Morning Huck

Neo-Confederate Huckabee supporter Ron Wilson, another fine Christian white man

Well, it's still morning on the West Coast!

Between the Huck's campaign and Ron Paul's, we're getting more much daylight than we normally have shining into some of the darker corners of the American radical right. The People for the American Way's blog Right Wing Watch gives a brief profile of the Neo-Confederate Behind Pro-Huckabee Flag Ads in South Carolina 01/18/08.

The Huck defended his position on the South Carolina Confederate state flag by resorting to the anal imagery of which he sees to be so fond, saying, "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do". Technically, implied anal imagery.

Wilson has participated with a number of neo-Confederate groups, including the white supremacist League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the latter being the present-day name of the White Citizens Council, which was the most significant overtly white-supremacist group in Mississippi during the civil rights battle of the 1950s and 1960s. Wilson also participated in the white supremacist takeover of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 2000, which had previously been a stodgy group of Confederate romantics rather than racist activists.

Brother Huck's Presidential campaign has been providing abundant reminders of what the late Steve Gilliard always said, which is that we seriously misunderstand the Christian Right if we don't remember that it is largely synonymous with white folks who don't much like black people. More than a little of Christian Right ideology is old-line segregationist thinking.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, council of conservative citizens, mike huckabee, neo-confederates, neosegregation, racism, sons of confederate veterans, white citizens council

Mississippi politics: Haley and the Citizens Council

I see that the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger had picked up on the appearance of gubernatorial condidate Haley Barbour's picture on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which as I mentioned a few days ago is the unreconstructed successor group to the White Citizens Council:

Some of Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour's campaign material features the state flag and its Confederate battle emblem, a symbol many black voters find offensive. [And not just black voters - Bruce]

Barbour wears a lapel pin with the U.S. and state flags and he is in a photograph on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a neo-Confederate group accused of racist views. Barbour says he doesn't know anything about the council. The picture was taken at a council-sponsored barbecue in July used to raise money for private academy school buses.

But Barbour says he wants to be the state's most successful Republican vote-getter among African Americans and has held closed-door strategy meetings with minorities. If elected, he says he will create a "colorblind" state government.

Missisissippi voters in a referendum in 2001 - California isn't the only state that causes itself trouble with these things - chose a state flag that prominently features the Confederate battle flag.

It's a bit odd that the article dwells on the state flag, though. Willingly associating himself with the White Citizens Council is something that is of much more interest in terms of his political perspective. Barbour is a former chairman of the national Republican Party. Hanging out with the White Citizens Council isn't exactly what most people think a "compassionate conservatism" would look like. It sounds like old-fashioned mean conservatism is more Barbour's thing.

Tags: authoritarianism, council of conservative citizens, haley barbour, mississippi politics, racism, white citizens council

Mississippi politics: Governor's race

Check out this picture ("Black Hawk Rally Kicks Off Campaign") of Mississippi's Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). This is the hate group that Trent Lott got in trouble for associating with, along with his praise for 1940s-style segregation. The CCC is better known by the name of its predecessor organization, the White Citizens Council.

Note that it claims to be a picture of Barbour at an event sponsored by the CCC to raise money to support segregated private schools, also known as "seg academies."

I came across this via the Temple of Democracy Weblog, which tracks the "neo-Confederate" movement with which Southern Republicans increasingly find themselves befriending.

Tags: authoritarianism, council of conservative citizens, haley barbour, mississippi politics, racism, white citizens council