The Nativist ideologue, Peter Brimelow, insists that he is not a racist but rather is merely looking to engage this nation in a dialogue as to its direction. The issue, he argues, is whether the complexion of this country, both figuratively and literally, should be changed by the growth of non-whites who are not Anglo-Saxon Protestants? The terms of this "debate," as well as the persons entitled to debate this issue, per Brimelow and his nativist bretheren, are highly instructive as to the nativist mindset and more particularly as to Brimelow's true purpose. We are to assume that this is simply a dry policy issue, not unlike farm support subsidies. Why, so the unstated refrain goes, do liberals get so enraged over the mere invitation to such a debate? Instead of engaging us, so the narrative proceeds, does the immigrant lobby attack us as racists, xenophobes or extremist right-wingers? All we want, so Brimelow would conclude, is a fair and open debate -- no holds barred.
A central premise of Brimelow's argument as advanced in his nativist tome, Alien Nation, is that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed the racist national-origin categories which had governed immigration policy since the enactment of the the restrictive and racist Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924, was a great mistake which irrevocably changed the "character" of this country. If it were possible, Brimelow would turn back the clock and undo the changes wrought by the 1965 Act. Accordingly, the persons entitled to a voice in this debate are the white Anglo-Saxon protestants who comprised the overwhelming majority of citizens in 1964. Anyone born of non-white immigrants should not be entitled to a voice because such people are not the progeny that gave birth to this, "our country." This is especially true of anyone who immigrated to this country after 1965 from any country that was not formerly a part of the United Kingdom. This exclusion would apply to anyone born from such emigrant stock, no matter how assimilated or removed from the original immigrants. Accordingly, underlying this debate is a racist premise, nonwhites need not voice their views or concerns. The message to nonwhites, per Brimelow, is "shut up, while we decide your fate!"
And what are the terms of Brimelow's complexion debate? We have already established that since nonwhites are not a part of this debate any recourse to self-interest, group-identity and the elements of sovereignty for nonwhite are off the table just as they were off the table for the indigenous population after Europeans arrived in the New World. If anyone is to speak for Latinos, Asians and even African-Americans, it has to be vis-a-vis the good graces of white overlords, not unlike Colonialism, which Brimelow has championed. As any student of the American legal system will tell you, an adversary who is absent at his own trial has no chance of redeeming himself. The verdict, for those tried in absentia, is a dead certainty.
Having assured that their deliberations will not be encumbered by those whose fate they are debating, Brimelow's nativists are not content to let the outcome be endangered by inconvenient truths. The nativists who write for VDare, Michelle Malkin's website or ALIPAC, make no bones about their disdain, even hatred, for nonwhites and for nonwhite immigrants. Hence, the marriage of nativist ideology with racism. Brimelow, who is himself racist, prominently features racists, Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald and Patrick Buchanan, amongst others. These writers are not a counter-balance for pro-immigrant writers, they are the core of authors who regularly perorate in nativist publications. Such views are the heart of the definition of bigotry, a stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own, no matter how true. So much for debate. This is not the presentation of positions, it is the shouts of the hooligan.
Shortly after being liberated from a Nazi Prisoner of War camp, Jean-Paul Sartre penned the classic tome, Anti-Semite and Jew. In this seminal essay, Sartre explored what animates the anti-Semite, the racist and the bigot. The anti-Semite is not concerned with an actual Jew (qua Jew) just as Brimelow is not concerned with real Latinos or Hispanics. For the racist, hate of the other is, among other things, a way by which to "lay claim to the nation in which they reside, and an oversimplified conception of the world in which the antisemite sees "not a conflict of interests but the damage which an evil power causes society." Nativism, like antisemitism is not an idea in the commonly understood sense of the word: it is not a point of view based rationally upon empirical information calmly collected and calibrated in as objective a manner as is possible. It is not an idea, ‘It is first of all a passion.' (Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, (Schocken Books, Paris, 1948), p.10.) It is a deep passion, 'Some men are suddenly struck with impotence if they learn from the woman with whom they are making love that she is a Jewess. It is an involvement of the mind, but one so deep-seated and complex that it extends to the physio-logical realm, as happens in cases of hysteria.' (Ibid. p.10-11)
Sartre comments that, ‘It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than of reason. But ordinarily love the objects of passion: women, glory, power, money. Since the anti-Semite has chosen hate, we are forced to conclude that it is the state of passion that he loves.’ (Ibid. p.18.) He chooses to reason from passion, to reason falsely ‘because of the longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may intervene to cast doubt on it.’ Anti-Semites are attracted by ‘the durability of a stone.’ (Ibid.) What frightens them is the uncertainty of truth. (Ibid. p.19.) ‘The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith.’ (Ibid.) He has escaped responsibility and doubt. He can blame anything on the Jew; he does not need to engage reason, for he has his faith.
