Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals
Oct. 10, 2008 PALMER, Alaska — | On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the “traditional family” and secede from the United States.
So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. “This here is my attack dog,” he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. “Her name is Suzy.” Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. “I’ve got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement,” he said, clutching the gun in his palm. “Then again, so do most Alaskans.” But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call “the 48.” “We want to go our separate ways,” he said, “but we are not going to kill you.”
Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.
Read more @ Salon.com.
9 comments:
Gulag, gosh isn't that one of them there new power drinks?
If it wasn't for the Federal Government, a lot of folks from Idaho to North Dakota and down to Louisiana might have ended up under a guillotine.
So what's your point?
Are you suggesting that without the federal government, it would have been better to subject the those people to the guillotine?
Roadkill, actually I was because of the federal government that some people were killed. Ruby Ridge comes to mind. Countless Indians would also fall into the category.
I think the point is to compare and contrast some of the guilt-by-association, McCain campaign rhetoric concerning the Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers with those spewing the rhethoric...like Mrs. Palin.
My guess is Alaskan politics is less about Republicans and Democrats and more about independents and libertarians. The fact that Todd Paling was a member of AIP doesn't really bother me. Likewise, the fact the Mrs. Palin recorded an welcoming address for the AIP convention doesn't bother me -- unless she refused to do the same for the Democratic convention.
I always like to put up posts mentioning lots of guns and words like "9mm" because that gets the radical left nervous. Maybe I should find a good set of photos explaining how to field dress a deer.
For the record, the title should be "reactionary right wing pals."
Sunny,
I think its fair to look at Palin’s past associations; it provides a window into her thinking and general political philosophies. And I do not like groups that advocate for secession; we fought a terrible war over that subject and the question is settled. Responsible politicians (is that an oxymoron?) should steer clear of such outfits.
One of my dust-ups with those hard-cases on the other borderline blog concerned Ron Paul, and his association with actual rightwing groups like Stormfront. And while Paul’s isolationist and anti-government philosophy bothered me, it was those group associations that made him utterly untenable (for me, anyway) as a presidential candidate. Not so with the people I was arguing with, of course…
The AIP, from what I can gather, is essentially an anti-tax and anti-gun control movement. As far as I can see, they never advocated for – or carried out – any bombings, murders, racist action, or other violent forms of revolt. What it seems to boil down to is that the AIP rejects the idea of the modern welfare/nanny state, and espouse individualism and self-reliance. Those values are not uncommon in America, especially in the western parts of the country.
Look, if Barack Obama had hung out with groups like hippie communes and Vermont anti-corporate secessionists (e.g. SVR), I could understand that. They were/are not violent and espouse other legitimate American values. My problem with BO is that he hung out with people who were violent, who hate America, and who are criminals. More to the point, I don’t understand how he never separated himself from those people early on. Surely he doesn’t consider violence, hate, and criminality just other American values, does he?
You should write the Palin campaign and ask for some info on field dressing deer. Those self-reliant individualists know how to do those things, you know.
RK:
Concerning Obama hanging out with Ayers, I don't really have a grasp of the facts on what actually constitutes hanging out. But if I do the math, BO met Ayers sometime around 1995 which is around when he move back to Chicago. That was 13 years ago and 20+ years since Weather Undergoround days. I don't know how much of this relationship is being used to whip up the troops, but I do know that local party politics provides a meeting place for people of vastly diverse opions, experiences, backgrounds, etc. to get together. Just because you sit next to someone in a meeting or on a board doesn't mean you embrace everything that person has done in his or her life.
Because I drink a beer with a friend who spouts off racist slurs doesn't mean I agree with him. It also doesn't mean I'm responsible for re-educating him.
I would also hope BO would immerse himself in a world of diverse opions on how to solve the problems faced in the community where he worked as a community organizer. Would it be ok for BO to associate with CEO's the directed companies that pursued policies that resulted in hardworking people losing everything they worked and saved for in their live?
I don't endorse anything that the Weather Underground did, but I do understand that the 1960s were turbulant times with a great many radical and reactionary forces butting heads.
COncerning field dressing of deers, I've never do it. I've never shot a deer and it's been decades since I used to go deer hunting. When I did go deer hunting, I never once put a bullet in my gun. My main reason for deer hunting was to go up north with a couple of buddies and drink up the one buddy's dad's remaining beer and eat up the food in the cabing freezer before the old man went south for the winter. I was also Thanksgiving break at college and we always accomplished our goal.
I have shot many ground squirrels on my property and I know how to cutup a chicken in less than a minute.
Roadkill says: "The AIP, from what I can gather, is essentially an anti-tax and anti-gun control movement."
You really dropped the ball with your research on this on Roadkill.
From the Alaskan Independence Party Website.
"The Alaskan Independence Party's goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:
1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State."
Vogler has been quoted as stating "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions.
Volger was killed buying plastic explosives.
Convicted thief Manfried West confessed to having murdered Vogler the following year in what he described as a plastic explosives sale gone bad.[4] Vogler's remains were discovered in a gravel pit east of Fairbanks in October 1994 following an anonymous tip.[4] They had been wrapped in a blue tarp secured with duct tape and were identified through fingerprint analysis.
Once again DUCK TAPE is the central character in this caper. ha
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=K1m56rGiw-c
Sunny,
Great story about that Volger guy; his end sounds downright poetic.
Your research not withstanding, I still don't see the AIP as a violent or secessionist organization. That "Goals" statement you (accurately) quoted is, frankly, a bit vague, and could be construed to mean independence from large or intrusive government. But like I say, its rather strangely worded and I'm not sure what the point really is meant to be.
Much more concrete is the party platform on another page of the website: 20 planks that specifically call for adherance to the US and Alaska constitutions, smaller government, gun rights, lower taxes, and other garden variety conservative principles. Nothing about breaking away from the union in there. I'm sure you read it.
Its seems funny that a party with (allegedly) independence as a goal so strongly pledges allegience to the US Constitution in the first plank of its platform.
Maybe if Volger had actually blown something up, went on the lam for a decade, and later lamented that he had not done enough for his cause, you wouldn't see the murky Palin connection with AIP as such a big deal.
Gosh Roadkill, you should run for something! You can spin with the best of them.
I'm waiting for Obama to record a video welcome to the Weather Underground Convention in Chicago. Then we can compare Apples to Apples.
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