You know, there was a time, not that long ago, when people would say, “But Florida’s not really the South, though. Like not The South the South.” Back when it wasn’t just a swing state but the swing state. Because hey! While there may have been the infamous “Florida Men” with face tattoos getting high on bath salts and getting chased around by methgators and what-have-you, there were the snowbirds and Disney people and others to balance things out enough to make it a toss-up. Plus most of them didn’t seem to have the accent. It was a simpler time.
Well, those days are certainly over, and now Florida is “The South” enough that it is about to elect Marshall Clayton Rawson, a “neo-Confederate” who previously belonged to the white supremacist and antisemitic League of the South, has cheered the execution of gay people, marched at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, and may have operated a pseudonymous social media profile on which he advocated for lynching, to its state Legislature.
Now, the vast majority of this information was known before Rawson won his primary against Chase Brannan, the son of the incumbent term-limited state Rep. Chuck Brannan. Voters were well aware of his involvement with the League of the South, which he characterized as an “activist phase that was really fighting on issues that mattered to everyday people,” and voted for him against another Republican.
The following are just a few of the very normal social media posts and shares that voters were aware of before they chose him in the primary, having been reported by Clay News & Views. Note that several of those shares were from out-and-proud white nationalist Lauren Witzke.
Here he is cheering for the execution of gay people in Uganda.
Here he is explaining that Christians who think slavery and racism are bad must also think that God is bad.
Here he is hating on Dr. Martin Luther King.
What a charming, normal person. I bet he has a lot to say about how scary and violent the Left is!
The new information, reported by Christopher Mathias for Talking Points Memo, is that he marched in Charlottesville (and was even photographed hanging out right by murderer James Alex Fields Jr. and other neo-Nazis carrying shields like a bunch of dorks and very likely operated an even more extreme social media profile under another name.
On top of that, Mathias reports that much of the financial support from his campaign came from the white supremacist pals Rawson met during said “activist” phase, including, but not limited to, the daughter of David Duke.
Via TPM:
Non-League of the South donors include Sam Dickson, a former lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan who became a leading figure in multiple white supremacist groups, including the Council of Conservative Citizens, the National Policy Institute, and the Charles Martel Society. Dickson — who once stated that “Negroes… are hopeless” — gave $1,000 to Rawson’s campaign.
“I was asked to give a donation and I felt he was fighting the good fight and he deserves support,” Dickson told TPM, recounting how Rawson asked him personally for a donation. He’d met Rawson on “multiple occasions” over the years, he explained, including at a conference hosted by James Edwards of the Political Cesspool, a longstanding white supremacist podcast.
Dickson added that Rawson had made it “very clear” to him “that he’s taking a stand against discrimination against white people.”
“I believe that white people, white Christian Americans, European Americans … are entitled to our own nation,” Dickson told TPM, before adding: “Diversity is not a source of strength. Diversity is a source of weakness.”
Honestly, there is a part of me that wishes we could banish all of these creeps to their own special nation, and then, as a parting gift, build them the giant wall they’ve always dreamed of and never let them out again. In fact, I think we should even give them their own internet so they don’t even have to encounter normal people in cyberspace.
In total, Mathias reports, known white supremacists contributed $15,000 to Rawson’s campaign.
As for that social media profile …
The profile photo for the “RockOfDixie” account on X features a bodybuilder flexing on stage. That exact image can be found in an online gallery of photos from the 2016 National Physique Committee’s Galaxy Championships. The bodybuilder in the image is identified as Marshall Rawson, who finished fourth out of six contestants in the competition.
“RockOfDixie” only has three followers on X, one of whom is Rawson’s wife, Megan Rawson. (Megan did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
In one post on RockOfDixie, Rawson appeared to advocate for public lynchings.
“Multiculturalism kills and public lynchings worked,” he wrote in 2018.
Rawson did not reply to questions about whether he was behind the account.
But it sure would be weird if he wasn’t. I would have to assume that someone who opposed public lynchings would have immediately denounced the profile as a fake from someone with psychic abilities who knew he’d be running for office eight years later, but he has not, so far, done that.
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Now, over the last few years, Republicans have been very insistent that we can’t call people “racist” anymore, unless they are “racist” against white people (while another “r” word is now totally acceptable, just because they said it is). They keep saying it over and over again, like a mantra. Like how they keep repeating that they’ve “debunked” the idea that the parties switched sides on issues of racism after the Civil Rights Act or that Nixon’s Southern Strategy ever happened, and that they’ve “debunked” Trump having called Charlottesville Nazis “very fine people.”
The fact is, they actually are good enough at convincing stupid people of this shit to make me start believing that “manifesting” and “The Secret” are real. And, as a result, they manifested this very obviously racist dipshit. They fucking manifested, in Florida, a pro-Confederate Charlottesville marcher who has defended slavery, (likely) called to bring back lynchings, cheered for executing people just for being gay, and they all now have to pretend that’s fine and dandy because “waycism” (as they like to pronounce it) is just something we made up. Just like how Republicans in Texas who are currently running for office or may in the future are afraid to fully condemn Railroad Commission nominee Bo French’s blatantly racist comments about the number of Asian students at a University of Texas event. They all — except Karl Rove???!!! — have to pretend they are okay with any number of horrific comments … or else the bad liberals win.
Not a single Florida Republican has “condemned” or “denounced” Rawson, and it’s highly unlikely that any of them will. In all likelihood, he will be elected to the Florida state Legislature, and they will all likely continue refusing to condemn or denounce him (or just pretend that the media takes anything he says “out of context”). I’d like to say that at some point going this direction is going to bite them in the ass, but I can’t say I’m sure of it.
It’s a heavily Republican area (despite having been solidly Democratic up until 2012), so it would be a pretty big stretch for the Democratic candidate, Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, to pull out a win here, but it sure would be nice if she did. If you’d like to help her out, donate here.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
The OT on this thread is getting a bit out of hand. Please ease up. Thank you.
I *love* Florida. It was where my dad, who I loved more than anything, was happy. (And he was rarely happy.) I love the beaches, the seafood, the docks, the piers, the fishing, the seagulls, the lizards in the beach grass, the salt smell in the air, it's like Heaven to me.
And I *hate* what's been done to it - environmentally, politically, and in part, culturally. I hate its takeover by racists and selfish idiots. It makes me sick to my stomach and so god damned angry.
Sorry to be a downer. But I feel sometimes like a part of my childhood is being destroyed.