Alabama-based League of the South launches Russian-language page to promote ‘Southern nationalism’
An Alabama organization designated as a white supremacist hate group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is launching a Russian-language page calling on Russia and the American South to become allies.
A letter posted to the League of the South’s website first reported by AL.com spoke of natural similarities between Russian culture and the conservative southerners.
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“As fellow Whites of northern European extraction, we come from the same general gene pool. As inheritors of the European cultural tradition, we share similar values, customs, and ways of life. And as Christians, we worship the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and our common faith binds us as brothers and sisters,” the group’s leader Michael Hill wrote.
Hill’s letter continued that the site’s Russian-language page would be the “first step” toward building “[a] firm and resolute understanding and commitment to cooperation between the Russian people and the people of the South [that] could indeed be the foundation for a better world in which our peoples thrive and prosper far into the future.”
The group’s move to establish the page comes days after President Trump’s bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two leaders spoke about decreasing tensions between their two nations.
Trump was criticized after a press conference including both leaders for appearing to agree with Putin’s dismissal of Russia’s election interference efforts, which he later clarified he did not intend in a statement at the White House.
ADL researchers have recorded chapters of the League of the South group in 16 states, first appearing in 1994 after Hill, a former professor at Stillman College, a historically black school, founded the group.
The group is described by ADL as “espouse[ing] white supremacist ideology and southern nationalism, advocating for an independent southern nation devoid of Jews and other minorities.”
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