Backbiting and Infighting: The Florida League of the South Online
Michael Hill’s desire to build his unruly neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS) into a well-organized fighting group is best exemplified by Hill’s chief of staff, Michael Tubbs, and the Florida chapter. A disgraced Green Beret, Tubbs has used his position as chairman of the Florida League of the South (FLOS), to shape the FLOS into a well-organized, uniform group that might serve as an example to other League chapters.
Despite the apparent real-world success of Tubbs’s spit-and-shine strategy, recent eruptions on social media reveal discord and dissent among the ranks even under the watchful eye of Hill’s most trusted lieutenant.
Last month, a thread started on Stormfront surrounding Hatewatch’s coverage of the formation of the “Southern Defense Force.” Titled “Southern Defense Formed League of the South,” it included discussion of the Kentucky chapter’s participation in former Matt Heimbach’s Pikeville event in April.
After some debate over whether the League was “NS [National Socialist] and would distance themselves from those kind of groups,” one poster shared separate images of League members and noted the presence of:
“… the two Mexicans in the back row, each holding a flag. In the middle picture, notice the mulatto in the back row. In the bottom picture, notice the same mulatto from the middle picture, this time with a full-fledged black.”
The thread was shared on a LOS Facebook group by a non-member posting in the League’s “Unofficial Hangout” under a pseudonym. The son of the “Mexicans” in question, Chris Cedeno, is a Cuban “lone leaguer” from the Miami area who took great exception to the perceived slur against his racial pedigree.
LOS members quickly rushed to Cedeno’s defense, with Renee Griffin, daughter of Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) founder Gordon Baum and wife of Occidental Dissent’s Brad Griffin, noting, “[o]nly an ignoramus doesn’t know there are Spanish Cubans.”
Tubbs, Cedeno’s chairman, acknowledged the bind that Cedeno’s ethnicity puts the League in by stating “Chris has done more fore [sic] the cause of Southern Nationalism, Florida’s Independence and White supremacy in one 24 hour period than 99 9999% of Florida’s native White population have done in their life times.
Cedeno’s response?
“Except lynching negroes, I unfortunately have yet to do that …”
What Griffin and other LOS members seemed to miss in the post was not an argument about European heritage in Cuba, but an assertion that in a white nationalist movement like LOS, pigment and melanin count matters.
While the issue is apparently squarely settled in the Florida League camp, this will likely not sit well with the white nationalist community at large, which already looks askance at Hill’s bizarre conception of southerners as an ethnically distinct people from other whites.
As for the “mulatto” described in the original Stormfront post, neither Hill nor Tubbs rose to defend the contributions, character, or whiteness of Jeremy Walls.
Jeremy Walls is a tattoo artist currently residing in Guntown, Mississippi. He has long been affiliated with the racist right in that area.
Walls was involved with the League for several years before he was ejected after Hatewatch revealed that he had been charged with the improper touching of two teens in Mississippi. Having since been cleared in that case, Walls has continued to turn up around League events, most recently the Arkansas League’s state conference in late 2015, where he engaged in an altercation with a black library employee.
Walls’s presence in the League has continued to cause friction, particularly with the Florida crowd. This week the same LOS forum erupted over an altercation between Lake City residents Brad and Mary Barlow and Walls. From Barlow’s post:
While the cause of the spat remains unclear, the fallout has been sizeable. League president Michael Hill felt it necessary to voice his support of Mrs. Barlow, stating:
Mary Barlow has The League’s complete faith and trust. We will not tolerate her being insulted. Mr. Walls is no longer a member of The League. Anyone else who bad-mouths her may lose their membership as well.
There has been no word yet as to whether Walls will be disinvited from participating in future League events. The “wendell winkler” in question likely refers to Shaun Winkler, who joined the League this year and was photographed with Michael Hill at their national conference. There has been no mention of him being ejected from the League for his role in the fracas.
Petty as they may be, these incidents reveal the friction and discontent that lie beneath the militaristic veneer of Michael Tubbs’s FLOS.
