From the newsletter of Christian Exodus (a theocratic, Texas-based secession group believing, among other things, that sex outside of marriage and homosexuality should be “regulate(d) and legislate(d) against”), on their 2007 convention:
(League of the South founder) Michael Hill shared recent happenings from the Secession Convention, and the national publicity that was generated. There was also much talk about distribution of the new League of the South newspaper- the Free Magnolia. Modeled on the Vermont Commons, which has had significant success in promoting the idea of a Second Vermont Republic, this newspaper was a new strategy to bring the ideas of Southern Independence to the public.
“the goal of our secession is not liberty – the goal is obedience to God-and creating the society where that is possible.” – League of the South Board Member and frequent Vermont Commons contributor Franklin Sanders addressing the same convention last year.
The story of The Fall is, in my opinion, the most powerful metaphor in human history. There are so many primal lessons at play in that one simple story, it’s little wonder that it’s resonated so powerfully over the millenia. Its most fundamental lesson, though, is its most meaningful and compelling; when Adam & Eve ate the fruit, it wasn’t just any ol’ forbidden fruit. It was an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After eating it, they became ashamed of their nakedness, became frightened, and were expelled from paradise.
The fact is that with knowledge comes responsibility for your own place within the context of that knowledge. Once we are confronted with the perspective of morality, the nakedness of naivete is gone forever and can never be regained – a bell that cannot be unrung. It may be heretical in some circles, but as metaphor rather than dogma, the symmetry seems clear; Adam and Eve expelled themselves, as the knowledge of right and wrong thrust them into a world of shades of grey, a world where the idyllic utopia of The Garden could only be a distant, unattainable dream. And that single act of disobedience (or was it coming of age?) would forever become our most defining collective quality.
Like all great metaphors, The Fall has application at every level; on the grand, historic and global, as well as the day-to-day and the personal – and in all honesty, there is not a day that passes that I’m not reminded of it.
Case in point (perhaps tragic point): Rob Williams, the editor of the Vermont Commons.
With the Second Vermont Republic and Vermont Commons connections to the white supremacist movement back under the microscope, Williams has retaken his position in the forefront. He continues to characterize his long, personal, and institutional association with SVR guru Thomas Naylor as anywhere from non-existent to parochial, depending on whether or not that association is an albatross around his neck in any given conversation. But his efforts under the current scrutiny are so desperate and so clearly detached from reality they either draw an objective reader to one of two conclusions; Williams either has no compunctions about outright lying, or he is becoming something of a tragic character, desperately clinging to his Utopian Eden despite being confronted with the realities of good and evil.
Or to put it in a perhaps less pretentious way, Williams is in a deep hole, and has resumed digging furiously to get out, leaving many of us looking into this pit asking ourselves “why?”.
In a miserably ineffective attempt to inoculate himself from criticism for his own connections to, and relentless defense of partnering with, some of the purest practitioners of institutional evil you can find, Williams has posted the complete text of a back-and-forth held with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s writer, looking for background on her recently completed expose. In doing so, Williams does himself no favors. One particular line stands out (emphasis added):
I have absolutely no interest, nor does Vermont Commons, in partnering with or publishing the ideas of known racist groups or individuals who openly espouse racist beliefs. We never have and we never will.
What can one say to such a brazenly false statement?
Vermont Commons routinely allows itself to promote the ideas of known racists, homophobes, anti-Semites and misogynists. There is of course, Williams’s “philosophical guru” Donald Livingston, who has been given quite a bit of ink at Vermont Commons, a scholar deeply involved in the early days of the historically theocratic and white nationalist League of the South, and who maintains active ties. There is also the aforementioned Franklin Sanders, a long time League of the South Board Member who edits the LOS’s quarterly, The Free Magnolia which cites Vermont Commons as its inspiration (see the lead-in to this diary).
The creation of which, as the opening quote of this diary makes clear, people like Williams and all the so-called “progressives” who lend their own talents to (or provide platforms for) Vermont Commons – are freely empowering with their own skills and reputations.
