By Edward H. Sebesta
The Touchstone
Vol. XII, No. 3
Summer 2002
This article was originaly published in the summer 2002 issue of the Touchstone, an alternative newspaper published in the College Station area in Texas.
“The Decline of the West: From the Alamo to Kosovo” was the cover title of the June 1999 Chronicles magazine published by the Rockford Institute of Rockford, Illinois. Chronicles is the leading national magazine of the Old Right or what is called Paleoconservatism, a branch of what might be called the radical right, in opposition to the neo-Conservatives. It can be found distributed on the magazine racks of bookstores across the nation, as well as in most major university libraries, such as the Texas A&M Univ. library. (1) In it are articles written by a galaxy of prominent writers, scholars, editors, and politicians in and out of right-wing politics. (2) The editors are published and their books are in major university libraries, again such as Texas A&M library.
The institute has strong Texas connections. The institute’s Chairman of the Board of Directors is David Hartman, who was the chairman and CEO of Hartland Bank in Austin that he sold in 1999, and was the Republican statewide candidate in 1994 for Texas Treasurer, defeated by Democrat Mary Whitehead. (3) He has been a director or chairman for a variety of Texas conservative groups. (4) Fellow Rockford Institute director is Tom Pauken, Texas conservative Republican and former Texas Republican party chairman. (5) A corresponding editor and regular contributor to Chronicles is William (Bill) Murchison, Dallas Morning News columnist.
The theme of the June issue is about what they see as a decline in society from what they characterize as the frontier spirit, and complaints about U.S. policy in the Balkans. The idea is that a declining decadent society can’t resist what they see as the menaces of Islam and immigration. William Murchison, has his article “Print the Legend: Retaking the Alamo” complaining about Hispanic rejections of the Alamo myth. The connection between the Alamo and Kosovo is expressly stated in three articles.
Michael Hill, League of the South (LOS) (6) president has an untitled short item, on what he calls the “Kosovo Standard” in which he states that support for the Albanians in Kosovo would set the precedent for Hispanic secession, stating:
If the U.S. Government (more precisely, the American Empire) operated consistently on principle rather than expediency, it would be worried about establishing a precedent for the Kosovo Standard. Suppose that the American Southwest (including Southern California) becomes predominantly Hispanic in the next century. The Aztlan Liberation Army (ALA) in an attempt to form an independent Hispanic state or to bring about a reconquista on behalf of Mexico, engages in terrorist activity against federal and state authorities and attacks non-Hispanic citizens. [Emphasis in the original] (7) Then Hill describes a race war with parallels that would justify asking NATO for an air strike against the United States, “Remembering the ‘Kosovo Standard’ of 1999, Third World Nations petition NATO to act to prevent an ‘humanitarian disaster.'”
Hill expressed his opinions more forthrightly in the 4th annual LOS convention videotape, when in his speech he declared, “To most of us here today, I believe, a border would be best defined as something a foreigner would be shot for crossing.” His anxieties are revealed when in the same speech he states, “I for one don’t relish the thought of my daughters and their offspring living amidst a non-European majority to whom the principles of Western Christendom mean nothing.” (8)
Robert Hawkins in his article attacks U.S. intervention in Kosovo, stating: Imagine that a San Antonio Liberation Front were to champion — by armed violence — Mexican-American rights north of the border, demand autonomy for the Texas city that is home to the Alamo, and plan for the eventual return of the area to Mexico. Would U.S. authorities have the right to oppose such a movement? … The obvious historical analogy was never mentioned in the House debate.(9)
Ronald F. Maxwell, director of the movie, Gettysburg, invokes the same theme, writing
… we should be casting a discerning eye around the globe the globe in an effort to anticipate future Kosovo’s. Sadly for America, the southwestern United States could become a Tex-Mex-style Balkan powder keg in the not-too-distant future.
Maxell projects a future in which the Southwest will be, as he sees it, swamped by Hispanics, and lead to violent “disaster.”
