cncl conserv cits ccc

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/council-conservative-citizens">https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/council-conservative-citizens</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Among other things, its Statement of Principles says that it “oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Created in 1985 from the mailing lists of its predecessor organization, the CCC, which initially tried to project a "mainstream" image, has evolved into a crudely white supremacist group whose website has run pictures comparing the late pop singer Michael Jackson to an ape and referred to black people as "a retrograde species of humanity</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">." The group's newspaper, </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, regularly publishes articles condemning<b> "race mixing," decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization. Gordon Baum, the group’s founder, died in March of 2015.</b></span></font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.83em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Its Own Words</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God."<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />— Council of Conservative Citizens website, 2001</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. … We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />—Statement of Principles, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</em>, 2007 </font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Controlling immigration is about the security of this republic [terrorists illegally crossing the borders] and making sure countries like <b>Mexico stop dumping their murderers, rapists, those carrying AIDS</b> and other communicable diseases and gang members on America's door step."<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />—Devvy Kidd, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</em>, 2006 </font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.83em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Background</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Founded in 1985 by <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/gordon-baum" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Gordon Baum</a>, a worker's compensation attorney and longtime racist activist, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) rose from the ashes of the Citizens Councils of America (CCA), commonly called "White Citizens Councils,"</b> a coalition of white-supremacist groups and individuals formed throughout the South to defend school segregation after the Supreme Court outlawed the policy in 1954 in <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Brown vs. Board of Education</em>. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Unlike the KKK, the CCA groups had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the "uptown Klan."</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> While there were plenty of bare-knuckle racists attracted to the councils' anti-integration slogan, "Never!," the members also included bankers, merchants, judges, newspaper editors and politicians — folks given more to wearing suits and ties than hoods and robes. During the White Citizens Councils' heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Although they weren't immune to violence — Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member — the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of "forced integration." </span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once the segregation battle was lost, the air went out of the White Citizens Councils. The councils steadily lost members throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Sensing the need for a new direction, Baum, formerly the CCA's Midwest field director, called together a group of 30 white men, including former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and future Louisiana Congressman John Rarick, for a meeting in Atlanta in 1985. Together, they cooked up a successor organization: the Council of Conservative Citizens. </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like the original White Citizens Councils, the CCC is made up of local chapters, some of which are active in civic affairs beyond the national group's racist agenda. And until the 2000s, some of the group's "uptown" attitude remained, as meetings resembled Rotary Club events more than Klan outings and regularly featured politicians as keynote speakers. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Most Americans learned of the CCC in late 1998, when a scandal erupted over prominent Southern politicians' ties to the brazenly racist group. After it was revealed that </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) gave the keynote speech at the CCC's 1998 national convention and that then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) had spoken to the group five times, both claimed they knew nothing about the CCC.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> However, an </span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">Intelligence Report</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> investigation, publicized by national television and newspaper reports, made clear what the CCC really was: a </span><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20171004/frequently-asked-questions-about-hate-groups#hate group" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s;">hate group</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> that routinely denigrated blacks as "genetically inferior," complained about "Jewish power brokers," called LGBT people "perverted sodomites," accused immigrants of turning America into a "slimy brown mass of glop," and named Lester Maddox, the now-deceased, ax handle-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, "Patriot of the Century." </span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As evidence of widespread association between Southern GOP officeholders and the CCC mounted, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson took the unusual step in 1998 of asking party members to resign from the group because of its racist views. </b>A resolution moved through the U.S. Congress "condemning the racism and bigotry espoused by the Council of Conservative Citizens," although it ultimately failed. (Congress had earlier condemned the black supremacist <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/nation-of-islam" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Nation of Islam</a> in a similar manner, but failed to do the same with the CCC. Republican Party leaders, likely embarrassed by Lott's very public connection to the CCC, managed to defeat the censure effort.