The irony that the city where the second war for American Independence went ‘real’ is the same place that another American Revolution seemingly began is not lost on us. In 1861, Charleston Harbor was where disagreements erupted into a hot war. And in 2015, a Charleston Church was where another political upheaval erupted.
In both cases, the result would be bloodshed and destruction. But imagine, just for a moment, that the aftermath of “Charleston Act II” was a fraudulent hoax perpetrated on the American people. For example, what if….the photograph that launched the war on American history was ‘retouched’? There have been various allegations made by observers. HK Edgerton, past president of the Asheville, NC NAACP made the charge on May 20, 2018, but he was not the first, nor the last. Critics of the Roof photographs began shortly after the images were ‘discovered’ on Lastrhodesian.com. Recently, on our June 'members only' event, a Venezuelan ex-pat familiar with the psycho-manipulative tactics used by Chavez and his successor regarding Simon Bolivar, and an expert in digital imagery, charged the photo was ‘retouched’. How much of a bon faux was the image? Criticism of the images of Dylan Roof with the Confederate Flag began shortly after the image emerged. Several videos on Youtube, now removed, identified issues with pixels and shadows, and finger and hand positions. One deleted video suggested the way Roof was holding the flag looked more like he was holding a beer bottle. Another analysis criticized the flag stick for being all one color of pixels, which would not have been realistic. The Centre for Research on Globalization posted an article in 2015 was critical of the photos not because of the Confederate flag but because of a patch on Roof’s jacket and caution that “In an era of mass illusion where digital representations can be so easily and convincingly altered to accommodate or bolster a specific story line, the importance of such analysis cannot be understated. Like the Sandy Hook School shootings, the Charleston Church massacre represents an emotionally potent and divisive powder keg, especially because it is positioned to draw on conflicting sets of socio-cultural experience, identity, and history.” And this analysis doesn’t consider the sanitary mechanics of the lastrhodesian.com website. The domain name was originally purchased for 90 days, which in itself is unusual. According to the Wayback machine, the site and its content was only active for about 60 days, disappearing by August 1, 2015 – 45 days after the shooting. Then there is the matter of the photos. All the photos were uploaded in a .zip file, rather than displayed for browsing. Who would do that? A nice, neat package readily downloadable by ‘the media’. What has happened since then?
Anti-fa terrorists have occupied large American cities burning and beating civilians.
Disrespecting The National Anthem and the US flag has become fashionable.
Sports teams with public subsidies have funded the removal of historic American monuments.
The Civic landscape has been ‘re-decorated’ as acceptable in an ever widening purge of American history starting with Nikki Haley’s removal of the memorial flag in South Carolina to the City of Boston’s removal of Abraham Lincoln in Park Square.
The American economy and civil rights has been tested with the COVID pandemic.
FBI’s objectivity has been tarnished as they relied on faked oppo research on candidate Trump.
President Biden abruptly withdrew American forces from Afghanistan.
Harvey Weinstein and a myriad of others were ‘cancelled’ by #metoo.
Dozens of deadly shootings at schools, clubs, churches and mosques.
China is suppressing freedom in Hong Kong.
A 16-year-old became the world authority on environmental science.
President Trump was impeached regarding Ukraine and President Biden’s son was linked to Ukraine graft and now Ukraine is in a war with Russia.
Two seemingly unrelated deaths ignited riots, looting, burning in cities around the nation.
“Defunding the police” has become a campaign issue for Democratic candidates.
Everything from pancake syrup and butter, to showing an ID when voting an election is branded ‘racist’.
So, who would profit from the “Confederate Hoax”? Whose fingerprints were on the early reports about the photograph? None other than the Southern Poverty Law Center and their trial lawyer President, Richard Cohen. The SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded by a trial lawyer, Morris Dees. Starting out with a good mission, the SPLC, over the years, has seemingly devolved into a “Demogogic Bully” and a track record of “successfully fundraising by demonizing respectable political opponents as “hate groups” according to Mark Pulliam’s 2017 City Journal article. The exposé suggests the war on the Confederate Flag and the ensuing 1500 targeted sites including trees, street names and even county names with Southern themes, was nothing more than the next in a long line of SPLC fundraisers. The article even quotes a former SPLC lawyer, Gloria Browne, who charged that SPLC programs were "calculated to cash in on black pain and white guilt.” This project may be the SPLC’s biggest. Pulliam calls the history war a “breathtaking initiative” that would remove 1,503 "symbols of the Confederacy in Public Places" and it “entails the classic elements of the SPLC’s finely honed demagoguery: false association of a repugnant killer with the SPLC’s target, in this case, Confederate symbols; raising the specter of racism to suppress dissent; and exploiting a divisive issue for fundraising purposes.” Six years later, on June 17, 2021, the SPLC crowed that they had been successful in removing 170 “Confederate Monuments”. But one thing most people will agree, we’re not ‘better off’ now than we were before June 17, 2015. Of course, there is no ‘conclusive’ evidence yet of this hoax, and the Confederate flag has been so effectively vilified that it may take a lifetime to heal the damage. Remember Jesus says to Nicodemus, "though the light has come into the world, people have preferred darkness to the light" (John 3:19).
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