SPLC Invents False Claim of League of the South Hypocrisy

By Hunter Wallace

The SPLC has written a ridiculous article about the League of the South’s position on the Confederate Battle Flag. They have also cited this website and misrepresented my position on the Confederate Battle Flag and Southern heritage issues.

For the past two years now, my position on the Confederate Battle Flag has been that it should only be used at heritage related events. That’s because the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of Southern heritage and should be displayed in that context. Thus, I have opposed the use of the Confederate Battle Flag at immigration rallies and gay marriage protests as inappropriate, but I have supported its use in the case of “heritage violations,” such as the renaming of Confederate Drive at Ole Miss.

The SPLC, of course, knows this because it sent one of its own bloggers to Oxford last summer who walked with us during the March through Oxford, MS while we carried Confederate Battle Flags. When the ceremonial Confederate Battle Flags were removed from Robert E. Lee’s tomb at Washington & Lee University, the League of the South participated in a protest in Lexington, VA.

In fact, I have been involved in four separate actions in recent months related to the Confederate Battle Flag before Dylann Roof’s shooting spree in Charleston:

1.) In April, when a group of juvenile communists burned the Confederate Battle Flag in Tallahassee, FL on the 150th anniversary of Appomattox, I personally organized a protest against them, traveled to Florida, and participated in it myself.

2.) In early May, Council of Conservative Citizens board member Tom Pierce organized a Confederate Flag Rally in Knoxville, TN to protest the desecration of the Confederate Battle Flag at the University of Tennessee.

3.) In late May, I traveled to Selma, AL to participate in the Confederate Memorial Circle Celebration and Rededication to celebrate the restoration of a Nathan Bedford Forrest Bust in Old Live Oak Cemetery.

4.) Also in May, when Myron Penn invaded the Confederate cemetery in Union Springs, AL to remove the ceremonial Confederate Battle Flags that had been placed there for Memorial Day, I traveled to Union Springs multiple times to document what was going on there, and I welcomed the Alabama Flaggers when they arrived in town.

5.) Even before Dylann Roof’s shooting spree, I drew attention on this website to black artist John Sims’ malevolent publicity stunt on Memorial Day to livestream the burning of the Confederate Battle Flag in 13 states.

I have always supported the Confederate Battle Flag. In fact, I was writing about the sharp uptick in attacks on the Confederate Battle Flag before Charleston.

For years now, I’ve gone out of my way to defend Southern and Confederate monuments. When the Tom Watson statue was removed from the Georgia State Capitol in November 2013, I personally organized a demonstration against it in Atlanta. At the time, I explicitly compared the removal of the Tom Watson statue to the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I also presciently told Joeff Davis, a reporter from Creative Loafing who was making a documentary about the Tom Watson statue, that I would be back whenever the leftwing mob came for the other Confederate monuments there, such as the statute of Confederate General John Brown Gordon.

But Atlanta was hardly my first rodeo: in June 2010, I personally drove to Columbia, SC to participate in a Confederate Battle Flag demonstration at the South Carolina Statehouse. The purpose of that rally, which was co-sponsored by the Council of Conservative Citizens, was to defend the Confederate Battle Flag that was taken down this morning as crowds of negroes cheered and shouted “USA, USA, USA!”

By my count, that means I have defended the Confederate Battle Flag and Confederate monuments in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi and Missouri. I’ve also toured Southern heritage sites at Memphis and Appomattox. Naturally, I am outraged by the cultural genocide that is now underway across the South, but I was already deeply involved in opposing it in my own backyard well before Charleston.

Although I haven’t had the chance to write at any length about it, I am hopeful that the meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag is changing again. The SPLC is correct that I have long opposed the debauchery of the Confederate Battle Flag, which has lost a lot of its currency since the 1970s by its overuse in minstrel shows like The Dukes of Hazzard, or for instance in tasteless and tacky swimwear, or by various rock stars, etc. It has also become, so to speak, a harmless subcultural symbol of “Redneck Pride,” and in doing so had lost its broader appeal and much of its former meaning. To be perfectly honest, “Cooter” and the Dukes putting around in the General Lee neutered the symbol and made it conjure forth images of Larry the Cable Guy rather than dashing, chivalrous gentleman warriors in the mold of J.E.B. Stuart, Wade Hampton III, or Robert E. Lee.

Now, I believe that is starting to change. The Confederate Battle Flag is becoming the preeminent symbol of opposition to political correctness, states’ rights, rebellion against the federal government, and the total rejection of Americanism. In the long run, I believe the symbol will benefit from losing much of its mainstream cachet. Unlike the American flag, which is worn by Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, the Confederate Battle Flag will actually stand for something meaningful.

The Confederate Battle Flag is now an outlaw symbol. I don’t think that is a bad thing. It’s a symbol of heritage and rebellion – a symbol that I expect more White Southerners will grasp for the right reasons in the years ahead.

Note: Get your Confederate Battle Flag today at Patriotic-Flags.