League of the South

Introduction

Created in 1994, the League of the South is a self-proclaimed “neo-Confederate” group that seeks a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.”* The League advocates the transformation of southern U.S. states into independent nations in order to protect Southerners of European descent who are “committed to preserving the traditional culture of the South.”* The group promotes itself as pro-South and pro-white, and has levied hateful rhetoric against non-Christians and African Americans, among other minorities. The League further claims that it is not a racist organization, as it deems the word “racist” to be “a slur used by anti-Whites.” Instead, the group argues it is “pro-South and pro-White.”*

The League of the South has warned supporters about the loss of white, Christian culture in America due to what the group calls the “corrupt and corrupting influence of post-Christian culture in America.”* In August 2019, League founder and leader Michael Hill declared that America is in the early stages of a “war for white survival.”* He has written that the “Jew-dominated media” and “Jew-dominated White House” condemn any white person who defends himself as a white supremacist.* During the League’s June 2017 national conference in Alabama, former KKK leader David Duke said that there has been a “purposeful destruction of our country” and praised the League’s “glorious leader,” Michael Hill.*

The League and its founder, Hill, are vehemently antisemitic. Hill has singled out Jews as the international puppeteers behind communism,* multiculturalism and Third World immigration,* and a global agenda to weaken and eventually destroy the white race.* According to Hill, “the Jew has used every means at hand to foster anti-White hatred and malice in the minds of non-Whites,” including “the steady increase across the decades of violent black-on-White crime” to create “a actual physical war against Whiteness.”*

In February 2017, the League of the South created the Southern Defense Force to "combat this growing leftist menace to our historic Christian civilization." League of the South founder Michael Hill noted that the League does not promote violence except in "self-defense of life, liberty, and property," but has called on followers to stand ready by building their firearms and hand-to-hand combat skills. Though Hill officially disavowed the use of violence in an offensive capacity, his inflammatory rhetoric threatens to inspire others to violence, as Hill makes vague and provocative statements such as the assertion that whites will "not only fight back, but relish doing so!"*

On November 23, 2021, a U.S. District Court in Charlottesville found Hill and other organizers of the Unite the Right rally liable in a civil suit that alleged they were responsible for injuries to counter-protesters. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy charges. The two dozen defendants in the lawsuit included Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, event organizer Jason Kessler, and neo-Nazi podcaster Christopher Cantwell, among others. The jury awarded plaintiffs more than $25 million in damages.* In a June 5, 2017, message to Vanguard America commander Dillon Hopper, Heimbach referred to the two of them, National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep, and League of the South leader Michael Hill as the leadership of the far right. Heimbach said the Charlottesville rally would bring them together with other far-right leaders.* During the trial, Hill testified he remained dedicated to his white nationalist beliefs. Defense attorneys presented to the court an April 2019 tweet by Hill that he “would not go back and change a thing.* Hill later addressed the verdict on the League of the South’s website, soliciting support and pledging the League will continue.*

Base of Operations

Killen, Alabama*

Website

leagueofthesouth.com

Membership Size and Relevance

The League of the South claims to maintain chapters in 16 states across the United States. As of February 2023, it had chapters in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.* The group's membership has significantly increased since its founding in 1994. By 1998, the League of the South claimed to have recruited 4,000 members. By 2000, it reportedly had roughly 9,000 members, and in the early 2000s, that number allegedly grew to 15,000 members nationwide. In 2009, Michael Hill claimed that his organization had 25,000 members, but far-right watchdog groups doubted the veracity of this claim.* As of August 25, 2017, more than 7,500 people followed the League of the South's Facebook page, which has since been suspended.* The group's main YouTube channel had received more than 50,000 views as of April 2, 2018.* The page has since been suspended. The YouTube and Facebook pages of individual League of the South chapters remain active. The League of the South created an account on Gettr in June 2022. The account had only 25 followers by February 21, 2023.* The League also created a Gab page in June 2022. As of February 21, 2023, it had only 134 followers.* In contrast, the League’s North Florida chapter’s Gab account—launched in 2020—had 42 followers by that same date.*

In the mid-2000s, the League of the South splintered as many group leaders defected over Hill's increasingly overt racism. However, the group has adapted to internal fissures by mobilizing new followers around mainstream political issues such as immigration and "traditional marriage."*

