All the really far-right wackjobs in one place -- and they tear at each other's throats.
Joe S.
publisher of most of Ann Coulter's books as well as being the publisher of
several other "bibles" of the far-right wackadoodles.
QUOTE
For a gathering of people devoted to denouncing the inferiority of blacks
and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims, the biannual
conferences thrown by the New Century Foundation, publisher of the racist
newsletter American Renaissance, are decidedly genteel affairs. Men dress in
suits and ties, women in formal business attire, and there are no uniformed
skinheads or Klansmen to be seen. Large plasma television screens, Starbucks
coffee spreads and fancy linens adorn the hotel meeting hall. Epithets have
no place here.
Or at least they didn't. At the latest edition of the conferences that began
in 1994, held this February at the Hyatt Dulles hotel, a nasty spat broke
out that upset the gathering's decorum -- and may even shape the future of
the radical right.
It began when David Duke, the former Klan leader and author of Jewish
Supremacism, strode to a microphone after French author Guillaume Faye
wrapped up a talk vilifying Muslims entitled "The Threat to the West." Duke
thanked Faye for remarks that "touched my genes." But then he went one
further.
"There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our
government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and
spirit," Duke said, according to an undisputed account in The Forward
newspaper.
"Tell us, tell us," someone in the back yelled.
"I'm not going to say it," Duke replied. Laughter began to fill the room,
until a short, angry man leaped from his seat, walked up to Duke and began
to curse.
"You fucking Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting!" he said.
And with that, Michael Hart, a Jewish astrophysicist and long-time attendee
at American Renaissance conferences, headed for the door. As many as 50
people at the conference began to jeer and point at the rapidly disappearing
Hart.
This extraordinary incident marked the beginning of an open rift between
those on the radical right who see blacks, Hispanics and Muslims as the
primary enemy, and those who say "the Jews" are ultimately behind every
evil -- a split that has usually stayed just below the surface but now
threatens a leading institution of American extremism. While in the past he
has managed to bridge this divide mainly by ignoring it, American
Renaissance founder Jared Taylor now must finally come to terms with the
split. His dilemma boils down to this: Throw out the anti-Semites and try to
build a larger movement with electoral possibilities like those increasingly
seen in Britain and Germany; or openly join hands with the very energetic
neo-Nazis, even though that means the loss of any remaining shred of
respectability.
"These are the makings of a major schism," wrote Shawn Mercer, co-founder
and moderator of American Renaissance's AR List, an E-mail group. "If
American Renaissance ultimately fails as a result of this donnybrook at the
convention, it will be a sad, possibly fatal turn of events for the future
of whites."
Jews and the radical right
The traditional enemy of the American radical right, going back to the Civil
War and even before, has been the black man. Given the numbers of voters who
would be created by enfranchising former slaves -- and the historical fact
that blacks outnumbered whites in many southern counties -- that is no
surprise. But radical anger also has been directed throughout U.S. history
at each new wave of foreign immigrants, and, in both the 19th century and
the 20th, that included Jews.
European anti-Semitism made its way across the ocean as well, infecting
Americans with ideas about secret Jewish plans for world domination and
alleged ritual practices like the murder of Christian children.
Increasingly, hatred of Jews filtered into groups like the Klan -- most
famously, in 1915, when the group was reborn on the strength of the lynching
of Jewish businessman Leo Frank of Atlanta. (Frank was falsely accused of
the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.)
In the 1920s, auto tycoon Henry Ford published anti-Semitic treatises
culminating in the book, The International Jew. In the following decade,
Father Charles Coughlin, a radical Catholic, railed against Jews in radio
broadcasts heard by millions. There followed a brief lull in anti-Semitism
due to revelations about the Nazi genocide, but it wasn't long before
Jew-hatred came roaring back.
This was partly due to the spread of Christian Identity, a radical theology
that claims that Jews are biologically descended from Satan and are the
chief enemy of the white man. This ideology, which increasingly crept into
traditionally Christian groups like the Klan, helped to start the
broad-based change that has occurred over the last half century or so -- the
Nazification of the American radical right. Growing anti-Semitism also
reflected the view of many segregationists that Jews were behind the black
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The bombings of several
Southern synagogues by white supremacists underlined this conviction.
In recent decades, however, mainstream American society has rejected
anti-Semitism, to the point where it is generally seen as more acceptable to
voice ugly views of blacks than Jews. And this has not been lost on certain
sectors of the radical right that have become increasingly interested in
gaining real political power. Given recent developments in the United
States -- especially large-scale Latin American immigration and the threat
of radical Islamist terror -- these sectors have wondered if it wasn't
better to direct their hate at people of color, rather than Jews who are
seen by most Americans as white. Seeing the electoral success of neofascists
in Germany and Britain who aim their wrath at dark-skinned immigrants and
Muslims generally, many American radical leaders have sought to dispense
with anti-Semitism.