Anti-Semitism is a way of feeling good, proud even, rather than guilty at the abandonment of responsibility and the flight before the impossibility of true sincerity. (Ibid.) The anti-Semite abandons himself to the crowd and his bad faith, he ‘flees responsibility as he flees his own consciousness, and choosing for his personality the permanence of the rock, he chooses for his morality the scale of petrified values.’ (Ibid. p.27.) He pulls down shutters, blinds, mirrors and mirages over his consciousness to keep himself in his bad faith away from his responsibilities and his liberty. The anti-Semite is afraid ‘of himself, of his own consciousness, of his own liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and the world – of everything except the Jews.’ He is ‘a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself.’ (Ibid. p.53.)
The nativist, like the anti-Semite and the racist, expounds at length on the great evils wrought by the subject of his hatred. The fact that most of his "views" are false or gross distortions is of little consequence. What matters to the hater is the confirmation of his hatred. Hence, the pathological fixation on the social ills supposedly wrought by "the menace." The crime of one becomes the guilt of all who share the criminal's ethnicity. The drain on society, however false, becomes an article of faith which no amount of reason will remove. Hispanics are demonized for each and every action which any one of the group commits. As well, the fact that an immigrant is working at low wages with false documents is not an indication of economic need but rather an indication of mendacity and venality common to the whole group. All characteristics must bear out the durability of his hatred for this evil race. The nativist constantly resorts to images of defilement, the dark rapist who preys on white women, nay who preys on under-age girls, the avaricious alien who steals not only your job but your very bread. Our culture, the white Anglo-Saxon culture is constantly said to be at risk, defiled and sullied. The nativist is so steeped in his hatred that he unconcsiously parrots the very same tired arguments of such anti-Semitic tomes as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such is the nature of anti-Semitism, racism and nativism. And this truly is what Peter Brimelow wants to advance when he calls for a debate on the "immigration question." It is not a debate but a call to action, all true whites stand up for your race, you are at peril. Brimelow is not concerned with real Latinos, Hispanics or immigrants. For the nativist, hate of the other is a way by which to lay claim to the nation in which they reside, and an oversimplified conception of the world in which the nativist sees not a conflict of interests but the damage which an evil power causes society.
The associations between criminal extremist enterprises and so-called mainstream anti-immigrant advocacy organizations has been a source of concern for groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and, of course, to the victims of such hate groups. On eristic ragemail we have written about these connections and have provided links to information on such groups. In this regard, there is an extremely informative article in Searchlight Magazine (which bills itself as anti-fascist and anti-racist) by David Williams. Although, the article covers the 2006 meeting of the racist webzine, American Renaissance, its description of the well-established relationships between groups such as FAIR and neo-Nazi organizations if extremely incisive. The article is entitled, “BNP leader embraced by top US Nazis.” American Renaissance held a similar gathering this year but it was not as well-attended, perhaps a reflection of waning influence. In any event here are some excerpts from Williams’ excellent article.
For the past 12 years Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, which is published by his New Century Foundation from Oakton, Virginia, has sponsored a series of biennial conferences the first of which took place in 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia with a hundred people. American Renaissance is a pseudo-scientific racist magazine, which uses IQ tests and eugenics to promote the “clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites”. Taylor’s dogged determination to “concentrate on what unites” and to “expand the consciousness of race” drew a large crowd, approximately 300, a record number of racists though they preferred the term “white preservationists,” who sat and listened to speeches centred on the theme of “The Global Crisis: Perspectives from Europe, Africa, and Australia”. In keeping with its global perspective this year’s conference had a truly international flavour with speakers including Nick Griffin and Derek Turner from England, Professor Andrew Fraser (Australia), Professor Philippe Rushton (Canada), Dr Dan Roodt (South Africa), Dr Guillaume Faye (France) and Sam Dickson (America).
