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| Picture of gun and bullets from Dylann Roof's website. |
Please see earlier posts with the label "violence". There is agoing to be a series of posts.
I wrote a letter to a great many churches in Mobile, Alabama. This is the general letter which I sent to all the churches. I did additional letters to the LGBT, Unitarians, and synagogues.
If the links suddenly vanish because the Sons of Confederate Veterans have pulled things, I had the Internet Archive archive them.
February
26, 2019
Edward
H. Sebesta
edwardsebesta@gmail.com
Address of church here.
Dear XXXXX l:
I am
writing you out of concern for the safety of your church members. I am sure you
are aware of the massacre in Charleston in 2015. I am a researcher of the
neo-Confederate movement. I have been published by two university presses and
peer-reviewed academic journals, the last one at Cambridge Univ. I was also
awarded the Spirit of Freedom medal by the African American Civil War Museum in
D.C. I have reason to be concerned.
I am
bringing this to your attention since the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is
having their national convention in Mobile, Alabama July 10-13, 2019. The
webpage for the reunion is: https://www.scvsemmes.org/2019-scv-reunion.html.
In
Charleston Dylann Roof wasn’t a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens
(CCC), but it was the inflammatory material put out by the CCC that led to his
committing the massacre. Similarly, I don’t think it is likely that a member of
the SCV is going to commit a massacre, the SCV has not called for violence
against any group. However, I think that material, that I think are angry or
inflammatory materials, which the SCV has had a hand in making more available
could possible led someone to commit a violent act.
Additionally,
as Confederate monuments come down across the nation I sense that the
neo-Confederates are becoming more enraged as their world is crumbling. I also
see increasing radicalization of the SCV year after year. Black
Commentator published in an article by myself, “The Racism and Extremism” of
the SCV in 2013. Yet, as extremist as
they were then, I think they have become more extreme.
The most
recent development is the appointment of Walter Donald Kennedy to head of the
national “Heritage” defense for the SCV. He, along with his brother, have a web
page http://www.kennedytwins.com/
where you can purchase books, such as “Rekilling Lincoln.” He is a former board
member of the League of the South.
It could
be asked why this particular time period of the reunion should be of concern
more than any other time. I think it is a concern because the SCV reunion in
Mobile, AL will bring a lot of focus to controversy over the Confederacy to the
Mobile area. Further, if some prominent monument goes down, the SCV leadership
will be speaking from Mobile, Alabama. If Alabama changes its laws on
monuments, the SCV leadership will be speaking from Mobile, Alabama.
In
particular I wish to especially alert certain religious groups. African
American churches because it was an African American church where a massacre
occurred in Charleston. Other groups are Unitarians, Muslims, and Jewish
people. The Unitarians have been denounced in neo-Confederate writing for some
time. I don’t suppose it should be surprising that Islam has been an object of
hostile writing. I will provide
information about their special animosity against these groups online at https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/.
For
Jewish people, the SCV offering for sale the book, “The South Under Siege,” is
of special concern. The civil rights movement is held to be a Jewish conspiracy
in and Northern Jews are called the South’s “deadliest enemy” in this book. The
Black Commentator article details
some of this.
I don’t
want to create the impression because I mention some religious groups, others
are safe. Walter Donald Kennedy and other neo-Confederate groups feel betrayed
by the Southern Baptist Conference and have expressed anger in their writings. I
think it would be wrong to think that those who commit these massacres are
predictable.
Now there
hasn’t been a massacre at any SCV reunion ever, but there hadn’t been any
massacres from people reading the CCC online material until 2015. As to what
should be done, I am not a security expert. I strongly suggest that churches
contact those who have expertise in this field.
Feel free to contact me by email for more information about the SCV and
the neo-Confederate movement. I will be putting information online at https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/.
Additionally,
I will be sending out two more mailings of matters I think are of concern to
Mobile churches shortly, but I thought I should start out with the issue of
security first.
Sincerely
Yours,
Edward
H. Sebesta
P.S.
Please share this information with other churches. I compiled my list of
churches to write to from Google maps and I am sure I must have missed some.
