That moment of triumph was a little premature


Dylann Roof credited the Council of Conservative Citizens for educating him about the dangers of the Black Race, and Charles Johnson reported that the Council of Conservative Citizens Is Running Scared, and that their websites had all been shut down. I wish. I’m sorry to report that it must have been a temporary glitch, because I can read their horrible racist site just fine.

But I do think it’s good to expose them to the light. The SPLC’s report on the CCC is damning — they are awful people.

Their article deploring Roof’s killing spree is typical; oh, isn’t it sad that he killed people? Let’s hope it doesn’t increase racial tensions (that’s rich, coming from the CCC). Roof was a drug user, and he had black friends, and he only got interested in racial politics recently.

And then you read the comments, and it’s all racist lunatics ranting about black people killing white people, and how it’s so unfair that blacks are so privileged and get so many breaks from the media. It’s totally unreal.

I rather liked this quote from the SPLC.

Unlike the KKK, the CCA groups had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the “uptown Klan.”

Unfortunately, I’m not seeing anything “uptown” about it now. It’s more like Stormfront.

Comments

  1. says

    The fact he had black friends is meaningless. People are good at rationalising their contradictions, and he probably thought those people were the “good ones,” not like the rest.

  2. says

    At least they realize their beliefs are embarrassing. I guess wearing the conical cloth hats helps dissipate the cognitive dissonance, huh?

  3. says

    From the OP:

    And then you read the comments, and it’s all racist lunatics ranting about black people killing white people, and how it’s so unfair that blacks are so privileged and get so many breaks from the media.

    Breaks like NBC’s Chuck Todd hosting a segment about Charleston featuring a group of remorseful murderers who were all black?

    Or perhaps they’re thinking of breaks like the media’s overrepresentation of minorities as crime suspects and white people as crime victims?

    Yeah, we get a lot of breaks?
    ::near-fatal eyeroll::

  4. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    And then you read the comments, and it’s all racist lunatics ranting about black people killing white people, and how it’s so unfair that blacks are so privileged and get so many breaks from the media. It’s totally unreal.

    Yeah, the media only reports the times blacks get killed by ‘white cops’, or shot while ‘driving while black’, or etc. I do not see that as “privilege”. I don’t think it mens what those commenters think it means.

  5. AMM says

    When I read “Council of Conservative Citizens”, I thought you were talking about the openly racist and segregationist “White Citizens Councils” that I remember all too well from the 1960’s, which, among other things, set up whites-only schools which in some places replaced the public schools. This got me to reading the Wikipedia articles on both organizations. Apparently, the CCC is just the White Citizens Councils with a name change and an organizational shuffle.

    I don’t think “uptown Klan” was supposed to mean that they were any nicer than the Klan, as their openly expressed goals were the same as the Klan’s; I think it referred to the demographic they appealed to. I didn’t read the racist rants people are talking about, but I doubt it is much different from the stuff I would overhear from ordinary whites back when I was growing up.

    Also, if the widespread support shown for cops and white people who murder black people is any indication, I would say that a substatial minority, possibly even the majority, of white people throughout the USA would agree with the ultimate goals of all three groups — keeping black people “in their place” — and while they might be disturbed by having to see the means by which these goals are achieved, would nevertheless still support them.

    Back when I was a kid, people would always say, “they exaggerate, it can’t be as bad as they’re making it out to be.” After 50+ years of seeing what goes down in this country, I’d have to say they were right — it’s not as bad, it’s worse. However horrible you might think things are, the reality always turns out to be even worse.

  6. says

    If there is any way to get the membership listings, they need to be disseminated far and wide across the internet so people will know exactly who each and every member is.

  7. says

    From the Southern Poverty Law Center article:

    […] Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member […]

    Even if the group mouths the politically correct “we deplore violence” rhetoric, they have a long history of nurturing ideologies that encourage violence.

    They nurtured Dylann Roof. They should own that. And then they should disband in shame.

  8. says

    From the Southern Poverty Law Center article, a paragraph that illustrates the overlapping hatreds and ill-informed mindsets of modern-day conservatism. “Conservative” is becoming synonymous with racism and with reactionary politics. They sure hate poor people.

    […] in 2009 Republican Mississippi State Sen. Lydia Chassaniol spoke to the group. She gave a rabble-rousing speech on “Cultural Heritage in Mississippi.” In a brief history of the state since 1540, Chassaniol complained that the U.S. was in decline, as evidenced by tributes to Michael Jackson, a “pedophile who’s being celebrated.” She indicated that the government wants to “take from those who have and give to those who don’t want to work for it.” And she worried that the 2010 national census might hand over government “to the radical left.” Chassaniol confirmed to the Southern Poverty Law Center that she is a member of the CCC, which she described as a “conservative organization.” […]

    [In 2013] Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson, both well-known racist activists, appeared as speakers at the Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, alongside some of Europe’s most extreme, right-wing fringe.

    So, these racist dunderheads are also exporting their really bad ideology.

  9. lakitha tolbert says

    I’ve tried to Google this topic, apparently my Google-Fu is just not strong, but can anyone provide me with some trustworthy links about crimes committed against Whites by Blacks.

