More GOP S&M

Call me old fashioned, but I thought camp was supposed to be fun:

A San Antonio pastor and an employee of his Christian boot camp were arrested today on aggravated assault charges, accusing them of dragging a girl behind a van after failing to keep up with others during a running exercise.

Investigators with the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office arrested Charles E. Flowers shortly before noon at the Faith Outreach Center in northwest San Antonio, said Brad E. Bailey, a spokesman for the Schertz Police Department.

The department assisted Nueces County authorities in the arrests because some of the camp’s training exercises occur in Schertz.

S&M, OSU Style

A shirt on sale at Operation Straight Up’s website, courtesy of Jonathan Hutson, the man who exposed the Left Behind videogame.

Hutson writes:

And given the Pentagon’s policy of discrimination against gays in the military, it is ironic that the Christian missionary group that they promote sells T-shirts that display what can only be described as homoerotic art. In short, the Pentagon seems to have adopted a new missionary position for the Operation Straight Up Tour and its “Tough-Men Meetings.” Basically, the OSU Tour is promoting a holy war against the alleged enemies of Christ — not unlike, say, a jihad. But there’s a difference: jihad does not come with a homoerotic T-shirt.

Learn more about college Republican values here.

Common Sense 101

From: “Miles L Fisher” Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by mindspring.com. Learn more
To: maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com
Subject: U R A Traitor Jew
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 16:35:22 -0400

Max Blumenthal,

You are a moron. The Christian Right is the only people in the world supporting the Jews living in Israel . You and the rest of the idiotic leftist blind Jews have the wrong enemy. Why don’t you focus on the real enemy, (THE ISLAMIC JIHADISTS)? You can’t be this stupid can you, or are you another self-hating Jew. Remember, the Islamic Jihadists who want to slit your Jewish throat are the enemy, not Christians like John Hagee who wants to love you.

Billy Bob, the 7th grade drop-out from the rural south understands who the enemy is, why don’t you? Perhaps I should send Billy Bob over to you and teach you, his class is called Common Sense 101.

Miles Fisher

My Q&A With The Forward

Last week I was interviewed by Daniel Treiman of America’s oldest Yiddish-language daily, the Forward. The interview is now up:

How did you wind up starting to make these political videos? What was the impetus behind it?

I’ve been covering the conservative movement, the religious right, the anti-immigration movement for well over four years, and I wanted to show people what it was like doing the work that I do, because so many people had sort of expressed fascination with the idea of just hanging out with people they consider to be intolerable, I guess. These are sort of progressive fans and friends. And so I just wanted to show them what it was like and how interesting and intellectually stimulating it can be, and also how funny it can be to hang around these kinds of conferences.

You said you find covering this beat to be intellectually stimulating, but in the videos people come across, oftentimes, as laughable or ridiculous. Do you find hanging out with the conservatives to be something you enjoy, or do you find it intolerable? Do you find that they make points that make you think?

I suppose when I initially delved into covering the right, it was because I found it so fascinating. I realized that there were so many unacknowledged components of this movement that I could explain to people and try to investigate for myself. It propelled me to go further into the movement. And on my videos I think that there are some subjects who are unintentionally self-satirical and hilarious, and stupid also, brain-dead even. But there are also people who are part of something that fascinates me. For instance, the people on the Christians United for Israel video explaining their eschatology — that’s really interesting, a whole movement that supports Israel because of end-times theology. Also, I find the spectacles that the right produces to be really fascinating. As far as how I feel about it personally, covering this movement and being among people who I deeply disagree with, I guess it doesn’t have that much of a lasting effect on me. I have a pretty short emotional memory.

Have you gotten more response from your videos than you have from your articles on the same topic?

I wrote in 2005 a piece on the College Republican National Convention, and I asked participants the same question. While the reaction was immense, it wasn’t the same. I think for so many people, reading is just such a rigorous mental exercise; they just can’t handle it. They respond much more to my videos. That’s partly why I produced it, to break out of the liberal intellectual bubble that I’ve been working in and that audience that I’ve been writing for. And I think I’ve really broken through. Also, young people have responded more to my videos because they’re like the YouTube generation. And I think it’s difficult to capture the aesthetic of these rallies and conservative conferences in print, and my videos, I think, have captured it perfectly, especially in the case of Christians United for Israel. I’m not comparing this organization or its agenda to fascism, but I think if you read Susan Sontag’s essay on the “fascist aesthetic,” there clearly is a fascist aesthetic to their Night to Honor Israel, which I portrayed in this video.