But it was not only the keynote speakers who were of interest. The list of those attending this year’s conference read like a veritable “who’s who” of American white supremacy. Particularly prominent among the attendees were the contingent from Stormfront.org, the world’s largest white supremacist website – slogan “white pride, world wide” – run by the former Alabama Klansman Don Black, who in 1981 tried to invade the island of Dominica and set up a white supremacist state. The venture failed and Black was jailed for three years.
John Brimelow (twin brother of Peter Brimelow, author of the influential anti-immigration tract Alien Nation) who runs the popular VDARE.com website attended and was observed cloistered in the atrium consorting with Black and his cohorts. A controversial figure for some within the American Renaissance milieu, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (who was succeeded by Black), was there as were the far-right radio talk show host Hal Turner, Mark Weber, director of the California-based Holocaust denial outfit the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), Kevin Strom of National Vanguard and David Pringle, both former members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. There was also a large contingent of Canadians led by Paul Fromm of the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee. Fromm is a friend of the Holocaust deniers Lady Michelle Renouf and Ernst Zündel who, much to Fromm’s annoyance, is currently on trial in Germany.
The after dinner speech was delivered by Rushton, Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and currently the president of the Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 for the “racial betterment” of the white race by funding spurious racial science projects dedicated to proving its genetic superiority. The Pioneer Fund has made a series of large financial grants to Taylor’s own New Century Foundation, the company behind American Renaissance. Rushton’s speech, replete with slides, on “New Research on Socio-biology” was dedicated to proving that IQ tests showed blacks to be genetically inferior to whites, though his imputation that on “average” Asians might have a higher IQ than whites left more than one diner at our table with a bitter taste in the mouth after an otherwise pleasant meal.
The conference threw into stark relief the increasing synergy between British and American racists. Those who had tired of the speeches or merely wished to stretch their legs could peruse the stalls at the back of the hall, many of which were giving away mountains of free literature. One of the first we encountered was the Occidental Quarterly stall run by James Russell, a member of its editorial board. Also on Occidental Quarterly’s board are Derek Turner and the controversial Leeds university don Frank Ellis. Coincidentally the stall next to Russell was that of Washington Summit Publishers (WSP) run by yet another Occidental Quarterly editorial board member, Louis Andrews of Augusta, Georgia. It is Andrews who manages the American distribution of Right Now!. WSP publishes Race Differences in Intelligence by Richard Lynn, emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, who like Taylor is a recipient of Pioneer Fund grants. WSP also reprints “classic” Aryan and eugenic tracts including a homily to the antisemitic philosopher Count de Gobineau as a pioneer of genetics.
Other stalls included those run by Joe Sobran, who was fired from his job as senior editor of the National Review in 1993 on account of his antisemitism, and Social Contract Press whose journal Social Contract is edited by Dr Wayne Lutton who sits alongside Taylor, Andrews, Russell and Derek Turner on the editorial board of Occidental Quarterly. Social Contract Press also publishes The Camp of Saints by Jean Raspail, an apocalyptic vision of immigration peddled in this country by Right Now!
The “Jewish Question” was, noted one attendee, “always present in the thinking of those I met, either at the forefront of our conversation or just below the surface”. Indeed Griffin “made reference to it several times” during the course of dinner with several American activists on Friday night. However, it came very publicly to the fore on Saturday afternoon and has generally dominated discussion of the conference on white nationalist websites since then… After thanking him for a speech which had “stirred our genes” [David] Duke, whose charisma appears to have been surgically enhanced of late, asked Faye if there weren’t a more insidious threat to the West than Islam? “Tell us what it is” came a call from the back of the room. “I’m not going to say,” said a coy Duke to rising laughter.
Martin Hart, a squat right-wing Jewish astrophysicist who has attended all the American Renaissance conferences since 1996, took umbrage to this, not least because he had only just reassured Hershel Elias, a new initiate to the American Renaissance circuit from Philadelphia, that although the conference was “infiltrated by Nazis and Holocaust deniers” this should not detract from his enjoyment of the gathering. “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting,” Hart shouted at Duke before storming out of the hall followed by boos and catcalls. As one can tell from a glance at the Stormfront forums Hart appears to have woefully misjudged the audience!
