Blood and Politics (86 page)

In addition to elected officials and Sons of Confederate Veterans members, organizations such as the League of the South, which promoted its own brand of southern nationalism, mobilized their membership to march alongside newly prominent neo-Confederate groups, such as the Southern Party and the Heritage Protection Association. Council of Conservative Citizens and National Alliance members joined the crowd, as did Kirk Lyons, who had recently started yet another nonprofit corporation called the Southern Legal Resource Center and developed a new law practice focused on Confederate-related issues.
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The Confederate battle flag had been resurrected in the 1950s by segregationists, who hoisted it atop state capitols to show their defiance of federal authority. In Georgia, for example, the state legislature had incorporated the Stars and Bars into the state flag in 1956. After decades of protest against the flag’s public display, the NAACP mounted a campaign to remove the Confederate symbol from the Georgia flag, culminating in a compromise in 2001 that gave it a less significant placement in a new state flag.
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White nationalists continued using Confederate imagery and memorials as statements of group identity. Rebel flags had infused the white riot in Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1987, for example, and Aryan Nations had rallied its skinhead contingents at the foot of a Confederate war memorial in 1989. Kirk Lyons had raised the battle banner on a federal flagpole in Arkansas to celebrate the Aryans’ victory in the seditious conspiracy trial, and he had repeated the performance in Montana after surrendering the Freemen.

In South Carolina the NAACP had started an antiflag campaign in 1994. Pro-flag forces began rallying their own troops across the state in response. Led at that time by the South Carolina state chairman of the Council of Conservative Citizens, William Carter, they brought their Confederate banners to the Lexington County Peach Festival parade on the July Fourth weekend and to Hilton Head on Labor Day and held a string of meetings that year in Myrtle Beach, Barnwell, Orangeburg, and Greenwood.
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The pro-flag forces also had a hand in electing Republican David Beasley governor. Once elected, however, Beasley took steps to remove the flag as a point of contention and sought a compromise with the NAACP. Angered at Beasley’s perfidy in this contest of political wills, pro-flaggers had enough power to let him go down to defeat in the 1998 elections.
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As the fight progressed, the CofCC’s ideological position and influence grew within the broader neo-Confederate movement. And the state of South Carolina, birthplace of the Confederacy, continued flying the banner into the new millennium.

While some Confederate flag wavers claimed they were promoting their heritage and not what they called “hate,” they denied that racist domination was an integral part of that history. They contended that Confederate nationalism should be considered separately from both chattel slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. For Council of Conservative Citizens leaders, by contrast, the flag was an unabashed symbol of whiteness. In an article written for a local Sons of Confederate Veterans newsletter, Jared Taylor wrote: “The reason why the Confederacy is under such violent attack today is that it is a symbol not only of the white culture that the ethnic saboteurs wish to destroy, but it is also seen—rightly
or wrongly—as a symbol of white culture that refuses to apologize. What better way to attack white America than to insult the last remnant of a
proud
white America [emphasis in original]?”
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A set of studies conducted at southern universities found evidence that supported Jared Taylor’s argument, rather than the “heritage, not hate” claim. These scholars described a group of white people who were self-conscious of their whiteness as a badge of ethnic identity and at odds with multiracialism and egalitarianism. More important, pollsters found higher levels of support for the Confederate flag among young whites.
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As these young whites thought of themselves as a “dispossessed majority,” projected by census takers to become a racial minority in a nation of minorities by the mid-twenty-first century, they prepared themselves for the future by wearing the battle flag on T-shirts and ball caps. Their T-shirt slogan was “You Wear Your X and I’ll Wear Mine,” a reference to the ball caps memorializing Malcolm X that were popular among a segment of black youth. These competing ball caps were not celebrating the past as much as symbolizing current racial identity.