So I take it from this video that you don’t think that American Jews should ally themselves with these Christian Zionists?

Whatever you think about Israel, whether you’re a Zionist or not, whether you’re a Likudnik or you support Labor or even a more left-wing party, you have to recognize that Israel’s survival depends on a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. And this organization opposes and lobbies against any sort of negotiation with the Palestinians or Israel’s Arab neighbors, and that’s extraordinarily dangerous to Israel’s short-term security and long-term survival. If you look deeper in a moral sense, it’s absolutely immoral for Jews to align themselves with this organization and cynical, because of their theology, which his openly antisemitic and culminates in a battle between what one participant in the conference described as a war between the Christians and the anti-Christians — the anti-Christians encompass Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, anyone who isn’t a born-again Christian, including mainline Christians and Palestinian Christians who’ve lived in Nazareth and Bethlehem since the days of the Apostles. So absolutely, I think it’s cynical and dangerous for Jews to align themselves with this organization and with Christian Zionists. And those who have reflect a level of desperation that I think is really troubling.

In part, this is because American Jews feel spurned by some groups that they had seen — particularly liberal Jews had seen — as their natural allies. For instance, the more liberal mainline churches are seen as unfairly placing the onus on Israel for its conflict with the Palestinians. The Presbyterians had moved forward on a divestment measure, an effort that we’ve seen echoes of in other mainline denominations. And many Jews view the intellectual left or the activist left — including The Nation magazine — as hostile to Israel. So people say, “Well, Jews and Israel should take their friends where they can get them, irrespective of what these friends think is going to happen in the afterlife.” How would you respond to people who say that, who feel because they perceive those on the left as being unfriendly to Israel, they can’t really turn away these people who are coming to them as allies, and as supporters of Israel?

“Being friendly to Israel” is sort of a loaded phrase. It’s a very subjective phrase. And I don’t know how you would define that, “Being friendly to Israel.” But if anyone thinks “being friendly to Israel” means encouraging Israel to take more land, encouraging Israel to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank, encouraging Israel to ramp up hostilities with its neighbors, then I think those people need to look in the mirror and assess the consequences of their priorities, because these sort of initiatives have very dangerous consequences for Israel’s long-term survival. If they want to be in a permanent state of war, I think Christians United for Israel, those are great allies for Israel, and Christian Zionists in general.

What’s your Jewish background like? Are you involved at all in communal activities or communal activism?

I’m not in the army of God, I’m more in the secret service, which means I go to shul on the High Holy Days, or when I feel like it, sometimes on a Friday, I’ll go. I haven’t gone in quite awhile, because I just haven’t been connected to any element of the Jewish community because I’ve been so transient as a reporter living in so many different cities. But recently I took Hebrew lessons with a Lubavitcher rabbi. I’ve traveled to Israel. I went to Hebrew school, so I have sort of a traditional Reform Jewish background. My faith right now is pretty much dormant — not in the army of God.

Was this video a way of weighing in on an issue that you feel is of import to you specifically as a Jew, the Christians United for Israel video?

It’s a very personal issue. The Christian right and Israel are both issues that are really personal to me. No. 1 because I think the Christian right wants to relegate American Jews to second-class status by removing the Establishment Clause, eroding the First Amendment and smashing the wall of separation. They’ve openly intimidated and attacked Jews who’ve tried to combat their efforts. For instance, Mikey Weinstein, who heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me he gets dozens of death threats every week for what he’s trying to do — to protect, for instance, his son, a Jewish cadet in the Air Force Academy, from Evangelical proselytization. And the fact that they’ve allied themselves with Israel is just extremely dangerous, because I care about what happens with Israel, and I care deeply about the Palestinians. And I think our history as Jews now, because of Zionism, is inextricably linked with that of the Palestinians. I really want to see a settlement. So this organization and this movement of Christian Zionism personally troubles me a lot, and I think it should trouble not only Jews, but anyone who wants to see some sort of a peaceful resolution to what’s happening across the Middle East.

