6/29/21 The Sons of Confederate Veterans Include People in Positions of Responsibility

Not all hackers are baddies. Some (called “white-hat hackers” are activists). It was one of the white-hatters who provided The Guardian, a public-interest news publication, with the names and contact information of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate group.

The data sent to the Guardian reveals the names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of almost 59,000 past and present members of the organization, all organized into state chapters. The list includes 91 who used addresses associated with government agencies for their contact email, and 74 who used addresses associated with the armed forces. Thirteen members had emails from The Citadel, a notoriously misogynistic military academy in South Carolina.

"The organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance,” says The Guardian.

That expert is Danny W. Davis, Ph.D, a professor and a program director at Texas A&M University. Davis told The Guardian that he'd joined because three of his great-grandfathers had fought as Confederates. He said he thought the group members were mostly "people like me who are interested in history."

The SCV generally sticks to defending statues of Confederates that are being moved out of the public eye. For instance, last year, the SCV rededicated statues of Jefferson Davis and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest at its National Confederate Museum in Columbia, TN.

But some members also belong to other, more violent neo-Confederate groups, such as the League of the South. Members of that group marched at Unite the Right in Charlottesville, NC in 2017. Also at that rally was SCV member Chester Doles, a former Klansman and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, who marched with the Hammerskins white power gang. He has also been a member of the SCV Motorized Cavalry, a motorcycle club made up of members of SCV.

Ugly, to be sure. Still, we'd rather know about these people than have them hiding in the dark corners of society -- or, worse, in positions that involve the public trust.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/neo-confederate-group-members-politicians-military-officers?fbclid=IwAR3RBEWoWxfbA07lUfilDXZFBIAP7aRxxVH9pX9Na6SqJB89QPesw766xBY