But let’s focus on an example that hasn’t gotten as much attention on the blogs, and is particularly egregious. The case of notorious white supremacist sympathizer and one-time UVM professor Robert Griffin. Here’s only some of what the SPLC has to say about Griffin:
As the essays in Living White proceed, Griffin’s admiration of white supremacist groups becomes more and more open. In one essay, he criticizes Carol Swain, the black author of a book called The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenges to Integration. He attempts to undermine Swain’s ideas — which include her dubious advocacy of opening a dialogue with the white supremacist right — by defending the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), a hate group formerly run by Matt Hale, now serving 40 years in federal prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge….
…Griffin spends a great deal of time describing how the mass media oppresses white nationalists.
Griffin’s persecution complex similarly serves as the backdrop for One Sheaf, One Vine, which features one white nationalist after another expounding upon his or her perceived oppression by mainstream society, and particularly by Jewish-controlled media outlets and institutions.
The interview subjects speak at length about how they have been made to feel guilty and inferior for being white and how being white has become a detriment in today’s multicultural society. They include a former newspaper reporter who complains that he was unfairly passed over for positions because of affirmative action policies and a college student at the University of Texas who blames the media as the indirect cause of the rape of one of her white friends by a black man.
“From that experience, it wasn’t that I learned that all blacks are bad,” the woman says. “What I learned is that this culture and the media and everything inhibit your instincts and your common sense to where you don’t want to say, ‘No, Casey, going off with a carload of black guys is not a good idea.'”
The centerpiece of the book is a chapter titled “News Without Jews,” which revolves around an interview with Alex Linder, the operator of the virulently racist Web site, Vanguard News Network. The notion of a Jewish boogeyman is on full display as Griffin provides Linder with an unfettered venue to explain his racist roots and vent about mainstream news outlets like Newsweek, which Linder describes as “just Jews lying about reality and I hate people who lie about reality.”
Griffin’s work was published in Vermont Commons’ second issue, and the piece was widely re-circulated. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):
Despite the rhetoric, democracy and individual freedom and self-determination are antithetical. There are times when it is practical to put something to a democratic vote. We can?t have one congressman for you and another one for me (I guess). But you have to keep in mind that whenever you have a democratic vote, up to 49% of the people don?t want the result of the election, and probably a good number of people on the winning side wouldn?t do it exactly that way if it were their call. So you can?t assume that democracy is the best way to go, here, there, and everywhere. With schools having become politicized, democratized, don?t be surprised if you feel out of control, because, ironically, democracy is about taking control away from you…
…I think it is fair to say that the victors in the competition to insert their perspective into school programs have been the egalitarians, collectivists, multiculturalists, feminists, gays, environmentalists, internationalists, secularists, and Holocaust promoters.
“Holocaust promoters.”
Does that even qualify as code?
So, was Williams simply lying? His own Vermont Commons bloggers, along with supporting some things we can all get behind, have also been known to be very pro-segregation. There is this from the VT Commons’ blog this last February, as JD reported:
“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.”
…and this, even more recently (February 12th):
…wise secessionists, and the various networks and organizations they create, should stress their goal is giving people choice, including, but not limited to, creating homogeneous communities.
(Williams personal response to the return of this blogger to the VT Commons site, printed shortly after those two quotes was simply “We’ve missed you here. Good to see you back in the e-saddle and blogging with us. Keep those links coming!”)
If we are to look at Williams as a tragic character, its possible that his denial is becoming delusional, and in the process he believes what he is saying. How? Well, here is what Williams says about the racist League of the South, that has drawn such inspiration from Vermont Commons:
You state in your question above, Heidi, that the League of the South is “clearly racist,” and would “like to create a racist society in
their seceded state.”
Yet, the League of the South issued a public statement in 2004 specifically denouncing racism, a statement explicitly explaining that
they do not want a racist state in a secessionist nation.
There is an abusrdist sense in which this is true; The League of the South (which, as SPLC writer Beirich notes, “is against interracial marriage, believes the old Confederacy never surrendered, and wants to reestablish ‘the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions’ in a newly seceded South”), did nominally reject racism, but has followed that rejection since with nuggets such as this, originally printed on their website in February of 2007 (since scrubbed, but not before I read it, and the anti-neoconfederate blog quoted it):
…many conservative Christians have unknowingly adopted a term that undermines their own beliefs while promoting the ideology of their enemies. By accepting the term “racism” from the Marxist secular humanists, mainstream Christian conservatives are promoting the radical, anti-Christian ideology that invented it.