Are the videos going to be your new focus? Are you still going to be doing journalism? Or, given the great response the videos have received, do you think you’re going to be moving more in that direction in the future?

I’m actually going to be writing a book that’s either going to appear during or after the election about the culture and political psychology of the right, and that’s where I’m going to be putting my energy this year. And if there’s any room to do videos, I’m going to continue to do them. But I have nothing planned, and I think because people recognize me so much, I might have to wear, like, a John Edwards wig and a Geraldo mustache to get into the next conference.

You grew up in the thick of things politically. How has that affected your outlook?

I grew up in Washington and saw things from the inside. It’s had a profound effect on me. No. 1, I don’t have any reverence for powerful people or influential people. I just see them as my equal. I can even see through the veneer they put up. At the same time, there was a period in my life when I wanted to divorce myself from politics and from Washington. But when Bush was elected, a lot of the things that my father had written and that he had told me about the conservative movement started to ring true, and I started to understand why he had pursued this career and also who the forces were that tried to destroy him. During the Clinton scandals, I just saw it as a dirty business that I wanted no part of. I just wanted to stay away from the personal destruction of it. But when these forces that tried to destroy Clinton came into power, it was really illuminating for me. That’s partly what propelled me into journalism. But not all of what propelled me into it. I just love reporting. I love the craft and the process of it. So that’s the main reason why I do this

Kill or Convert, Brought to You By The Pentagon

My latest, about the Pentagon’s endorsement of an evangelical End Times entertainment troupe, is up at the The Nation. I would post it here but I’m having formatting problems. I’ll post it as soon as I figure out what the problem is.

Another Video, Sort Of

I just got back from Chicago and still don’t have a free second to write about YearlyKos. For now, I’ve posted a video chat I did with my man Andrew Golus of Talking Points Memo outside the Time Magazine Swampland party last Friday. In it, I give a preview of my forthcoming book and explain why I started making what some people are calling video blogs (I suppose they are too crude to be called short documentaries).

I’m working with Mikey Weinstein of the Military Freedom Foundation on what should be a pretty important story so I don’t know if I’ll get to post on YearlyKos tomorrow, but I eventually will. I also hope to post some video of Iggy and the Stooges at Lollapalooza if I can find my damn camera.

Update

I just got in to Chicago for Yearlykos. I’ve been away from the blog for a while so there is a lot to cover. Hopefully this weekend I will get to catch up on blogging and do some reporting on YK. I will also get everyone’s comments up shortly. For now, check out my post below on the dust-up between TNR and the Weekly Standard — and the Standard’s dubious sourcing.

The Weekly Standard’s Reliable Sources: Male Prostitute Matt Sanchez and Web Weirdo “Throbert McGee”

The war in Iraq has sparked a parallel war between two of Washington’s most prominent partisan political publications, the Weekly Standard and the New Republic. The war has been akin to the ongoing seige of Baghdad’s Green Zone, with the Standard playing the role of Iraqi insurgents, lobbing mortars over the Green Zone gates while TNR scurries to shore up its defenses.

The war began on July 13, when The New Republic published a “Baghdad Diary” by “Scott Thomas,” an Army private writing under a pseudonym about US atrocities in Iraq. Thomas described his participation in the mockery of a female soldier disfigured by an IED, claimed he witnessed troops intentionally running over dogs in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and alleged that another soldier played with the skulls of dead Iraqi children.

In attempt to challenge the wild notion that atrocities could occur amidst a violent occupation, the neoconservative Weekly Standard’s Matthew Goldfarb published an article declaring that TNR’s Baghdad Diary was “looking more like fiction.” Goldfarb’s piece relied on a series of letters supposedly sent to him by active-duty soldiers that raised questions about the veracity of TNR’s story.

