Jack Hunter on CNN: “I was wrong about the flag”

Editor of Rare news magazine Jack Hunter appeared on CNN this morning to argue in favor of the removal of the Confederate flag from the state grounds in South Carolina.

Famous for having formerly been known as the “Southern Avenger,” Hunter issued his mea culpa initially in a column on the Daily Beast, and described the ugliness of the response by conservative when a police officer manhandled a black female teenager in a viral video.

Jack wrote: 

The week before a white supremacist murdered nine black men and women in my hometown of Charleston, I was angry at my fellow conservatives.

A 14-year-old black girl attending a pool party in McKinney, Texas, had been manhandled and thrown to the ground by a police officer. The girl had done nothing except talk. She was just standing there with other teenagers.

It was revolting to watch. I asked others to imagine it was their daughter.

The overwhelming response was that she was a “thug” who was “no saint” and needed to be taught “respect.” The comments were as revolting as the act—an adult mob praising the assault of a 100-pound, half-naked and scared black kid. Ipleaded again for people to stop defending this. It got uglier.

It bothered me greatly, probably because at one time I might have done the same thing.

In my role as a conservative radio personality, I would’ve likely joined in in calling a group of excited black teenagers, or protesters, “thugs.” I might have called illegal immigrants criminals or worse. Muslims would’ve been slandered asterrorists.

Ugliness was a stock-in-trade.

Hunter’s views have apparently evolved over the years from a paleo-conservative perspective, to a more libertarian one. The ill-fated “paleo strategy” employed by Murray Rothbard, Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell, and Ron Paul has cast a heavy, and long shadow over the liberty movement. Their attempt to court racist rednecks in the early 90’s through a series of newsletters was a millstone around Paul’s neck during his two presidential runs in 2008 and 2012. Jack Hunter’s distancing himself from that movement and the iconography of Southern Nationalism is a positive step towards a liberty movement more focused on the politics of limited government, and less about race.

The Freedom Report podcast broke down the history of paleo-conservatism, the Charleston shooter, and neoconfederates in the liberty movement on our show the other day. You can click to listen at this link.

Why The Liberty Movement Should Distance Themselves From The Confederacy