Under this re-definition (or un-definition), they then have no problems with declaring themselves non-racist, as the very concept is a Marxist/Atheist plot.
In fact, the comments from the Vermont Commons blog above completely mirror the neo-confederate line; that segregation and neo-theocratic-fascist states would, somehow, be good for blacks, jews and homosexuals – presumably because they would know to steer clear, and could set up their own little homelands/reservations/walled cities (where, exactly, is an open question).
It seems likely that Williams can make his desperate plea that Vermont Commons is a “no racists allowed” based on this un-definition of racism.
But there’s still something that doesn’t sit quietly with me in all this. Williams also makes the claim about the current controversy:
many bloggers – who love to flap their electronic jowls in cyberspace – have attacked us repeatedly without ever once bothering to contact us to find out what we really think.
This too, is not exactly true. After I made the initial post at this site on the matter, which largely repeated what was reported at the Vermont Secession SVR-counter-blog, and used a lot of words like “concerned” and “disturbing” (as the connections between the Vermont left and the Klan-crowd had me concerned and disturbed), Williams contacted me to meet. I agreed. It was an…odd…meeting. At the time, Naylor had already attempted to attack me personally through my employer on the radio in southern Vermont. I insisted as a precondition to talking that he disavow such a sleazy attack on my livelihood. Williams crudely evaded any response, and after multiple attempts, I announced I was leaving – at which point he relented and agreed (it was then the next day that Naylor unloaded in his broadside on my employer that necessitated my stepping down from blogging for about a month… Williams simply ignored my demand for an explanation via email at that time. So much for integrity).
But there was a point at the restaurant where we met when he tried to claim the moral high ground about working with these kinds of people to build a better world, resorting to angry gobbledygook about the enemy of his enemy being his friend, and the evils of the “American empire.”
I got frustrated, and noted how easy this was for him to say as a privileged straight white European male, and was therefore not likely to receive the Matthew Shepherd treatment from any of his buddies he was lending his own reputation and efforts to empower. Noticing a single African American man in the restaurant, I gestured to him and said something to the effect of “if you’re so sure of your moral superiority on this, why don’t we go over there and tell him the situation, and see what he has to say about it. Maybe he’ll sign on and write you a check. Let’s go!”
I was met with a frozen stare and stony silence, followed by some stammering. Williams clearly knew that I was dead serious, and was already making motions to walk across the room and ask the stranger for his opinion. The prospect left him like a deer in the headlights.
The meeting ended shortly thereafter.
That reaction spoke volumes. There was self-consciousness. Realization. Whether at that moment, or sometime before, it seemed clear to me that he’d had the apple. The knowledge of good and evil was at least somewhat in play.
So, does that make him a tragic character in denial as Eden collapses around him, or just a garden variety confidence man peddling the worst that humanity has to offer?
I for one, will obviously never really know, but he could still wrap up any questions by doing the obvious; condemning groups like the League of the South, refusing to hold hands with them, and expunging the creepy segregationist stuff from the website. After all, for a “clean,” bigot-free model of a movement like the one Vermont Commons purports to envision, they need look no further than Vermont’s own Institute for Social Ecology for a start.
Or he could follow the advice of Commons-contributor and neonazi-sympathizer Griffin from last December:
Get in the best shape you can. Figure you are in a war. Get battle-ready. Put your mind and body in the best condition possible. If you have some physical or mental issue, habit, addiction, whatever it is, that is getting in your way, get it out of your way, starting now.
Don’t buy the nonsense they tell you about yourself. The people doing the talking in this country tell you that being pro-minority is good but being pro-white is bad, that you are bad, that they are the action and you should kowtow to them and keep your mouth shut over in the corner. Constantly tell yourself another, more positive, story: you are the action, you are as central – as much as anyone is in this world.
Find likeminded people. You aren’t alone. There are people that think as you do and who will like and encourage you. They may be right around you or you might have to go looking for them. You might have to contact them on the sly.
As always, it’s all about choices. What you believe, whether you want to leave the world better than how you found it.
And who you choose to stand with.