Sarcasm aside the dispute between Duke and Hart highlights the uneasy alliance between the socially conservative “race realists” such as Taylor and Baum, who believe antisemitism detracts from the real task of opposing immigration, and the hardline antisemites gathered around Stormfront for whom antisemitism is the issue. Indeed Stormfront, although generally supportive, regards American Renaissance as a “soft core” organisation, useful because its broader appeal on race and immigration issues enables it to function as “an entry level portal for those still learning the racial basics” and for that reason “it has value”. The verbal fracas and its fallout reveal just how unstable are the foundations upon which Taylor is trying to build his coalition.
On Friday, July 11, 2008, Eristic Ragemail published a transcript of a conversation between Ragemail and Peter Brimelow. Today, Peter Brimelow and his buddy, Cronulla submitted a response (Click on response to see Brimelo’s response) which is posted herein. Read what Peter Brimelow has to say in defense of his controversial views.
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What I find most incredible and disturbing about the responses from Peter Brimelow’s groupies is the utter lack of shock at the extreme nature of the statements that come out of Brimelow’s mouth.I say, “come out of Brimelow’s mouth,” since every single element of my parody is taken from actual statements made by Brimelow, right down to his statement about defending the white race and “get used to it.”Make no bones about it, Peter Brimelow is a dyed in the wool racist, xenophobe and all-around fascist.I could throw in a few more “isms” but the catch-all “fascist” (despite its loss in currency through over-use) most accurately defines Brimelow’s ideology better than any other number of categories of hate.
This Brimelow guy means to undermine our republic.For someone who rails on about aliens who fail to assimilate, I am profoundly disturbed that this British wanker apparently snookered INS into letting him pass his citizenship test despite his avowed fascist tendencies.
Brimelow has no respect for American Democracy.He needs to be deported!Accordingly, I am henceforth starting the “Deport Peter Brimelow Society” with the aim of stripping this fascist of his naturalized citizenship and sending his limey ass back across the Atlantic where he can bugger his fascist buddies at the British National Party.
(For your information, Brimelow, my people were here before the American Civil War was fought.In fact, on my mother’s side they were in the Western territories before the Revolution against King George.So kiss my ass, you slimy racist.)
So I was getting really ticked off at all the nativist crap published on the VDare website when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I reached for the phone. The site’s editor is Peter Brimelow, a British expat who is obsessed with Hispanic immigrants and the threat they pose to his son, Alexander and his daughter, Sue. I decided to have it out with Brimelow, once and for all, man to man --- mano a mano. I dialed up his number and the bloke picked up.
“Brimelow?” I said. “Peter Brimelow? Is that you?”
“The very same. ‘Ow can I ‘elp yer, mate?” he replied, in a distinct British accent.
“Peter, I have to tell you, as a Latino, I’m getting really pissed off at all of the anti-Latino hate speech you’ve been spewing out onto the Web. I mean, what gives with you, man? You didn’t even grow up in this country, much less in L.A. or El Paso, so you can’t be carrying a grudge ‘cause some of my peeps kicked your ass or something. So what is it with you?”
“And ‘oo mightchoo be then, mate?”
“Razzo, Razzo Castro. And don’t call me ‘mate’, all right? I have a blog called Eristic Ragemail. It’s all about elite racist peckerwoods such as yourself, who disseminate bogus statistics on immigration.”
“Right! Ragemail, eh? Can’t say I’ve ‘ad the pleasure of reading it, Razzo. An’ what’s that you said about ‘peckerwoods’? Was that meant to be derogat’ry?”
“You should check the Ragemail site out sometime, Brimelow. After all, you’re featured prominently on the site, right next to the section on Hitler.”
“Whazzat? Bloody ‘itler, eh? Where you get off wif dat, exackly? I only lays out the facts. What people does wiv ‘em is their own business. Follow me?”
“Facts!? You call the garbage you spew out, ‘facts?’ Man, you are deluded. Seriously. I mean come on Pete – I can call you Pete, can’t I? – you know damn well that, immigrants don’t make up 25% of the US federal prison population. As for public assistance, immigrants aren’t even eligible for that –not that anybody is any more. And do you seriously believe your claim that aliens are responsible for suburban sprawl? Last time I was in the suburbs I didn’t see too many low riders out there, joo-know-whad-I-meeng?
