Five Before Chaos

(crossposted on Green Mountain Daily)

and that would be… Glenn Beck. Yeah, that Glenn Beck, he of the hysterics, teabagging, hatemongering, and America’s most high-profile purveyor of right-wing bullshit conspiracy theories. And of course, you know the other guy, Thomas “Obviously a Good Confederate” Naylor, of the punchline known as Second Vermont Republic, the Vermont secessionist group that GMD brought to your attention two years ago of having lots of friends in the Neo-Confederate movement.

So, anyways, fact-checking (oh, who am I kidding, reality) has never been one of Beck’s strong suits, so of course he has Naylor on his show for an interview. Given that Naylor’s completely lost the support of the left in Vermont due to his love of the Stars n’ Bars and all it stands for, he must figure, what the hell, why not shoot for the paranoid right? Beck heaps tons of praise on him, of course, and unquestionably accepts Naylor’s ridiculous claim that a whopping 60,000 registered Vermont voters support secession (yet SVR, oddly enough, has about 1,000 supporters), and I’ve yet to meet anyone who takes Naylor seriously at this point. Well, I can think of one person… I’ll get to him in a minute.

You can read the very cordial interview between Beck and Naylor here. Naylor starts off by thanking Beck for “stirring the pot” (would that be those rabidly succesful tea parties, perhaps?) , and then imparts such wisdom as:

The movement rolls on, in spite of the fact that Vermont is probably the most left-wing state in the country and voted very strongly for Barack Obama. This poses a challenge for us. But people are beginning to see that, really, there’s not much difference between his policies and those of George W. Bush…. People were more angry at George W. Bush, but now, under Obama with the economic meltdown, there’s genuine fear.

Yes, Unreconstrcted Confederates such as Naylor have a lot to fear from Obama, at least in their warped world view. As for this “movement rolling on”, well, Dr. Naylor, that train left the station two years ago.

Beck, like Naylor’s organization, also has the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the exemplary hate-watch group which released a report last year on SVR, with this beautiful quote from Naylor himself that really shows the essence of what the man is all about:

In the face of these criticisms, Naylor remains defiant. “I don’t give a shit what you write,” he told the Report. “If someone tells me that I shouldn’t associate with the League of the South, it guarantees that I will associate with the League of the South.”

Beck is on record as saying how the far-right, racist John Birchers are “starting to make more and more sense to him.”

Tommy Reb doesn’t have too many friends left in these parts, but he can always count on Rob “Is he a racist? I dont know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level,” Williams of Vermont Commons, whose integrity lies flapping in the wind like a noose from a magnolia tree, posts the Beck video with with this brief, insightful commentary:

And Mr. Beck seems surprisingly lucid and thoughtful this evening

Indeed. These people never seem to learn, PhD’s notwithstanding.

It’s BAAA-CK… Two years after the fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center has finally written up its article about the deal with the secession group Second Vermont Republic’s cuddly relationship with neo-Confederate racist groups, which effectively killed most of the support that group had from the Vermont left. The major players are all there, the batshit-insane SVR head Thomas Naylor, “I-don’t-know-if-they’re-racist-and-I-don’t-care” Rob Williams of VT Commons, and Middlebury’s Kirkpatrick Sale. It’s a pretty detailed piece. I didn’t know that VT’s own right-wing free-market hack extraordianaire John McLaughry has even lost his googly eyes for them.

The money quote from Naylor, whom I really can’t help but picture either in a long, silver robe with a pointy 3-foot pyramid hat, or perhaps a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers when he said this:

In the face of these criticisms, Naylor remains defiant. “I don’t give a shit what you write,” he told the Report. “If someone tells me that I shouldn’t associate with the League of the South, it guarantees that I will associate with the League of the South.”

That really says it all, doesn’t it? If you’re a glutton for punishment and want to relive the whole thing, there’s plenty on FBC about it if you poke around, or for the real goods, VT Secession.

Not to beat a dead horse (and I really can’t think of more of a dead horse than the current VT secession movement), but the SPLC is reporting that hate-radio DJ James Edwards “Political Cesspool” radio show is going off of the air:

Since co-founding “The Political Cesspool” in 2005, Edwards has become a golden boy in white nationalist circles and his show has served as the primary radio nexus of hate in America. Its sponsors included the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a leading Holocaust denial organization. And its guest roster for 2007 reads like a “Who’s Who” of the radical racist right, including such people as the leader of the CCC, Gordon Lee Baum; Holocaust denier and IHR chief Mark Weber; neo-Nazi activist April Gaede; and anti-Semitic professor Kevin MacDonald. The show’s most frequent celebrity racist guest is former Klan leader and neo-Nazi ideologue David Duke, who has logged three appearances.

A particularly nasty twat, eh? Second Vermont Republic’s nutbag leader Thomas Naylor made an appearance on Edwards’ show a few months back, where Edwards proudly proclaimed that Naylor was obviously “a good Confederate.”

Good riddance.

Hard to believe it’s been a year since that whole Second Vermont Republic fiasco, in which it was revealed that the tiny VT secessionist group had (and continues to have) some rather unsavory ties to Neo-Confederate groups. It got the wingnut brigade out in full force, but they couldn’t hide the bad PR, especially when they were defending it as though it were nothing to be concerned about. But that hasn’t stopped founder Thomas Naylor and VT Commons editor Rob “I don’t know if they’re racist and frankly, don’t care” Williams from trying. Blogger Thomas Rowley, the man who set the ball in motion that would eventually sink SVR, has a little retrospective up now. And today’s Times Argus also has the latest on the failure of the recent effort for SVR to get a secession initiative going on the ballot at Town Meeting Day in several towns this year (h/t to Jack at GMD). They couldn’t even get enough signatures to get it on one ballot, anywhere. Yet Thomas Naylor will probably insist that support is still growing, the neo-confederates are nothing for us to be concerned about, and whatever other blatherings those crazy voices in his head make him say. It seems to be his stock formula now, regardless of the truth of the matter.Nice job guys.

Anyone surprised by this? Rowley has the goods.