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It鈥檚 no secret that Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate hate group League of the South (LOS), is a racist with a deep-seated contempt for black people and a more-than-rosy view of his 鈥淎nglo-Celtic鈥� landsmen.

The former professor, who for 18 years taught history at a historically black college in Alabama, has long opposed racial intermarriage, defended segregation as a policy designed to protect the 鈥渋ntegrity鈥� of both the black and the white races, and described antebellum slavery as 鈥淕od-ordained.鈥�

Despite all this, it has until recently been easy enough to dismiss Hill as a garden-variety bigot. But with a bellicose essay published this June on the LOS website, Hill revealed himself as a white supremacist with views that are essentially indistinguishable from those of the Klan.

White people, he wrote, are endowed with a 鈥淕od-ordained superiority.鈥� Black people 鈥渉ave never created anything approximating a civilization,鈥� and it鈥檚 a 鈥渕onumental lie鈥� that all men are created equal. Slavery, he contended, was 鈥渟uccessfully defended from a Biblical standpoint鈥� until 鈥渢he institution鈥檚 legitimacy was systematically undermined in the name of 鈥榚quality鈥� and misappropriated 鈥楥hristian ethics鈥欌�� by the 鈥淲ar for Southern Independence鈥� and all that followed.

鈥淸I]nstead of whites owing black reparations for slavery and its alleged attendant ills 鈥� blacks in reality owe white America (especially the South) a debt that likely will be neither acknowledged nor paid,鈥� he wrote.

Michael Hill

Hill has been moving in this direction for some time. Though the group was nominally non-racist when he and a batch of other white academics and Southern intellectuals founded it in 1994, its platform over the years has become distinctly white nationalist, with the stated goal of building a theocratic South defined by 鈥渢he cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic [white] people and their institutions,鈥� as Hill once put it. At the same time, its early rhetoric demanding that the rest of the country treat the South with more respect has been replaced with explicit calls for a second secession from the 鈥渦ngodly鈥� North. Beginning in 2007, when the national conference was titled 鈥淪outhern Secession: Antidote to Empire and Tyranny,鈥� each year has seen further and more militant dedication to that idea.

Hill鈥檚 own militancy was on full display at last summer鈥檚 national conference in Abbeville, S.C. 鈥淭he mantra [that] violence, or the serious threat thereof, never settles anything is patently false,鈥� he said, adding later, 鈥淗e who is willing to die for a cause will defeat one who isn鈥檛.鈥�

His June essay, titled 鈥淥ur Survival As A People,鈥� seems to complete this evolution. 鈥淚t is white Southerners themselves who must muster the courage to act and act soon,鈥� he wrote, noting demographers鈥� predictions that whites will be a minority in America by the middle of this century. 鈥淚f we are not willing to fight to preserve that glorious heritage bequeathed us by men of honor, genius, and principle, then we truly deserve the disinheritance that will befall us within the next half century.鈥