Black attack
In 1990, Jared Taylor, a Yale graduate who had spent 17 years working in
Japan, joined the active white supremacist scene with his launching of
American Renaissance, a magazine focusing on the alleged links between race
and intelligence and on eugenics, the discredited "science" of breeding
better human beings. The magazine scrupulously avoided racist epithets,
employed the language of academic journals, and sought to put a palatable
face on hate (though that didn't stop Taylor from describing blacks as
"deviant," dissipated" and "pathological," or later writing a booklet that
claimed that blacks are far more "crime-prone" than whites).
At the same time, Taylor made it clear that he had no problem with Jews. At
the group's very first conference, held in Atlanta in 1994, the dinner
speaker was a rabbi named Mayer Schiller, and the meal was kosher. Taylor
banned discussion of the so-called "Jewish question" from American
Renaissance venues, and, by 1997, had kicked Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis
off his E-mail list. In recent years, a growing number of Jews have attended
Taylor's conferences.
But Taylor, who operates in a world that is peopled with anti-Semites as
well as black-bashing "white nationalists," also tried to have it both ways.
Atlanta lawyer Sam Dickson, for instance, has been invited to speak at every
one of Taylor's biannual conferences -- despite a long history of Holocaust
denial that includes membership on the editorial board of The Barnes Review,
a journal that specializes in that topic. Joe Sobran, a columnist fired from
the National Review for his anti-Semitism and repeat author for the
Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review, gave a speech on Jewish
power at Taylor's 2004 conference. Don Black, the former Klan leader who
runs the neo-Nazi Stormfront web forum, has attended many conferences and
visited Taylor's home. Another attendee and old Taylor pal, Mark Weber,
heads up the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review.
Taylor, whose journal and conferences were fast becoming key institutions of
the American radical right, tried to keep internal peace. But that was not
to be.
In 2003, a remarkable E-mail debate between the late racist writer Sam
Francis and neo-Nazi lawyer Victor Gerhard was made public by Gerhard. In
it, Francis, widely regarded as the leading white nationalist intellectual
in America, lambasted Gerhard, who had been an official of the neo-Nazi
National Alliance, for his views of the Jews. He denounced what he saw as "a
monomaniacal obsession with the omnipotent Jew" and instead discussed the
threat of blacks and Hispanics. The E-mail exchange was widely circulated on
the American radical right.
The same period saw several groups -- the Social Contract Press, the Charles
Martel Society (publisher of The Occidental Quarterly), the Pioneer Fund,
the Council of Conservative Citizens and the recently formed National Policy
Institute -- focus in on the perceived ills of blacks, Hispanics and
Muslims. Joining them was a new crop of racist intellectuals with no
interest in the Jews.
Taylor, it seemed, could not stop the inevitable. The split between those
who saw Jews as the primary enemy and the others was bubbling to the
surface.
Battle of words
The biggest threat to Jared Taylor's balancing act has always been David
Duke, the former leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who has also been
a convinced neo-Nazi since his teens. Duke, who came close to winning a
campaign for Louisiana governor in 1992, was for years a celebrity on the
radical right. Still, Taylor has sought to discourage Duke from attending
his American Renaissance conferences ever since Duke crashed the first one
in 1994. But even in years when he didn't enter the hall, Duke was often
found outside, talking to participants.
It wasn't just Duke, either. Over the years, more and more participants at
Taylor's conferences were Duke allies -- most notably, Don Black and
supporters of Black's Stormfront website, including Stormfront moderator
Jamie Kelso.
This year, the Duke/Black/Kelso crew was larger than ever. In an interview
with the Intelligence Report, Kelso said that he had organized a contingent
of some 75 Stormfront supporters to come to the conference. And these
supporters were the most enthusiastic members of the 300-strong audience,
standing and applauding each speaker after receiving the signal to do so
from Kelso. They were also not the only anti-Semites present. Others, not
affiliated with Stormfront, included Kevin Alfred Strom of Virginia, leader
of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard group; Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi radio host
from New Jersey; and David Pringle of Alaska, the former membership
coordinator of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
As a result, the Duke-Hart clash, which occurred on the last day of the
conference, rapidly assumed epic proportions, spinning out across the entire
radical right. Just days later, Duke published an essay on the conference,
expressing deep admiration for Taylor as a man with the courage to tell the
truth on race. But he went on to say that non-white immigration and a host
of other ills "all have been driven by Jewish extremists in their relentless
search for supremacy." Hart, Duke added tartly, had risen "in an almost
perfect Jewish caricature and started to scream at me."
