Another One Bites The Dust

Enough isn't being said about failures of the secessionist movement. What's left of the group that called itself the Second Vermont Republic is a mere shadow on a cloudy day of what it used to be. At its greatest, SVR claimed 125 "members," that is until its founder, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, eliminated memberships and declared himself a "think tank." He stopped bankrolling the Vermont secesher print journal, Vermont Commons and funding their gatherings so their visibility became nil. Then Naylor up and died a year and a half ago and that brought the few remaining VT secesher antics to a screeching halt.

Similarly, Ed Sebesta over at the Anti-neo-Confederate blog reported yesterday about the folding of the Southern Nationalist Network website, a website that had been devoted to the racist and anti-gay nature of the "emerging" Southern secessionist movement. Most of its membership seems to come from the depleted ranks of the League of the South, Sons of Confederate Veterans and a few mostly defunct chapters of the Klan. It seems that the SNN feels that they've been so successful in their demonstrations, where they number usually less than ten, that they no longer have the need for a platform like a website. Su-u-re. In the 21st century the path to success lies in restricting your public access.

Here's Ed's report:

Southern Nationalist Network Website is Supposedly Shut Down Because It is Claimed That It Has Been a Big Success
May 8, 2015

"The www.southernnationalist.com website has shut down."

"The person who ran it claimed that the website was shut down for this reason:"

"Over these past 5 years demonstrations have been held to rally folks to the idea of independence for Dixie. Many people have become serious Southern nationalists. Due to this rise in activity SNN will be shutting down; in order to begin a new phase that will inspire even more folks to get involved in the movement."

"So because the website was successful it is being shut down and the ownership given up. I would like to suggest another possibility, the SNN wasn't going anywhere."

"You look at photos of the League of the South/SNN demonstrations and you realize that there aren't a lot of people at the demonstrations."

"Or perhaps there wasn't any money to pay the bill. Even if you were going on to another activity you would retain ownership of the existing site to refer people to your new site or activity."

"I don't think the SNN's demise is a great advance. It didn't seem to be accomplishing much. I thought because they were protesting they might get recruits. Direct action, protests often get people involved. But it seems there isn't seem to be any public support for the SNN's agenda."

The Southern seceshers got maybe ten people to turn out, on a good day, for their demos. Not unlike VT seceshers who at their last Statehouse stunt got maybe a dozen people from instate, some visiting allies from out-of-state and a few of the nutters from that worn-out act called Bread and Puppet Theater. The VT seceshers were spread out so thinly on the Statehouse floor that they had to shout to hear each other.

So, if you want to see one of the last remaining seceshers in Vermont, you'll have to go to the Waitsfield or Warren Fourth of July parade (no irony there, huh?) where you'll get to see Rob William's wizened scowl.

UPDATE Sunday, May 10, 2015, 12:00 PM: There's a particularly vicious racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic website called Occidental Dissent run by a white supremacist and neo-Confederate scumbag named Brad Griffin a.k.a. Hunter Wallace where the commenters are lamenting the passing of the Southern Nationalist Network. Included in the collective wailing and whining is this post by the piece of shit who ran the racist Southern Nationalist Network, another neo-Confederate waste of time by the name of Michael Cushman. Here's his bullshit:

Palmetto Patriot says:
May 9, 2015 at 4:44 AM

Thank you very much to those who read and supported the site. I enjoyed running SNN and met quite a few really good folks thru it. It was intended to be more than a blog. We did regular podcasts, videos, organised (sic) activism, etc. It was much too much for me to operate by myself once I began to work more hours. Even with a little help it was too much. I also felt it had served its purpose by popularising (sic) the term and ideology ‘Southern nationalist’ among those in pro-Southern and pro-White circles. We mostly defeated the Rainbow Confederate forces and moved the Southern secessionist movement in an ethno-nationalist direction. That said, we were not seeing a lot of growth in our ranks despite a lot of time, money and effort being put into the project over 5 years. So I think it is time for the next thing. To get a different – better – result something new must be tried, I think. We need talented people to step up with new ideas for spreading our worldview. For the last few months I have been focused on writing a Golden Circle book. I recently finished the first draft of that and will soon start a new book project. As HW says, I do plan to start a new blog – a much less ambitious but more manageable site than SNN.

Heh!

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