had to say and, not unlike what I've experienced with Vermont's own seceshers, struck back with what some might call a flat out lie.

He said in his statement that Clay had “lied about my non-existent working relationship with the League of the South” and implied that he'd had no association with the League of the South for the past 13 years. Turns out he was an invited scholar neo-Confederate flack at an August 2009 conference sponsored by the League of the South Summer Institute.

Hopefully, SVR Advisory Board DiLorenzo will drop me a note to clear this, ah, discrepancy up.

(h/t: Southern Poverty Law Center)

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

A Vermont Commons Blogger's Anti-Semitic Rant

One thing about a neo-Nazi post like last week's is that you do get email as a result.

One of the email subjects had to do with a certain veteran blogger
for"Vermont Commons" (Full Disclosure: she's also a longtime, virulent critic of this blog.), Carol Moore.

My own investigation has come up with a truly putrid example of the sort of anti-Semitism that paddles along with so much of the fringe movement known as secessionism, as well as the sovereign citizen movement, in America. [1] [2] That's not to say that because one is intrigued with what secession might mean to accomplish, it then follows that they're an anti-Semite. It's just something that as you wade through what's being written by seceshers you'll find anti-Semitism pops up as one of the rationales for why they're failing, over and over again. For instance, Thomas Naylor, baas of the Second Vermont Republic, rants about the Israeli Mafia or he suggests the possibility that this or other blogs might be agents of, or in cahoots with, the Mossad.

Here's what one VTCommons blogger, Carol Moore, a sputtering dingbat if ever there was one, has written in the past at a Yahoo group messageboard:

Re: [libs4peace] U.S. Troops vs. HAMAS?! (click on screen cap to embiggen)

"Sharon would love to have Hamas killing American troops, just like he's delighted to see them killing Jews, since it makes his facist (sic) goals of "leibenstraum" (sic) and grabbing the rest of Israel that much easier by inflaming the public."

"I'm getting tired of turning on the news first thing in the AM and seeing the TOP story is what is going on in Israel. And it disgusts me to have to watch a congressional sub-committee dominated by pro-Zionists reaming Bush for the TINY little bit he is doing to try to keep the Israelis from driving the Arabs out of what little is left of Palestine, which the goyim obviously dare not ask ANY question of the Bush official that might be interpreted as criticism of Israel. And we've seen how Bush is back to Kissing Sharon's Ass. (Plug for Carol Moore products deleted.)"

"And Mr. Sass wonders why this issue keeps coming up here.. If the Israel's (sic) just kept their oppression over there, it would be far less annoying."

"Dealing with the nefarious influence of Israel Firsters on Congress and in the media (which is mostly owned and/or controlled by pro-Zionists, mostly Jews) has got to be a prime goal of the peace movement -- but good luck, with left and right wing pro-Zionists ready to yell anti-semite at the drop of a hat. Even the Buddhist Peace group I went to recently was dominated by pro-Zionist Jews. ARGHGH!!!"

"... Meanwhile Israel keeps building up it's 400 nuke arsenal and can now deliver them any where on earth."

"Anyone else want to concentrate on nonviolent SECESSION from our Special Interest (corporations, labor union, military-industrial, Zionist) controlled government??"

CM

I've only highlighted a few of the vile, anti-Semitic and racist tropes used in Moore's tirade. A more detailed inventory of Moore's anti-Semitic image management can be found here: one example is her characterization (cover) for a Holocaust denier by suggesting that "questions remain" and the Holocaust is "has been exploited shamelessly for political gain" - Ahmadinejad couldn't have said it better. So crazed is Moore's desire for importance and relevance that she outs her perceived "obsession" with Jews at the libs4peace messageboard members here.

Moore's an example of the new anti-Semitism so prevalent in today's fringe groups or on Fox News, which equates Israel with Nazi Germany using "trivializing comparisons" such as (Lebensraum), thus suggesting that Israel is a vastly expanding fascist, neo-Nazi state whose armies of millions are on the move; reiterates the old anti-Semitic myth that Jews control the media and the US government (also called ZOG).

Moore's hateful harangue is as utterly shameful as her assertion that she is being oppressed by Israel is ludicrous.

One need look no further for evidence of Moore's ongoing war against
the Jews than her 400-500 edits in the Wikipedia article, Allegations of Jewish Control of the Media . This anti-Semitic activism caused a firestorm on the Wikipedia Noticeboards last month that has yet to abate. Here's one example, as well as others from a month earlier here and here that also revolve around actions advancing the cause of anti-Semitism. There're many, many more complaints about her anti-Semitic agenda wreaking havoc on Wikipedia articles.

No less an expert on white supremacists, the Klan, anti-Semites and other wingnuts, Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, has had this to say about Carol Moore and her whitewash of the Branch Davidian murderers and their serial child molester/murderer/cult leader, David Koresh:

"Ah yes, Carol Moore. She wrote one of the worst books on the Branch Davidian tragedy (and there were some real stinkers)."

"She has this great theory that radical protests are tied to sunspots."

Chip Berlet

You'd think that after four years (today's the 4th anniversary for this blog), VTCommons publisher, Rob Williams, would have figured out that as long as he keeps up these sorts of direct associations with racist, white supremacist or anti-Semitic extremists like Duncan, Griffin, Naylor and plain old whackjobs like Moore, as well as his recruiting promoters of loopy sovereign citizen movement legal arguments, his movement is going to remain stopped dead in its tracks as it is.