Further evidence that the battle flag was not strictly a symbol of regional remembrance came from a California protest aimed at brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers. When the picket ran into counterprotests by immigrant rights activists, several of the younger white nationalists could no longer restrain themselves. They unfurled a Confederate battle flag alongside a swastika banner and Old Glory’s red, white, and blue. The incident sparked a cyberspace discussion. One character named “Valhalla” asked, “Why did you let people bring Nazi flags? While 80% of whites are opposed to illegal immigration, probably 99% are opposed to Nazism.” To which someone going by the moniker “baldy” replied: “The commies were chanting ‘Nazis Go Home’ for hours . . . so I and everyone present on the street in the hot sun, facing hostile commies, browns and who-knows-what greenlighted the flag idea. We will stand behind our decision.”
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Here was a true contest of ideas, and the Confederate battle flag was raised as an emblem of white domination to come.

For his part, Pat Buchanan still regarded the contemporary battles over the flag as a defense of the past. “What kind of timidity and cowardice are today gripping South Carolina that so many of her sons will not defend the battle flag of kinsmen who fought and died,” the son of Confederate veterans editorialized.
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Buchanan had become the spokesman for a definable segment of white nationalist sentiment after his two runs for president in 1992 and 1996. As he prepared for yet another bid in the year 2000, however, his electioneering proved to be as out-of-date as his theories of the flag.

March 3, 2000.
Texas governor George W. Bush was checking off the presidential primaries in preparation for a contest with Vice President Al Gore when Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan appeared at a state convention in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was open to the public. One hundred and fifty people attended. Buchanan told them that the Reform Party could break up the two-party monopoly over the elections and he wanted their nomination to run as president. If elected, he said, “at that very moment their New World Order comes crashing down.” As he had in several other states, Buchanan swept the nominators’ selection process that day, winning all eleven delegates to a future national convention. During the meeting he was buttonholed by a Liberty Lobby official for a photograph handing a
Spotlight
special edition supporting Buchanan’s candidacy to the man himself.
The Spotlight
reported on the exchange, claiming Buchanan replied, “I’ve already read it. I’ve got a copy at my house.” Sixteen years after launching the Populist Party, a failed effort to establish a third party to the right of the Republicans, Willis Carto and Liberty Lobby thought they had found it in Buchanan’s Reform Party.
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The Reform Party was founded as a personal vehicle for Ross Perot, a multimillionaire with a Texas twang and a knack for cornball quips. Perot financed his own independent campaign for president in 1992, calling for fiscal restraint and a balanced budget, and emphasizing the fact that elected officials worked for the taxpayers. “You are the boss,” he told the public. The message resonated with a segment of voters. His money and
celebrity pushed him into the nationally televised debates, and he won a striking 19 percent of the popular vote in the general election.
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In the run-up to the 1996 election cycle, Perot created the Reform Party as a stand-alone political party. It subsequently received almost thirty million dollars in Federal Election Commission matching funds. This time around, however, Perot was kept out of the nationally televised debates, and his support dropped to 9 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, because it had received more than 5 percent of the national vote, the party remained eligible for federal matching funds in the next contest for president.
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As the party approached the 2000 election cycle, a changing body of governing rules and a shifting set of personnel at the helm resulted in an unsteady leadership and a membership rendered inert by the factional fighting. Further exacerbating the instability, the Perot loyalists still populating the Reform Party lacked a viable presidential candidate of their own. Into this vacuum Pat Buchanan stepped boldly and decisively.

