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Scott Cuddy is a lifelong resident of Winterport and served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives.
When news broke that a neo-Nazi is building a compound to recruit and train violent white nationalists on a piece of land in Springfield, I, like nearly all Mainers, was appalled. I was also grateful that some of my former colleagues in the Maine Legislature — both Republicans and Democrats — spoke up loudly in opposition to this hateful movement. It is critically important that our political leaders put aside their differences and stand together against those who seek to commit violence against our fellow Mainers.
I’m also glad that some of the loudest voices pushing back against this hate are people who look like those spreading it. White men like me cannot leave it to those being persecuted to defend themselves. I’m reminded of the great quote from Martin Niemöller, “First they came for …”
Unfortunately, some influential conservatives have sought not only to downplay and dismiss these racist groups, but are actually trying to deflect from the issue by claiming that the real problem is anti-white racism. Writing in the conservative Maine Wire, a blog of the Maine Policy Institute, former four-term Republican legislator Larry Lockman of Bradley reacted to the news by claiming that Rep. Rachel Talbot Ross, Maine’s first African American House speaker, “has a history of stoking racial animosity.” Why would he say such a thing? Because she once made, in his words, the “ignorant pronouncement” that “in the early 1920s, the very first public march in hoods by the KKK was done in Milo, Maine and that history of white supremacy continues to this day.”
There is nothing ignorant about that statement. It is a sad but true fact. Those who have read Maine’s political history know that the Ku Klux Klan was a major force in Maine Republican politics during the 1920s, although their attention then was then focused on Catholics and immigrants.
As for the present, I don’t recall seeing any news about anti-white rallies in Kittery, Lewiston, Portland, and Augusta. But I did read about neo-Nazis appearing in those cities shouting racist and homophobic epithets at people.
But Lockman has an answer for that. In the same column, he implies that these neo-Nazis are somehow a “false flag” operation planted to make anti-immigrant activists like himself look bad. The reality is that the Blood Tribe leader was apparently inspired to hold his rally in Augusta last month by a misleading article about Gov. Janet Mills’ workforce policy by the Maine Wire, the same publication Lockman’s diatribe appeared in.
The Maine Policy Institute’s roughly 20 year history in Maine (it was for many years known as the Maine Heritage Policy Center) is one of being the preeminent think-tank for the conservative movement and the Republican Party in Maine. It’s deeply troubling that its news arm is putting out articles that seem to move white supremacists to action. The history of connection between the Maine Republican Party and these groups must be severed once and for all, but the response of white supremacists to articles published by one of the thought leaders of the party shows that there is still work to be done.
I don’t mind having vigorous debates about taxes, energy policy and the allocation of state resources, but we need to recognize each other’s basic humanity and stop this kind of scaremongering about people different from us because it only feeds hate. That kind of hate leads to violence, and we don’t need that in Maine.