Those who believe that “it can’t happen here” should remember that a cataclysmic civil war tore this country apart once already, only 135 years ago, when our population was much more ethnically and culturally homogeneous than it is today.(10)
This theme is actually more elaborately stated in a January 1999 Chronicles article, “Reflections on a Texans Visit to Bosnia” by David Hartman. After portraying Yugoslavia as a failure of multiculturalism and stating “The United States has demonized the Serbs for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, …” Hartman compares Texas to Bosnia:
We are a product of Western civilization and Christianity, both of which evolved in Europe. … To be an American citizen (or, as an immigrant, to aspire to be one) is to join these cultural bonds, not import alternatives. The only real alternative is the eventual dissolution of America which, if history is any guide, will likely occur under conditions of savage hostility. Specifically instructive are the circumstances in Kosovo and Muslim Bosnia. Kosovo is the heartland of Orthodox Serbia. Today the region is predominantly peopled by Albanian Muslims, the result of immigration from Albania and victory in a war of reproduction. … At the rate that the Muslims are reproducing, Bosnia will soon find that Muslims have replaced the Orthodox Serbs as the majority. …
There is a lesson here that those of us who live close to our national border should heed. Texas was effectively annexed by Americans whose language and culture were alien to Mexicans. Today, Texas has a reverse demographic shift due to immigration and reproduction, and our politicians are pandering to the Hispanic constituency by encouraging the preservation of a foreign language and culture. [Emphasis in the original.]
After commenting on what he sees is the failure of Hispanics to assimilate Hartman concludes:
Over the long term, this could lead to an increased desire for separatism and a reversal of allegiance to our country.
Locally in Rockford the institute is known for its leadership role for about a year in a bitter struggle in a Federal Court desegregation case until it was exposed as neo-Confederate, in a Rockford Register Star article, “New Confederates spark outrage in Rockford,” (3/15/98). Thomas Fleming, Editor of Chronicles, and president of the Rockford Institute denied being neo-Confederate despite being a League of the South founding board member, saying his involvement was nominal. However, an ad for Chronicles subscriptions, which ran for five consecutive issues of the Southern Patriot, the official publication of the League of the South was as follows:
Chronicles is the only national magazine whose editors are all League members: Thomas Fleming, Theodore Pappas, Scott Richert, and Chilton Williamson, Jr. That is why every month in our pages, you’ll find articles by League Board Members like Michael Hill, Jack Kershaw, Grady McWhiney, and Clyde Wilson; reviews of the latest pro-South books; and features like “The Good Kennedys,” a profile of Southern Patriots James and Ronald Kennedy.
You’ve watched Tom Fleming fire up the crowds at League meetings. Now you can take advantage of this special offer to subscribe to this magazine. … [Boldface in the original] (11)
Chronicles has had over the years many neo-Confederate articles, ads for the League of the South events, and League of the South authors. (12) Contributing Editors Samuel Francis and Paul Gottfried both write for the notoriously racist American Renaissance and attend its conferences . Samuel Francis is the editor of Citizen Informer, the official publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens and is a regular columnist for the Southern Partisan since its 2nd issue in 1980. Samuel Francis has a regular column in Chronicles. Paul Gottfried and contributing editor J.O. Tate are on the masthead of and contribute articles to the Southern Partisan. Joseph Sobran is a frequent contributor of articles to Chronicles and is a regular columnist for Southern Partisan. Chronicles Corresponding editor, William Murchison, is a regular columnist for the Southern Partisan. The League of the South listed him as a Texas Chapter Board member on their website. (13)
The Rockford Institute was founded as the Rockford College Institute in 1975 and renamed the Rockford Institute in 1980. (14) Though some neo-Confederates contributed some articles earlier, Thomas Fleming became editor of Chronicles in 1985 gradually changing it into a neo-Confederate opinion journal by the mid-1990s.
The Texas State League of the South is one of the more active state chapters listing twelve local chapters, and has six regional directors. Not surprisingly, the League of the South, during the U.S. intervention in Kosovo, had an editorial on their web page with the same comparison and conclusions as David Hartman in Chronicles. (15)
Chronicles magazine started to progressively focus on immigration, Islam, and the idea of Western Christian civilization under siege in the late 1980s with more intense and extreme viewpoints developing along the way. The focuses were and are:
” The United States is being swamped by immigrants.
