Moscow pastor agrees with Trump on Charlottesville tragedy

By Nick Gier
Reader Columnist

There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed
with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.

—Douglas Wilson, Pastor of Moscow’s Christ Church

I equate Black Lives Matter with the Klan.
Hatred and murder are to be reprobated, period.

—Wilson

In an August 16, 2017 blog post entitled “In Praise of Our President,” Douglas Wilson, pastor of Moscow’s Christ Church, wrote that “Trump refused to be steered by mob action, and when two evil groups clashed violently, he refused to take sides.”

Wilson commended Trump for identifying “the game plan that is being run on us all by the violent Left.” That plan was the removal of monuments dedicated to Confederate leaders and their battle flag, but how could this be a leftist plot if Southern mayors, legislators, and governors have been at the forefront of this movement?

Southern Legislators Remove Flags and Statues

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, President of the subversive U.S. Conference of Mayors, has led an effort to remove all the major Confederate monuments from his city. Landrieu promised that they will not be destroyed: “We can remember these divisive chapters in our history in a museum or other facility where they can be put in context.”

When Nikki Haley, Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador, was governor of South Carolina, she signed a bill that removed the Confederate flag from the Statehouse. A conservative House and Senate voted 130-23 in support of the legislation. Haley declared: “This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state.”

Robert E. Lee: No Monuments, Please

It is significant to note that Robert E. Lee did not wish to see monuments erected to memorialize fallen Confederate soldiers. He explained: “I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.” No Confederate flags were flown at his funeral in 1870, and none of those veterans present, including the general himself, wore their battle uniforms. Lee’s daughter wrote: “His Confederate uniform would have been ‘treason’ perhaps.”

Neo-Confederate League of the South at Charlottesville

One of the “evil groups” at the Charlottesville protest was the neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS). In a July 24 tweet, LOS president Michael Hill declared: “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August.”

On April 11, 2015, the LOS had held an event celebrating the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The invitation on the LOS Facebook page read as follows: “Join us in April to celebrate the great accomplishment of John Wilkes Booth. He knew a man who needed killing when he saw him”! Former Klansman David Duke actually thinks that Lincoln was a Marxist.

Former Klansman David Duke Keynotes LOS Convention

David Duke was invited to give the keynote address at the LOS 2017 National Convention. His main message was that the LOS must continue to fight for the preservation of the white European race. He rejected the designation “white supremacist” claiming that the only supremacists are the Jews, whom he believes run the country. However, I’m sure that Duke would agree with the LOS on “the natural societal order of superiors and subordinates.” Included in the latter are African Americans, “a compliant and deadly underclass,” as in LOS President Hill describes them.

LOS President: Arm Yourself for a Race War

In May 2015, Hill warned that “if negroes think a race war in modern America would be to their advantage, they had better prepare themselves for a very rude awakening.” Back in 2011, according to the Anti-Defamation League, “Hill was urging his followers to arm themselves and ‘join the resistance.’ The LOS began offering members weapons training around this time.”

On May 30, 2015, LOS members joined a small contingent from the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in a rally in Alexandria, Kentucky. Under the banner “Feds Out of Kentucky,” a spokesman declared that it was good to work together with the LOS “to rid this country, starting with our own states, of the Zionist Jewry that decays our people, our states and our nation.”

Wilson Defends Slavery with LOS Founder Steve Wilkins

At one time Michael Hill was a member of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana. The church’s pastor Steve Wilkins was a LOS founding director, and in 1996 he teamed up with our own Wilson to write Southern Slavery As It Was. This sentence sums up the book’s message: “There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”

On January 16, 2004, Wilson wrote to his congregation about Wilkins and the League of the South. He explained that Wilkins resigned from the LOS Board not because he thought the organization was racist, but because he had moved on to other priorities. The problem of course is that the LOS has been racist from the beginning and continues to be, as LOS President Hill’s statement clearly indicates above.

Wilson Offers “Mild” Support for LOS

In his memo to Christ Church members, Wilson offered “mild” support for the LOS, and he disagreed only with their belief in secession from the union and reconstituting the Old South along white nationalist lines. LOS protesters are frequently holding huge signs that simply say “Secede”! Wilson proposes a different strategy: he would rather reform the evangelical church and convert the nation to his version of Christianity. As he states: “the only one who can deliver whites from their resentments and hatreds is the Lord Jesus.”

