League of the South Billboard in Alabama taken down resulting in national publicity.

The League of the South (LS) put up a bill board in Alabama like their billboard in Florida.

This is a link about the Florida billboard at the LS website.  http://dixienet.org/rights/2014/secede_billboard_in_florida.php

This is a link about the Montgomery, Alabama billboard at the Southern Nationalist Network website.

http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2014/05/16/secede-billboard-goes-up-in-montgomery/

The LS would have gotten some publicity with the billboard  It is a billboard after all and it has a message that you don't see everyday. However, after being up for a while, and some local commentary, it would have disappeared from public awareness.

However, the billboard advertising firm, Lamar Advertising, gave into pressure from its other advertisers and pulled the LS billboard last weekend. I am guessing, but I suppose the local chamber of commerce saw the billboard and imagined that it was bad for business. I don't think it is the type of thing you want a visitor from a company that might locate an operation in your city to see.

Censorship is always a topic of interest to the public and the AP distributed a story on the billboard being taken down. So the removal of the billboard has been in the media all over the nation. The LS is publicized not in ads which people often ignore, but in news stories.

Both the Washington Post and the Washington Times had coverage of the billboard being taken down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ad-company-takes-down-southern-secession-billboard/2014/05/19/604c2ac0-df7b-11e3-9442-54189bf1a809_story.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/19/southern-secede-billboard-dropped-alabama-after-co/

The removal made the Miami Herald's "Weird News" section.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/19/4124729/ad-company-removes-pro-secession.html

Being in the "Weird News" section is actually a fairly good thing. People like to read those sections.

As the old saying goes, "You can't buy publicity like that."

Also, it is of interest that local business interests saw the billboard as a threat when most people would find it an amusing thing from a fringe movement. I thought it was interesting that in Florida a billboard actually went up in response to the LS bill board.

The suppression of the billboard in Montgomery was a stupid strategy. People don't like censorship. People generally feel that they can judge ideas on their own. This act of the Lamar Advertising generated national publicity for the LS and negative publicity for itself as a censor. It is surprising that Lamar Advertising didn't learn from the Florida LS billboard that their clients are probably not happy seeing secede billboards. The chamber of commerce in Florida did a counter billboard with the word "Succeed," which gave the LS more publicity.

The Lamar Advertising agency from here on probably won't be allowing a LS billboard anywhere in the future. The League can probably find some other means to get themselves before the public.

The billboard campaign I think is doing more than publicizing the LS and drawing to them potential members. It is making the public aware that there is a neo-Confederate movement. One thing about the billboards is that a person realizes that the LS has significant money to spend. It costs a lot of money to rent a billboard and it costs money to put it up. That a secessionist group has money like this to spend means it is to some extent a significant movement. The image of the South is being changed to that of a region where there is a contemporary secessionist movement.

I think now more people will look at the entire Lost Cause phenomenon such as Confederate Memorial days, Confederate monuments, ceremonies by groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) differently. If a person praises the Confederacy it isn't an unreasonable assumption that that person might to seek to emulate the Confederacy, that is support secession. Possibly reporters will ask the SCV and the UDC what they think about neo-Confederate secessionists. This could have all sorts of ramifications.

This shows that the LS is understanding how to be a viable movement. Instead of endless study events they are becoming active and getting in the news. The study events are not a mistake. A movement needs to define itself and have a world view and create its own core of individuals with that world view, but at some point it is time to get on to the next stage. The LS with the billboard being pulled down will certainly learn, if they haven't learned already, that getting your opposition to react foolishly is the most effective strategy.

So I think that we will see a continually more activist LS. They recently have had protests against gay marriage that has gotten themselves in the news. The LS likely has adopted provocation as its agenda.

Another development is that the Civil War and southern studies are likely in the future to be more and more considered in a context where there is a current secessionist movement and a realization who in these academic fields act as enablers whether these enablers are aware of it or not, such as Kevin Levin. Also, actions by elected officials will be evaluated in context of an ongoing secession movement like sending a presidential wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument.

Kevin Levin, Sons of Confederate Veterans and Beauvoir

Developments concerning Beauvoir in Mississippi where Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy spent his last days, still a racist and pro-slavery, are very gratifying. It is also an opportunity to view and understand the true nature of Kevin Levine.