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But six years later, many Southern lawmakers were still pandering to and meeting with the CCC — and still pleading ignorance. According to a 2004 <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Intelligence Report</em> review of the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</em>, no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials had attended CCC events between 2000 and 2004, most of them giving speeches to local chapters of the hate group. </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the 1998/1999 scandal stripped much of the remaining varnish off the CCC's mainstream pretensions, the extremist views expressed on its website and in its newspaper have become increasingly crude. "What do you call ... four blacks, three Hispanics, three Russian Jews, and one white guy?" the CCC home page asked in 2003. "The FBI's Most Wanted List!" Another day, the home page ran photos of accused Beltway snipers John Muhammad and John Malvo, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and shoe-bomber Richard Reed. "Notice a Pattern Here?" asked a caption underneath the four photos. "Is the face of death <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">black</em> after all?" In 2002, the Web site featured a photo of Daniel Pearl, the "Jewish <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Wall Street Journal</em> reporter" who had just been decapitated by Islamic terrorists. In the photo, Pearl was shown with his "mixed-race wife, Marianne." The headline above the couple's picture was stunning even for the CCC: "Death by Multiculturalism?"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The danger of "race-mixing" has been a consistent theme for the group since the days of the White Citizens Councils. "God is the author of racism," said one story on the CCC's website in 2001. "God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God." After the NAACP declared its boycott of South Carolina in 1999 because the state continued to fly the Confederate battle flag over its Capitol dome, the CCC distributed a mock advertisement proclaiming, "South Carolina Now Has Whiter Beaches!" The <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer </em>item urged whites to vacation in South Carolina and "enjoy a civil liberty that has been denied to them for many years at hotels, restaurants and beaches: the freedom to associate with just one's own people."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with theological arguments, the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</em> has published countless stories detailing "scientific" evidence for white people's inherent superiority. Writing about <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Brown vs. Board of Education</em> in 2004, contributor Michael Polignano noted that many commentators were using the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling striking down public school segregation to talk about "how far America still falls short of racial equality." According to Polignano, that lack of progress "should surprise no one, because racial inequality is genetic and cannot be changed by social programs. ... Blacks are on average probably less intelligent than Whites and more aggressive, impulsive and prone to psychopathologies." To prove this point, a 2005 article in the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Citizens Informer</em> written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina described "[a]ccounts of little children — girls and boys —being gang raped, rescue vans and copters being repeatedly fired upon by mobs of violent blacks, anarchy, chaos, confusion, looting even by black police officers." </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More recently, the CCC has focused very heavily on battling non-white immigration. The group jumped quite early on the "threat" it perceived was posed by immigration, holding a rally against immigration in Cullman, Ala., in 1998 that featured major nativist hate group leaders <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/barbara-coe" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Barbara Coe</a> and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/glenn-spencer" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Glenn Spencer</a>, both of whom worked to pass the punishing California anti-immigrant Proposition 187 (the rally was also attended by an unrobed Klan leader and a top official of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/federation-for-american-immigration-reform-fair" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Federation for American Immigration Reform</a>). The CCC has held rallies nearly every year since then against immigration and the topic is addressed regularly at the CCC's biannual conferences, which have included as participants CCC leaders and prominent racists including <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/jared-taylor" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Jared Taylor</a>, editor of the anti-black and anti-Latino race science newsletter <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">American Renaissance</em>, and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/don-black" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Don Black</a>, founder of the first hate site on the web, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/stormfront" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">Stormfront.org</a>. </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CCC meetings have rarely featured politicians as speakers since the 2004 <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Intelligence Report</em> exposé that exposed the fact that dozens of GOP politicians (and one Democrat) had been speaking at the group's events despite GOP chief Jim Nicholson's warnings in 1998. But a few have continued to associate with the CCC. In 2005, George Wallace Jr., the son of the late segregationist Alabama governor who was then an Alabama Public Service commissioner, spoke at the group's summer conference. In June 2008, another Alabama politician, state Sen. Charles Bishop (R-Jasper), addressed the group. Bishop's speech appealed to the assembled CCC crowd, particularly when he denounced the idea that Southern states should apologize for having sanctioned slavery. Bishop said that "atonement equals reparations" — meaning that apologies would surely be greeted by demands for financial payback by black Americans. Bishop received a standing ovation from the audience and he and his wife posed for pictures with members afterwards. </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in 2009 Republican Mississippi State Sen. Lydia Chassaniol spoke to the group. She gave a rabble-rousing speech on "Cultural Heritage in Mississippi." In a brief history of the state since 1540, Chassaniol complained that the U.S. was in decline, as evidenced by tributes to Michael Jackson, a "pedophile who's being celebrated." She indicated that the government wants to "take from those who have and give to those who don't want to work for it." And she worried that the 2010 national census might hand over government "to the radical left." Chassaniol confirmed to the Southern Poverty Law Center that she is a member of the CCC, which she described as a "conservative organization."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A June 2011 barbeque held in Tennessee showcased another set of unsavory relationships maintained by the CCC. According to postings on website of the CCC’s Tennessee chapter, members of Volksfront and Blood and Honour, two notorious and violent racist skinhead groups, joined CCC members to network and discuss “ideas and plans to make a positive impact on our regions.” The then-head of the CCC, Gordon Baum, referred to the meeting as a “no-no” after stating that the chapter was not supposed to meet with “costumed Nazis.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 7, 2013, Leonard R. Wilson of Jasper, Alabama, died. He was a charter member of the CCC, as well as the organization’s national secretary and the Alabama state coordinator. He earned the nickname of "Flagpole" Wilson by climbing a flagpole during 1956 anti-integration riots at the University of Alabama to shout, "Keep 'Bama white!"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few months later, at the organization’s 2013 annual conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., Bill Lord addressed a crowd of around 75 attendees, imploring them to think locally and “get you some bigots together and take some organizations over.” Lord, who was then the chairman of the Carroll County Democratic Party in Mississippi, was referring to positions such as the school board. He then went on to refer to Greenwood, Miss., as “the Congo” because of its large black population. The gathering only went further sideways from there, with Keith Alexander of the “Political Cesspool,” a racist and anti-Semitic far-right radio program, decrying Jewish political power and influence before stating, “The only people who can be trusted to be in charge are white people.” Another attendee, John Shudlick, five-time mayor of Ocean Ridge, Fla., encouraged the crowd to use critical thinking in the struggle for the country’s soul. According to Shudlick, the “six million figure [Jews killed in the holocaust] is a dirty filthy lie.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November of the same year, the CCC and the neo-Confederate League of the South held their first joint protest together against the removal of a statue of Tom Watson, an infamous racist and anti-Semite known for playing a key role in instigating the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, from the steps of the Georgia state Capitol. The two groups’ membership rolls overlap a good deal; however, this event was demonstrative of the CCC’s longstanding strategy, focused on small, local rallies, being adopted by <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20171004/frequently-asked-questions-about-hate-groups#categorize" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background: transparent;">other hate groups</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2em; line-height: 2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gordon Baum, the CCC’s founder and longtime leader, died at the age of 74 in early March 2015, leaving the future of the CCC uncertain. However, Baum’s death did little to slow down the activities of several of the group’s board members. Just weeks later, Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson, both well-known racist activists, appeared as speakers at the Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, alongside some of Europe’s most extreme, right-wing fringe.