SPLC: The League of the South’s Bad Year

While I was on the road in Virginia, I heard about the SPLC article on the League of the South:

“Cushman and Griffin’s departures represent the latest in a decades-long trend of the League losing its quasi-academic veneer of respectability. That façade is being steadily replaced by the open militancy exemplified by LOS Chief-of-Staff and Florida State Chairman Michael Tubbs, a former Green Beret once convicted for his role in the theft of weapons and munitions from the U.S. military.

In “An Open Response to Michael Hill,” Griffin had this to say about the shift:

“I don’t think militias, survivalism or violent apocalyptic rhetoric – the 1980s and 1990s is the way forward. When I joined the League of the South, it was none of those things. Because of Lügenpresse guilt by association, I had to deal with the aftermath of the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston. I’ve never wanted to be associated with violent vanguardists like that. I don’t want to attract or encourage unstable people who do stupid things.” …

I’ve been itching to respond to this.

1.) There is no disagreement between us on Southern Nationalism. I’m a Southern Nationalist. I’ve said all along that Trump won’t succeed in Making America Great Again. My position has always been that civic nationalism is a failure. I’m really delighted that it is being given a chance to fail.

2.) There is no real substantial disagreement on Trump, even though I preferred and campaigned for a Trump victory. Basically, I thought a Trump victory would be far more polarizing. In 4 or 8 years, Trump won’t be president anymore and will leave behind a far more polarized landscape than the one he inherited. In the meantime, he might do some good things for us and so far I think he is off to a good start.

3.) There is no real disagreement on the Alt-Right. I think of the Alt-Right as an umbrella term. It means being rightwing, but beyond the pale of mainstream conservatism. That includes Southern Nationalism and a bunch of other related movements. Southern Nationalism was the original Alt-Right in the 1850s.

4.) I do think we should be reaching out and building alliances. When I was in Washington, I saw Norbert Hofer of the Austrian Freedom Party. Nigel Farage was there. I’m a Southern Nationalist, but we are part of a broader worldwide nationalist, populist reaction against the liberal world order. We are living through history being made and I have spent a lot more time writing about that lately.

5.) I don’t have any beef with Michael Hill or the League of the South. Actually, I believe there should be less beefing and more cooperation. We should work together to defeat our common enemies.

6.) On the specific question of violence, I have never been fond of the periodic episodes of vanguardist violence. Examples of this include Dylann Roof, Glenn Miller, James von Brunn, etc. I don’t think rampage shootings are morally defensible or tactically sound. Basically, I think our ideas are moral and popular and becoming more so every day and I don’t want to have to deal with unnecessary distractions. There’s nothing to be gained from killing random people which are invariably nothing but a bonanza for our enemies.

7.) I’m not a pacifist. I strongly support gun rights. I believe in self defense. I believe you should be armed. If someone violently assaults you, you have the right to respond with force.

8.) I’m not opposed to preparation. By that I mean arming yourself, training, gaining experience with firearms, developing your military skills with others. Clearly, the Left believes it has the right to initiate violence and it would be an error on our part not to prepare for the worst. In hindsight, I wish I had been more clear on that. All I was trying to say is that military preparation shouldn’t be our primary focus. We have to win on the battlefield of ideas in the hearts and minds of our own people.

9.) I will happily grant that the vanguardists might actually get their violent apocalypse. My position is that political violence should remain illegal and taboo. If the Left wants to initiate violence against us and force the question of civil war, as John Brown & Co. did in 1859, they should be the ones to own it. It should be on them, not us. We should not be the aggressors in the conflict.

10.) At any rate, I suspect the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions will launch a swift crackdown on leftwing political violence. I’m going to write more about this tonight. The antifa are out of control. They’re have opened the question of the legitimacy of violence.

As for the League of the South, I have said for months now that we need to spend less time beefing and fighting on Facebook and more time spreading Southern Nationalism on Twitter. While I was in Washington, DC, I met up with some Southern friends who were there for Trump’s Inauguration including a few League members. The general attitude was that we are optimistic, but at the same time realistic about Trump.

I doubt that President Trump is capable of reversing our national disintegration. In fact, I think he will accelerate preexisting trends. The civil war is already raging in Washington. No, I don’t think 2016 was a bad year for us, as no one has changed their views. I think 2017 will be an even better year.