As a result of intensifying attacks from the Standard and right-wing blogs — attacks amplified by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz — Thomas was forced to reveal his identity: Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp. According to Foer, the Army punished Beauchamp by revoking his cellphone and email privileges. Right-wing bloggers subsequently seized on TRN editor-in-chief Franklin Foer’s disclosure that Beauchamp is engaged to TNR reporter and researcher Elspeth Reeve.

Beauchamp has placed his career in extreme jeopardy and subjected his private life to the scrutiny of right-wing trolls, all to confirm his published account of US atrocities in Iraq. TNR for its part has just completed a review of Beauchamp’s diary and found only one minor error. Now it is up to Goldfarb and his allies to back up their incendiary charges. Who are the Standard’s sources? Are they reliable? And if they are, why did the Standard omit key details about their backgrounds?

Among all the active duty soldiers used by Goldfarb to undermine Beauchamp, only one is cited by name: Matt Sanchez, a corporal in the Marine reserves. “Frankly, I don’t believe ANY of this story,” Sanchez proclaimed in the Standard about Beauchamp’s diary. Who is Sanchez? According to Goldfarb, he is simply a soldier “who stands behind his work.”

But Sanchez is more than a mere man in uniform. As I reported for Media Matters today, Sanchez is also a conservative pro-war activist whose bio includes a stint as the gay porn actor Rod Majors, (star of such filmic classics as “Beat Off Frenzy”) and an illustrious part-time job as a male prostitute — facts he has acknowledged “leaving … off my curriculum vitae.”

More importantly, Sanchez has been under investigation by the Marine Corps for fraud. According to an April 1 Marine Corps Times article, Sanchez was informed in a March 22 email from Reserve Col. Charles Jones, a staff judge advocate, that he was under investigation for lying “‘to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council [UWVC] and U-Haul Corporation’ about deploying to Iraq at the commandant’s request.” The email added: “‘Specifically, you wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq’ by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul.”

There is no excuse for Goldfarb’s omission of these facts about Sanchez. They were easily accessible through a simple Google search of Sanchez’s name, and have been the talk of the blogosphere for some time. I wrote extensively about Sanchez for the Huffington Post in March and appeared on a segment of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” to discuss his strange double life. Sanchez has also been profiled by Radar and by numerous bloggers. He even penned a long auto-apologia for Salon.com about his path from porn to the conservative movement. Couldn’t Goldfarb find a better on-the-record source? Apparently not.

The efforts of Sanchez and right-wing bloggers to take Beauchamp down were allegedly supported by a TNR staffer with a bizarre background. I just received a letter from a source close to TNR. The source wrote:

One reason Beauchamp had to go public was that conservative bloggers were tracking him down. And the reason they were was that a temp who was working as assistant for our publisher was leaking like crazy to right-wing websites. Not that he knew much, but he was hanging around, he went to a going away party for Ryan [Lizza] at frank’s [Frank Foer] house, eavesdropping and then posting on right-wing websites.

That’s how they found out about Scott being married to Ellie [Elspeth Reeve].

Anyway, the guy’s name is Robert McGee. His online pseudonym: Throbert McGee. Not real hard to track down (especially when he’s posting that he works at TNR.)

After a little Googling, I found that “Throbert McGee” (seen here embracing his “longtime sidekick Juan”) once kept a “blinkin’ blog” where he posted about “Faggot fixer-upper wallpaper” and linked to the overtly racist right-wing blog, “Little Green Footballs.” On the forum of another conservative blog, Throbert commented favorably about Matt Sanchez’s “11″ Monster Cock.” Throbert also used this forum as his platform to attack Beauchamp and leak information to conservative bloggers about Beauchamp’s private life.

I hear there are darker postings by Throbert lurking in the blogosphere, but I will leave it to his right-wing mouthpieces to explain those. And I will wait (hopefully not in vain) for the Weekly Standard’s Goldfarb to come clean about Sanchez and the rest of the unnamed “active duty soldiers and various experts” he used as sources.

An Update

I’ll be on CNN Sunday Live tonight at 7 PM ET discussing my “Generation Chickenhawk” video. It will be a short taped segment possibly include some member of the College Republicans criticizing me. I am also told part of my video will be featured this week during The Daily Show’s Moment of Zen, so look out for that. The Minnesota Monitor has a good write-up on the eschatological contradictions that occured during Christians United for Israel’s Washington-Israel Summit.

