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06/22/2015
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s sudden capitulation on the Confederate Battle Flag was entirely predictable given the terminally corrupt South Carolina GOP [South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says Confederate flag has 'no place' on statehouse ground, Fox News, June 22 2015]. But as Conservatism Inc. and the GOP blindly attempt to distance themselves from Southern history, they are digging their own graves. Their joining in the rush to demonize the Council of Conservative Citizens is just another example. There was a reason the late Sam Francis, himself once editor of the Council’s newsletter, described the GOP as “the Stupid Party.”
The Charleston shooter Dylann Roof’s supposed manifesto noted that he Googled “black on white crime,” found the Council of Conservative Citizens website and discovered that there was an enormous amount of black on white crime that the Main Stream Media just suppresses. This is the extent of any known connection between Roof and the organization.
After the shooting, the Council’s blog stated: “the loss of nine lives is devastating” and “we pray, for the sake of all Americans, that there will not be an escalation of racial tension.”
The organization’s president Earl Holt III further noted:
The CofCC does not advocate illegal activities of any kind, and never has. I would gladly compare the honesty and law-abiding nature of our membership against that of any other group.[Media Interviews with the CofCC, Conservative-Headlines.com, June 20, 2015]
In all the condemnations of the Council in the wake of the shooting, I have not seen anyone suggest that Roof was actually a member, or that the organization has advocated violence. And insofar as the Council highlighted black on white crime, it is no different than most other conservative news outlets like Drudge Report, Breitbart, Fox News, and Daily Caller.
In fact, many Leftists quickly blamed these conservative outlets as well.
For example, South Carolina House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford (pictured right) attacked Fox News saying Roof:
…hears that, because he watches the news and he watches things like Fox News, where they talk about things that they call news, but they’re really not. They use that coded language, they use hate speech, they talk about the president as if he’s not the president. They talk about churchgoers as if they’re not really churchgoers. And that’s what this young man acted on. That’s why you can walk into a church and treat people like animals when they’re really human beings. [South Carolina legislator took a cheap-shot at Fox News on Charleston massacre, By Erik Wemple, Washington Post, June 20, 2015]
Similarly, Bill Maher noted "there were a lot of stories about black people" on Drudge and Daily Caller, which "present a really twisted view," so he was "not surprised this guy thought ‘they’re taking over the country." [Bill Maher Says Daily Caller, Matt Drudge, Fox News Inspired Dylann Roof [VIDEO], By Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, June 20, 2015] (In 2011, when Drudge merely linked to headlines about the Flash Mob phenomenon without mentioning race, Salon’s Alex Pareene called it Matt Drudge’s disgusting race war awareness campaign.[June 1, 2011]).
No doubt Conservatism Inc. was relieved when Maher cited the Council of Conservative Citizens rather than a more Establishment site. So they joined on the pile-on. Writing on Breitbart.com, Jordan Schachtel describes Roof’s manifesto as advocating “neo-Nazi” beliefs and claimed that “through the Council of Conservative Citizens, Roof said he ‘found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race.’” [Dylann Roof Manifesto Reveals Racist, Neo-Nazi, Anti-American Beliefs, Breitbart.com, June 20, 2015]
Essentially everything Schachtel writes here is false. The only thing Roof said he learned about from the Council of Conservative Citizen’s website was accurate information about black crime and lies about the Trayvon Martin scam — issues that Breitbart itself has regularly highlighted. Roof said he “researched deeper,” presumably from other sources, before forming opinions on Jews.
In fact, even its critics do not call the CofCC anti-Semitic. It carries nothing that could even conceivably considered anti-Semitic. For that matter, the only mention of Nazism in Roof’s manifesto is where he says “I myself would have rather lived in 1940’s American than Nazi Germany.”
Schachtel then goes on to note how the organization has nothing to do with the Republican Party because it "has been condemned by the Republican National Committee for holding 'racist and nationalist' views." Yet this fails to acknowledge that the reason this occurred was that so many Republican politicians, including Trent Lott, Bob Barr, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee and Roger Wicker had associated with it, and the RNC was trying to shame other politicians from doing the same. (See James Kirkpatrick’s Scalise And GOP Don’t Want To Admit It, But They Needed Duke (= White) Vote. They Still Do).
Although the GOP has tried to completely marginalize the Council, there are still some state level politicians who ignore the party line and work with the group. As recently as 2013, Council board member Roan Garcia-Quintana was on South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s steering committee for reelection.
And this goes to the larger issue: by joining in the attacks on the Council, Conservatism Inc. and the GOP are providing more fodder for the Left. It will now proceed to look for more “links” between the GOP and the Council, and for evidence that Roof may have read more conventional websites.
All the RNC’s efforts have not stopped the MSM from trumpeting even more attenuated ties. Notably, it turns out that Earl Holt has contributed $65,000 to various Republican politicians including Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Rob Portman, Rick Santorum and Jeff Flake.
(Actually, I am surprised that a supposedly far-right leader is giving thousands of dollars to amnesty supporters like Jeff Flake and Rand Paul. I’m reminded of Joe Sobran’s quip after Bob Barr apologized for speaking to the group:
“[I]t has been reported in several newspapers that I once spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is currently being pilloried as a radical racist organization. It’s true I addressed them some years ago. But I should state here, for the record, that I would never have accepted their invitation if I had known then of their associations with Republican leaders.”[Change This Document!, Sobran.com, February 4, 1999])
Anyway, fleeing from the MSM, Romney, Paul, Cruz, and Portman have all announced they are either returning the donations or giving it to black charities.
Even if Holt were as evil as the MSM pretends he is, returning his donations sets a terrible precedent for GOP politicians. They are acknowledging they are responsible for the views of their donors. This invites the MSM to sort through FEC filings and find new scandals. As much as the Republican Party tries to be politically correct, their supporters are not. In the upcoming months, expect to see someone who made intemperate about gay marriage or black crime on Facebook contributing 200 dollars to Ted Cruz as national news.
In contrast, while I have no brief for Ron Paul, he realized the trap of setting a PC litmus test for his financial supporters. When the MSM went after him from accepting donations from people far to the right of Mr. Holt, his campaign responded:
All of our campaign’s energy is dedicated to spreading the message of liberty and limited government, and we do not spend time screening donors or blocking websites…If a small number individuals who hold racist beliefs want to waste their money by giving to Dr. Paul, a man who stands firmly against their small minded ideologies, then the campaign will simply use those funds to protect freedom, peace and civil liberties across our Nation.[Ron Paul Refuses to Divest of Donations from Neo-Nazis, By Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones, November 15, 2007]
Similarly, by demonizing the Council, Breitbart accepts that it’s fair to attack any news source that may have indirectly influenced Roof. But just because Roof did not cite Breitbart or other Conservatism Inc. websites in his manifesto does not mean that once the FBI goes through his browsing history, they won’t find them.
In fact, many of the black-on-white crime stories that the Council’s website links to came from Breitbart, and it praised Andrew Breitbart as a hero. [Conservative hero passes away, March 2012]. If the Council of Conservative Citizens is responsible for Dylan Roof liking the Council’s website, then why isn’t Breitbart responsible for the Council liking Breitbart?
Lenin may never have said “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them,” but the modern reality is much worse.
Today, the GOP and Conservatism Inc. are giving the Cultural Marxists the rope for free.
Alexander Hart is a conservative journalist.
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