Completely wrong about Chronicles magazine

I did this blog.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2019/08/chronicles-magazine-leaves-confederacy.html#.XlqsKiieGiM

I had said that Chronicles magazine, now run by the Charlemagne Institute had left the Confederacy behind.  I was totally wrong. Some links below.

https://charlemagneinstitute.org/

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/

This is the current issue.
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2020/February/45/2/magazine/

The lead cover article is an attack, "Deconstructing the 1619 Project" article series by Brion McClanahan. He does the podcasts for the neo-Confederate Abbeville Institute. At one time he had some official position with them, but that disappeared from the Abbeville Institute website.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/

In his bio at the Chronicles magazine website it doesn't mention his involvement with the Abbeville Institute. https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2020/February/45/2/contributors/detail/2559/

He does their podcast as well as some articles. You  can find them at this link.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/author/brionmclanahan/

These are his articlew at www.lewrockwell.com.  https://www.lewrockwell.com/?s=Brion+

There is a cover article, "The Great Debate: Lincoln's Legacy," by H.A. Scott Trask. He  contributed an article to Southern Patriot, Vol. 7 No. 2, April 2000 of the League of the South. Vol. 6 No. 4 says  he has joined Trinity  Christian College near Chicago, but that is July/August 1999. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this periodical.

These are some of his lectures and articles at the Abbeville Institute. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/?s=trask

More stuff at Lew Rockwell.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/?s=trask

Then there is a cover article, "Remembering Richard Weaver" which was the leading or one of the leading neo-Confederates of the 20th century, by Jay Langdale. You can listen to his lectures on Richard Weaver at the Abbeville Institute. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/author/jay-langdale/


Three out of four cover articles are neo-Confederates in content by neo-Confederates..

The fourth cover article is "Remembering Albert Jay Nock," by Joseph R. Stromberg.  You can listen to his Abbeville Institute at this link. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/?s=stromberg

Chronicles Magazine leaves the Confederacy behind. Charlemagne does publish it, but they haven't left the Confederacy behind.

HAVE NOT LEFT THE CONFEDERACY BEHIND.

My correctiong blog. https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2020/02/completely-wrong-about-chronicles.html#.XlqxuSieGiM

There has been a merger between the Rockford Institute which publishes Chronicles Magazine and the Charlemagne Institute.

Relevant links.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/about/the-rockford-institute/

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/magazine/

https://charlemagneinstitute.org/

It seems that the Rockford Institute has been acquired by the Charlemagne Institute because they wanted to have a print magazine with some established readership.

The Charlemagne Institute purpose is that they are "Defending and Advancing Western Civilization."  Charlemagne was the person who founded a local European empire in the late 8th and early 9th century and for many the founder of modern Europe. Likely this is so. Charlemagne was constantly at war, this was the Early Middle Ages, and so this name selection indicates a military spirit of those who think Westeren Civilization is under attack.

The Charlemagne Institute had this online publication for which they claim a large following in terms of million of page views or something like that. I have no reason to doubt their claims.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/

Backstory

John Howard founded the Rockford Institute in 1976 which undertook to published Chronicles Magazine. He apparantly had the financial resources to fund the effort. He brough Thomas Fleming in the mid-1980s.  Fleming made it into a paleoconservative and neo-Confederate publication. Fleming launched the League of the South in the Chronicles Magazine pages. Howard died in August  2015. Chronicles Magazine circulation had been in servere decline. Fleming retired from Chronicles Magazine in June 2015.  From reading accounts it seems that Howard was very much in decline and I speculate that the board of the Rockford Institute saw a change to dump Fleming.

This is the link to the Fleming Foundation.

https://fleming.foundation/

He hasn't given up on the Confederacy. At this website there are links to the Abbeville Institute and Shotwell Publishing.

The Merger and Chronicles Magazine

This has meant some changes for Chronicles Magazine.

Aaron Wolfe who was going to be one of the key players running the magazine suddenly and unexpectedly died. Chilton Wlliamson reportedly decided to leave the magazine.

Williamson has this web presence.

https://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/

On this page he announces that "Articles will now be posted more frequently." https://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/articles/index.html

So I don't think Williamson is going to retire, he just isn't going to be running Chronicles Magazine. I speculate with Aaron Wolfe gone, Chilton Williamson decided he would be there alone and the magazine was going to go in a new direction and he would be kept on but isolated.