Recruitment and Propaganda

The League of the South appeals to Southern pride and nationalism by propagandizing that the Southern way of life is under threat. Those who join the group are told that they are joining “a group of Southern Nationalist men and women who are not content to sit by and allow their land, liberty, and culture be destroyed by an alien regime and ideology.”* The League of the South offers membership rates ranging from $30 for students to $1,000 for “sustaining” members.* To spread its propaganda, the League maintains a social-media presence through Facebook and YouTube. It also hosts annual conferences and distributes newsletters. The League has also set up an online store to sell uniforms, shirts, baby clothes, mugs, totes, and other merchandise brandishing the group’s name and logo. The store is hosted by the League’s Florida chapter through a WordPress website.*

The League of the South also provides multilingual international editions of its propaganda in Chinese, Hungarian, and Russian.*

To further promote its successionist agenda, the League of the South planned a Southern National conference on June 3-4, 2022, in Lake City, Florida.*“2022 Southern National Conference, League of the South, accessed April 29, 2022, https://leagueofthesouth.com/2022-annual-conference/. x Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke was among the invited speakers.*Michael Hill, “Speakers for the 2022 League national conference,” League of the South, March 28, 2022, https://leagueofthesouth.com/speakers-for-the-2022-league-national-conference/.x Other speakers included Hill and Kevin McDonald, who spoke about the pervasiveness of Jewish power and the Jewish plot to undermine American democracy. The Florida League of the South chapter posted clips of Duke and other speakers at the conference to its YouTube page. Some of the clips of Duke’s speech were deleted for violating YouTube’s hate speech policies, but they were reuploaded and remained online as of February 2023.*

Violent Activities

At least one member of the League of the South has been linked to political violence and domestic terrorism plots.

