What? You say this is nothing more than another desperate try for the SVR to grasp at relevance? Of course, if you said that you'd be right, but don't tell them--it would be like telling a little kid there's no tooth fairy.
I've promised myself I won't talk about the Second Vermont Republic issue anymore - I'm gonna leave that to Rowley and JD Ryan - but I want to restate something I did say to minimize collateral damage. I've been swapping email with an angry Jason Sorens of the Free State Project, and I'm afraid after the Guardian article, that people may be making incorrect inferrences from my brief reference to him/them. I have no factual correction to make, but given Sorens' understandable reaction I want to make sure I'm 100% clear, so I'm going to restate with a bit more force:
I've heard on more than one occassion, people suggest or charge that the Free Staters may be xenophobic or have racist undertones - in large part due to their involvement in an event last year that had originally been flagged by the Anti-Defamation League as such. But in my web surfing, it looked to me like these charges were unsupportable - even the ADL backed off from them to large extent. And you can bet that if I'd caught a whiff of racism or xenophobia, I'd have said so in that diary. I specifically didn't, and I sure wasn't inclined to hold back (for that matter, I had nothing on Bassani either - those specific charges have come from the Green Mountain Collective).
While I find Sorens' politics WAY off, he seems like a well-meaning sort. In fact, he went so far as to agree on the racism of the League of the South and scoffed at their hiding behind the banner of heritage.
As far as this stuff goes, I've even tried approaching the FSP online community a bit, to maybe a little avail (I owe them a link to a student group complaint that I had also, but of course, I cant find it now - I think it was mutterings in response to the same NH event anyway...). A lot of ranters and ravers over there sure, but also a lot of decent folks. It's a good site, believe it or not.
(As this issue is still getting more attention, please note that I re-promoted the original thread to near the top of the page. It appears right below this diary)
A lot has been "not happening" and a lot has been happening regarding the now publicized link between the Second Vermont Republic organization and radical anti-union white supremacists and "Christian" neo-fascists. The traditional media has been rumbling, but we;ve seen nothing yet. Yet that may change as, even though the initial story is waning, the bigger story - that is, the reaction to the news - is just beginning.
(Re-Bumped to the top, as the issue seems to be gaining steam again - promoted by odum)
A few weeks back, I received email from an anonymous blogger asking if I'd ever looked closely at Vermont's small but high profile secession movement, the Second Vermont Republic (and its companion publication, VT Commons). Despite the fact that many high-profile Vermont activists have associated themselves with the organization, I had dismissed them largely over sentiments I thought brushed into anti-immigrant territory. This particular blogger, however, had a deeper concern.
He (or she) had just heard SVR spokesperson Rob Williams on Switchboard passing on a revisionist historical portrait of Abraham Lincoln which the blogger (who follows hate groups) recognized as part and parcel of what the Southern Poverty Law Center (the premier anti-hate group advocacy and tracking organization in the country) refers to as the Neo-Confederate Movement. The blogger considered the possibility of a connection and looked into the SVR and VC websites.
What he found was shocking for two reasons; one, that there seem to be no degrees of seperation between SVR and leading neo-confederate thinkers and activists specifically discussed on the Southern Poverty Law Center website. These people are serving on SVR's advisory board.
And two; that there seems to be no effort to hide the fact, given that groups such as the flagship neo-confederate organization The League of the South are linked to prominently, and the work of LOS activists cited and praised repeatedly.
The anonymous blogger has posted the first of his findings at vermontsecession.blogspot.com, and the work he's done is prodigious. It is as well cited and linked as any research document, and as such virtually impossible to refute. From the anonymous blogger who is using the psuedonym Thomas Rowley after one of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys:
As I've read and learned more about the group at Second Vermont Republic and its publication, Vermont Commons, I've become concerned about some of what they say and even more so about things that they aren't saying. My purpose in this blog won't be to gevaltize about the various people and their connections to organizations that promote ideas (or as they would have it, "Truths") that are inimical to generally accepted Vermont values of inclusion and respect for others. I'd simply like for my neighbors to have additional facts not being presented by those who are proposing secession.
I strongly suggest a visit to vermontsecession to review what is only the beginnings of his case (there is much more coming). In the meantime, I'll try to provide some highlights below the fold, including the results of some of my own digging.
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