On the masthead is Bill Murchison, a person seen in neo-Confederate publications here and there, and Donald Livingston who headed the league of the South Institute and now heads the Abbeville Institute. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/

The current subscription base has been concerned about the new direction of Chroniclces Magazine so I think Murchison and Livingston will be kept on. However, I think the old Chronicles Magazine, excepting some token articles, is gone. Murchison and Livingston will likely pass on to retirement or just pass on so there isn't any urgent need to have them resign.

I don't think the topic of the Confederacy will be avoided, but it will be only engaged as part of a general rightwing antipathy  to losing a white landscape as opposed to being part of any neo-Confederate agenda. There base, the readers of Intellectual Takeout, (don't worry, no heavy meals here, and we are hip I tell you we are hip.), I don't think are that interested in the Confederacy. I think  the Confederacy will come up as part of a general antipathy to demands for racial justice and as part of fear of losing a white landscape in general, but not as a specific neo-Confederate agenda. Perhaps there might be a token article or two so they hang onto current subscribers while getting their Intellectual Takeout readers to subscribe.

But as the Intellectual Takeout readers becomes the magazine's base of readers, the prior subscribers of the matgazine will not be needed. After all it there are millions of readers of Intellectual Takeout, with a few percent of them subscribing, they will have several times more readers than Chronicles Magazine ever had before.

They can depend on some Chronicles Magazine subscribers continuing out of habit anyways with an occasional bone thrown them.

As a force for the neo-Confederate agenda, that phase of the Chronicles Magazine existence appears to be over.

Some of the things that happened since the 1990s when Chronicles Magazine was in its heyday is that people now know what neo-Confederacy is and can recognize it. Also, I had for years an online index of the issues, title of the article, one sentence summary, and author. I know people were not happy being known to be in the index. Like with the Southern Partisan, a point came where I suspect people did not want to have Chronicles Magazine on their resume and the association with neo-Confederacy. John Shelton Reed dropped out in the mid-1990s.

So I am happy to consider that I contributed some to their demise.

Am I going to track Chronicles Magazine in the future? Probably at some point in the future I expect to stop tracking them.

What Next?

I think it is time to inform the public about the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  They are still a major force to keep Confederate monuments. The SCV appears to be one of the two significant forces for neo-Confederate ideology. The other one is the Abbeville Institute which they work with.

I think I can be effective in ending their influence in a few years.

I will be expanding my efforts to the racialized landscape in general. For example this page on Fair Park.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/fair-park.html

And this page on the Hatton W. Sumner Court Room in Dallas.

http://templeofdemocracy.com/hatton-w-sumners.html

This is my blog for my efforts to deracialize the Dallas landscape.

https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/

Abbeville Institute author at "Breitbart"

As I dig into Breitbart I am making interesting discoveries. I see that Brion McClanahan is the author of seven articles in 2016. No articles before and so far as of 1/29/2017 no articles in 2017.

All seven articles are articles to praise Trump or discredit Trump's opponents or both.

We should watch carefully who Trump nominates to various boards relating to scholarship and arts. For example the National Institute of Humanities. M.E. Bradford may not have been able to get nominated to the National Institute of Humanities, but McClanahan might. Some may say that the Democrats in the Senate would prevent it, good luck with that.

http://www.breitbart.com/author/brion-mcclanahan/

Brion McClanahan is a major figure at www.abbevilleinstitute.org, a neo-Confederate organization.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/topics/brion-mcclanahan/

I see that McClanahan is able to give his neo-Confederate interpretations of history.

In this article, "Donald the Good," McClanahan attacks James G. Blaine, Republican presidential candidate of 1884. McClanahan's leadership role in the Abbeville Institute isn't mentioned.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/25/donald-the-good/


In this article, "Trump Foreign Policy Speech Makes all the Right Enemies," mentions that McClanahan is the author  of "9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America -- and Four Who Tried to Save Her." I just bought the book while writing this blog posting.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/29/trump-foreign-policy-speech-makes-right-enemies/

You can read about the book here. You will notice that it is endorsed by neo-Confederates Lew Rockwell and Clyde Wilson.  The presidents who are listed as messing up America are Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Barack Obama.
https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Who-Screwed-Up-America/dp/1621573753

The ones the thought tried to save here were Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge.

