By Tim Lockette, Star Staff Writer, tlockette@annistonstar.com  3 hrs ago  (0)
An Alabama-based group among the white nationalist organizations in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday has gone from advocating Southern secession from the United States to partnerships with neo-Nazi groups, according to one hate-group watcher.

“The scary part is, what if people allow these groups to pretend to be mainstream?” said Carla Hill, who studies extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League.

The Killen-based League of the South, a group that has long advocated Southern states’ secession from the Union, had about three dozen members on hand at the Charlottesville protests, where violence broke out between far-right marchers and anti-racist counterprotesters, the ADL researcher said.

One anti-racist protester was killed and 19 were injured when a far-right protester drove his car into a crowd of people, police have said.

Many Alabamians are familiar with the League, which has been around since the 1990s. But some may not have recognized the group’s emblem – a black X on a white background, vaguely similar to the Alabama state flag – on shields, uniforms and banners carried by marchers in the Charlottesville rally.

That banner flew alongside Nazi flags and other racist symbols, much to the dismay of at least one local former member.

“It saddens me that what was once an intellectual group has aligned themselves with the Klan,” said Josh Doggrell, a former Anniston police lieutenant who lost his job in 2015 because of his activities with the League.

Founded by a former college history teacher, Michael Hill, the League in its early years seemed merely like an edgier version of Confederate “heritage groups” like the  Sons of Confederate Veterans. The group’s 1994 manifesto praised agrarian ideals and the “chivalric idea of manhood.” The group adopted British spellings – “honour”  and “colour” –  in a rejection of American spellings created by Noah Webster, a northerner.

News accounts from the 1990s show the League disavowing any support for slavery or segregation, even as watchdog groups warned of racist overtones to the secessionist idea.

That was then. In 2017, the group routinely posts announcements noting that Hill is a “proud Southern white nationalist” and claiming that Jews hold too much influence in American government.  White supremacist David Duke gave the keynote speech at the group’s national convention in Wetumpka in June, praising Hill as a “glorious leader.”

“There’s no Southern nationalism without preserving the white race,” Duke said in opening remarks of the two-hour speech, which the League posted to YouTube.

Attempts to reach Hill for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday. So too were efforts to reach Wetumpka resident Mike Whorton, who was the League’s state-level leader when The Anniston Star last spoke to him in 2014.

Duke’s speech to the League was no surprise to Carla Hill, of the ADL. She said the League has joined the Nationalist Front, an umbrella group of white supremacists that includes frank neo-Nazi organizations such as the National Socialist Movement.

Nationalist Front’s various groups have 500 to 1,000 members who will mobilize for marches like the one in Charlottesville, the ADL researcher said.

The Nationalist Front’s website identifies League founder Mike Hill among the top three leaders of the umbrella group. A “unity statement” on the site claims the group “rejects racial supremacy and racial hatred,” but it also quotes Joseph Goebbels, blames financial problems on “Jewish oligarchs” and calls for splitting the U.S. into “ethnostates” for different racial groups.

“They’re trying to maintain common ground,” Carla Hill said of the group. Infighting has been common among far-right organizations, she noted.

The League in recent years has lost many of its more mainstream members as it drifted more toward open racism, she said.

The Donald Trump presidency also seems to have put some pressure on the League’s membership, by promoting right-wing ideas that appeal to potential League members.

“The LOS isn’t happy since the rise of Trump is undercutting their justifications for secession,” wrote Edward Sebesta, a writer who studies neo-Confederate movements, in an email to The Star.

Doggrell, the former Anniston police officer, said he still believes secession would be best for Alabama, though he said he doesn’t recognize the League today.

“There are still some good people in the League, as far as I know,” he said. The leadership, not rank-and-file members, he said, have driven the shift to white nationalism.

Doggrell said he hasn’t been a dues-paying member of the group since 2014. The Anniston Police Department looked into his affiliation with the League in 2009, after he led the formation of a local chapter in Anniston. Doggrell kept his job at the time, but was fired in 2015 after a watchdog group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, posted a video of a 2013 League speech.

Doggrell has sued the city over his firing, saying the city had already approved his membership in the League and changed course only because the SPLC called attention to it. The city’s lawyers argue that Doggrell was fired because he mentioned the Police Department in the League speech and presented the impression that the department endorsed his views.

Doggrell said he isn’t aware of any current League chapter in Anniston. His chapter collapsed in 2010, he said, because of “lack of interest.” The federal government is a top employer in Anniston, home to an Army depot. Doggrell said that’s one reason the League was difficult to promote in Anniston, but not the only one.

“I think it’s a hard sell everywhere,” he said. “It’s a hard line to take. A lot of Southerners have adopted the the idea that secession died at Appomattox.”

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.