The American Freedom Party made recent news rounds by funding robocalls in Iowa urging Republican primary voters to support Donald Trump. The calls, many of which were voiced by American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, mentioned that the U.S. should be inviting in “white people” rather than Syrian refugees. The party, which was formed as a political extension of the Golden State Skinheads, has shifted slightly as we head into the actual primary elections. Now they are running their own candidate for office on a third-party bid. This is not new for them as they ran former filmmaker Merlin Miller back in 2012, when they were going by the American Third Position Party. Miller, who did not even know what “Third Position” actually meant, regularly embarrassed himself in interviews, having a difficult time keeping up with basic political questions. He eventually went on international media outlets and declared that Israel was responsible for 9/11, which made the A3P even less relevant than it already was.
Now the AFP is attempting to provide a nationalist alternative to the two main parties by running Bob Whitaker, someone who is relatively well known for those who have been involved in far-right American politics over the decades. Whitaker’s primary campaign tagline, similar to Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” is “Diversity is a Code Word for White Genocide.” Though this is not the most catchy line for a bumper sticker, the AFP seems to want to get those who will be upset with Trump’s eventual loss to Ted Cruz and want to double down on their anti-immigrant racism.
Whitaker has had a career that has defined what it means to “Walk the Line” between Beltway conservative politics and the racist far-right. These edges have been known for years by the institutions he has worked with, so it is not exactly a “well kept secret” to those who knew him. At the University of Virginia he was denied his PhD in Economics after his work came in with questionable themes. He went on to work at the National Review with what was later called an effort to turn former Barry Goldwater supporters into Ronald Reagan Republicans. He was an early Reagan appointee, though only dealt with minor things like staffing clearances. He eventually went off the deep end, descending into the world of paranoid racial conspiracy theories.
His tagline may seem a little strange, except for the fact it is what he is known for best today. Called “the Mantra,” the tagline is a shorter version of his prose passage about diversity that is often repeated at length by fellow white nationalists, similar to David Lane’s “14 Words.”
The Mantra reads:
ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY!Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.(SIC)
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
Whitaker has not actually worked in politics since 1985, but since he is one of the few people in their camp with some political experience he stands out as an option for running for office. His Platform is even simpler than most the AFP has put forward, though reflects their nativism and focus on immigration as key issues. Anything beyond this seems to be ignored, and they often fill in the gaps with protectionist foreign policy and paleolibertarian economic ideas.
“At my inauguration, I will take the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.”
The Preamble to the Constitution is the only statement of the purpose of the United States:
To “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
Having so sworn, I will, as Commander in Chief begin the orderly process of withdrawing all American forces from foreign soil.
The only purpose of the American armed forces is to protect American soil.
The Constitution instituted America as an independent nation. An independent nation does not enforce its notions, be they equality or anything else, on other independent nations.
To declare itself a “nation of immigrants” a country must demand sovereignty over every potential immigrant on earth.
We are a people with many political points of view. A government which uses force to collect taxes and then gives that money to groups or persons to promote their own political agenda are committing a criminal act.
It is the duty of the Executive Branch to prosecute such people.
And to receive the people’s funds.
Congress has become the means of doing what the people do not want done.
Technology has given us the means of going directly to the people and asking them what actions will fulfill the Preamble.
In his “Goals” section the only thing that is listed is “exposing white genocide,” which is introduced earlier by comparing the AFP to the “Prohibition Party” and himself to “Herbert Hoover.” On their own track record, the AFP/Whitaker campaign lists its main success as creating “viral memes,” maintaining the trend from people like The Right Stuff of using internet trolling as their only political outlet. This does beg the question as to why the AFP is even running a candidate since they do not have any explicit political program to propose and instead seem content to running a very primitive propaganda campaign. They state that they are taking advantage of campaign laws that give them special allowances, even though they are likely to only be on the ballot in a handful of states at the most.
Federal campaign laws give us certain advantages in spreading our message. Media outlets are required to air our messages complete and unaltered, and they must give political candidates the lowest possible rates.