Rhetoric

  • League of the South, Gettr post, January 24, 2023: “CAPTION THIS: Dissident Right warriors as we are called ... defended and defeated antifa scum and blm scum in the streets of Charlottesville, VA on 12 August 2017 and took one of the leftist's banners as a prize possession. Of sorts: capturing the enemy's flag. What a glorious day! The League of the South has the strongest leaders in this movement and by far we are the only organization standing with the same leaders after Charlottesville. Yahweh bless our leaders and may you continue to guide our organization.”*
  • Michael Hill, Gettr post, January 21, 2023: “The sooner Ukraine is defeated, the sooner things will get better for the working- and middle-class. Of course, the elites will lose their primary location for money laundering, sex trafficking, and bio lab mischief, among other criminal activities. So you can see why they are desperate to keep their boy Zelensky in power and this scam up and running.--Michael Hill”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 30, 2022: “Those who have supported the more than half century of revolution that has virtually destroyed the foundations of the West are the avowed enemies of those of us who wish to preserve the Western Christian inheritance from our forebears. Do you understand that? You are our enemies because either your action or inaction has put in danger our entire civilization.”*
  • Michael Hill, Gettr post, June 16, 2022: “The same people who lied about Charlottesville are now lying about the January 6th ‘insurrection.’ They are not only liars but communist criminals who staged a couple d'etat at the ballot box in November 2020. They are pushing their New Red Terror rapidly, before opposition from the rousing White working- and middle-class can be effectively organized and mobilized against them. But they know that opposition is coming, and they are quite nervous about it. As they should be . . .--Michael Hill”*
  • League of the South, Gettr post, June 14, 2022: “We believe that secession and Southern independence are the keys to our survival as a people in the 21st century & beyond. Without our independence from the forces that openly call for and seek our destruction, the Southern people will be subsumed by a non-White majority in America. We and our progeny will become a hated minority with no rights to life, liberty, and property. Our lives will be forfeit.”*
  • Kevin McDonald, League of the South National Conference, June 3-4, 2022: “Jews are sort of natural Bolsheviks in the sense that they don’t believe in democracy, they want authoritarian government and top-down control where they are the elite. And that’s what happened in the Soviet Union, for the first decades anyway. But America, this democracy presented problems to them. They had to have a different way of going about it. You couldn’t just have a putsch like they did with the Bolshevik Revolution, which was a very narrow thing by the way. It was not a popular uprising. But anyway, with America they had to deal with democracy and that means you got multiple sources of power. But they figured it out, shall we say. Money is power. Media is power. Look at where are the power centers in society. Media, the academic world, and money are basically the key because you can fund these lobbies. You can fund political parties. And this is how you control democracy. And so it’s becoming increasingly apparent that is what is happening. You gotta figure that people in the know, in Washington, if you know what’s really going on, you know that Jewish power is enormous.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, March 28, 2022: “The South simply cannot afford to stay in this rapidly disintegrating American Empire and go down with the sinking ship. But to successfully break free and leave, we must prepare the groundwork for that moment, and that’s what The League has been doing for more than a quarter century. We are the only serious Southern nationalist organization that survived Charlottesville and its aftermath.”*Michael Hill, “Speakers for the 2022 League national conference,” League of the South, March 28, 2022, https://leagueofthesouth.com/speakers-for-the-2022-league-national-conference/.x
  • Michael Hill, blog post, March 12, 2022: “When the American Empire, and the perverted Western liberal democracy that it upholds, comes falling down, what will replace it? What will fill the vacuum?Since the end of WWII, despite an overblown and over-hyped Cold War with the USSR (1945-1991), the United States, and all those pulled in its mighty wake, has been by far the most dominant force in the world by every geopolitical and economic measure. The world had one real Superpower. It was a unilateral world system that dominated, especially after the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The US pretty much did whatever it wanted. After all, who was going to stop it? What it did was to corrupt the world morally and attempt to enslave it financially.”*Michael Hill, “The Fall of the Empire, League of the South, March 12, 2022, https://leagueofthesouth.com/the-fall-of-the-empire/.x
  • Michael Hill, testimony in a civil trial regarding the 2017 Unite the Right rally, November 2021: “I pledge to be a white supremacist, racist, antisemite, homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe and any other sort of phobe that benefits my people, so help me God. I still hold those views.”*
  • Michael Hill, radio interview after giving testimony in a civil trial regarding the 2017 Unite the Right rally, November 2021: “I’m very honored … to have gotten to face off with this New York Jew attorney.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 26, 2021: “The USA is now a global laughingstock and its days are literally numbered. The Southern states should move immediately to get off this sinking ship before it goes under. We encourage our elected officials on the state and local government levels to begin the process of devolution as soon as possible. Our civilization’s survival will depend on how our people handle this deepening crisis. We can start by preparing ourselves, our families, and our local communities and our states for self-sufficiency, self-protection, and self-government. The day has come for the secession and independence of the Southern states. It is now both necessary and desirable.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, January 29, 2021: “The League of the South, the premier Southern nationalist organization (1994-present), stands with the Southern people (and other good Americans) against the incipient communist regime that is now in power in Washington, DC. This regime has unequivocally determined that ‘we, the people’–the White middle- and working-class–is the enemy, declaring us to be nothing less than ‘domestic terrorists.’”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, December 9, 2020: “The current election debacle is raging proof that we in The League have been right all along: Secession is preferable to living in a fraudulent system.