Somewhat inconsistently Brion McClanahan praises Trump as another Andrew Jackson in his article, "Is Donald Trump the Andrew Jackson or Aaron Burr of our Time?".
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/26/is-donald-trump-the-andrew-jackson-or-aaron-burr-of-our-time/


If you look at this website you will see a list of Scholars & Writers for America statement of endorsement for Donald Trump.

I see in it persons who wrote for Texas Republic, Southern Partisan and Chronicles magazine. I should emphasize that most of the writers on this list haven't. But I see a fair number who did, as well as those who wrote for the Abbeville Institute and at least one who I think was involved with the League of the South Institute.

Again, it is likely that they will expect to be appointed to some board or committee and apply their neo-Confederate or fringe ideology to American culture.

I do not have any information at  all whether Trump supports the thinking of any of these individuals or Brion McClanahan. I think that Trump, if he is sincere about his slogan, "Make America Great Again," should not appoint any neo-Confederates to any position or employ them in his administration.

By the way Lino Graglia what was your opinion of whether Texas should have joined the Union?

Thomas Fleming is no longer with Rockford Institute. Founder of the League of the South now runs Fleming Foundation. Institution dedicated to wailing "All is Lost."

Thomas Fleming is no longer with the Rockford Institute. He is now running the Fleming Foundation which seems to consist of himself as he pointed out.

Link to the Fleming Foundation:  https://fleming.foundation/

This is his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/thomas.fleming.5249?fref=ts

It seems he left in March 2015 which he announced on his Facebook page.

He was the editor at Chronicles magazine of the Rockford Institute since 1984.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blogs/thomas-fleming/

The person who founded the Rockford Institute and probably provided a good deal of the money, John Addison Howard, has passed way in August 2015.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2015/October/39/10/magazine/article/10829597/

I don't know if Howard's passing is related to Fleming's exit from the Rockford Institute. It could be that Howard was incapacitated and didn't have influence on the running of the Rockford Institute at the time of Fleming's exit, or it could be that Howard faced with the end of his life decided that he needed to finally act to preserve the Rockford Institute. I doubt I will ever find out.

Howard is most remembered in Rockford, Illinois for his attempt, as president of Rockford College, to make the college  a right wing college with purges of those who he didn't like.

The first change of Fleming's status at the Rockford Institute was that he was no longer its president but he was to remain Editor of Chronicles magazine as announced in the March 2015 issue of Chronicles.  There was some comment about his replacement able to get donors interested in the institute. In the March, April, May and June issues, articles by Fleming were run in his usual place in the magazine. Then he is not there.

As his America changed towards greater democracy and inclusion of minorities of all types and with immigration Fleming saw that his hope for a reactionary restoration was not going to happen. However, I don't think you can get support for a magazine or an institution if your message is that things are hopeless and that your goal is to save some cultural items for the future as if a new dark ages is coming.

Fleming mentally existed in the ancient classical world of the Greeks and Romans, including the Byzantines and has never really left it, if anything he has more and more existed mentally within that world.

Having read 30 years of Fleming's essays, I can tell you they often had a theme, but he would start out in the classical world (Ancient Rome and Greece) and work his way through the medieval world and thorough modern times and then get to his subject which the history he related was supposed to illustrate.

The Fleming Foundation has chosen Boethius to identify with. Boethius lived at the end of the  Western Roman Empire and represents the idea of the Fleming Foundation that they are repeating the work of Boethius for a coming dark ages.

Thomas Fleming is now no longer with the Rockford Institute where he had at least the comradeship of his fellow reactionaries, though he probably has supporters in Rockford, Illinois who will go to his activities of the Fleming Foundation.

I don't have any sympathy with Fleming's plight. He hoped to break up the United States of America, he hoped to reverse all the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement. He was hostile to every movement giving social justice to any minority and women. In the June 1987 Chronicles magazine, page 37, Jane Greer is gleeful that the jury supported a gay basher.

Fleming was quite adamant about reactionaries consider the need for violence at some point.

