Dylann Roof
In the notorious manifesto that mass murderer Dylann Roof posted online before his shooting spree in Charleston, South Carolina, he told the world
exactly who informed his views after, he says, Trayvon Martin's killing "awakened" him:
But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words "black on White crime" into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?
The Council is not a hard organization to understand. They're
the direct offspring of the notoriously segregationist
White Citizens Councils that sprung up in response to the Supreme Court's order to integrate schools
Brown v. Board of Education. You'll frequently see the CCC referred to as the "uptown Klan": They may have ditched the robes, but they
proudly wear their racist views on their sleeves.
We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races
And leading this group is a man named Earl Holt III, a Texan who regularly describes himself as a "slumlord" when he donates to political candidates. That sentence should instantly feel strange: Who on earth would want to take money from an utterly unabashed racist such as this?
The answer, it turns out, is "quite a few people"—and they're all Republicans. Indeed, since 2009, Holt has donated to four dozen different GOP candidates in over 30 states, giving over $54,000 in total. His roster includes many of the party's most extreme adherents, like Michelle Bachmann and Allen West, but also a few supposedly more moderate figures, such as Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and frequent Washington candidate Dino Rossi.
Most of those who've been flagged as recipients of Holt's tainted money have hurriedly tried to divest themselves of it, including Portman and some presidential hopefuls like Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, and Rand Paul. But some are stubbornly holding on to the cash, like Ohio's Josh Mandel, who insists it's already been "spent" (even though he could easily cover the $1,500 he took with what's in his campaign's bank account right now).
Far more candidates, however, have not received any attention at all. In an attempt to remedy that, we've put together the chart below detailing exactly whom Holt donated to for the last three election cycles (2010, 2012, and 2014), using data compiled by CampaignMoney.com
Reporters need to ask every last one of these Republicans about what they plan to do with Holt's lucre—and there's only one acceptable answer they can give.