What happened at Beauvoir is that the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) who own it decided that they wanted to fly the Confederate battle flag over it. No one should be surprised by this. It has been documented that the SCV is run by neo-Confederates with a neo-Confederate agenda. This is an article in Black Commentator about them. The Southern Poverty Law Center has also reported on them.

In the conflict at Beauvoir between the staff, some directors and the SCV there were three resignations and two dismissals.  The Sun Herald had an article on it, 3/15/14, but I see that they pulled the article. I was able to find this article.  http://legalpronews.findlaw.com/article/9b3c51fec1f4f228fcd1784896a3060c#.U3kEj_ldWSo

The website for the Beauvoir property is online at http://www.beauvoir.org/. It is being redesigned and announces that it is under "Un-reconstruction." I can only imagine what it will be like when the SCV is done changing it.

The program for Beauvoir had been this subtle banal white nationalism of making Beauvoir a shrine to Davis and Varina Davis his wife, avoiding the issues of slavery and the Civil War and instead obsessing over things like Varina Davis plan for Beauvoir's garden.

Bertram Hayes-Davis, a direct descendant of Davis, and his wife Carol came down from Dallas to work at Beauvoir. This is good in itself because the fewer of these type of people in Dallas the better. (Sorry Biloxi better there than here.) I am sure Hayes-Davis was looking forward to living out his ancestral fantasies of being a descendant of Davis at Beauvoir.   The Sun Herald article reports:

He oversaw the opening of the library and the completion of Varina's Garden, which recreates the garden of Davis' wife, and with his resemblance to his grandfather and extensive knowledge of the family history, became the spokesman for Beauvoir. 

It is revealing of his attitudes towards race that he would want to be in Beauvoir rather than trying to move on from Jefferson Davis a pro-slavery advocate and white supremacist, though his attitudes do fit right in with that of the old guard of Dallas.

The SCV didn't want to go along with the usual so-called "professional" historical interpretation and not surprisingly wanted to use it to advance their agenda. This conflict has resulted in the resignations of three board members including Bertram Hayes-Davis and dismissal of two staff members.

I don't have any sympathy for any of them. They refused to acknowledge that the SCV wasn't really the sentimental "heritage" organization that it represented itself to be, refused to recognize the SCV for what it was and then were surprised that the SCV turned out to be what it obviously was. The agenda of the resigned and dismissed is actually worse than the SCV agenda. Instead of engaging the issues of Jefferson Davis and his pro-slavery views and actions and his white supremacy, they avoided these issues and instead pursued an agenda of avoiding these issues in the interpretation thus making a Confederate shrine which the public often uncritically accepts. Some call this a professional interpretation.

The article does point out that in Varina's will the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans have the house unless they can't maintain it, then it goes to the state of Mississippi. If the state of Mississippi gets the house I am sure will promptly adopt the typical Confederate shrine interpretation and obsess over "Varina's garden" and avoid many issues about Davis, race, the Civil War, and slavery.

The SCV better keep Beauvoir in tip-top condition, because I am sure there will be people running to the state of Mississippi if they see as much as single paint flake or rusty nail or a leaf not raked up.

Kevin Levin wasn't happy over this turn of events.

http://cwmemory.com/2014/03/16/confederate-flag-flap-at-beauvoir/

Levin's comment about this change is:

Apparently, management is consulting with the Virginia Flaggers on how to respectfully and tastefully display the Confederate flag. I visited Beauvoir once years ago. It is a beautiful site and one that deserves to be preserved and professionally interpreted. It looks like the Mississippi SCV is capable of doing neither.

Levin believes himself to be a member of the elite interpreters of the Civil War and is upset that Beauvoir isn't going to be interpreted by people like him. Note his terms "professionally interpreted" and "respectfully and tastefully." He would be quite happy with Beauvoir continuing to be used as a Confederate shrine by "professional" interpreters as he is with the Museum of the Confederacy being a Confederate shrine.

Levin is also upset with manifestations of the neo-Confederate agenda. He puts neo-Confederate in quotes in his blog posts, as if it is a questionable term. With the SCV agenda at Beauvoir, it becomes harder to ignore the reality of the neo-Confederate movement when it is highly visible. The SCV agenda for Beauvoir will discredit the Confederacy whereas the "professional" interpretation would work to increase identification with the Confederacy.

This increased visibility is good since it will alert the public. It will also serve to discredit the Civil War enthusiasts who want the Civil War to be anything and everything but the issues of race and slavery and would like to enthuse over Varina's garden and count buttons on uniforms. These Civil War enthusiasts will also be seen as enablers as since they surely should have been aware of the neo-Confederate movement and did nothing.