The Merlin Miller campaign had almost no reach, and was an almost complete tactical waste of time and money for the AFP. Bob Whitaker seems even less able to speak to contemporary political issues, and his ability to write an internet meme seems to be mistaken for the ability to actually edge American racism into an organized form of nationalism. Their website certainly celebrates every piece of media that Bob does get, including a short interview on CNN in June of 2015 and a couple billboards in Alabama and Arkansas that says the Mantra(but does not mention Whitaker and were not actually a part of the campaign.). Most of the mentions were simply using the “Diversity is a codeword for White Genocide” or “Diversity=White Genocide” line in banner holds or written in public places with sidewalk chalk, which shows exactly the level of propaganda that the AFP is operating with.
The AFP has had little reach even within the white nationalist community. In earlier years, something like Willis Carto’s Populist Party could get hundreds of thousands involved in both their white racialism and economic right populism. The Council of Conservative Citizens, the League of the South, and various KKK and other regional rural racialist organizations may have rallied behind something like the AFP in previous generations. Today, however, the racist right wants less and less connection to any of these propped up political parties. Institutions like The National Policy Institute, as well as anti-system politics like National Anarchism and racist Heathenry, want to completely de-legitimize the American system of government as well as to reject many traditional American values. The AFP has to play on the relationship between extreme patriotism and ultra-nationalism, which means making their own white nationalism an extension of a conservative “Americanist” analysis. To do this you have to reinforce traditional American mythologies about “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the Constitution.” Without this it lacks any cross-over, yet with it you lose the hip core of the Alt Right.
There will likely be many who will back Whitaker, such as the old core of the CofCC who is disaffected after the Dylan Roof fiasco basically demolished their organization. Places that have relied heavily on the Mantra, like the podcast Horus The Avenger, will likely use his candidacy as a talking point for months. Stormfront, and their podcast hosted by founder Don Black, will likely present him as a thoughtful and responsible candidate, but that also lends to their lack of an intellectual core. It would be surprising then to see him survive more than a few months of this, but there are still donors who will keep the AFP afloat as they run straw candidates such as this. If you are in the south or the midwest you may start to see some signs and bumper stickers, perhaps even a billboard. Gun shows, right-wing events, Christian evangelical meet-ups, and militia meetings will all be prime areas for AFP engagement, so these can be areas that anti-racists can begin to counter organize, but it will be likely that Whitaker support will not become a mass mobilizing factor outside of trying to radicalize the edges of rural conservatism. What is surprising is that they are not attempting to brand the party to pick up more on the militia supporters who have risen in ranks recently with the Bundy siege in Oregon. It may also be a reminder that this brand of American nationalism is being pushed back to the recesses of the internet as Donald Trump slowly fades from view, but that does not mean the reactionary violence that fueled his meteoric rise has gone away for good.
People may have noticed an aggressive shift in Republican Party politics with the inclusion of Donald Trump, and we aren’t talking about the Sarah Palin endorsement. Iowa voters recently got a series of “robocalls” telling them to vote trump. The calls featured the voice of Jared Taylor of the white nationalist organization, American Renaissance.
“I’m Jared Taylor with American Renaissance,” Taylor says. “I urge you to vote for Donald Trump because he is the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America. We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”
It also uses the Christian pedigree of Reverend Ronald Tan, the controversial Christian radio host.
‘My name is Reverend Ronald Tan, host of the Christian radio talk show program For God and Country. First Corinthians states: God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise and God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong. For the Iowa caucuses, please support Donald Trump. He is courageous and he speaks his mind. God Bless.’
The Super PAC that has been going after swing-state voters with a call for “white unity” is funded by the American Freedom Party founder, William Johnson. Johnson founded the AFP originally as the American Third Position party, referencing the “anti-communist, anti-capitalist” trend of fascism that rose in popularity in the 1980s. His brand of white nationalism was less in line with these esoteric anti-capitalist fascist traditions and more American and “constitutionalist,” so they changed the name to gain broader appeal. The Board of Directors of the AFP is a cast of the usual suspects of the far right. Included are famed anti-Semite Kevin McDonald, anti-immigrant radical Virginia Abernathy, white nationalist radio-host James Edwards, and pseudo-academic nationalist Tomislav Sunic(strangely an immigrant himself). They ran a presidential candidate in 2012 with Merlin Miller, a former filmmaker who became just beside himself with non-whites in Hollywood and the influence of “Jewish Cultural Marxism.” The party itself was actually founded through the Golden State Skinheads, Southern California skinhead gangs, who wanted to take their politics in a more “legitimate” direction.
