League Of The South Defends Man Who Inspired Charleston Killer Dylann Roof

Back in February supporters of the League Of The South demonstrated at an anti-gay marriage rally on the steps of the Alabama capitol. Yesterday Michael Hill, president of the League, defended the author of the website for the Council Of Conservative Citizens.  Warren Throckmorton has the statement:

The League of the South supports our friend and compatriot, Kyle Rogers, of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), who is being lambasted by the left-wing media for turning Dylann Roof, the young man arrested for the Charleston church shooting, into a “white nationalist.” From our point of view, all Mr. Rogers has done is diligently catalog the facts about the epidemic of black-on-white violent crime in America. We see this as a service that the mainstream US media refuses to provide to the public, thereby endangering the lives of many innocent people. The fact that young Mr. Roof chose to act on this information is no fault of Mr. Rogers or anyone else who tells the hard truths about race that the leftist media regularly sweeps under the rug. To attempt to blame Mr. Rogers, the CofCC, the Confederate battle flag, Southern culture, or the Easter Bunny for causing this murder is the sort of repulsive ideological persecution one used to find commonplace in the old USSR. It is, in a word, shameful.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Michael Hill participates in JMG thread. The League Of The South celebrates 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Creationist Ken Ham headlines convention held by former League head Michael Peroutka. Right Wing Watch reports that Michael Peroutka bankrolled the return of Roy Moore to the Alabama Supreme Court. The SPLC reports that the membership rolls of the League and the Council of Conservative Citizens "overlap greatly." Tony Perkins speaks at 2001 meeting of the Council Of Conservative Citizens.

Ted Cruz To Return Donations From Leader Of Council Of Conservative Citizens

Via the Guardian:

The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum. Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were “the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world” – were posted online in his name.

After being approached by the Guardian on Sunday, Cruz’s presidential campaign said it would be returning all money the senator had received from Holt. Holt, 62, is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a Missouri-based activist organisation cited by the author of a manifesto-style text that was posted on a website registered in Roof’s name along with photographs of the gunman. The FBI said on Saturday it was investigating the website. The manifesto’s author, who has been widely reported but not verified as Roof, recounted learning about “brutal black on white murders” from the CofCC website.

The CCC has issued a statement which condemns Dylann Roof but also defends his "legitimate grievances."

The C of CC unequivocally condemns Roof’s murderous actions. However, the council stands unshakably behind the facts on its website, and points out the dangers of denying the extent of black-on-white crime. Every year, there are about 500,000 violent , interracial crimes. Of these, about 85 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Every year, there are some 20,000 rapes of white women by blacks, but rapes by white men of black women are so unusual, they scarcely appear in crime statistics.

If these figures were reversed—if there were wide-spread white-on-black rape and violence—it would be constant national news. Instead, the true nature of interracial violence is ignored. This is dangerous. Our society’s silence about these crimes—despite enormous amounts of attention to “racially tinged” acts by whites—only increase the anger of people like Dylann Roof. This double standard *only makes acts of murderous frustration more likely*.

In his manifesto, Roof outlines other grievances felt by many whites. Again, we utterly condemn Roof’s despicable killings, but they do not detract in the slightest from the legitimacy of some of the positions he has expressed. *Ignoring legitimate grievances is dangerous*.

Hit the Guardian link for many of the appalling statements attributed to Earl Holt, some of which were made in the comments sections of Glenn Beck's site The Blaze.