Instead of achieving these goals he lives in a world with gay marriage and an African American president.

To Fleming it is a dark ages since he doesn't see a future where a reactionary regime with the subordination and persecution of many groups can be accomplished. Where even Tea Party elements think he is fringe. His agenda has no hope.  When he founded the Southern Partisan in 1979, and even when he started being the editor of Chronicles in 1984 there was still the possibility that the election of Reagan might be the start of a long trek to the right in politics with the reversing the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, with the defeat of the gay rights movement and feminism.

The counter-revolution never came. Fleming can see with immigration and the changing attitudes of Americans that his counter-revolution will not happen in his life time and not in any future  visible to the present.

Fleming probably feels his world is coming to end also because he can see the declining interest in classical studies. (studies of the Romans and Greeks). When I was young knowing about the Romans and Greeks was essential to be considered educated and I read a great deal. I even purchased Theodore Mommsen's "Provinces of the Roman Empire," two volumes. Maybe someday I will read it.

In the early and mid-twentieth century the fall of Rome was a topic of popular interest, reasons given usually were related to someones political agenda.

However, in the 1960s Latin was being dropped from the high schools. Interest has declined steadily. Now it is a specialist topic in history like others.

I doubt that there will be much interest in the Fleming Foundation.

And for Fleming, he goes raging, frothing, into the night. 

Shabby book for neo-Confederate Tom Landess, "Life, Literature, Lincoln: A Tom Landess Reader."

I recently ordered "Life, Literature, Lincoln: a Tom Landess Reader," for my research. I thought it would be good to have a book of Tom Landess' writings and some biographical information. Tom Landess wrote a lot for Southern Partisan and was a significant figure in the neo-Confederate movement. The book was edited by Clyde N. Wilson & Mary Beth Landess.

It is a shabby book. That is to say it is physically poorly done. It is poorly edited.

The book is a print-on-demand book, which is allowable. The problem with print-on-demand books is that the print is somewhat glossy so you have to be careful regarding your lighting, that it be diffuse so the print is easily readable.  However, did Chronicles magazine decide they weren't going to risk even a short printing run? Was there no money to do so? It is an inexpensively printed book and I will want to make sure I don't stress the book's binding.

However, the real shoddiness of the book is the contents of the book. There is a series of items written by Tom Landess. However, there is no indication where and when the item was first printed. The essays exist ahistorically in the book, abandoned outside the stream of time. An important element of Tom Landess' intellectual history is missing. You have no idea of his scope or impact, the byways or highways he traveled.

The University of Missouri was reorganized in 2013 and maybe they are no longer publishing books by or about racist crackpots, such as they did regarding M.E. Bradford. So without a university press, books like this book of the writings of Tom Landess is what is in store for other neo-Confederates when they pass away, if they get any book at all.

One thought I had was that the editors were embarrassed by where Landess had been published, but Wilson's foreward mentions as a positive accomplishment that Landess wrote much of Southern Partisan. Perhaps by not having the time and place of publication Wilson thought he would make Landess timeless and not dated. Instead it is lost in time. We just know that the material was likely written after high school graduation and before his death.

Maybe the Southern Agrarian, M.E. Bradford strategy of forming a Southern nationalism drawing on a historical narrative of the Confederacy is drawing to a close and this book is the first manifestation. There still is the Abbeville Institute, it will be interesting to if it is there in 15 years when a lot of its contributors pass away.

I am thinking more and more that in the future neo-Confederacy will be largely confined to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Outside them there largely won't be a neo-Confederate movement.

One thing is that scholars now recognize neo-Confederacy when they see it and neo-Confederacy has a name, and there is less and less toleration for it.  The Southern Studies of people like John Shelton Reed is recognized for what it is. Academic publications and presses just aren't going to be interested anymore.

Thomas Fleming no longer president of the Rockford Institute. Still editor of "Chronicles" but some changes

Thomas Fleming is no longer the president of the Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois. He is still the editor of Chronicles Magazine.  He is important in the neo-Confederate movement for coming up with the idea for the Southern League, now known as the League of the South. http://www.leagueofthesouth.com but is no longer  a member.

He also was a founder of Southern Partisan, but left it after a couple years. Chronicles magazine under his leadership was a forum for neo-Confederates such on John Shelton Reed and others.