It's time for Williams to start taking out the trash at the VTCommons blog and in the Free Vermont movement, or is his allowance of anything goes in a Brave New Vermont a not so subtle warning being given to "undesirables" of the treatment they might anticipate when he and the other cowboys (and girls) take over? Certainly Williams' Don't Ask, Don't Care policy isn't going to do (or will it Rob?):

"(S)ome of our secession scholars - Don Livingston, for example - happen to be southerners. Anyone who has met and talked with Don knows the man is thoughtful and well-studied. Is he a racist? I don’t know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level."

Or maybe it'd be simpler if Williams would just accepted the obvious; that the vast majority Vermonters (by last count 99.21%) aren't interested in what his "small community of secessionists" is offering (Actually, 1.21% is the average of spoilt ballots over the past 22 years, so maybe no one really intended to vote for the secesher candidate in the first place).

Update 12:00 PM: Carol Moore's complained of the use of the photo. She isn't very photogenic so I get her point. The parody involved, that of a bigoted fraud who purports to be an advocate for peace and whose hateful t-shirt belies that role, apparently escaped her, but for the sake of comity I've removed the photo and replaced it with an explanatory message. In the future, the parodic use will be clear and unmistakeable, even to her.

Interestingly, Moore did not refudiate any of the above text or the thoughts and views expressed by her in any of messages sent by her this morning. She does, however, appear to be fascinated with googling herself. I hope she's not as confused about that as Marge Simpson was. Moore attached a link that she said comes up first (it doesn't) when she gives herself a googlejob. When I checked the link she provided, it discloses that her "research" relies on the likes of world class nutjob, Jerome Corsi.

Update 2.8.11, 4:00 PM: Carol Moore has written at the VTCommons blog that "The fact he gets no comments attests to the fact he doubtless has few readers, except maybe his employers, who aren't getting their moneys worth." Where to start on that little boatload of crazy?

Site stats refute her readership claims.

All the comments received have been from the very "small community" of secesher supporters and their out-of-state allies. Something about staying on topic escapes them, and I have no intention of providing therapy for what's ailing them - they were not approved for publication. In Moore's case the truth is that in addition to being an anti-Semite, she's a liar; she submitted seven nutty comments.

Comments are now closed.


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Today In Secession History

"South Carolina is too small to be a Republic,and too large to be an insane asylum."South Carolinian anti-secessionist and Attorney General,James L. Petigru (1789-1863)

150 years ago today, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina
became the first state to formally secede from the United States in the South's War to Preserve Slavery.

Similarly desirous of creating safe harbors for dominant cultures, "Vermont Commons" blogger, Carol Moore, has advocated for secession as a mode to provide for "homogeneous (Read: segregated) communities":

"Those "identity groups" of whatever identity who desire separation to preserve their culture or live out a vision or lifestyle should not have to waste time and resources in defending or fighting discrimination lawsuits and onerous zoning laws and can focus it on building community."
Source

Just this past year the Lost Cause Northern neo-Confederates at VTCommons and the Second Vermont Republic gubernatorial candidate accepted and refused to return a contribution from an out-of-state contributor and member of the highly secret (until exposed on this blog) Free Vermont listserv. The contributor, James Duncan, has reservations about lesbians generally and race mixing in particular, and he looks forward to putting members of Vermont's law enforcement community on trial for as yet unspecified charges after the seceshers takeover.

In an often seemingly unhinged campaign that was laced with innuendo, invective and middle finger waving giddiness, Steele and his campaign staff sought to tap into baser emotions.

Since that campaign I've received an email from one secesher that, while toggling back and forth from apology to aggression, revealed the new strategy of the small Vermont secesher community for the coming year. It seems that "old times there are (to be) forgotten," while new lows in fact churning are to be employed so that up will become down, hot will become cold and white will become black - well, maybe not that last one so much. Gone are to be all recollections and rememberances of ties to League of the South advisors; or of former SVR co-chairman and current VTCommons honcho Rob Williams' infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Care" policy regarding the possible racism of contributors to his rag:

"(S)ome of our secession scholars - Don Livingston, for example - happen to be southerners. Anyone who has met and talked with Don knows the man is thoughtful and well-studied. Is he a racist? I don’t know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level."

Or of Thomas Naylor's revealing essay, "Minority States NOT Minority Rights".

And. of course, let's not forget while not forgetting, the early VTCommons white supremacist, racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi contributor, UVM prof Robert S. Griffin, that I first reported on in February, 2007. Griffin, like Williams, had written a fawning review of Thomas J. DiLorenzo's anti-Lincoln, revisionist history. Vermont's press caught onto Griffin two years later, here, here and here (Sadly, the Times-Argus story that began the media hubbub more than two years after I first wrote about Griffin lies entombed behind their paywall.). Griffin's original VTCommons piece, although erased there, can be found at secesher and Council of Censors member Susan Ohanion's "education" website.

No doubt they'll call their upcoming reset for the Vermont secesher movement in 2011 a "Look Away" strategy. More on their re-branding effort in a future post.

Here's The Daily Show on "The South's Secession Commemoration":



UPDATE 12.21.10 12:00 PM: As if to confirm the
deranged turns that the argument for secession can take, Carol Moore has posted at the VTCommons blog that segregation and discrimination is okay if it's secessionists that are doing it.

Truly bizarre.

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