The Youtube version of “Rapture Ready” is up. Spread it around like poison ivy:

Comments Shut Down

I’ve been informed by the Huffington Post that comments were indeed shut down on my post: “Posts involving Israel inevitably invite a rash of anti-Semitic comments…” Although I approve every comment here, including anti-Semitic ones by commenters like Lizard, I understand the Huffpost’s rationale. If they approved Jew-bashing comments, they would be accused by right-wingers from Bill O’Reilly to Powerline of anti-Semitism. However unfair that is, it’s the way it is. The most disheartening thing is that my video contains extensive footage of extremist evangelicals proclaiming their wish for the “cleansing of the Earth” of all its unbelievers — an anti-Semitic position if I ever heard one. I suppose hateful people attract each other.

I have been told by several visitors to this blog that the Huffington Post has shut down comments on my latest video. I am investigating that and will report back here tonight.

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour

My latest video is up at Huffington Post. Here’s a brief summary:

On July 16, I attended Christians United for Israel’s annual Washington-Israel Summit. Founded by San Antonio-based megachurch pastor John Hagee, CUFI has added the grassroots muscle of the Christian right to the already potent Israel lobby. Hagee and his minions have forged close ties with the Bush White House and members of Congress from Sen. Joseph Lieberman to Sen. John McCain. In its call for a unilateral military attack on Iran and the expansion of Israeli territory, CUFI has found unwavering encouragement from traditional pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and elements of the Israeli government.

But CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation. Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee’s flock as “even greater than the multitude Moses led out of Egypt.”

Throughout CUFI’s Israel Summit, videographer Thomas Shomaker and I were hounded by PR agents seeking to prevent us from interviewing attendees about the End Times. The conference, we were told, was about “one message” - evangelical Christians supporting Israel. We were instructed to only interview CUFI leaders capable of sticking to the talking point that their support for Israel has, as Hagee declared, “nothing to do with the End Times.” But I was forbidden from asking Hagee about statements he made in his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” that appeared to blame Jews for their own persecution. After doing just that during a press conference, I was removed from the conference by off-duty DC cops summoned by members of Hagee’s family.

I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself

What’s Next

The past two weeks have been unusually busy. I am trying to get everyone’s comments up as fast as possible and to respond to all your emails. I especially appreciate the flood of messages from active duty servicemembers who are appalled by the chickenhawks depicted in my latest video. The response to “Generation Chickenhawk” has been overwhelming so please accept my apology for not blogging.

(I haven’t even had time to respond to the perpetually petulant Joe Carter’s screed about my report on all the Christian right hacks lining up to join Fred Thompson’s campaign. For now I will simply say that I hope Thompson declares. He is a fresh breath of halitosis. And I hope Carter gets the contract he is transparently seeking and becomes Thompson’s blogger. That might resolve the conflict of interest he currently faces as the 501 c-3 Family Research Council’s lead blogger.)

I have been in the studio (actually a bedroom in Queens) for the past four days with my right-hand man Thomas Shomaker, editing our next video. It is a tour of the Christians United for Israel’s annual Washington Israel Summit. This one will certainly be more controversial and possibly more shocking than “Generation Chickenhawk.” If you thought Tom DeLay’s attempt to link abortion to illegal immigration at the College Republican National Convention was unsane, wait until you see my interview with him at CUFI’s summit. For now I can only report that he has some interesting views on the Rapture. Joe Lieberman plays a supporting role.

I am hoping to release this video on Wednesday at the Huffington Post, so stay tuned. If the scheduled release date changes, I will update here.

Generation Chickenhawk: The Unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour, Now On Youtube

Just posted it on Youtube. It’s yours:

Generation Chickenhawk: The Unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour

(The Huffingtonpost has had technical issues all day. I will have a Youtube link available shortly.)

On July 13, 2007, I visited Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq were freshly interred. Afterwards, I headed across the street to the Sheraton National Hotel, owned by right-wing Korean cult leader Sun Myung-Moon, to meet some of the war’s most fervent supporters at the College Republican National Convention.