</font></p></div></div></div><div class="view view-stories view-id-stories view-display-id-eva_stories_by_group view-dom-id-34c6839e2d6911d24d4edf0251db8474" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><h2 class="title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0.83em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recent News</font></h2><div class="view-content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><article id="node-12725" class="node node-story node-teaser node-even" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-field-issue-area field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1; padding: 0.2em 0.5em; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 5px 2px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">HATE & EXTREMISM</font></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-title-field field-type-text field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/30/not-knoxville" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Not in Knoxville</font></a></div></div></div></div><div class="links" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></article></div><div class="views-row views-row-2 views-row-even" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><article id="node-12665" class="node node-story node-teaser node-odd" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-field-issue-area field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: inline-block; letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1; padding: 0.2em 0.5em; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 5px 2px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">HATE & EXTREMISM</font></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-title-field field-type-text field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/15/organizers-and-leaders-charlottesvilles-deadly-rally-raised-money-paypal" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Organizers and Leaders of Charlottesville's Deadly Rally Raised Money With PayPal</font></a></div></div></div></div><div class="links" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></article></div><div class="views-row views-row-3 views-row-odd views-row-last" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><article id="node-12055" class="node node-story node-teaser node-even" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-field-issue-area field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: inline-block; letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1; padding: 0.2em 0.5em; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 5px 2px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">HATE & EXTREMISM</font></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-title-field field-type-text field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/02/14/hate-group-member-speak-republican-club" style="box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 0.3s; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hate Group Member to Speak at Republican Club</font></a></div></div></div></div></article></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2007/racist-memphis-radio-host-celebrated-council-conservative-citizens-conference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RACIST MEMPHIS RADIO HOST CELEBRATED AT COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS CONFERENCE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2007 Fall Issue</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">October 01, 2007</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Holthouse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The host of a Tennessee talk show, America's new nexus of radio hate, is positioning himself to become the next David Duke</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the<b> white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) held its annual national conference June 1 and 2 at a Holiday Inn in Greenville, S.C., James Edwards</b> was the golden boy of the hate group's proceedings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Edwards, 27, is the host of "The Political Cesspool," a shamelessly white nationalist radio talk show that's broadcast for two hours every weeknight from a studio near Memphis, Tenn., where Edwards grew up and still lives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Political Cesspool" in the past two years has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America. Its sponsors include the CCC and the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust denial organization. Its guest roster for 2007 reads like a "Who's Who" of the radical racist right. CCC leader Gordon Lee Baum, Holocaust denier Mark Weber, Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm, <b>American Renaissance editor Jared Taylor</b>, neo-Nazi activist April Gaede, anti-Semitic professor Kevin MacDonald,<b> Stormfront webmaster Jamie Kelso </b>and League of the South president Michael Hill have all been favorably interviewed on the "Political Cesspool" this year, along with<b> former Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, </b>the show's most frequent celebrity racist guest, who has logged three appearances.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I have known Dr. Duke for a number of years and have found him to be a Christian man above reproach," Edwards says on the "Cesspool" website. "Time and again, he has gone out of his way to help me, asking for nothing in return."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Edwards</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards is quite a bit younger than the majority of CCC members who attended the South Carolina conference. Many of those members' involvement in the white supremacist movement dates back to the White Citizens Councils that were formed to oppose school desegregation and the civil rights movement and were later reincarnated as the CCC. Edwards sat with his wife at a table near the back of the conference hall, engaging in conversation with a nearly constant stream of admirers who looked twice his age or more. They slapped his back and shook his hand and congratulated him not only on the success of "Political Cesspool" — which is tailored for a southern, neo-Confederate, white nationalist audience — but also his recent triumphs in smoothly injecting white nationalist ideology into national mainstream media discussions of race relations and crime in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards arrived at the hate group conference just three days after his <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">third primetime appearance on CNN in the previous two months. "Crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go</span>," he said in his April 4 CNN debut, a panel debate on "self-segregation" hosted by Paula Zahn. "And if you think that is racist, then spend some time on the mean streets of south Memphis."