” The only real basis of a nation is ethnicity, and drawing parallels of potential American futures with the Yugoslavian present.
” Common issues with other anti-immigrant groups from Hanson in Australia to Le Pen in France.
” The idea of the Christian West being under attack by Islam and sympathy for right wing groups in Eastern Europe.
” Support for Serbian extremists
” Intellectual advocacy of violence and extreme measures.
The anti-immigration issue really starts going in the March 1989 issue with the cover theme, “Nation of Immigrants” bemoaning immigration. Fleming’s lead article for the issue, “The Real American Dilemma” explains how he sees America being swamped and threatened by immigration. Fleming sees the demise of national sovereignty, the necessity to breakup the United States into ethnic regions as a plan to avoid violence, and the Southwest being made into a Hispanic political entity. He feels that race war is likely stating: …Descendants of the old settlers that fought and won the land from Mexico will be quite rightly indignant with what many Mexicans are already calling the Reconquest, and we shall probably have far more trouble than Canada in adjusting to a multicultural situation. Perhaps we can evolve into a safely neutered society of consumers — like Switzerland. It is just as likely to be a bloodbath. [Emphasis author’s.] (16)
The June 1993 issue, has the cover title, “Bosnia, U.S.A.” with the Statue of Liberty crying out with a face of terror as she is being swarmed over by pointed ear bald clawed demon figures. Fleming in “Middle Class Helots” argues that different ethnic groups can’t coexist:
Whether the differences are purely ethnic, purely economic, or a mixture of the two, it is hard for two peoples to inhabit the same space at the same time. … In the subhuman world, the law that goes by the name of Cause’s principle of competitive exclusion stipulates that two species cannot occupy the same ecological niche, and a similar principle applies to subspecies and social groups in direct proportion to the strength of their identity. … Arab and Pakistani terrorists, Nigerian con artists, Oriental and South American drug lords, Russian gangsters all are introducing their particular brands of cultural enrichment into an already fragmented United States that increasingly resembles Bosnia more than the America I grew up in.
Fleming compares multiculturalism in America to “Bosnia’s experiment in multiculturalism” and concludes “The results of our own experiment may well turn out to be as grim.”
Chronicles magazine also reports on what they see as immigrant menaces, chiefly Muslim, to Western European nations, and anti-immigrant movements there as well as in Australia. (17)
The anti-Islam campaign switches into high gear with the February 1999 issue, with the cover title, “Islam and the West.” Thomas Fleming leads with the article, “East is East, and West is Wuss” with a sub-title in the table of contents, “Defending decadent Christendom.” He concludes his article with a call for the West to resist what he sees as the Muslim invasion as follows: The second, which is not quite the opposite of the first, is to keep up a stout heart for the coming confrontation between insurgent Islam and decadent Christendom. As Chesterton understood at the beginning of this century, Islam is our enemy, not only in a geopolitical sense, but metaphysically: … My fear is that Christendom has entirely lost its nerve. East may still be East, but West is no longer West. So far from resisting the Muslim invasion of Europe, we may ourselves be succumbing to an Islamic temptation: in the mistaken belief that, while Muslims are free to be men, we Christians are condemned to be something like Ralph Reed. …(18)
Other articles in the same issue are “Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration” by James George Jatras, U.S. Senate foreign policy consultant for the Republicans ; “A Quiet, Little Jihad?” by Harold O.J. Brown; and “Multiculturalism and Islam” by Srdja Trifkovic. The articles are napalm-soaked writing.
Jatras castigates Islam, stating, “In short, Islam is a self-evident outgrowth not of the Old and New Covenants but of the darkness of heathen Araby.” (19) After a long article with the theme that Islam is out to destroy the West and has been since its inception, he concludes as follows:
At the same time, in light of the growing volume of Muslim immigration, Western Christians will soon find out … that confronting the Islamic advance has become, as it has always been for Eastern Christians, a simple matter of physical survival. But by that time it may be too late for the West as well.(20)
Srdja Trifkovic writes:
… this peculiar creed has been synonymous with violence and intolerance since its earliest days. Like Bolshevism and Nazism, Islam is part religion and part ideology. …(21)
The November 2001 Chronicles cover theme is “Strangers In a Strange Land” with dripping letters as in an old horror film. A family dressed like they are from the 50s, looks out over an ominous landscape, with the sky awash with foreboding clouds and around an old church black crows fly. Between the 50s family and the Statue of Liberty in the distance the landscape is covered with pagodas, the Kremlin, and other buildings representing an alien America. Fleming has a special forward to this issue:
… The time has come to face the unpleasant reality that politically, at least we have lost the immigration battle.