And what’s with the racist crap about immigrants bringing in leprosy. Come on man, you are a smart guy, why do you put out such… horseshit?”
“Look, Razzo. (Say, what kind of name is that anyway: ‘Razzo.’) I appreciate you takin’ the time to call me, but I’m not goin’ a sit ‘ere and debate wif you if you’s goin’ a be ‘ostile.”
“Ok. But, just so you know, all this stuff is really meant to scare white people . . . I mean, seriously . . . Leprosy? That’s so yesterday. Why not something with a little more traction, like Ebola or Marburg? I mean, if you’re going to invent exotic diseases carried by aliens why don’t you at least pick something a little trendier; something that wasn’t originally brought here by the slaves dragooned by your illustrious forefathers?”
“Ok, ok. Maybe the leprosy fing was a stretch, but it spun so well for my man, Lou Dobbs, I figured hell, why not just keep it spinnin’, like. Why go to the trouble of reinventin’ the wheel, so to speak? Ha ha ha. I do like the Ebola/Marburg angle, though. ‘ow you spell that: Marburg? Never mind; I’ll Google it. I needs some material fer me nex’ column.”
“See, there you go again, making stuff up to tarnish Latinos. You really have to take a hard look in the mirror, my man. And I don’t mean so you can coif that impeccable white mane of yours. I mean you need to look in the mirror so you can really see yourself for what you are and say: Is this really the legacy I want to leave? A legacy of hatred?”
“Razzo, I ain’t either fomentin’ ‘atred. In fact, I resents the implication, as it were.”
“Bullshit, Pete! You most certainly are fomenting hatred. I mean when your pal, Steve Sailer, writes that Black women and Asian men are doomed to evolutionary extinction because they are too ugly… what the hell do you call that?”
“Yeah, Steve did kind of go a little bit overboard wiv dat one. ‘e should’ve cited ‘is sources, ‘e should.”
“Or when you endorsed the Minutemen vigilantes? Didn’t you know the Minutemen are like Ku Klux Klan?
Like? Hell, they are the KKK!”
“On the other ‘and, you ‘as to admit that they do enjoy a certain amount of – ‘ow you call it? – popular support. An’ you ‘as to pick your dogs wherever you finds ‘em.”
“But . . . why do you have to lie so much? I mean you just constantly make stuff up, like saying that whites are at zero population growth and that US population is going to double due to ‘dark immigrants.’ Where do you get that shit?”
“Look, you misunderstood what I said, mate. What I meant to say was that when you considers the whatsit? . . . um . . . the net aggregate . . . yeah . . . that’s it: the net aggregate . . . – which is not just the new immigrants, but all the immigrants what’s come in since 1970 – yeah, when you considers the net aggregate, then my statement is in fact, accurate, as it were.”
“So you mean, like me and my kids and their kids’ kids?”
“Exactly!”
“Well, by that standard ALL population growth is going to come from people born after 1970, no matter their race or ethnicity. After all, the child-bearing years belong to the young . . .like your child bride.”
“’Ey now! No need to get personal! What you got against child brides, any’ow?”
“Hey, I’m not faulting you for marrying someone half your age. I mean if you really are concerned about the decline of the Aryan race, you need to keep breeding, even if you have to keep on doing it into your senescence. In fact, according to your logic you, as scion of the noble white race, should acquire several child brides. In fact, I know just the group for you . . .”
“My wife ‘as got nuffin’ to do wiv dis. Besides, I already ‘as kids by me first wife.”
“We all know that you have kids, Pete. How could we not? You bring up your little girl Sue and your ‘blonde, blue-eyed’ boy, Alexander James Frank Brimelow, at every speaking opportunity. Hell, we even know their birthdates, since you relate these dates to the ‘brown apocalypse’ that your children will supposedly experience in their lifetimes.”
“Well, I do fink that if we continues to favor the darker races with quotas and affirmative action, poor little Alexander James will one day be punished just for being white. ‘E’ll be a victim of reverse racism, in fact. You can’t deny that.”