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zahn, who initially identified Edwards to CNN viewers as merely a "radio talk show host" from Memphis, invited him back on May 21 for a "Paula Zahn Now" episode titled "The Changing Face of America."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Why not celebrate the diversity?" Zahn asked him in one exchange.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"My primary interest is to protect and safeguard my family," Edwards replied. "Whites are in for the fight of their lives. America is becoming balkanized. We are being robbed of having a future in the very nation our ancestors carved from the wilderness."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>David Duke, who calls Edwards his "favorite radio patriot," gave the "Cesspool" host's CNN appearances a glowing online review: </b>"He delivered a powerful performance, stuck to his guns and didn't back down as he articulated an unapologetically conservative viewpoint regarding race relations."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Heathen Savages'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards began garnering similar accolades from his elders on the radical right last year as the "Cesspool" gained a larger and larger audience. (Although the show is broadcast only regionally on the airwaves, anyone can listen to it on the Internet.) "James is a bundle of energy and dedication who is deeply concerned about the genocide against European-Americans," white nationalist Bob Whitaker stated online after appearing on the show. "He is also wiser than many of the older members of our movement. … He sticks with legitimate complaints that gentiles have and our fear of the genocide of immigration and intermarriage that respectable conservatives all advocate. The Political Cesspool is one of the first major steps toward making our perfectly legitimate and generally felt concerns — the ones that are presently denounced as heresy, racism and hate — the mainstream."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The "Cesspool" host is a rising star of the white nationalist movement because he's articulate, charming and equally at ease in a television studio, behind a radio microphone and standing in front of a crowd. He was a specially invited guest speaker at the CCC conference. His topic: "Creating Your Own Media." CCC National Field Coordinator Bill Lord told a "Martin Luther Coon" joke in his introduction of Edwards.</span> Lord and other longtime CCC members casually dropped racial epithets at the conference, but Edwards carefully avoided using such crudely derogatory language, as he always does when speaking in public, on the airwaves or to the media. Edwards allies himself with hate group leaders who call black people "niggers," but he doesn't drop the N-bomb himself. Instead he speaks in the more or less polished code of a suit-and-tie racist, calling blacks "heathen savages," "subhumans," and "black animals," exclusively in the context of discussing violent black-on-white crime.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His audience of about 150 at the CCC conference included Jared Taylor, whose magazine specializes in race "studies," and Don Black, the former Alabama grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of Stormfront, the largest racist forum on the Internet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards began by quoting Mississippi civil rights activist Fanny Lou Hamer, telling the crowd that he is "sick and tired of being sick and tired" when it comes to reverse discrimination against white people. He described "Political Cesspool" as "unabashedly pro-white" and detailed the show's early success in rallying Memphis whites to "defend" the gravesite of Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first national leader of the original KKK. The gravesite was the subject of a protest in August 2005 led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, at which about 200 whites squared off against a few dozen black Sharpton supporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Sharpton denigrated the general's gravesite with that kind of rabble there," Edwards said. He then boasted of the lavish all-expenses-paid treatment afforded him by CNN, including, he said, fine hotels and limousine rides. Edwards finished by announcing that "as a result of listener demand, support from station ownership and a surge of interest from the recent CNN exposure," beginning the following week "Political Cesspool" would expand from one hour per weeknight to two.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He received a standing ovation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biased and Controlled</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The radio station that carries "Political Cesspool" — WLRM-AM — is a Christian station (WLRM stands for "We Love Radio Ministries," according to its website). Most of its programming consists of standard nationally syndicated conservative Christian "news and views" content that is often homophobic but generally non-racist, including a two-hour weekday show by the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a well-known anti-gay minister who is African-American.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WLRM is not audited by Arbitron, the radio industry's equivalent of the Nielsen Ratings system, so there's no reliable estimate of the number of "Political Cesspool" listeners. Advertising on the show is cheap: $100 a week for a regular plug. Edwards describes "Cesspool" as primarily "listener-supported," and the show's website claims it has received nearly $15,000 in donations this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The WLRM station manager did not return three phone calls seeking comment for this story. Edwards politely refused to comment as well. "I appreciate your request for an interview as much as I do the SPLC's continued interest in our conservative radio program," he wrote in response to an E-mail from the Intelligence Report. "I must, however, respectfully decline your offer."