Wilson: The South Was Right and “Will Rise Again”

Wilson is not always consistent in his views. In his self-published book Angels in the Architecture (1998), he predicted that by God’s will “the South will rise again.” In a feature article in The Spokesman Review, he admitted “Confederate flags have adorned office and [his] school walls at times,” and I possess an image of Robert E. Lee’s portrait in Wilson’s Logos School.

In an interview with Christianity Today, Wilson affirmed that “the South was right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war. I would define a neo-Confederate as someone who thinks we are still fighting that war. Instead, I [as a paleo-Confederate] would say we’re fighting in a long war, and that [the Civil War] was one battle that we lost.”

Moscow Chamber Head Praises Robert E. Lee

On August 5, 2004, the Moscow Chamber of Commerce held a retreat, and Paul Kimmel, Chamber Executive Director and Christ Church congregant, gave a presentation on leadership. He chose Robert E. Lee as a model for business leaders to follow. He concluded his PowerPoint presentation with a display of Old Glory and the Stars and Bars side-by-side. Kimmel later publicly apologized for his indiscretion, but Wilson has never repented for bringing the neo-Confederacy, including visits by Steve Wilkins, to Moscow.

At Least One Hold-Out at Christ Church

Douglas Jones was at one time Wilson’s former right-hand man and he was co-author of Angels in the Architecture. But almost a decade later he had had a change of heart. In a 2007 essay “Take Down That Flag” in the Christ Church journal Credenda Agenda, Jones argued that the defeat of the Southern forces was obviously a sign of divine wrath. Instead of acknowledging the South’s sins, neo-Confederates instead boast about “their proud legacy and dwell on the sins of their accusers.” Jones recommended that they should burn their flag and wear the ashes as a sign of repentance.

Wilson: KKK and Black Lives Matter Morally Equivalent

In his blog post Wilson admitted to a respondent that he had indeed “equated Black Lives Matter with the Klan. Why, yes, I did. Hatred and murder are to be reprobated, period.” I challenge Wilson to find any leader of Black Lives Matter preaching hate or encouraging murder.

In stark contrast, here are the words of a Klan leader. In an interview with Univision’s Ilia Calderon, Christian Barker, the imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, called Calderon the “N” word, and declared that “we’re going to burn you (Hispanics) out. We killed 6 million Jews the last time. Eleven million is nothing.”

Tens of Thousands of Peaceful Protestors

A week after the Charlottesville tragedy, tens of thousands protested peacefully in Boston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, and Laguna Beach. An estimated 40,000 showed up in Boston, and apart from 27 arrests for disorderly conduct, the protestors were peaceful. A small group harassed a man wearing a Trump hat, but the Associated Press reported that “other counter-protesters intervened and helped the man safely over a fence where the conservative rally was to be staged.”

Many False Claims about Antifa

Black-clad members of Antifa, a small anti-Fascist organization, have been responsible for disrupting dozens of right-wing talks and rallies across the country. Antifa and peaceful protestors are not allies, whereas the LOS, the KKK, and the neo-Nazis coordinate their hate-filled actions. I join many others in strongly condemning Antifa’s attempts to undermine free speech rights.

Charges that Antifa has committed violence against individual white nationalists have not been proved or are outright false. Snopes.com has shown that an alleged Antifa manual that urges violence and a flyer calling for the murder of white children are fraudulent documents. The anti-Semitic language in the latter is actually evidence that it was made by a white nationalist. An alleged Antifa knife attack on a man in Sheridan, Colorado on August 24 turned out to be self-inflicted. See more exoneration of Antifa at snopes.com.

Right-Wing Extremists Kill 275; Antifa Kills None

Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, reports that “over the past decade, extremists of every stripe have killed 372 Americans, and 74 percent of those killings were committed by right wing extremists. Only 2 percent of those deaths were at the hands of left wing extremists,” and none by Antifa members. Antifa activists do not carry guns, but most white nationalists do.

Trump Changes His Mind, but Will Wilson?

Wilson must reconsider his position now that Trump has backed away from his comments blaming both sides, claiming that the media distorted his remarks. Turning to his Dr. Jekyll persona, this is what he said about the August 19 Boston protestors: “I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate.”

We know that Trump is a rank opportunist and a dishonest man, but Wilson claims to be a man of God. Those who would still cast equal blame on both sides are nothing but moral reprobates.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. He can be reached at [email protected].