League of the South

From Freepedia

The League of the South is a nationalist and secessionist organization headquartered in the Southern United States with chapters and members in a majority of states nationwide. It advocates for the South and Southern heritage in the realms of political and social discourse and over time the League hopes to achieve greater autonomy for the South either within a revived constitutional federalism in the United States or as an independent nation. Secession is openly discussed as leverage in order to secure many of the same rights Quebec has won through its own secession movement in the federation of Canada.

Politically, the League of the South defies normal definitions of Left and Right, being further right than Edmund Burke and further left than Karl Marx. Despite this paradox, it may be best characterized as Southern traditionalist, advocating both for greater political and cultural autonomy for the South against the dual onslaught of centralized government and global capitalism. The League proposes to build a new society on a foundation of government centered in communities, accountable to the people, and with an economy of self-sufficient farms and small businesses.

The League began in the 1980s as the Southern League, an organization designed to promote Southern rights, much in the manner of the Lombard League or Northern League of Italy. The name was changed when legal questions arose concerning another, older Southern League, a minor league baseball organization. The League began as an association of eighty university professors and its League Institute conducts annual weeklong summer schools at resorts on various Southern topics. The institute also holds periodical Hedge Schools, inspired by the Irish independence movement of the nineteenth century.

The League promotes Southern heritage through political and intellectual means. It interprets the South as a separate and unique culture within the United States and appeals to the South's heritage of traditional values and conservative Christianity. Its membership is composed of varying types of Southern nationalists, including educators, academics, political figures, and individual citizens. It rues that the Confederate flag has been used for "ignoble purposes," yet calls the association of Confederate symbols with racism "politically correct fascism" that is "inevitably motivated either by historical ignorance or by pure, unadulterated malice towards the South, its symbols, its heritage and its people." [1] The group is critical of Abraham Lincoln, political centralization, Affirmative Action, the extensive "imperialistic" Government of the United States, and left-liberals, and it strongly supports states rights, self-governance and individual rights such as expressed in the Second Amendment.

Criticisms stem from statements by League members that attack Abraham Lincoln as a racist and a war criminal and that slavery was not the principal motivation for the U.S. Civil War. While not expressing a desire to return to slavery, most League members feel that slavery is a thing of the past, and should not be used as a means for the collective damnation of the people of the South; only a small minority of persons both in the North and in the South ever owned slaves, and none own them today. All the same, some romanticism is felt for antebellum society as depicted in Gone with the Wind, which they feel is closer to the facts of history than Uncle Tom's Cabin was -- H.B. Stowe never set foot in the South or a plantation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which initiates civil rights suits, has added the League of the South to its list of watched 'hate' groups, which include Libertarian, Christian, and paleo-conservative organizations. League members rebut charges of racism by noting that the organization has several black members such as activist H.K. Edgerton and J.J. Johnson, the founding editor of the Sierra Times.

Interest in the League has been spurred somewhat by the publication within the last decade of books such as The South Was Right!, Was Jefferson Davis Right?, Defending My Heritage, Southern Invincibility, Southern by the Grace of God, Southern Heritage Survival Manual, and other thematically related works. The League has demonstrated a considerable talent for self-promotion, and gets considerable news coverage in several Southern markets. It does not make its membership figures available to outsiders; however it is estimated that the organization has more than 10,000 members as of 2005, with eighty-nine local chapters spanning dozens of states.