Kevin Levin is representative of a certain faction of Civil War enthusiasts which would like to avoid a lot of the issues about the historical memory of the Civil War. So it is instructive to observe him. As the the issues of historical memory regarding the Civil War move into a future and away from representations that might have been acceptable in the past he is reacting to it and his blog postings are very revealing. I next hope to blog on his coverage of the opposition to neo-Confederacy at Washington and Lee University by African American students.  It is both hilarious and revealing.


The old regime is passing away.

Sons of Confederate Veterans and their hate group policy

The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) like to say that they are against hate groups in particular towards the KKK. This is supposedly proves that they aren't racist.

The White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s were against the KKK also, and the White Citizen's Councils were hysterically racist. This website has the White Citizens' Council newspaper online. http://www.citizenscouncils.com/

The SCV doesn't however have problems with people who are members of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) (www.cofcc.org).  The SCV had CofCC members write articles for its now defunct publication Southern Mercury and I keep coming across CofCC members involved with the SCV.

If the SCV "no tolerance policy towards hate groups" meant anything, the SCV would not allow CofCC members to have any influence or role in the SCV and would seek to have them banned from membership.

There is no indication that this will happen.

Council of Conservative Citizens reporting on race: An Example

The Council of Conservative Citizens has a hysterical article at their website here:

http://topconservativenews.com/2014/05/nova-scotia-bar-owners-convicted-of-racism-for-calling-police-on-unruly-black-patron/

The head line reads, "Nova Scotia bar owners convicted of racism for calling police on unruly black patron." The article tells the reader, "Dino Gilpin, a black immigrant, was asked to leave a Halifax bar because he did not have a valid picture ID. When he refused to leave and made a scene, the bar called police," and "So, in Canada, it is now literally illegal for a business to call the police on a black customer who is causing trouble and refusing to leave." in bold print.

So is that the case? This is the Canadian coverage of the story.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-man-wins-discrimination-case-against-alehouse-1.1344565

From the news story:

"Dino Gilpin — who is black and originally from Sierra Leone — went to the commission after he was refused service at the Halifax Alehouse on Feb. 20, 2010, when they wouldn't accept his Canadian citizenship card as a valid form of photo identification."

Further from the news story:

In a decision dated June 13, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission ruled the decision to refuse to serve Gilpin was based on the bar's rigid ID policy, rather than his race.
But the commission also said the Halifax Alehouse broke the Human Rights Act when staff called the police, ruling that only racial discrimination could explain that action when Gilpin was simply drinking a glass of water.

"I find that the worst that can be said of Mr. Gilpin is that he overstayed, lingering over his water. I find that he was calm and behaved appropriately throughout," wrote J. Walter Thompson, the chair of the Board of Inquiry.

"I find that he did not become loud, rant and rave or cause a huge commotion. I find he showed no signs of intoxication and was not in fact intoxicated."
Thompson went on to say Gilpin was "publicly humiliated."

 An African immigrant stood up for his rights. Good for him.

This should tell the reader how much credibility to accord a Council of Conservative Citizens story.

Wisconsin GOP set to vote on secession resolution, Wisconsin Republicans embarrassed. Update:

At the Daily Beast there is the following article about the upcoming Wisconsin GOP statewide convention in which they are going to vote on a resolution which says that a state has a right to secede.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/wisconsin-s-gop-secession-panic.html

Since the Sixth Congressional Republican Party voted on a resolution saying a state has a right to secede it is coming up for a state wide vote much to the embarrassment of the Wisconsin party and the national republican party. The Republican Party embarrassment is what the article is about.

In earlier blogs I have stated that this secession nonsense would be an embarrassment for the Republican Party. It is going to be difficult for the Republican Party to manage since the Republican Party activists seem to be in a competition with each other to adopt a more ultra position on being hostile to modernity and government.

When a political party passes a resolution like this they can't then go and say they are the patriotic party. If you are patriotic to a nation you don't discuss destroying it.

The patriotism of those who advance these secession resolutions can be questioned as well as media outlets which enable secession activity.

Update:

Further evidence of the embarrassment of Wisconsin Republican elected officials that have to run for re-election and don't want to be the candidates of the crazy party.

http://wuwm.com/post/50-assembly-republicans-call-wi-gop-reject-secession-resolution