The leader of a white supremacist group cited in the racist, hate-filled manifestothat Dylann Roof is believed to have written before last week’s tragic shooting in Charleston has given tens of thousands of dollars in donations to Republican politicians, including presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum, according to federal election records.
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Left unaddressed by all three candidates was why a man who leads a hate group would choose to help fund their campaigns. While there may not be a clear answer to that question, the question itself will now hang over their campaigns as the men struggle to join the current national conversation on race and racism—two topics that most of the GOP field has made it clear they’d prefer to avoid altogether.
The donations were made by Earl Holt III, who is listed as the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens.* According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, that group is the “modern reincarnation” of the network of supremacist groups known as White Citizens’ Councils that cropped up in the 1950s to battle desegregation in the South. The St. Louis-based council makes no secret of its reprehensible views. Its website has referred to blacks as a “retrograde species of humanity,” and claimed “God is the author of racism” because he “divided mankind into different types.” The group’s newspaper, meanwhile, “regularly publishes articles condemning ‘race mixing,’ decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization,” according to the SPLC, which tracks hate groups.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/22/eric_holt_s_gop_donation_hate_group_council_of_conservative_citizens_president.html?wpsrc=slatest_newsletter&sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d
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