Michael Hill
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| “ | I pledge to be a white supremacist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, and any other sort of ‘phobe that benefits my people, so help me God! | „ |
| ~ Michael Hill, August 2016 |
Michael Hill (born 1951) is an American white supremacist who is the co-founder and current leader of the Neo-Confederate group, the League of the South, an organization aligned with the Alt-Right. Hill is known for his extremist views, which include anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, anti-immigration, Islamophobia, Christian Identity, and pro-slavery, among other bigoted beliefs.
Background edit
Hill taught British history at Stillman College, a historically black college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for eighteen years until 1998. Building on the views of his mentors at the University of Alabama, he published two books on the Celts, romanticizing the "Celtic" soldier.
In 1994, Hill co-founded the League of the South, a pro-Southern secession organization, with Reverend J. Steven Wilkins of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana and thirty-nine other Neo-Confederates. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers the League of the South to be a hate group. In 1995, Hill established a chapter of the League of the South on the campus of his alma mater, the University of Alabama.
With Thomas Fleming, Hill co-authored an article entitled "New Dixie Manifesto" in The Washington Post in June 1995. The "League" venerates what it calls the south's "Celtic" heritage, advocating a version of racist pseudohistory in which (white) southerners are alleged to descend from Scottish and Irish immigrants and the "liberal" north is alleged to descend primarily from English immigrants.
Michael Hill's speeches make frequent reference to the movie Braveheart, and he often states that a war between the "Celtic" south and the English north is "inevitable". In an Abbeville speech he asked the crowd "What would it take to get you to fight? … What would it take to turn you into a William Wallace?" in reference to the main character from the movie Braveheart. His supporters also support and glamorize groups like the Irish Republican Army and the Scottish Nationalist Party. The notion that the south is "Celtic" and the North is "English" has been dismissed by scholars on numerous grounds. It both provides a justification for the civil war that is based on a psuedoscientific racial determinism and which also does not include the southern states explicitly seceding for the sake of preserving slavery. Furthermore it has been pointed out that proponents of the theory define numerous parts of southern and central England as "Celtic", in order to make the numbers work, and it ignores the fact that even amongst the working classes immigrants from Scotland and Ireland were massively outnumbered in the south by English indentured servants by a collective margin of roughly 5:1 (with groups like the Scots-Irish not being the largest immigrant group at this time as Hill and his group claim, but rather they are the largest non-English group) and that in the 1980 census when people were asked what their ancestry or ethnicity was, a large majority of southerners self-identified as being of English ancestry.
Hill tried to revive the Southern Party in 2003. A decade later, in 2013, Hill promoted "opposition to immigration and same-sex marriage." In June 2015, he spoke out in defense of slavery and white supremacy, stating that his views were backed up by science.
He spoke in support of the Christchurch mosque shootings perpetrated by Brenton Tarrant in March 2019, saying he had "no sympathy for dead Muslims" and that they should all "go to Hell."
He has stated that he idolizes noted segregationist George Wallace.
Hill has ties to numerous other white supremacist groups, including the White Citizens' Council, Posse Comitatus, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and the Imperial Klans of America.
Hill began venturing into terrorism territory when he created a paramilitary wing for the League of the South, called "the Indomitables". The unit was tasked with advancing a second southern secession by any means necessary and embodied the increasingly extreme rhetoric of the group. “The primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run,” wrote Hill on the League’s website. He concluded the essay by quoting Psalms: “Blessed be the Lord my strength who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.”
In May 2015, Hill published what was probably his most provocative essay yet, pontificating about the possibility of an American “race war” and warning black Americans of “a very rude awakening” if such a war developed.