Reform Party rules prescribed a two-track route to nomination. The first was through state conventions, where party officers, national committee members, and delegates to the national convention were selected. In effect, these statewide meetings were much like Republican and Democratic Party caucuses. The second track was through a mail-in ballot. This was akin to a national primary, only more convoluted. Mail-in ballots were sent to all 250,000 Reform Party members. The would-be candidates could also request that ballots be mailed to those supporters who met the party’s eligibility guidelines. Unlike a primary vote, however, the mail-in ballots were advisory only, and no convention delegates were selected on this track. Instead, it was the convention that would formally nominate the party’s candidate.
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Pat Buchanan and his sister Bay, acting as campaign manager, easily mastered this state-by-state process. After two runs through the Republican presidential primaries, they possessed a core group of followers in the person of the Buchanan Brigades. They won state leadership posts away from the Perotistas in the Reform Party, often packing otherwise sparsely attended meetings in the process. Then the brigadiers got themselves selected as delegates to the national convention, much as they did in Maryland. Adding to the brigades’ firepower in this election cycle were cadres from the white nationalist movement who decided to aid Buchanan’s bid on their own terms. Vanguardists and mainstreamers alike believed they had a chance to find a place in the leadership of a mass revolt by angry white people.
Spotlight
readers and Liberty Lobby were notable in this regard.
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Liberty Lobby’s support for Pat Buchanan had not been particularly steadfast. After the 1996 election,
The Spotlight
had published articles claiming his failure to leave the Republican Party had turned him into a liar who used and abused his supporters.
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As a consequence, when Buchanan announced early in 1999 that he was preparing yet another Republican bid, Liberty Lobby ignored him. After his decision to run on the Reform Party ticket, however, the Lobby embraced him gladly. It claimed that its board of policy members “favored” Buchanan over all others by 60 percent in a mail-in vote.
The Spotlight
began regular favorable reports on his candidacy, defended him against charges leveled in the general media, and recounted his views on immigration and other relevant topics.
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Similarly, it printed pages of local and state contacts for the campaign and urged its readers to get directly involved.

The special insert handed to Buchanan at the Maryland meeting was entitled “Buchanan 2000: The People vs the Big Media, the Big Money & the Global Elite.” Thousands of copies were distributed at every possible venue, creating a small stir in the world outside Buchanan supporters. When asked on
Meet the Press
about Liberty Lobby, Buchanan acknowledged the tabloid insert’s existence. “I have not read the publication, but apparently it is inoffensive in and of itself,” he said.
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The Spotlight
begged to differ, as noted above.
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Whether or not Pat Buchanan admitted he had read a piece of Liberty Lobby propaganda was not of any genuine import. Nevertheless, the relationship of white nationalists to his 2000 campaign remained, as in 1992 and 1996, a point of genuine consequence.

Council of Conservative Citizens members also joined the brigades. By the time the Reform Party race began, Sam Francis was firmly ensconced as the editor in chief of the council’s periodical, the
Citizens Informer.
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While Buchanan’s old friend and colleague ensured that the quarterly tabloid preferred Buchanan to any other candidate, the council itself avoided an explicit endorsement.
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Its Mississippi council members were particularly loath to leave Republican ranks. Despite equivocations elsewhere, in Chicago one of the council’s chief representatives, Father Dennis Pavichevich, played a key role in a fund-raiser for Buchanan. In addition to supporting Buchanan, Pavichevich did double duty as priest of the Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Church and as vice chair of the council’s northern Illinois chapter. A decidedly different kind of Chicagoan, he flew both a Serbian flag and one of the many permutations of the Confederate States of America national flag. He also served as host for a group calling itself The Coalition for
Peace in the Balkans, which held a hundred-dollar-a-plate fund-raising luncheon.
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In keeping with his America first–style isolationism, Buchanan had long advocated American disengagement from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It was a position that resonated with certain sections of the Serbian community, particularly as President Clinton bombed Serbia’s positions, first in its conflict with Croatia over the Dalmatian coast and later when the battle for control of Kosovo turned bloody. And this Chicago event drew largely from the local Serbian-ethnic community. Add to this conjunction personnel from the flagship institution of the paleoconservative movement, the Rockford Institute, located in Rockford, Illinois. Both Tom Fleming, editor of the institute’s glossy monthly
Chronicles
magazine, and its foreign affairs editor, Srdja Trifkovic, played key roles alongside Pavichevich during the fund-raiser. Fleming, a native Carolinian with a long southern nationalist pedigree, introduced Buchanan to the roomful of Serbs, and Trifkovic whispered in the candidate’s ear during a question session where the answers required an intricate knowledge of the Yugoslav civil wars.
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