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Proper manners were instilled in Edwards early in life both at home, he writes on his website, and when he attended Briarcrest Christian School, an expensive private school in Memphis — tuition is now $10,000 a year — where "conservative Christian values and morals are taught and practiced in every aspect of school life," according to the Briarcrest mission statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Fromm, a well-known Canadian white supremacist, has appeared on "The Political Cesspool" this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Edwards reached the ninth grade he transferred into a "Christian nationalist" home schooling program. "It was that decision that ultimately led me down the road of political activism," Edwards says on his site. "I could no longer be aware of the problems that are plaguing this Republic without trying to be part of the solution."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He began reading the works of white nationalist politician and commentator Pat Buchanan, who appeared on "Cesspool" last year. "Buchanan was one of the first commentators that I noticed who really seemed to be speaking my language," Edwards told the Mid-South Patriot, a monthly Memphis newspaper, in a February interview. "I felt as though he was articulating a message that resonated within me."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>When Buchanan ran for president in 2000, Edwards worked on his campaign. </b>"Politics was in my blood at that point and there was no turning back," he said. Edwards ran for the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2002 on a pro-life, pro-school vouchers platform. His campaign website featured endorsements from his pastor and the fathers of several children on a bowling team that Edwards coached. He lost. But during his campaign, Edwards befriended fellow Memphis-area conservative activist Austin Farley.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The two of them together launched "The Political Cesspool" in October 2004. Farley left the show in 2006 to run for the Tennessee House in District 97, the same district Edwards had targeted four years earlier. Farley also lost.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "Cesspool" founders won a remarkable token of mainstream political acceptance in 2005, when Memphis City Councilman E.C. Jones, who has been interviewed on "Political Cesspool" several times, presented Edwards and Farley with a certificate "in appreciation of outstanding contributions to the community," and named them honorary city councilmen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">League of the South leader Michael Hill has been on "The Political Cesspool" this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Jones came under fire from the Memphis media for honoring the "Cesspool," he told the The [Memphis] Commercial Appeal, "It pisses me off when people want to make a big damn deal out of nothing. … Just because they have a different political view, am I supposed to exclude those people?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Mid-South Patriot asked Edwards in February about the accusations that he's a racist he replied: "The horrible defamations we must endure are little compared to the physical battles of blood and bone that so many of our ancestors had to endure so that we could be here now." He also said that David Duke, his favorite "Cesspool" guest, is unfairly maligned. "Most of his detractors come to their conclusions about him based upon what they hear parroted from a biased and controlled global media."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Idolizing Duke</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Feb. 20 "Political Cesspool" broadcast featured a phone interview with David Duke, speaking from the Ukraine. Edwards made it abundantly clear during their conversation that he, like Duke, believes Jews control the media, among many other things</span>. "We have a very small minority that has incredible power in the American media, the American government, in academia, and in the economy," Edwards told the infamous author of Jewish Supremacism. "I find it amazing that no movement has been too big or too small that these people have not had their hands in. … You look at all the destructive movements of the 20th century. We're talking about women's rights, the civil rights movement, and today the newly protected minority status for homosexuals."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Duke said in response: "Well, the way they have been able to do that, James, and everybody listening, is through organization. They have an agenda. They make a united front. When I was a university student at LSU [Louisiana State University] on campus, the very leftist, liberal anti-Vietnam war movement was absolutely led by radical Jews." Duke failed to mention another aspect of his LSU years: In 1970, while still a student, he was photographed dressed in neo-Nazi regalia, including a swastika armband, to protest the appearance of left-wing Jewish attorney William Kunstler at nearby Tulane University. That photograph, along with hundreds of others of Duke in his Ku Klux Klan robes, have haunted Duke over the decades and hampered his attempts to win mainstream political office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Radio host James Edwards has been compared to former Klan leader David Duke, who has run for numerous political offices. But unlike Duke, who was photographed as a young man with neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbols, Edwards has avoided the most compromising situations and language.