Racial Politics at a Virginia Flagger event in Richmond and what the "Richmond Times-Dispatch" didn't tell you.

Recently I visited Richmond, Virginia to carry out activities including counter activities against the neo-Confederates there, in particular the Sons of Confederate Veterans 2015 National Reunion from July 15th to July 19th.

We did a lot of video recording while we were there. We plan to be putting up some videos online on Youtube which will show the thinking of neo-Confederates.

The following video is a speech of Richard T. Hines at the Virginia flagger rally on the afternoon of Saturday July 18th at the Capitol Square in Richmond, Virginia. Richard T. Hines was the former managing editor of the notorious neo-Confederate magazine Southern Partisan for 20 years. He was also a lobbyist for dictators.

An article on who he is is online here: http://www.thenation.com/article/lobbyist-lost-cause/

The link to the following video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLQNSKfQwIE.

Click on the video to make it larger so you can see the entire video.



Watching the timing.

At 3:08 Hines makes brief reference to Gay pride flags to characterize those who are at the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and who wanted to see the flag lowered. He wants to characterize the anti-Confederate flag forces as pro-Gay.

At 3:16 Hines starts talking about what Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says about the Confederate flag.

At 3:26 Hines quotes Ann Coulter to say this about Nikki Haley:

"At least Nikki Haley should have waited for three or four generations before telling Southern Americans what symbols were allowable or not."

Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina and grew up there, but since her parents are immigrants Richard Hines and Ann Coulter don't think she really is Southern or American enough to make decisions about the place where she lives and despite the fact that she was elected by the residents of South Carolina to be the governor.

At 3:43 the politics of race comes up and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are denounce as shysters and Nikki Haley is denounced for merely being on the stage with them.  The fact that Nikki Haley is a potential Vice-Presidential candidate with Jeb Bush is bemoaned.

The crowd of flaggers is cheering Hines' speech.

So we have homophobia, the politics of race, an attach on Nikki Haley and Jeb Bush a leading presidential candidate, a clearly expressed Xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments, and an attack on Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Did any of this get into the Richmond Times-Dispatch coverage of the event. Not at all, not even hinted at.

This was the coverage of the rally. http://www.richmond.com/news/local/article_0624e257-8be0-5d14-8f59-86e9476b1e3f.html

Even though the opening speech was by a former editor of the Southern Partisan, the reporter puts the word "neo-Confederacy" in quotes:

"We’re here to see what motivates the Virginia Flaggers, what makes them tick,” said Sebesta, who has written studies of the “neo-Confederacy” movement.

Otherwise the entire report was the uncritical repeating of the assertions of the Virginia flaggers.

I was in communication with the reporters at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and sent them considerable documentation about the Sons of Confederate Veterans none of it made it into their paper.

Generally the Richmond media is sympathetic to the Confederacy. We hope to have more videos online from the visit as time goes on.