Chronicles has been engaged in this struggle for nearly 20 years. …What sort of world will our children and grandchildren live in?
Fleming sees an American inheritance being progressively destroyed by the Civil War and 19th and early 20th century immigration.
The inheritance was already sorely battered by 1980. The agrarian republic of Washington and Jefferson had been overthrown by Lincoln and replaced by an imperial republic., which was in turn replaced by the warm-and-fuzzy national socialism imposed by FDR. The New Deal state, it is important to emphasize, was in part a direct response to the mass immigration of European ethnics … [Emphasis authors]
All of that has passed away, of course. The new wave of mass immigration … has reinforced the leftist campaign to destroy Christendom, …(22)
The articles for this issue focus on what they see as various immigration threats. Roger D. McGrath, has an article, “California, Here We Come: Katy, Bar the Door” about Hispanic immigration. Fleming’s article is titled, “Redeeming the Time: The Days are Evil,” with comments such as “The country as a whole cannot be saved,” and “But in the South …, there are places worth saving, … where people might circle the wagons and make a stand.”(23) The Chronicles articles press multiple intertwined agendas on immigration, religion, and gender with a campaign of fear. The first most obvious aspect, is the merging of anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic fears to mutually reinforce each other by literally mapping them on to each other with Kosovo being equated with Texas, Muslims with Hispanics. Both issues are unified into an issue of a total assault on the West.
The level of fear is also escalated. The issue is not represented as dispossession of dominance, but the menace of being a victim of violence, even genocidal conflict. The future is portrayed in apocalyptic terms of possible.
The anti-immigration campaign is also made into a defense of the Christian faith in a religious war. Immigration is characterized as “a leftist campaign to destroy Christendom.”
Finally, the anti-immigration campaign is a campaign for their definition of masculinity. The entire West is crumbling because its men have forsaken their masculinity. According to Fleming, “Muslims are free to be men, we Christians are condemned to be something like Ralph Reed …”. In an article complaining about the State Department policy in Yugoslavia and towards nationalism, Fleming states, “Imagine how much fun they must have, those cases of arrested development that staff the State Department bureaucracy, playing at empire as if they were grown-ups who could grow beards and father children.” (24) “Arrested development” is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic cause of homosexuality. (25) The Swiss, a multilingual nation in peace, are “neutered.”
Then there is the “West is Wuss” title of the lead article of Fleming’s anti-Muslim campaign. In this article Fleming complains about the British support for the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century as partly because: … but I sometimes wonder if there is not some horrifying attraction, especially for English boys brought up in a public school, to the brutal manliness that regards sodomitic rape as an expression of virility. In any event, a series of Anglo-Saxon males who have gone in search of their manhood found it in Islamic culture: Sir Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence, and Pasha Glub are at the head of a large pack, whose rear is brought up by the academic camp-followers …
Richard Burton is the author of the “Sotadic Zone,” about homosexuality in various non-Western countries. T.E. Lawrence is also known to have been gay. So in summary the view of Fleming and Chronicles, is that the West is under siege by immigration, which will result in the slaughter of whites, the destruction of Christendom, all because Western European men have been homosexualized, or because as Chilton Williamson, Jr. had as a subtitle for his Chronicles article, “The syphilization of American manhood.” (26)
Notes
1. I have an online index of notes on each issue of the Chronicles at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Rockford.htm.
2. Two books which discuss Chronicles magazine are “The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought,” by Paul V. Murphy, Univ. of North Carolina Press 2001. A book with a description of the Paleoconservative movement and a collection of Paleoconservative essays is, “The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right,” editor Joseph Scotchie, Transaction Publishers, 1999. The Murphy book is in the TAMU library.