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards idolizes Duke. At the CCC conference, he repeatedly quoted "Dr. Duke" in conversation. But as much as he admires Duke, Edwards has also clearly learned from his mentor's early mistakes. He does not appear at any hate group events where he knows swastikas and other white supremacist symbols will be photographed or filmed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A frequent topic on "Political Cesspool" all of this year has been the gruesome murders of a young white couple in Knoxville who were allegedly carjacked, raped and murdered by four black men. "Hate crime laws were made for one reason and one reason only — to protect these black animals," Edwards said during his May 28 "Cesspool" broadcast. "If these two souls [the victims] had been more aware of the racial realities of our time, perhaps they would still be alive today."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two days before that broadcast, neo-Nazi leader Alex Linder organized a protest against "black crime" in Knoxville. Edwards was nowhere to be seen. When he appeared on CNN May 29, the network rolled footage of the protest showing demonstrators wearing swastika T-shirts and displaying other white supremacist symbols. CNN host Kiran Chetry asked Edwards, "Why has this [murder] case become a rallying cry among the white supremacists?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwards disingenuously dodged the question: "Well, I can't necessarily speak for people that I don't have any association with. But I will promise you this: Had the roles been reversed, and had the victims been black and the murderers white, this would have been the biggest news story in America."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next day on his blog, Edwards posted this message to his fans: "With regards to those who showed up in Knoxville (who were labeled 'Klansmen' and 'Nazis' etc.), conservative activists often get maligned with nefarious descriptions because they dare stand up and speak out. I don't know the hearts and minds of those who attended the Knoxville rally because I wasn't there. However, with regards to their demonstration, they were doing the right thing by bringing attention to the despicable double standard this case has received. God bless them for that."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's not exactly a stretch to "label" a man wearing a swastika T-shirt and shouting "Heil Hitler" a Nazi. Edwards knows that, but he's a master of carefully parsing his language so that he walks the razor's edge between conservative commentary and outright neo-Nazi rhetoric. This balancing act allows him to continue building his core audience of white nationalists without doing irrevocable damage to his mainstream political aspirations As this article went to press, Edwards was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at a Sept. 15 meeting of the Missouri chapter of the League of the South, a racist, neo-secessionist organization based in Alabama. He also had recently announced that he was in negotiations with a Michigan-based media company to start broadcasting "Political Cesspool" nationwide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His stated mission is "[f]ighting to advance a nationalist agenda based upon the Christian world view" and turning back the clock in America to the pre-civil rights era, "back when America had a strong moral compass," as he put it during his May 17 show. "You had cultural and racial integrity in those days. …What's been taken away from us, we can take back."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Edwards works hard to maintain a professional appearance and demeanor. He wears suits, not Klan robes.</b> But he's doing more than anyone else in the white nationalist movement at this point to promote the views of neo-Nazis, Klan sympathizers, Holocaust deniers, academic racists and anti-Semites. Helped along by cable news television and the occasional sympathetic elected official, he's beginning to look a lot like the next David Duke — and he'd almost certainly consider that a compliment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/kkk-dylann-roof-white-nationalism-infuses-our-political-ideology"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/kkk-dylann-roof-white-nationalism-infuses-our-political-ideology</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylann_Roof" style="text-decoration: none;">Dylann Roof</a> pulled a gun at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, his shots rang through history to the roots of the ideology of <a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/how-white-supremacy-tells-its-stories/" style="text-decoration: none;">white supremacy</a>, which justified genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of black people from Africa. We deny this at our own risk.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Roof attacked the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which by the early 1800s was at the center of black resistance to </span><a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/party-betrayed-lincoln/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">slavery</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> in Charleston, according to African-American history scholar </span><a href="http://www.uh.edu/class/history/faculty-and-staff/horne_g/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">Gerald Horne</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Black people, Roof feared, threaten the existence of the white race. Events in the church’s history play a role in Roof’s fear.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Inspired by a slave rebellion that began in 1791 in what is now Haiti, Emanuel parishioner <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_Vesey" style="text-decoration: none;">Denmark Vesey</a> of Charleston began organizing an insurrection against slavery, using the Charleston AME church as a base.