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 having a really bad year:

“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. I’m tired of infighting.

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, as it was the first time around. 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 the ones who have opened the question of the legitimacy of political 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.

Quite honestly, 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 really changed their views. I think 2017 will be an even better year.

Note: Remember the time the League of the South protested jihadists in Tennessee? That was before St. Cloud, Chattanooga, Orlando, San Bernardino, etc. We were right about refugee resettlement and terrorism. The Southern public agrees with us on that issue. We need to continue with that course.

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

32 Comments

  1. I have always found your analysis to be 99.9 % en pointe. I agree with everything you’ve written this time. The Leftist Marxist maniacs are unhinged. I take their threats and ACTIONS very seriously. They always say what they intend to do – and they mean to annihilate us. Trump’s ascendancy has emboldened and propelled them – and WE have every right to defend our property, person and very lives.
    You are correct – let them start Civil War. I cannot express the outrage and fury from the Normies I know, over the crude insult offered by members of Congress et all, by refusing to attend the Inauguration. Millions of Normies are seeing, really really SEEING, and mayhem, insanity, and pure EVIL exhibited on the part of the Left.
    Something will trigger open warfare. We must not pull the trigger. This is about bringing the masses of our People to our point of view. Something will trigger open warfare. Wait for it, Herrenvolk – it’s coming.

  2. 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.

    I’m glad to see you supporting this Hunter. Personally, I make it 75% of my primary focus simply because I don’t believe that at the rate the USA is disintegrating, that there is enough time to win hearts and minds. If Pastor Davey Blackburn’s mind can’t be won after what happened to his wife Amanda and their unborn child, then winning minds is a losing strategy (long term) in my humble opinion. I certainly don’t know the answers to swelling our ranks, but I do believe our enemies are going to become more violent, not less in the coming months and years. We should all be prepared to deal with that.

  3. i hope you keep on writing so well & succinctly, & your vision burns brightly for decades to come. thank God for southern nationalism.

  4. No, Southern Nationalism is not part of the alt-right. The only thing it has in common with the alt-right is racism.

    • Agreed. Southern Nationalism predates most f what has grown into the Alt Right by anywhere from 50-170 years. And stands in conflict with a good portion of it. Of course this is speaking of worldviews. Simply used as a catch-all term for “right wing but not mainstream,” I have no problem with folks including SN within the AR. But the only MAJOR philosophical plank the two share is white identity/white supremacy. Or as you put it, racism.

    • I’m a white man living in Ferguson, Missouri. Being called a racist does not mean anything other than you disagree with a politically correct Leftist. I’m numb to the racist accusation.

  5. Does this mean I will see you at the League conference this year? I must admit after that article you wrote I was wondering if you would attend?

  6. Mr. Roof took too much responsibility on himself; in all his readings on the Alt-Rt, and contacts with Alt-Rt individuals, he was not effectively counseled that determining the time to act was above his pay grade. He felt alone and isolated, and our movement is remiss that it let that happen.

    The Alt-Rt has an impressive array of writers and speakers, and an ever deepening bench. Yet, we fail to admit that the Alt-Rt has little infrastructure, and scant interest in providing leadership to the rank and file.

  7. Yes, civil war it is. But it sounds like pieces. I’m not a Southern Nationalist.

    I’m a Midwesterner. I’d love to see us split off from Chicago and St. Louis (city) and the like.

  8. “Southern Nationalism was the original Alt-Right in the 1850s”.

    That’s it in a nutshell. Still is.

    “We have to win on the battlefield of ideas in the hearts and minds of our own people.”

    Our argument is with the Southern people. Nobody else. Arguments with outsiders, is a distraction.

Comments are closed.