“Jesssuuuuuuuuuuuus, I just had an epiphany! That’s really what’s bugging you, isn’t it? You left the comfort of Jolly Old England, Jolly White Old England, hoping to find more of your own kind in the land across the sea. But instead, to your horror and dismay, what you found was a country practically overrunning with darkies. And now you’re afraid that one of your kids might even marry one of them? Is that it? Oh the horror! The horror! Pete, you must wake up drenched in sweat at the nightmare of being forced to one day dandle some chocolate-brown grandchild on your knee, in your own home. Oh my god; think of it! Your own grandchild!”
“Stop it! Stop it Razzo, you wanker. Clearly you are part of the problem, you mudwave surfer. Fuckin’ piece of third world trash!”
“Whoa, Peter! Get a grip on yourself, man. It’s just a fact that you’ll have to accept: the possibility that your own personal DNA might one day become contaminated with alien stock. How does Sue Madison Sanchez sound? Has a nice muddy-brown ring to it, doesn’t it? Think of it: Your little snow-white Suzie married to a swarthy Mexican cholo. It just wigs you out, doesn’t it?”
“Look Razzo, if that is your name . . . I admits that I doesn’t much like the thought of my daughter marrying an illegal anything. But my concerns is purely for the integrity of our great white ‘ardworkin’ Protestant culture is all. That is what is at issue ‘ere, and that is what is threatened by illegal immigration.”
“You mean, the purity of the white race, right?”
“Razzo, I fink this conversation ‘as gone far enough. Goodbye.” [CLICK]
“But Pete! Wait! I wanted you to explain why immigrants are to blame for the Northern Virginia suburbs.”
[Dialtone]
After this was posted Cronulla posted a defense of Peter Brimelow. Mr. Brimelow subsequently felt the need to clear the record. Herein his response.
Peter Brimelow responds:
Cronulla, you old plonker, thanks for writing in on my behalf mate. I really think you laid to rest the load of clobbers peddled by that third-world wanker Razzo. The only racist, in my conversation with Razzo, was the duffer on the other end of the phone. You can’t know how cheesed off I got when I saw that third world toff transcribed our phone conversation. Hell, I was honking gallons into the loo after reading his insults. So, I’ll finish correcting the record that you so ably started. Thanks again mate.
It is a fact that America is getting darker and we need to act to stop that. As you know the opening to the Constitution, the preamble, actually says the purpose of the constitution is to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, not posterity in general, our posterity. The posterity of the people who were living in the U.S. at the time. And that was a nation which was entirely white and it was also very heavily, overwhelmingly Protestant: 98 percent Protestant. So our founders envisioned an entirely white nation that was close to 100% Protestant. I don’t know why people get all scatty when I state this. This is a fact. The constitution did not envision securing the blessings of liberty to Blacks, Catholics or Hispanics, let alone immigrants.
Razzo wants to tarnish VDare because we publish white nationalists like Steve Sailer and Pat Buchanan. We publish on VDARE.com a few writers, for example Jared Taylor, whom I would regard as “white nationalist,” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists as the PC police would have you believe. But they unashamedly work for their people…Get used to it! As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group "white nationalism" will inexorably increase, and we will be there defending our people. So get used to it! We of the white race, will not go down without a fight.
Steve Sailer, another white nationalist, is also one of our contributors, and as you, Cronilla say, his comments on Asian men and Black women losing out in the evolutionary race, have been misinterpreted by the same duffers who accuse us of being white supremacists. What Steve actually wrote in his essay, "Is Love Colorblind," was as follows:
The general pattern to be explained is: blacks are more in demand as husbands than as wives, and vice-versa for Asians. The question is, what accounts for it?
The force driving these skewed husband - wife proportions appears to be differences in perceived sexual attractiveness. On average, black men tend to appear slightly more and Asian men slightly less masculine than white men, while Asian women are typically seen as slightly more and black women as slightly less feminine than white women.
So, what makes blacks more masculine-seeming and Asians more feminine-seeming? 1) Asian men tend to be shorter than white and black men. Does this matter in the mating game? One of America's leading hands-on researchers into this question, 7'1", 280-pound basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, reports that in his ample experience being tall and strong never hurt. Biological anthropologists confirm this, finding that taller tends to be better in the eyes of most women in just about all cultures. Furthermore, it can be rather cold comfort to a 5'7" Asian who is competing for dates with white and black guys averaging 5'11" to hear, ``Your sons will grow up on average a couple of inches taller than you, assuming, of course, that you ever meet a girl and have any kids.'' In contrast, consider a 5'1" Asian coed. Although she'd be happy with a 5'7" boyfriend if she were in an all-Asian school, at UCLA she finds lots of boys temptingly much taller than that, but few are Asian.
