Sergey Romanov, a contributor to a blog called “Holocaust Controversies” that normally focuses on debunking Holocaust deniers, has a scathing post about white supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain (who also writes for Pajamas Media and Hot Air’s Green Room), with examples from the messages posted by McCain on Usenet: Meet Robert Stacy McCain, a neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire.

There are quite a few of these Usenet posts; you should read the whole thing for the full steamy flavor of Robert Stacy McCain’s outrageous bigotry. I’ll just quote a couple that are especially juicy.

First we have a deranged and bilious rant labeling President Abraham Lincoln a “war criminal:”

WANTED for WAR CRIMES: Abraham Lincoln

* Violation of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
* Unconstitutional suppression of civil liberties in Ohio and other states
* Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus
* Disbanding the legislature of Maryland
* Aggression against the Southern Confederacy

[…]

So, then, if Lincoln was not an advocate of racial equality, and if hatred of black people was at the core of the “free soil” movement, why do Americans today continue to associate the Confederacy and the South with racism?

[Hmmm. Why would that be? ~SR]

[…]

Certainly, chattel slavery was no ideal economic or social system. [You think?! ~SR] Even many slaveholders such as Thomas Jefferson recognized that by stigmatizing labor, slavery encouraged sloth in both master and slave. Though most 19th-century white Americans, North and South, subscribed to racial theories that consigned blacks to an inferior status as “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” it is incorrect to say that slavery was a system based upon racial hatred. Indeed, both white and black Southerners of the era have left us testimony to the cordial and affectionate relations which generally existed between the races in the Old South.

[…]

None of this is to excuse or apologize for slavery, but merely to point out that it is wrong to confuse antebellum slavery with modern racism.

I don’t know why Robert Stacy McCain thought it was necessary to note that he wasn’t “apologizing for slavery.” What? You never considered Abe Lincoln a war criminal?

Here, have another helping of Stacy McCain-style nuance:

But to reiterate, when men defend what they view to be their own best interests, they are only being human. While I do not defend slavery, I at least will defend the 1830-1865 *defense* of slavery as being essentially no worse than any number of ordinary human follies (voting GOP, for instance) which persist to this day.

See? He’s not apologizing for slavery — he’s apologizing for the people who do apologize for slavery! Not the same thing at all. Why, it’s just like voting for a Republican.

Thanks to Sergey for this sadly accurate comment too:

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has been doing a thankless job of bringing to light McCain’s racist past. The conservative blogosphere basically excommunicated Johnson over this issue.

Of course, most of right-wing bloggers preferred not to deal with the facts Johnson and other bloggers and researchers laid out.

UPDATE at 10/19/09 6:04:53 pm:

Here’s Robert Stacy McCain in a humorous mood, dreaming up some hilarious Bumper Stickers:

RStacy2229
May 21 1996, 12:00 am

I’d rather be wenching in the quarters

or

Have you whipped your slaves today?