In conversations with at least twenty College Republicans about the war in Iraq, I listened as they lip-synched discredited cant about “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Many of the young GOP cadres I met described the so-called “war on terror” as nothing less than the cause of their time.

Yet when I asked these College Repulicans why they were not participating in this historical cause, they immediately went into contortions. Asthma. Bad knees from playing catcher in high school. “Medical reasons.” “It’s not for me.” These were some of the excuses College Republicans offered for why they could not fight them “over there.” Like the current Republican leaders who skipped out on Vietnam, the GOP’s next generation would rather cheerlead from the sidelines for the war in Iraq while other, less privileged young men and women fight and die.

Along with videographer Thomas Shomaker, I captured a vivid portrait of the hypocritical mentality of the next generation of Republican leaders. See for yourself.

I’m Back, Sort Of

Sorry everybody for falling off the face of the earth for a week. I’ve been working on some new video projects and I think you will be grateful I put all my energy into them once you see them. Hopefully my video on the College Republican National Convention will be up within 48 hours. I also dropped a print piece on the Nation’s website on Monday about the Christian right’s swift-boating of Mitt Romney in the service of Fred Thompson. Here is an excerpt:

With onetime Republican presidential frontrunner Senator John McCain in meltdown, Mitt Romney suddenly finds himself under fire from some of the Christian right’s most influential activists. Romney’s evangelical critics claim the former Massachusetts governor and devout Mormon was complicit in the Marriott hotel chain’s sale of pay-per-view porn on its in-room television sets when he served on the corporation’s board of directors from 1992 to 2001. Two Christian-right operatives involved in orchestrating the charges have enlisted as Internet organizers for former Senator Fred Thompson, who is preparing to enter the race formally. The tactics of these religious-right players, targeted below the radar against Romney, are calculated to alter decisively the outcome of the Republican primary contest.

[…]

The hostility of segments of the Christian right to Romney coincides with its mounting interest in Fred Thompson. Less than two weeks before Focus on the Family launched its attack on Romney, the Family Research Council began an informal campaign to rally support for Thompson. Without fanfare, the Family Research Council’s director of web communications, Joe Carter, and the group’s web editor, Jared Bridges, founded Blogs for Fred, a website that alternately shields Thompson from criticism and promotes him as the Great Right Hope. When Carter and Bridges are not plumping for Thompson, they blog on the website of the Family Research Council, advancing the causes of faith, family and freedom for the purportedly nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization.

More on Giuliani’s neo-Confederate SC Campaign Chairman

Last week, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign was hit with a flurry of bad press over the GOP presidential aspirant’s alliance with South Carolina’s Ravenel family. Arthur Ravenel Jr., the family patriarch, is a former Republican US Representative and current regional chairman of Giuliani’s campaign in the early voting primary state. Ravenel’s son, former SC state treasurer, Thomas, was forced to resign from his post as Giuliani’s state chairman last month after being indicted for cocaine trafficking.

Yet instead of pushing white powder like his son allegedly has, Arthur Ravenel has trafficked in white power. During a speech at a 2000 rally for the display of the Confederate flag on public property, Ravenel called the NAACP, “The National Association of Retarded People,” and has made several other racially charged remarks throughout his career.

After I wrote about the Ravenels on Campaign Matters and on my blog, I received a note from my friend Ed Sebesta, a leading researcher of the neo-Confederate movement and author of the essential (and perhaps only) anti-Neo-Confederate blog. Sebesta told me he opened his files on Arthur Ravenel and discovered that the old Palmetto state pol has embedded himself with neo-Confederate radicals even more deeply than anyone has reported.

The extent of Ravenel’s radicalism was exemplified by a startling proclamation of “support for secessionists” he delivered on the House floor on June 25, 1991.

This is the Congressional Record entry of Ravenel’s speech (scroll down to the Giuliani section of Sebesta’s presidential candidates page for more):

SUPPORT FOR SECESSIONISTS (House of Representatives - June 25, 1991)

[Page: H4950]

(Mr. RAVENEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. RAVENEL. Mr. Speaker, I know that those who win the wars write the histories. However, I must take exception to a remark made by Mr. Solarz last week wherein he said, Abraham Lincoln made the point that once the Southern States joined the Union, they were part of it permanently.

