(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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