The neo confederate past of top Lindsey Graham aide

Buzzfeed - Richard Quinn has been quoted in the press as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s longtime political adviser and his consultant and pollster. But there’s another title that Quinn once held: neo-Confederate magazine editor.

From early 1980s until the early 2000s, Quinn’s name stood on the masthead as the editor-in-chief of the Southern Partisan, formerly one of the country’s leading neo-Confederate magazines (it still exists in a barebones online version). Quinn has tried to distance himself from the magazine in the past, and after being contacted by BuzzFeed News, repudiated his past views and those of the magazine.

It was in his capacity as editor that Quinn wrote that Martin Luther King Jr.’s role in the Civil Rights movement was “to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul.” He called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” and a “bad egg.” He wrote positively of David Duke’s election: “What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?” In one column, he called Martin Luther King Day’s purpose “vitriolic and profane.”

Today, Quinn says he’s come to admire King and Mandela. “I wrote some things on the wrong side of history,” he told BuzzFeed News.

He had previously spoken of the columns with regret in 2001, when the issue of Quinn’s past came up while serving as an adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign...

He maintained to BuzzFeed News that he didn’t do much work for the Southern Partisan. He said he regarded it as a client of his consulting firm and said it was a mistake to appear on the masthead. He said fellow editors did most of the work.

In [a] column from that year, Quinn said Martin Luther King Day “should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane.”

“King’s memory represents, more than anything else, the idea that institutional arrangement — laws, ordinances and tradition — should be subordinated to the individual’s conscience,” wrote Quinn. “The brand of civil disobedience he preached (and for which he is remembered) exhorts his followers to regard social reform as a process to be carried out in the streets.”

He concluded: “Ignoring the real heroes in our nation’s life, the blacks have chosen a man who represents not their emancipation, not their sacrifices and bravery in service to their country; rather, they have chosen a man whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul.”

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Quinn said today he believes King’s strategy of civil disobedience worked, and he’s come to admire his philosophy.

“By today’s standard he was a moderate… I admire him,” Quinn said.