The fact was and still is that no constitutional prohibition of secession exists. Faced with this dilemma, Mr. Lincoln provoked the infant Confederacy into foolishly attacking Fort Sumter. He then declared the departing States to be in rebellion and called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress it. North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Virginia refused the call and joined their southern sisters. I join those who applaud todays secessions in the Soviet Union and around the world. But where were they in 1861? We’re content, but we still stand when the bands play Dixie!

[Page: H4951]
[TIME: 1230]

According to Sebesta, Ravenel’s ode to secession was reprinted Vol. 11, 2nd Quarter 1991 issue of Southern Partisan, page 10. The Southern Partisan is the flagship publication of the neo-Confederates. Its editors have habitually cast antebellum slavery as a benign institution that benefited both the master and slave. As I reported for the Nation, the Partisan’s former managing editor, shadowy international lobbyist Richard T. Hines, once penned a paean in the magazine to Preston Brooks, the secessionist South Carolina congressman who caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor in 1854 for his speeches against slavery. In the year before Bush’s election, Southern Partisan advertised the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with a Confederate flag shaped like a Republican Party elephant beside the phrase “Lincoln’s Worst Nightmare!”

On October 9, 1993, Ravenel headlined an event in South Carolina sponsored by the now-defunct Confederate Heritage Preservation Society and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), according to the CofCC’s Citizens Informer (Vol. 24 No. 3 1993, page 5).

With 15,000 dues-paying members, the CoCC is America’s largest white nationalist organization. It represents the reincarnation of the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the CofCC is a hate group that “has racism at its core.” If you don’t believe the SPLC, just take a cursory glance at the CofCC’s statement of principles, which includes this gem:

We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.

By appointing Ravenel to his campaign, Giuliani has recognized the influence neo-Confederates have in the South Carolina GOP. As I reported in my profile of Richard T. Hines, the same radical elements that doomed John McCain’s presidential campaign in South Carolina’s 2000 primary election have taken over America’s largest Southern preservation group, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and are implementing plans to transform it into a far-right wing lobbying outfit.

But Giuliani’s alliance with neo-Confederates like Ravenel is not surprising, nor is it necessarily novel. Those who lived under his regime in New York City are familiar with his penchant for exploiting racial divisions for political gain. Now that Giuliani has introduced his Southern strategy in the GOP primaries, he is truly the Copperhead Candidate.

Rudy’s White Powder/White Power Problem

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Rudy Giuliani’s campaign in South Carolina. Last week, his SC campaign chair, former state treasurer Thomas Ravenel, was forced to resign after being indicted for cocaine distribution (check out a copy of the the indictment here). Soon after, Giuliani’s camp installed Ravenal’s father, ex-state Senator Arthur Ravenel, as its SC campaign co-chair. Who is this Ravenel?

I immediately recognized Papa Ravenel from my Nation profile of neo-Confederate weapons industry lobbyist Richard T. Hines. Ravenel was a speaker at a rally Hines and white supremacists from the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Sons of Confederate Veterans planned in Columbia, South Carolina in 2000 to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. During his speech, Ravenel referred to the NAACP as, “The National Association of Retarded People.”

According to the Politicker’s Jason Horowitz, Ravenel’s remarks fit into an established pattern:

On October 18, 2006 The Post and Courier of Charleston, SC wrote ” Arthur Ravenel Jr., who is running for an East Cooper seat on the board, caught flack 16 years ago when he was in Congress and made a comment about white committee chairmen who operated on ‘black time,’ which he said meant fashionably late.”

So what will Giuliani do about his latest Ravenel problem? Perhaps it’s not a problem at all. In April, Rudy began honing his southern strategy, declaring his belief during an appearance in Alabama that displays of the Confederate flag on public property are “a local issue.” That was music to the ears of the neo-Confederates who hold sway over South Carolina’s GOP. With one of them on his payroll, they have even more reason to rejoice over Rudy.