With the May 2015 issue of Chronicles magazine I notice that his article is just two pages. In the past it used to go to three pages mostly even though the print was denser.

Maybe it is just a shorter article. Or maybe Chronicles is going to be leaving the Confederate States of America. Though I do see a full page ad for the Abbeville Institute on the inside of the backcover. And there is announced a book "Life, Literature, and Lincoln" of the writings of Tom Landess.

However this could be the residual of Fleming's leadership and in the coming months there a different focus on hating Muslims, gays, minorities, liberals without the distraction of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy. Perhaps even in reactionary circles the "sell by date" for the Confederacy is past.

As the cliche says, "Time will tell."

Fleming's great project, neo-Confederate secession failed, there is just the laughable remnant of the League of the South. He can spend his forthcoming years raging against the future or to be more precise the Renaissance and what came after.

If society has huge troubles he will fell vindicated, even if his beliefs are irrelevant to these possible future problems, he will rationalize that the problems are because society didn't heed his warnings.

If I ever have a traffic accident, I suppose I could have avoided it by using a horse, or by staying home and not going anywhere.

As some reactionaries pass away or out of influence it is wrong to assume that a movement is passing away. Thomas Fleming and others like him continue a stream of thought going back centuries. There are younger people who will take his place. Though they may not be from the same background. I think the cohort of reactionary professors who still don't accept the civil rights movement are passing away.

In the larger scheme of things there will always be this movement for a hierarchical society will always continue and there will be a never ending struggle as long as humanity lives. Some times will be better, and lets hope the future brings a more equitable society and progress, but there will still be a struggle. There will always be a reservoir of reaction in society.

John Shelton Reed's seeming conspiracy against Martin Luther King

In 1995 I was indexing issues of Chronicles magazine, a publication of the Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois. The Rockford Institute had a campaign to discredit Martin Luther King. Up until about the mid-1990s John Shelton Reed contributed articles to Chronicles magazine where his homophobia was rather upfront and his racial attitudes were very very thinly veiled.

It turns out that sections of King's dissertations are copied from other works. At the time of the discovery in 1990 King was dead and so was the dissertation advisor.

What is interesting is that John Shelton Reed played a very key role in helping the Rockford Institute attack Martin Luther King. The articles in Chronicles also attacked Boston University and administrators there. So I wrote Peter Woods to find out more.

The following is an extract from the letter to me from Peter Wood, Provost of Boston University, July 19, 1995, which I have permission to use which shows the role of John Shelton Reed who is referred to as Dr. Reed.  Reed is an academic with a Ph.D.

Although you cannot rebut the substance of the allegations, there is probably something worth saying about the tactics and motives of Mr. Fleming, Dr. Reed, and their collaborators. When Dr. Reed wrote to Boston University President John Silber in May 1990 alleging that Dr. King committed plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation, he cited no source, offered no evidence, and made no specific claims. From Dr. Reed's letter, it was impossible to tell in in [if] Dr. King was being accused of plagiarizing two words, two paragraphs, or the whole dissertation, and he offered no clue as to whom Dr. King had allegedly plagiarized. 

 John Shelton Reed's essay in Chronicles some months latter repeated this technique of broadside allegation, so vague as to be uncheckable, but presented in a manner that suggested that it was a well-established fact. In retrospect, it appears that neither Dr. Reed nor Mr. Fleming had any real evidence, but Dr. Reed knew from his service at a National Endowment for the Humanities reviewer (where he apparently saw a confidential report from Dr. Carson about King's plagiarism) that there was something to hunt for. The trick was to avoid violating NEH confidentiality by dropping hints and hoping Boston University would make the discovery on its own. 

Perhaps there was more to it than that, but that is my best guess as to why Chronicles developed the story in such an odd manner before the article in The Wall Street Journal on November 9, 1990, in which clear and specific allegations and evidence were for the first time presented to the public. So much for tactics.

King is not honored because he was a great academic, but for his courage and vision in leading the civil rights movement. However, the neo-Confederates hoped to discredit King with this information. John Shelton Reed was working with them to do this.

It also shows the impact when neo-Confederates are placed in cultural institutions and bodies.