William Johnson himself was not new to white racialist politics. When using the pseudonym James O. Pace he wrote a book that advocated what became known as the “Pace Amendment.” This would repeal the 14th and 15th amendments and institutionalize deportations for all non-whites, except Native Americans and Hawaiians who would be allowed regulated reservations. Johnson then used his own name to found the League of Pace Amendment Advocates to advocate for this man James O. Pace and his ideas. He ran for public office in 1989, 2006, and 2008 on a white nationalist platform, scarcely even being mentioned in the results. This poor showing inspired him to form what would become the AFP in 2010 as its only chairman. His ideas have been part and parcel of the Americanist wing of the white nationalist movement, allied largely with the militia movement and general racial politics. The only difference is his general support for Israel, which is certainly not shared by most in his party.
Donald Trump was pressed to denounce the robocalls from Media Matters, which he finally did with great reluctance.
BURNETT: Mr. Trump, when you hear that, does that shock you? Do you denounce that?
TRUMP: Nothing in this country shocks me. I would disavow it, but nothing in this country shocks me. People are angry. They’re angry at what’s going on. They’re angry at the border. They’re angry at the crime. They’re angry at people coming in and shooting Kate in the back in California and San Francisco. They’re angry when Jamiel Shaw shot in the face by an illegal immigrant. They’re angry when the woman, the veteran, 65 years old is raped, sodomized, and killed by an illegal immigrant. And, they’re very angry about it, and — by the way, thousands of other cases like that. They’re very angry about it. So, I would disavow that, but I will tell you people are extremely angry.
BURNETT: People are extremely angry, but to be clear, when he says, “We need smart, well-educated white people to assimilate to our culture, vote Trump,” you’re saying you disavow that. You do denounce that?
TRUMP: Well, you just heard me. I said it. How many times do you want me to say it?
BURNETT: A third would be good.
TRUMP: I said I disavow.
This no doubt upset Johnson to a degree, but is not going to stop the support. He went on the Political Cesspool, the racialist radio program hosted by the AFP board member James Edwards, to discuss the issue.
JOHNSON: Donald Trump’s response when he was asked to address it was just a wonderful response. He disavowed us, but he explained why there is so much anger in America that I couldn’t have asked for a better approach from him.
EDWARDS: I was going to ask you about that. So, you know, of course I saw that. In a perfect world he would say, “You know what? These guys are right. What are you going to do about it?” But understandably there is still a political reality. I think fundamentally, as I say on this show time and time again, most middle American, middle class whites agree with us fundamentally on the issues. But he’s operating in a different world than that — I think it was certainly better than to be expected. And I thought too it was quite good, as you did Bill, so this was something that you can live with in terms of a response from the Trump campaign and of course from there it’s over. You know, the news cycle is over, if he’s asked about it again he’s already gone on record, he is the Teflon Don. He’s the Teflon candidate. This wasn’t of course made to hurt him, I don’t know how much it hurt or helped him. Ultimately I don’t think it did much of either — it might have marginally helped him. It certainly didn’t hurt him. And so his response is something that you greet with a level of respect, am I right?
JOHNSON: Oh yeah I do, I like it very much. And also the response that I got — I put my own cell phone number out there. And I got, oh, a hundred calls regarding it. Most of the calls were hang-ups. They wanted to know if it was a real phone number. So they’d either hang up or say, “Oh I’m sorry, wrong number.” But there were a majority of calls who were opposed to it but there were a minority of calls who approved of it, and liked it. So that was encouraging also. And that is a new phenomenon. Before we would have gotten no one who would be willing to come out and say that so these little things incrementally help raise awareness of the issues and help change public opinion.
The same response basically came from Jared Taylor as well, who went on to answer what he thought of the Trump “denouncement.”
Yes, he was, you know, for days everybody was calling him up, calling up his campaign saying, “What do you think of these horrible people? Denounce them, denounce them.” And he didn’t. You know, he just maintained a dignified silence as he’s capable of doing. And then finally when CNN’s Erin Burnett really forced him to say, “Well, I would disavow it.” But she asked him, “are you shocked by this? Will you denounce this?” “I’m not shocked by anything in America.” I thought that was a great line. He’s so quick on his feet. And then he goes to say, “I would disavow it” but then he goes on to explain why people are so angry. In effect, he’s saying, “Yeah, yeah, if you want me to denounce it I will, but I understand exactly what these guys are saying, they’re furious, and they’re right to be furious.” So if he disavowed us, he did it, I thought, in the nicest possible way.
