Sunday, June 21, 2015

"The Council of Conservative Citizens and the Politicians Who Pander to Them"

When Dylann Roof discovered the Council of Conservative Citizens and was radicalized, he was tapping into a deep history of Southern racism.

           John Hill, with the South Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens, speaks during a news conference Monday, Feb. 14, 2000, on the Statehouse grounds in Columbia, S.C. The South Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens says Gov. Jim Hodges is a dishonest politician for taking an active role in the flag issue after promising during the 1998 campaign to stay neutral. Hodges confirmed today that he wants to move the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome and out of the House and Senate chambers and putit next to the Wade Hampton monument on the Capitol grounds. (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain)



(The Daily Beast

In his own words, Dylann Roof’s path from a child “not raised in a racist home or environment” to the 21-year-old white supremacist who shot and killed nine men and women in a historic black church in Charleston last Wednesday evening began with the discovery of a website.

After the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in 2012, Roof claimed he was “awakened.” In the manifesto he published to his personal websiteLastRhodesian.com, Roof wrote that Martin’s murder prompted him to search for “black on White crime [sic],” on Google, which led him to the Council of Conservative Citizens.