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The League of the South is a nationalist, secessionist, movement in the Southern United States.
The League began, apparently in the 1980s, as the Southern League, an organization designed to promote "Southern rights" politically, much in the manner of the Lombard League or Northern League of Italy. The name was changed when it was pointed out that it was identical to one of the leagues of minor league baseball.
The League presents itself as promoting Southern heritage through political and intellectual means. It sees the South as a separate culture from the larger sum of American culture, which it derides as decadent, and appeals to the South's heritage of conservative Christianity. It has a small membership of educators and academics who espouse its viewpoints, and, in their mind, rescue the concept of Southern heritage and the Confederate legacy from thugs, rednecks, and white trash who seem to have appropriated its symbols but have little or no feeling for their real original significance. The group is critical of Abraham Lincoln, Affirmative Action, the Federal Government of the United States, and left-liberals, and it strongly supports states rights and the Second Amendment.
Charges of historical revisionism stem from statements by League members that seemed to justify slavery as having been beneficial for the enslaved as well as the slaveowners. While not expressing a desire to return to slavery, most League members feel that the brutality of Southern slavery has been exaggerated and its many benefits minimized; in short that Gone with the Wind is closer to the facts of history than Uncle Tom's Cabin was.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a controversial anti-hate group, has added the League of the South to its list of watched groups. League members refute charges racism by claiming that the organization has black members.
Interest in the League has been spurred somewhat by the publication within the last decade of books such as The South Was Right. The League has demonstrated a considerable talent for self-promotion, and manages to get considerable news coverage in several Southern markets. It does not make its membership figures available to outsiders; however the SPLC estimates that the organization had about 9,000 members in 2003, with 89 local groups in 17 states.
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