The way that Trump handled this was similar to the response he had to the David Duke endorsement, where he basically took it in stride.
Johnson’s new Super PAC will be running the robocalls in Iowa until the beginning of February, which have already cost around $9,000. Jared Taylor, who is lending his white nationalist “celebrity” to the calls, will be hosting his American Renaissance conference in Tennessee on May 20-22. Anti-fascist organizers are planning counter demonstrations to confront what will likely be one of the largest racist events of the year.
Council of Conservative Citizens tabling next to the American Freedom Party, a neo-fascist “third positionist” political party advocating white nationalism.
The recently deceased Gordon Baum founded the Council of Conservative Citizens in the 1980s to try and resurrect the goals and principles of the White Citizens Councils. Baum was a former staff organizer with the original Citizens Councils of America attempting to stop integration in the Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement. After his failure he decided to begin working towards attacking social integration by creating an organization that focused on racial issues while remaining tied to the political mainstream.
What stands out as unique about the CofCC is that it maintains continuity to the past. For most groups on the political radical edge, both on the right and the left, it is difficult to maintain the original group structure for decades. Instead, groups that are successful in some historical period become a brand name that has power rather than being able to continue its original structure. A great example of this is the various generations of the Ku Klux Klan. Veterans of the Confederate Army founded the first Klan in Tennessee in 1865. The goal of this was to essentially create a paramilitary force that could overthrow the Republican, Reconstructionist state and re-establish Chattel White Supremacy. It declined and then restarted in 1915, then hitting incredible size by the 1920s. This is generally the KKK that people think of that forced waves of massive lynching of people of color all through the south, but also maintaining political power by getting Governors and Senators elected around the country. At its peak it had 4-5 million members, which was, at that time, about 15% of the eligible population. The third wave of the class started during the Civil Rights movement and were much more subcultural and fragmented, engaging in acts of violence throughout the south. Today the third wave somewhat maintains while dozens of different groups continue to say that they are the true tradition of the Klan, and it has had minimal success mainstreaming with figures like Don Black and David Duke. Each generation of the Klan has no organizational connection to the previous generation. The only connection is essentially the brand, even organizational structures and organizing goals change. The sheets stay the same.
The CofCC on the other hand actually does maintain continuity, to some degree, to the White Citizens Councils. Baum created the CofCC off of the original mailing list, so it was able to re-engage the members of the original councils that maintained their racist anger about the ongoing integration process.
It is from this formation in 1988 that the next complication begins to surface: its connection to mainstream conservatism. Organizations that deal with white nationalism do, in general, rebuke the political system of the U.S. because of its ongoing attempt towards progress, however piecemeal and “in name only.” It is hard for open white nationalist organizations to maintain any connections to mainstream politicians at this point because of the political liability that they maintain. The White Citizens Councils themselves were made up of segregationist conservatives that were a part of the mainstream political conversation of their time, and so when transferred to the CofCC there is still much of the political coherence. This was especially true in the Deep South where being associated with the White Citizens Councils is actually a political benefit even today. Their Statement of Principles included that this is a Christian country, that the United States are for European people, that the U.S. is a sovereign nation, that traditional family is central, and that they support racial integrity.
For years the CofCC participated in the Conservative Political Action Conference, a mainstream political conference that hosts all major Republican candidates of the period. They maintained a table with a large Confederate Battle flag. The late Sam Francis, one of the few paleoconservative white nationalists that somehow maintained a connection to mainstream conservative media outlets, edited their newsletter, the Citizen Informer. Their website and newsletter focuses on political issues that can tie directly to race, like racially components in crime, education, welfare, affirmative action, “forced bussing,” and others.