    “Therefore, we call on all the states that voted for Donald Trump to separate themselves from the states that legitimately voted for Joe Biden. As political bodies, we have nothing in common. A commonly-agreed-upon divorce would be the peaceful way of settling a situation that otherwise can only end in bloody conflict. But if the left insists, then we will do whatever is necessary to protect the ancient liberties given us by our honorable ancestors.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 28, 2020: “If one largely untrained, but skilled, 17-year-old young White man can cause this much fear & angst among BLM/Antifa and their supporters, think what 1,000 trained, skilled, experienced, and dedicated White men could accomplish. Maybe that’s coming together right now, who knows? If that’s what is takes to preserve our lives, liberties, and property–our civilization–then let it be.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, June 1, 2020: “International Jewry has continually pushed for non-White ‘civil rights’ in tandem with open-border, Third World immigration. The target was the White Man–America–for there would be no America as we know it without the White Man.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, June 1, 2020: “Over the last half century, the Jew has used every means at hand to foster anti-White hatred and malice in the minds of non-Whites. Slowly, as exemplified by the steady increase across the decades of violent black-on-White crime, there unfolded an actual physical war against Whiteness. Attacks on Whites have been justified in the Jew lugenpresse because of slavery, Jim Crow, institutionalized ‘racism,’ etc. Whites are evil oppressors; non-Whites (including the poor Jews, of course) are perpetual victims. And the hatred runs very deep.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, June 1, 2020: “Seeing that Whites have no champion in government and that they are literally on their own, the Jew has moved his New Red Terror into a fresh, and perhaps final, stage: the Final Solution of the White Problem. I said years ago that the US, if Whites did not take a firm stand, would devolve into Rhodesia/South Africa. That day seems now at hand. If non-Whites can riot, loot, burn cities, and assault and kill people with impunity, why do you think you’ll be safe in your little neighborhood? Do you think they’ll send in heavily-armed troops to protect you when they won’t even fire a shot in defense of their own police stations and city buildings? White will and resistance is what the Jew is now testing.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, May 26, 2020: “The following article is very important to understanding what anti-White Jews are up to regarding their plans for 2020. In essence, they have launched an all-out attack against Southern/White nationalists using every trick in their satanic book. Fight back and don’t let them win!”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, February 21, 2020: “Because Jews control the media, there is no danger of ‘Hunters’ being de-platformed as ‘hate.’ In fact, those who speak out against this crude piece of vile anti-White propaganda are the ones likely to lose access to social media, among other things.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, February 21, 2020: “Having studied Jew behavior for many years, I can say with assurance that there is not another group more hypocritical nor prone to telling lies. After all, Christ Himself called them liars and children of the father of lies (Satan) in John 8:44. Their modus operandi for the last 2000 years has been to play the victim, accusing their enemies (chiefly White Christians) of doing to them (Jews) what they themselves plan on doing to Whites.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, February 21, 2020: “The Holocaust, the world’s biggest and most lucrative con game, has become a religion in the West, Auschwitz taking the place of Calvary and the eternally-victimized Jew taking the place of Christ. The Holocaust has been used to cover a multitude of Jew sins, from the Holodomor (a true holocaust) to the current attempt to destroy all White countries through massive non-White immigration and the demonization of Whites who oppose such as ‘White nationalists’ or White supremacists.’ In the end, the Jew does to you exactly what he accuses you of having done to him. So when he speaks of a real holocaust, you can be sure that he intends for you to be the victim, White Man.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 21, 2019: “Historically, Jews have propagated virulent anti-White and anti-Christian ideas.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 21, 2019: “The biggest temporal threat to Jew world hegemony, and hence the primary target for their ‘culture of critique,’ is a resurgence of nationalism among Whites, especially White Christians, and especially in the American South. Blood and soil nationalism, meaning an organic system in which a racially- and culturally-distinct people inhabit a certain geographical territory and seek their own particular interests to the exclusion of other ‘out groups’ (especially Jews and other non-Whites) is anathema to the international Jew . . . except when it comes to the ethno-nationalist state of Israel.”*
  • Michael Hill, August 6, 2019: “We are in the early stages of a war for White survival. As Southern nationalists, we will do our work for the survival and prosperity of our people on the lands we love–Dixie. From the plains of Texas, to the hills of Alabama, to the bluegrass of Kentucky, and every place in between, we will defend our patrimony like the blessing it is.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post March 28, 2017: “With each passing day, we move closer to open conflict in America–civil war, if you will–between the forces of Western Civilization (which is founded on a biblical understanding of nationalism) and the forces of Judeo-Marxism or godless international leftism in general.”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, September 22, 2016: “Feral negroes and those puppeteers who control their actions had best be careful not to take their street theater too far from the urban kraals in which it has thus far been confined. When they hit the suburbs, the small towns, and the rural areas of the South, there is going to be a surprise awaiting them: white people who not only fight back, but relish doing so!”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, August 18, 2016: “I remember a time when I felt comfortable pretty much everywhere I went, from the rural, the suburban, to the urban. And the reason was simple: the white European man was clearly in control of all those areas. I never thought of taking a pistol with me when I went to downtown Birmingham, or Memphis, or Atlanta. The South, in particular, was still thoroughly White Man’s Land (but that was slowly changing because of the federal government’s involvement in forcing “civil rights” for negroes down our throats).”*
  • Michael Hill, blog post, July 12, 2016: “If you put every negro in America in California or Texas with its present great wealth and infrastructure, those places would turn into uncivilized hell holes in no time at all. Negroes cannot maintain white civilization, and they surely cannot build it on their own.”*
  • League of the South board member Jack Kershaw, 1998: “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?”*
  • Frequently Asked Questions, League of the South website, undated: “‘Racist’ is a slur used by anti-Whites. We are pro-South and pro-White.”*

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Fact:

On January 23, 2019, two car bombs exploded outside of a mosque in Benghazi, Libya, killing 41 people and injuring 80 others. No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but remnants suggested an ISIS affiliate was responsible.  

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