(VIDEO) MICHAEL PEROUTKA IS NOT A RACIST – AND HE HAS THE BLACK FRIENDS TO PROVE IT!

When you cavort with white supremacists and you want to play the “I’m Not Racist” game, you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find black people that will support you. Welcome to daylight, “brothers”. Jonathan Hutson of the Huffington Post also covered this press conference, and gives an excellent account of the event.

One People’s Project

GLEN BURNIE, MD – When attorney and former Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka was not on the mainstream political radar screen his associations with white supremacist and neo-confederate groups and individuals were no issue. Now however, since his Republican primary win for a seat on the Anne Arundel County, MD Council, and those associations are being scrutinized, particularly ahis affiliation with the secessionist and white supremacist League of the South, Peroutka held a press conference with two African American supporters to deny charges of racism and to declare he will not distance himself from the organization.

Not only am I NOT a racist, but I am an anti-racist,” Peroutka said. “I have spoken publicly against racism. I’ve gone out of my way to repudiate racism and if there are any racists in the League of the South, I repudiate and will pray for them.”

The League of the South (LOS) has a long history of racism, with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who listed the organization as a hate group, noting in reports its opposition to interracial marriage and it’s leaders defense of slavery as “God-ordained” and segregation as necessary to racial “integrity” of both races, black and white alike. The LOS supports secession similar to the efforts that sparked the Civil War, and its leaders promote a South where while non-White Christians will be allowed to live, they can, according to LOS founder Micheal Hill only if they bowed to “the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions.” LOS members participated in a rally in opposition to the removal of Confederate flags at the tomb of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

Peroutka attempted to smear the SPLC by recalling a August 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council Headquarters in Virginia where the shooter Floyd Corkins cited the organization’s website as a source he used to learn about anti-gay groups. “Providentially, this act of anti-Christian hate was stopped by a security guard, but it points out the dangers of the SPLC, which has labeled about 1000 groups across the country as hate groups smearing together obvious hatred, such as Neo Nazis or the Klan, with groups where the SLPC simply doesn’t like their politics, groups like the Family Research Council and the League of the South,” Peroutka said. “Despite the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center almost enabled an anti Christian massacre, they are somehow still given credence by left-of-center groups and news organizations.”

Unlike Peroutka, who as an LOS member that has appeared on white supremacist radio shows like the Political Cesspool and has accepted the endorsements in past runs for office by white supremaicsts like the late Sam Francis and Taki Theodoracopulos, Corkins, who later pled guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, has never revealed any other association with the SPLC apart from visiting the organization’s website.

After Peroutka spoke two African Americans who have been associated with conservative politics and campaigns in the past spoke in his defense. “I have known Michael for about four or five years now and I can say that I’ve seen no such…anything that would prove that he would be some sort of racist whatsoever,” Eric Knowles said in his brief statement, also noting that “If it’s out there, I’ve never seen it.” Robert Broadus also spoke and noted that despite being black he has also spoke at LOS events. “This group, along with Institute on the Constitution, stood with us when it came to defending marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and this was a very serious fight waged here in Maryland.”

According to a Facebook post last year, Broadus was chairman of Preserve Marriage Maryland, 2010, a delegate to the Southern National Congress, another group that promotes secession, and was scheduled to speak at an LOS event last Sept. 7 about “the partitionist-secessionist movement in Maryland”. Broadus has ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for both the House and the Senate and has appeared on Fox News and the Washington Times as a conservative activist for a number of issues, most notably against the Affordable Care Act, gay rights and immigration. According to the Liberty Roundtable website, he works for Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution and contributes regularly to the group’s website. Knowles is also an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the House and this year for the Mayland State Senate, barely losing the primary to Don Quinn. In 2010, he ran as a Constitution Party candidate for Governor of Maryland.

Carl O. Snowden, of the Caucus of African American Leaders has invited Michael Anthony Peroutka to address the group at its September meeting. In his Wednesday remarks, Peroutka attacked Snowden as someone who after drunk driving and drug convictions, “has been reduced to heading up a civil rights group that he created himself.”

Press conference video

Robert Broadus appears at the 2:55 time mark in this video.