A lot has been made recently of their connections to mainstream Republicans, from hosting them at their conference to the $65,000 that their founder contributed to contemporary Republican candidates. This main seem like a certain amount of excessive attention, but the connection here is much more elaborate than people might understand. Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was an early supporter of the CofCC and spoke at their conference in 1993. In 1998, Republican Congressman Bob Bar provided the keynote address at the CofCC’s conference, while former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott spoke to them five times. As recent as the period from 2000 to 2005, 38 elected officials attended CofCC events. These are not flukes, but really key elements of the CofCC that draws people into their events and conferences. The founding of the CofCC also included former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox and later Louisiana Congressmen John Rarick. In 2009, Republican Mississippi State Senator Lydia Chassaniol addressed the group with an appropriately titles speech “Cultural Heritage in Mississippi” where she made offensive claims about African Americans. She later confirmed that she is a member.
The CofCC has often been tied to this unofficial network of pseudo-political racialist groups internationally, even sending people to the Front National event in France. The members even presented nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen with a Confederate Battle Flag.
So then what kind of demographic makes of the rest of the CofCC? Jared Taylor, a proponent of Race and IQ debates and founder of the white nationalist American Renaissance organization, acts as one of their most prominent spokespeople. James Edwards, host of the racialist Political Cesspool radio program, sits on their Board of Directors. They have members of skinhead gangs like Volksfront, Hammerskin Nation, and Blood and Honour, in their membership, and often hosts discussions about racial inferiority, the innate criminality of black people, neo-Confederate revisionism, and even hosted a “historian” who’s “orthodox Christian” view of slavery is that it was a beautiful relationship between slave and master. Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network even gave a speech recently calling for white revolution towards an “ethno-state.”
So the curiosity of the Council of Conservative Citizens is how they have straddled the line between open white supremacist vanguard and semi-mainstream conservative activism. As mentioned, their board member James Edwards hosts a radio show that regularly brings on white nationalists, holocaust deniers, klansmen, and others from the “pro-white” movement. This show is hosted by the Christian Liberty News Network, which carries it on regular radio stations beyond its Internet presence. Their radio ads feature a number of conspiracy theory, white racialist, and alternative medicine ads, which also includes one for the CofCC. Here, among its various principles, its says “The CofCC supports racial purity, which is a part of God’s law.” How is this allowed on a relatively mainstream Christian radio network? How can politicians continue to claim that they were unaware of the CofCC’s agenda when it is shown so blatantly and publicly?
Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance, speaking at the CofCC conference. Taylor is a public advocate of white nationalism and race and IQ claims.
A large part of this answer is the importance it plays in southern politics even today. As with any institution that represents a vocal minority, politicians will have to pander to be elected. The Council of Conservative Citizens, by many counts, is the largest organization of its type in the country. It is certainly the largest that maintains an aesthetic and structure that blends into similar conservative and Tea Party groups, yet has a very committed membership. This allows for them to be the acceptable wing of the far right for politicians to continue to pander to. At the same time, they continue to represent a Southern Nationalism that is of critical cultural importance to many in the south. Similar to Southern Nationalist organizations like the League of the South they are allowed to have a dual politic by many of the people who look to them for leadership. They provide a revolutionary vision of a white southern state while also providing options for people to engage in contemporary politics. The bottom line is that this open racial rhetoric still plays in parts of the south and Midwest, where as coded racial language often drives whites in the rest of the country.
The CofCC also is allowed to blend into the panorama of American conservative organizations where race baiting, homophobia, and violent nationalism are still acceptable form of rhetoric. On a quick look at the CofCC website it would appear indistinguishable from most Tea Party, Paleoconservative, or Constitutionalist websites. If we are to be honest, many of their ideas are simply more openly articulated versions of many of these “dog whistle” right wing political organizations.
This is not a new type of politic and, because of controversies in recent years; the CofCC is being pushed further to the right as conventional politicians all but shun them. The CofCC is one of many groups that have maintained a bridge between the fringe and the edges of the mainstream. VDare, an anti-immigration website ran by former National Review writer Peter Brimelow, has hosted white nationalists regularly since its founding, but also is a meeting spot for mainstream Republican politicians and anti-immigration activists. The anti-tax movement of the 1980s and 90s was one of the best example of these where the Ron Paul movement was often matched by open neo-Nazis and militiamen, though in the 2000s we began seeing a left-cultural oriented libertarian movement that separated it from its right wing past. In the early 1990s, David Duke represented this crossover point very publicly where a former neo-Nazi and Klan leader, who never rejected his racism and anti-Semitism, almost won by a Senatorial position and Governor of Louisiana. He did with a state legislative seat, which he used to try and push bills to sterilize women receiving welfare. Pat Buchanan also mainstreamed these nationalist ideas in the 1992 Republican primary, though this has more well coded language that the rest. Today, a number of organizations continue to maintain this bridge from a number of locations. Traditionalist Catholics, neo-confederates, paleoconservatives, and other right wing groups have ties that go both ways, that makes them acceptable in both camps.