That set off an often testy back-and-forth between the two sides.
From London, Nick Griffin, a conference speaker who also heads the
whites-only British National Party, denounced those who see behind every
evil some kind of "world-Jewish conspiracy." Griffin's BNP, which harshly
attacks Muslims and other British minorities, made major electoral gains
this May -- a success that Griffin thinks would be undermined by neo-Nazi
attacks on Jews. In his essay, Griffin suggested that Jews are a natural
ally in the battle against Islam.
Black, on the other hand, threatened to pull his anti-Semitic supporters out
of Taylor's conferences. "I guess that would solve the overcrowding
problem," Black wrote. "Not only would he cut loose the ... Stormfronters,
but, should he apply such an ideological filter [barring anti-Semites],
about 90% of his other attendees."
Lawrence Auster, a former American Renaissance speaker who also is a
Christian convert with Jewish ancestry, chimed in on his own blog,
describing Duke as "a major Jew-hater and an attention hog" and asking
Taylor how he could be so "naïve as to allow Duke to attend at all." Another
poster to Auster's site added, "It is imperative that neo-Nazis be asked to
leave AR. ... European-Americans need to be assured they can affirm
themselves and still be decent human beings."
In the end, nearly every "intellectual" on the white nationalist scene was
pulled into the debate. So hot was the months-long exchange, in fact, that
more than half a dozen major racist thinkers agreed to speak to be
interviewed for this article.
Rejecting the Nazis
Virtually all those who denounced anti-Semitism and "Nazis" had no such
compunctions when it came to people of color, particularly blacks. Herschel
Elias, for instance, said that as a Jewish substitute teacher in public
schools near Philadelphia, "I'm very disappointed with black people. Black
kids are the worst kids." But he added that he now saw the conference as a
"Nazi front."
Another Jew, retired University of Illinois political science professor
Robert Weissberg, was a long-time supporter of American Renaissance who
spoke at two conferences. In 2000, he argued that Jews and blacks despise
one another, but that Jews are even more afraid of white nationalists and so
had tended to support policies that empower minorities. Weissberg told the
Report that he considered Taylor a friend and had been to his house "on
several occasions." But he went on to say that Duke was a "tax evader" (Duke
recently served time in federal prison for mail fraud and tax violations)
and "provocateur," and that his Stormfront allies were "losers." He said
that both Duke and the Stormfronters should be "disinvited" by Taylor.
The list goes on. In separate interviews, numerous "academic racists"
complained of the neo-Nazi element at the conference:
a.. Michael Levin, a Jewish philosophy professor at the City University of
New York who has spoken four times at American Renaissance conferences, said
that there was "anti-Semitism among members of AR" and that this was part of
the reason he did not attend the 2006 edition. (However, Levin still plugs
his black-bashing book, Why Race Matters, in ads in American Renaissance.)
b.. Paul Gottfried, a humanities professor with Jewish ancestry at
Elizabethtown (Penn.) College, spoke to the conference in 1998 and has
published in American Renaissance. But he said he is dismayed at the current
situation. "I cannot imagine any advantage to anyone to have these people
there," he said.
c.. William Regnery, the extreme-right publisher who also founded and
financially backs the Charles Martel Society and the National Policy
Institute, dismissed Duke's anti-Semitism, saying simply, "We don't sanction
it."
d.. Gordon Baum, the St. Louis-based CEO of the racist Council of
Conservative Citizens, has Taylor on his editorial board and fights to
preserve the "racial integrity" of white people. But, he said, the CCC
welcomes Jews. And, adding that the CCC has no interest in "skinheads," Baum
rapped Duke for believing that "race isn't even important, all that is
important is the Jewish issue."
e.. Baum's new editor for the CCC's publication, Citizens Informer,
seconded his boss' opinions. "Attacking people with Jewish lines of descent
is complete nonsense," Joel LeFevre told the Report, adding that he was
"very put off by Mr. Duke's behavior" at the conference. Separately, LeFevre
wrote on the AR List that Duke and his "puerile loser" followers should be
banned. "Duke has his own conference where he can rant about the Jews all he
wants," he said.
f.. Jared Taylor, also said, "European Jews are certainly welcome" at
American Renaissance conferences. "I don't think that Jews are the enemy in
the way that some people do." As a matter of fact, Taylor came out against
Nazism as early as 1983, in his book, Shadows of the Rising Sun: A Critical
View of the 'Japanese Miracle', where Germany was praised for outlawing
national socialism. In addition, Jews write regularly in American
Renaissance and have spoken at every one of its conferences.