    I’d like to have some accuracies in my head when encountering such people in various comment sections, as they have been out in full force. Never minding that no matter what crimes may be committed against White people or how many, it’s completely irrelevant to what happened in Charleston.

    I did visit Tim Wise’ statistics page and he tried to explain the findings as clearly as possible but I need more and most of the search results are muddied up with Conservative and racist sites trying to justify their hatred of PoC.

  10. F.O. says

    Did the conservative media finally accept that this was a racially motivated crime?
    I’m not asking them to use the word “terrorist”, God forbid, but at least to acknowledge reality when it smacks them in the face?

  11. chrislawson says

    lakitha@10 — the FBI crime stats page is a good place to start, specifically the murders by race/ethnicity table.

    According to that table, black/African Americans murdered 409 whites, while whites murdered 189 blacks/African Americans in 2013. Superficially this would support the idea that blacks are more violent towards whites than vice versa…but there are at least 2 very important caveats.

    1. If we adjust for population, where there are 197M whites and 39M blacks in the US, then the rate of white persons being murdered by black persons is 2.1 per million people per year, while the converse rate of black persons being murdered by a whites is 4.8 per million people per year.

    2. These figures only apply to murder cases with a conviction (the table excludes murders where nothing is known of the perpetrator, 23 of the murders are listed as offender’s race unknown, even more interestingly, 68 of the murders have the victim’s race as unknown). They do not account for murders where the perpetrator is never convicted, where the murder is prosecuted under a lesser charge like manslaughter, or where the convicted felon is later found to be innocent.

  12. chrislawson says

    Sorry, not with a conviction, but only cases where something is known of the perpetrator.

  13. auraboy says

    And the FBI statistics do not include the number of black people murdered by cops, which we have ongoing proof are often racially motivated executions.

  14. laurentweppe says

    but there are at least 2 very important caveats.

    Three caveats:
    3. They don’t count when the murderer was an uniformed sociopath who pretended to “just be doing his job as a law enforcement officer

  15. says

    I think I have two more caveats:
    4. It has been established that POC are more often suspected/convicted than white people with equal (low) level of evidence (this was discussed a lot after Trayvon Martin got murdered).

    5. FBI fudged a lot of their evidence in past years (even DNA evidence as has been revealed by media in last months) to confirm their bias against given suspects. So that in 409 cases a black suspect was convicted for murdering white person does not bear too much value vis-a-vis who actually really performed the crime. From all we know many of them are innocent.

  16. F.O. says

    @chrislawson #12
    I think your caveat 1. is wrong.
    If you adjust the number of the population for the victims, then you have to adjust it also for the murderers, which means that POCs are much more likely to be found guilty of murder.

    If you are white, a potential murderer has an 83% chance of being white and only a 13% of being POC. Even considering that POCs are only 1/5 of the population, whites still have more to fear from other whites.
    The same calculation done for POCs becomes rather irrelevant once we assume that the justice system is disproportionally stacked against them, so I’ll skip.

    I think it would be more significant to compare whether a white or black person is more likely to be “killed” (rather than “found guilty of murder”) by a white or black person, and THEN compare that to the population ratio.

  17. says

    @F.O. #18:
    Exactly. White people are disproportionately the greatest violent threat to other white people, hands-down. This raises an important issue: where are these so-called respected white community leaders when it comes time to denounce white-on-white crime that is plaguing our country? Where are the white fathers? When are they going to take responsibility for their own problems?

  18. lakitha tolbert says

    Thanx people!
    I sort of intuitively understood that Whites had more to fear from other White people (as I had not forgotten about White on White crime statistics), but it’s good to have some numbers in my head and understand what those numbers mean. Such people conveniently gloss over or erase the information that White people kill more White people than any of group of people and that 409 vs. several million is not an epidemic or a war.

    I can see how Dylann could come to believe such a thing because the misinform-ants of the internet are extremely persuasive, and if you are a mental lightweight, who does no research, then the idea that Black people are waging a war against White people will be your take-away.

  19. unclefrogy says

    @19
    I think you will find them supporting all of the tough on crime laws and policies that seem to be so popular with the electorate. things like street justice and mandatory sentences.
    uncle frogy

  20. says

    The Council of Conservative Citizens donates money to Republican candidates:

    The leader of a white supremacist group that apparently influenced Dylann Roof, the suspect in the killing of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church last week, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, including those of 2016 presidential contenders such as Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul, records show. […]

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/us/campaign-donations-linked-to-white-supremacist.html

  21. says

    Suspecting a takedown, I looked this up while it was still available (who knows, maybe they won’t take it down). If there is any notion that the Council of Conservative Citizens is just an organization for publishing cranky news stories or whatever, item number two (below) should make it abundantly clear what their intentions are. I found it nearly impossible to just summarize, the statements are categorically and thoroughly opposed to all notions of common humanity, cooperation, civic life, nuance, self-doubt and introspection.

    (05/15/2015 version retrieved 06:03 PDT via archive.org)

    http://web.archive.org/web/20150415132253/http://conservative-headlines.com/introduction/statement-of-principles/ :

    (1) …We believe that the United States of America is a Christian country, that its people are a Christian people […]

    (2) We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. […] 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.