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roof might have been unaware of the specific history of “Mother Emmanuel,” but he had immersed himself in a narrative that is deeply rooted in our nation’s history, a narrative that takes into account the history of Charleston’s historic congregation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Roof told a participant in the Bible study, “I have to do it. <a href="http://gawker.com/cousin-of-charleston-pastor-shooter-said-you-rape-our-1712203419" style="text-decoration: none;">You rape our women</a> and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” Horne and other social scientists believe Roof inherited the fear of murderous blacks raping white women from a common historic narrative of white supremacy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Horne says that after the bloody slave revolt, American newspapers were full of stories salaciously describing “marauding blacks with sugar cane machetes hacking the white slave-owners to death.” Regardless of their veracity, these stories informed a historic narrative that was seized upon by the founders and early members of the <a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/a-flag-highjacked-by-modern-segregationists/" style="text-decoration: none;">Ku Klux Klan</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan “was largely halted following federal legislation targeting Klan-perpetrated violence in the early 1870s,” said <em>Klansville, U.S.A.</em> author <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/02/14/171729575/klansville-u-s-a-chronicles-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-kkk" style="text-decoration: none;">David Cunningham</a> in a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/klansville/" style="text-decoration: none;">PBS documentary</a>. In 1905, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dixon,_Jr." style="text-decoration: none;">Thomas Dixon</a>, Jr., wrote <em>The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan</em>, later turned into the silent film <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-worst-thing-about-birth-of-a-nation-is-how-good-it-is" style="text-decoration: none;"><em>The Birth of a Nation</em></a> in 1915. The white supremacist frame of black men pillaging, raping, and murdering was returning to the mainstream.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Dylann Roof looked beyond our native anti-black texts. His website was <a href="http://lastrhodesian.com/" style="text-decoration: none;">The Last Rhodesian</a>. Roof allied himself with the cause of Rhodesia because, according to the racist right, the failed struggle in the 1960s to preserve African white nationalist societies, including South Africa, was a warning about the communist conspiracy to use black people to pave the way for totalitarian tyranny.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This thesis was purveyed by the <a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/conspiracy-theories-the-republicans-last-refuge/" style="text-decoration: none;">John Birch Society</a>, whose historic and current conspiracy theories are today utilized by Glenn Beck. A decade before he was appointed to the Supreme Court,<b> Justice <a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/the-supreme-court-vs-black-voters-in-alabama/" style="text-decoration: none;">Clarence Thomas</a> joined the conspiracy theorists when he became affiliated with the Lincoln Institute, a right-wing think tank that embraced apartheid in South Africa as a bulwark against communism.</b></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the world is wired today, these theories are a click away. <a href="http://jearl.faculty.arizona.edu/" style="text-decoration: none;">Jennifer Earl</a>, the co-author of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Digitally-Enabled-Social-Change-Technology/dp/0262525062" style="text-decoration: none;">Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age</a></em>, is one of several sociologists to have shown that the internet can mobilize people into movement participation. Right-wing groups from the militia to the neo-Nazi movements were early adopters of online technology, even before the internet created a world wide web of unedited communications that brought racist and anti-Semitic (and now anti-Islamic) rhetoric into our homes.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0omaQH9wc-w" style="text-decoration: none;">Roger Griffin</a> studied terrorism for the British government. His <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/terrorists-creed-roger-griffin/?K=9780230241299" style="text-decoration: none;"><em>Terrorist’s Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning</em></a>, describes the phenomenon of “heroic doubling,” which can turn a “normal” individual into someone who carries out acts of fanatical violence as a media-carried clarion call to arms to defend an idealized pure community under threat from a demonized “Other.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Roof was influenced by the<b> <a href="http://conservative-headlines.com/" style="text-decoration: none;">Council of Conservative Citizens</a></b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>. The CofCC</b>’s racist rhetoric provides the most extreme versions of the demonization of blacks and white liberals, while a more muted—sometimes coded—version of white supremacy is routinely broadcast on cable news and AM radio talk shows. The first black president continues to provide a lightning rod for racist rhetoric.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/arthur-goldwag-a-bad-day-for-jason-richwine-is-a-good-day-for-his-white-nationalist-editor/" style="text-decoration: none;">White nationalism</a> infuses our political ideology as a nation—from our major political parties to the armed extreme right. We need to confront the color line that bestows on white people unfair advantages. We need to revoke that grant of privilege by working to correct the injustice that still stains our nation with the spilling of blood. As Dr. King warned us, either we build community or we will face chaos.</font></p><div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_news-politics" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chip Berlet </font></em></p></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div>