The far right does fundamentally break from the Republican mainstream in that their value system rejects equality and democracy. Republicans may have a very distorted understanding of this, but many of them will agree in the fundamental equality of peoples on some level. This is not a universalized value by any means, and we see that there are still crossover points that we thought were long closed. The issue here is not that these right wing politicians will crossover to white nationalist organizations, but that their racial ideas will influence contemporary political discourse. Dozens of politicians have been associated with the CofCC, and you can certainly see where their politics of racial fear and separation have been allowed to seep into regional politics.
On the other end, the CofCC has seen a huge influx of press because Dylann Roof, the shooter in Charleston, cited it. In a recent NPR interview, a former FBI Terrorism investigator, who spent the late 1980s and early 1990s going undercover in neo-Nazi groups, mentioned that, while ideologically disgusting, not all of these groups are at risk for violence. He mentioned that it is important to look at the patterns of violence themselves rather than the underlying ideology. There is certainly some truth in this logic in that some people are predisposed to this violent behavior and many people would never engage in this type of violence no matter what ideological foundations they were provided. The problem with this, however, is that the white nationalist ideology and justifications maintain violence as implicit. The CofCC justifies their ideas of racial separation by making pseudoscientific arguments about genetics that make blacks appear as qualitatively inferior to whites. They manipulate news stories to make it appear as though blacks are attacking whites at a genocidal rate, raping white women and attacking children. These ideas create a sense of urgency, as well as separate people of color from the same humanity as fellow white people. This dehumanization fundamentally makes it easier to make them the target of violence, as well as give the sense that violent targeting of people of color as being socially responsible. This is also true in terms of the anti-Semitic attacks where by Jews are seen as essentially demonic cabals controlling and destroying white people. The ideas here are statistically much more likely to lead to acts of violence than almost any other. This is especially true as the SPLC’s recent reports that right wing terrorism has been almost twice as frequent as Muslim terrorism since September 11th, 2001. While the CofCC does not advocate violence, has condemned the attacks, and probably honestly thinks that these acts are counter-productive, the violence is built into their narrative. It feeds into anger and disorientation of many people on the edge, and is built to push them into murderous acts.The CofCC is no doubt in its period of decline, and this recent association with extreme violence will be the final nail in the coffin in terms of their political connections. Gordon Lee Baum died in March of 2015 and his son has proved incompetent in taking the organization forward. Their existence was based on their ability to straddle the fence between open white supremacy and regular politics, but this last push will no longer allow them into the open political sphere. In recent days people like Jared Taylor and James Edwards have begun doing interviews to defend the council, but they continue to go on and on about black crime rates rather than just stand against the murders. The CofCC has slowly become just another meeting place for organized white nationalists, usually with a southern flare, and the kinds of people we are seeing surround the organization now shows that it has finally taken a full plunge into the underground. They, along with the associated League of the South, will likely join in on the coming fight to keep the Confederate Battle Flag up in southern states, but their association with the issue could only help the opposition.
The question really comes to whether or not white nationalists will maintain organizations that can tie themselves to the mainstream. To the right of the CofCC are groups like the American Freedom Party, which was originally the neo-fascist American Third Position Party. The AFP is roundly denounced for its open racial rhetoric, association with Golden State Skinheads, and for essentially being a meeting place of other white nationalist organizations. The CofCC membership that does want to maintain ties may just flood over to constitutionalist and libertarian parties, groups working on border issues like immigration and affirmative action, or they may focus specifically on overturning the recent marriage equality decision. On the other hand, this may be what is needed to push them further into the radical sphere, which could result in even more acts of isolated ‘lone wolf’ violence. What is clear is that a light has been shown on organizations that were previously able to go under the radar through their ability to mimic the mainstream American conservative movement. What will serve people who want to organize against this type of racism best is to really look at the politics of the CofCC and to be aware of it when it pops up with different aesthetics.
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