A member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens has been a member of the Dorchester County Republican Party’s Executive Committee since April, according to a watchdog organization and a member of the county party leadership.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reported Monday that Kyle Rogers is a webmaster for the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization descended from the White Citizens’ Council, which fought school desegregation during the 1950s and ’60s. The CofCC’s Statement of Principles says, among other things, “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind,” and “We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.”
According to Tony Piscatella, who represents Dorchester County on the State Executive Committee of the Republican Party, Rogers is one of the county-level committeemen who represent Dorchester County’s 53 organized precincts. “Mr. Rogers’ membership on the Executive Committee is the result of his election to that position by his precinct. The Executive Committee does not vet representatives from the precincts,” Piscatella wrote in an e-mail Monday night. According to Piscatella, Rogers was elected by a Summerville precinct in March 2013, and his two-year term on the executive committee began at the April county convention.
The Southern Poverty Law Center blog Hatewatch reports that Dorchester County Republican Party leader Jordan Bryngelson looked into Rogers’ history, refunded his $25 membership, and asked him to resign, but that Rogers refused.
The Post and Courier ran a profile of Rogers in June 2012 that identified him as a CofCC member and quoted him as saying that African Americans “are the most privileged members of their race” and “benefit greatly from the generosity of American whites, as they always have.” But when the City Paper asked Piscatella about when he learned of Rogers’ membership in the CofCC, he wrote, “Today from you.”
“I understand that Mr. Rogers was refunded his dues and asked to resign,” Piscatella wrote. “Unless he breaks one of the Executive Committee’s rules, the Executive Committee can’t force him to do anything. He is his precinct’s rep.”
The Hatewatch blog, which has made a sport of calling out racists in Republican and far-right political groups, also recently revealed that Roan Garcia-Quintana, a then-member of Gov. Nikki Haley’s re-election committee, was a member of the CofCC. Haley’s campaign quickly dismissed Garcia-Quintana from the committee after telling the Post and Courier that the controversy was “clearly ginned up by some outside group.” In a subsequent interview with the City Paper, Garcia-Quintana declared Haley a Caucasian and confirmed that he opposes interracial marriage.
Rogers could not be reached for comment Monday. Here’s a video from the YouTube account kelt76, which identifies its creator as Kyle Rogers and is linked from the CofCC homepage:
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