3. Moreno, Sylvia, “Whitehead wins narrow victory over Hartman,” page 29A, Dallas Morning News, Nov. 9, 1994; Golz, Earl, “Community banking in Austin shrinks with Harland sale,” page D3, Austin American-Statesman, June 18, 1999.
4. “About the Author,” Texas Public Policy Foundation, http://www.tppf.org/assault/author.htm, 4/1/99.
5. Board of Directors listing, http://rockfordinstitute.org/about-tri.html, 4/6/99.
6 http://www.dixienet.org. The website is under reorganization at the time of writing with many links not working. The search engine will pull up web pages otherwise unlinked. The Southern Poverty Law Center has articles on the League of the South in two of its issues and the neo-Confederate movement. The Summer 2000 issue of the Intelligence Report is devoted to the entire neo-Confederate movement, the Spring 2001 issue has an article on the Christian Confederate movement. These articles are online at the Southern Poverty Law Center web site http://www.splcenter.org.
7. Hill, Michael, no title, page 8, Chronicles, June 1999.
8. Hill, Michael, speech at the 4th annual League of the South Convention, 1997.
9. Hawkins, W. Robert, no title, page 7-8, Chronicles, June 1999.
10. Maxwell, Robert F. no title, page 6-7, Chronicles, June 1999.
11. “Subscribe to the Magazine Every Southern Patriot Should Read!,” back outside mailing covers, Southern Patriot, Sept.-Oct, Nov.-Dec. 1997, Jan.-Feb., March-April, May-June 1998. Ronald and Donald Kennedy are the authors of the, “The South Was Right!” which is one of the primary founding books of the neo-Confederate movement, as well as “Was Jefferson Davis Right?” Jack Kershaw is in his 90s and was a leader in a pro-segregation Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government in the 1950s. Where No Flag Flies: Donald Davidson and the Southern Resistance, Univ. of Missouri Press, by Mark Royden Winchell.
12. I have an article on the Rockford Institutes concerning the school desegregation case, its denial of neo-Confederate identity, when neo-Confederates took over the institute. It is online at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Rockford.htm.
13. Murchison, William, “Our Charming Speech is Gone With the Wind,” http://www.dixienet.org/dn-gazette/gwtw.html, January 24, 2002.
14. Spivar, Cary, “Rockford Institute gains new maturity,” Rockford Register Star, 2/26/80.
15. League of the South, “Mr. Clinton’s War: A DixieNet Editorial …”, http://www.dixienet.org/dixnet-main.htm, 4/5/99.
16. Fleming, Thomas, “The Real American Dilemma,” page 8-11, Chronicles, March 1989.
17. Fleming, Thomas, “New World Disorder,” page 14-16, Chronicles, July 1992. Articles about Australia and Europe: Hanson in Australia, July 1997, page 20, Feb. 1999, page 34; Le Pen, Oct. 1995, page 45, March 1998, page 16, July 1998, page 6.
18. Fleming, Thomas, “East is East, and West is Wuss,” page 13, Chronicles February 1999.
19. This was originally stated in a speech causing great controversy. Professor Michael Sells, Professor of Religion at the University of Haverford, wrote two articles on this and you can access from my web page at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Muslim.htm.
20. Jatras, James George, “Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration,” page 14-17, Chronicles, February 1999.
21. Trifkovic, Srdja, “Multiculturalism and Islam,” page 21 23, Chronicles, February 1999.
22. Fleming, Thomas, “Forward,” page 2, Chronicles, November 2001.
23. Fleming, Thomas, “Redeeming the Time: The Days are Evil,” page 10-11, Chronicles, November 2001.
24. Fleming, Thomas, “The Imperial Presidency,” page 6-7, Chronicles, March 1996.
25. Altman, Dennis, “Homosexual Oppression and Liberation,” page 57, quote of Sigmund Freud, Discus Book, published by Avon, 1971.
26. Williamson, Chilton, Jr. “Men Unlimited: The syphilization of American manhood,” page 3, table of contents title, Chronicle, February 1994.