At the crossroads
Two months after the conference, on April 14, Jared Taylor went public.
Responding to a letter from a group of supporters including several Jews, he
posted a statement to his website that seemed to take clear sides. Under the
title, "Jews and American Renaissance," Taylor said that Jews "have a
valuable role" to play, and told those who didn't agree that they had the
choice of "staying home" or of keeping their anti-Semitism private. He wrote
that American Renaissance's role is to rescue white civilization, not dig up
a "Jewish conspiracy." And Taylor explicitly rebuked Duke, saying his
"disgraceful behavior" would not be tolerated in the future.
Within 48 hours, Taylor's statement had generated 168 responses. Two days
later, there were more than 300. The reaction from anti-Semites was harsh,
with many claiming that their erstwhile ally was actually in the pay of "the
Jews."
Cal Rogers, an American Renaissance staffer who headed up an E-mail list of
Taylor critics, quit the group, saying he was "diametrically opposed" to
Taylor's views. Jess David Peterson wrote in to say that Taylor's writings
had been removed from Peterson's Nationalist Party USA website. On
Stormfront, Elena Haskins, a hate website proprietress, scoffed at those
"who require their friend the rabbi to pat them on their heads and tushies."
Ron Doggett, a Duke factotum, suggested Taylor was unfortunately sending
America's anti-Semites packing. Don Black called Taylor's statement
"disastrous." Another neo-Nazi said it was "a devastating miscalculation."
At the same time, Taylor was being lobbied by Jews and others who argued
that the only way forward for American Renaissance was to drop those with
neo-Nazi leanings entirely. Members of this group included many of the
brighter minds -- or better educated ones, anyway -- that have come into the
white nationalist world in recent years, and their relative prestige would
be hard for Taylor to give up.
It's not clear how the situation will wind up. Taylor has now publicly
rejected anti-Semitic views, but he hasn't banned anti-Semites from his
conferences.
What is certain is that it will be painful for Taylor to definitively eject
the anti-Semites -- Duke, Black and their neo-Nazi allies are among the most
committed and serious workers in the American radical right, people who have
arguably done far more for "the movement" than all the racist professors who
travel to American Renaissance conferences put together. But he seems to be
personally uninterested in conspiracy theories about the Jews, and in any
case sees clearly that anti-Semitism will likely destroy any faint hope that
American Renaissance has to gain mainstream respectability. Taylor could try
to pursue a middle road - espousing, for instance, the anti-Semitic
teachings of Kevin MacDonald, which avoid neo-Nazi language in favor of the
academic veneer of "evolutionary biology." Or he could break with the
neo-Nazis and their allies, even though Taylor is connected to many of them
through dense ties of friendship and organizational alliances.
The outcome may be critical to the future of the American radical right.
American Renaissance has become increasingly important over the years,
bringing a measure of intellectualism and seriousness to the typically
thug-dominated world of white supremacy. Today, it may be the closest thing
the extreme right has to a real think tank. Whether or not it survives, and
in what form, genuinely matters.
END QUOTE
Scotius
>Note that one of the champions of these true screwballs is William Regnery,
>publisher of most of Ann Coulter's books as well as being the publisher of
>several other "bibles" of the far-right wackadoodles.
Noted. Also noted are these things: 1) While you claim no one
pays attention to Ann Coulter, you post a lot about her. 2) Your
attempt to associate her with former KKK member David Duke is a
shallow attempt at painting her as a racist.
>
>
>QUOTE
>
>For a gathering of people devoted to denouncing the inferiority of blacks
>and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims, the biannual
>conferences thrown by the New Century Foundation, publisher of the racist
>newsletter American Renaissance, are decidedly genteel affairs. Men dress in
>suits and ties, women in formal business attire, and there are no uniformed
>skinheads or Klansmen to be seen. Large plasma television screens, Starbucks
>coffee spreads and fancy linens adorn the hotel meeting hall. Epithets have
>no place here.
Really? Then how do you know they're dedicated to denouncing
the "inferiority of Blacks"?
Well, that's BS. Someone ought to check crime rates from Black
neighborhoods of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and take note. Their crime
rates at that time were probably lower than comparable White
neighborhoods. If he believes the same stuff Duke does he ought to
just come out and say it, although I don't really believe that many of
them believe that crap. I think they want other people to believe it
all, but I think they know better ... kind of.
Vladimir Zhironovsky suggested not far back that the US,
Russia, and Israel should "get together and destroy Islam", and he's
been so often denounced as an anti-Semite you would be surprised if
any news about him didn't stick that label to him.