    […]

    (4) […] We believe the United States is a constitutional republic […] We believe the Constitution can be changed only by the proper procedure of amendment or constitutional convention and not by court decision, popular majority, political whim, or legislative fiat. We therefore oppose the “imperial judiciary” in the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal courts […] We support the abolition of those government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels that have no constitutional foundation, including the U.S. Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Health and Human Services, and similar agencies. We support the separation of powers that is a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution and of basic human liberty […]

    (5) We believe in States’ Rights, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Bill of Rights. […] We also oppose all such legislation as so-called “hate crime” or “bias crime” laws. Such laws merely penalize thought and expression rather than genuinely criminal action and are a dangerous and frightening step toward government Thought Control. Similarly, we oppose all so-called “politically correct” speech codes and “sensitivity training” in schools, colleges, […]

    (6) […] we oppose all efforts by the state and other powers to weaken the structure of the American family through toleration of sexual licentiousness, homosexuality and other perversions, mixture of the races, pornography in all forms, and subversion of the authority of parents.

    (7) […] We believe tax laws should encourage private charity rather than public support for the poor, the disabled, and the sick and elderly who are unable to care for themselves […]

    (8) Cultural, national, and racial integrity […] We oppose all efforts to discredit, “debunk,” denigrate, ridicule, subvert, or express disrespect for that heritage. We believe public monuments and symbols should reflect the real heritage of our people, and not a politically convenient, inaccurate, insulting, or fictitious heritage.

    (9) A Strong National Defense. We believe in the strongest possible defense for the United States.We oppose the presence of homosexuals and women in the military services and especially of women in combat roles.
    […]
    (12) […] We believe that education should inform and build the mind and character, not brainwash children with political propaganda or “liberate” them from the traditional values and loyalties their families have taught them. We therefore oppose all “sex education” as well as so-called “multiculturalist” and “Afrocentric” curricula, “Outcome-Based Education,” and similar radical indoctrination in the schools. […]

    (13) Strong and Just Law Enforcement. […] We believe the most effective and most just response to crime is swift, certain, and morally appropriate punishment. We believe in capital punishment for the crimes of murder, rape, treason, and espionage. We oppose the substitution of the pseudo-sciences of psychiatry, sociology, and “rehabilitation” for real justice […]

    (14) Protection of the Environment and Natural Heritage […] from irresponsible government. We support the protection of truly endangered species of wildlife and areas of natural beauty.

  22. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re http://web.archive.org/web/20150415132253/http://conservative-headlines.com/introduction/statement-of-principles/ :

    including the U.S. Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Health and Human Services, and similar agencies.

    Sounds a lot like what Perry was trying to remember when he flubbed his presidential debate, where he was trying to name the 3 federal instutions he would abolish, …
    Is he a shill of the CCC?
    to nitpick their screed: the imperial judiciary they are so opposed to, does not exist in the US. So congrats CCC, job done. The SCOTUS has never invalidated any portion of that sacred Constitution you’re protecting. They invalidate laws that contradict the Constitution. So, your vaulted legislative powers can’t contradict themselves and the SCOTUS is just enforcing that.

  23. says

    The entire statement from beginning to end is remarkable to me for its pure contempt and for the way in which you can almost read, as between the lines, the ad hoc rebuffs against every humanitarian concern raised toward them:
    * You want peace, they want war;
    * you want shared human experience and an exchange of ideas, they want isolation and high walls;
    * you want equality for women, they say that women answer to men and men to gods and what gods bring to men are then brought to women;
    * you want the multiplication of the modes of human experience, they want subtraction and blotting out;
    * you want talk and thought, they want weapons and actions;
    * you want to explore and understand the mind, they want swift punishment;

    And, I cannot help but noticing, they see no contradiction with Christianity in any of it.

  24. says

    I had followed up on some of their pithier “articles” about various horrors committed, they say, by the NAACP or Liberals or an immigrant here or there. Superficially, they seem to mirror or parallel actual news coverage — names and events can be recognized — but it’s pretty obvious that the writers involved go to great lengths to fabricate entire scenarios for the express purpose of smearing and slandering.

    The only people who make use of the CCC are websites for Stormfront and similar, ‘reddit’ or ‘4chan’ types of groups. A one-way pipeline, in many cases, from CCC to these “distribution hubs”. Maybe all the same people, anyway.

  25. says

    Cross posted from the Lounge.

    Rachel Maddow’s analysis of the Council of Conservative Citizens history, and their present connections to Republican politicians, was mentioned up-thread.

    Here’s a link: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/racist-group-lurks-behind-thin-political-veil-469691971967

    The segment begins with an update on the polling stats of Republican candidates for president, then moves on to Haley Barbour. At about 5:00 minutes, the segment turns to a discussion of the CCC, and of Haley Barbour’s tight relationship with the CCC. (White Citizen’s Council, or Citizen’s Councils at the time)

    Maddox’s summary is excellent. We have Haley Barbour praising racists in 2010 when Barbour was considering running for president. This is very recent history.

    Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/06/23/lounge-500/#ixzz3dv20tnnw