2) Since women do not go bald and can generally grow longer hair than men, most cultures associate longer hair with femininity. Although blacks' hair doesn't grow as long as whites' or Asians' hair, that's not a problem for black women in all-black societies. After integration, though, hair often becomes an intense concern for black women competing with longer-haired women of other races.
3) Muscularity may most sharply differentiate the races in terms of sexual attractiveness. Women like men who are stronger than they; men like women who are rounder and softer. The frustrations of Asian men are a warning sign. When, in the names of freedom and feminism, young women listen less to the hard-earned wisdom of older women about how to pick Mr. Right, they listen even more to their hormones. This allows cruder measures of a man's worth -- like the size of his muscles -- to return to prominence.
As you can see, Steve was just pointing out the scientific basis for the sexual preference that discriminates against black women and Asian men. It’s a fact that women like their men big and men like their women soft. I don’t know why that Razzo wanker has to twist this into some kind of racist argument. It’s the same way that the PC police twisted my arguments in the essay “America’s Immigration Policy—Hitler’s Revenge?”
And as you, Cronulla, rightly point out, who is the racist when it comes to my children. As some of you who have read my book, Alien Nation, will remember, the most denounced passage was my reference to my little boy, Alexander, who had then just been born. There is reference in this book to his blue eyes and blond hair. Alexander James Frank Brimelow is an American, although I was still a British subject and his mother a Canadian when he shot into the New York delivery room, yelling indignantly, one summer dawn in 1991. I was merely pointing out the unintended consequences of the 14th Amendment. This is because of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, states in part:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
We need to repeal the 14th Amendment which was passed after the Civil War in an attempt to stop Southern states denying their newly freed slaves the full rights of citizens. What with all these illegals having anchor babies, it’s just literally changing the colour of our nation. And just because I mentioned that my son is blond and blue-eyed, all these people accuse me of racism. They want to see racism, go talk to the multi-culturalists.
The drive toward multiculturalism now exists in every English-speaking country. It exists because there are people who don’t like the majority white culture in these countries and want to undermine it. And in the U.S. it particularly exists because of the African-American population which, in many ways, is almost like a fetal nation. I mean blacks are developing in quite different ways culturally to the rest of the population and it’s a very deep-seated problem for the Americans. There is a sense in which current immigration policy is Adolf Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America. You see, African-Americans are the model for the Hispanics that are invading our country and fomenting multi-culturalism. We need to control the development of the African-American population just as we need to exclude the Hispanic growth.
Finally, that wanker Razzo brings up the whole Leprosy thing. I mean, yeah you had Brits bringing Africans over in conditions that bred disease. But of more immediate significance to readers is who was blamed for the spread of leprosy in the news reports.
(“European colonialism and the slave trade probably played a key role in the spread of leprosy, research suggests.”)
“…the disease may have begun in East Africa…then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.”
In other words, although this ancient disease was rampant throughout Europe and Asia by early medieval times, the study is being used as another occasion to denigrate the whites of Western Europe, solidly fixed in the media mind as the only practitioners of colonialism and slave trading. The source of this ahistorical slander, sadly, is the press release put out by head of the Pasteur Institute unit responsible for the study, Dr Stewart Cole:
“Europeans and North Africans then spread leprosy to West Africa… Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.
“‘Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health,’ said Cole.”
In other words, the brief period of European rule in the Third World, which triggered a population explosion there because of the introduction of public health disciplines, law, order, technology and capital, creating an improving living standard the post- colonial regimes have been pitifully unable to maintain, was “extremely bad.” However leprosy spread in the past, the answer to stopping extension in the future is obvious: curtail 3rd World immigration.The brutal truth is that immigrants bring disease..
The problem really boils down to letting these brown hordes have a voice in our democracy. Well that's really the problem and also we didn't have the institutionalization of of factionalization, in the sense of voting right acts and voting rights which is moving towards a proportional representation system where everybody gets everybody gets represented. That is a big part of the problem: too much democracy. I say deport them all!! And toss out their kids, who were born in this country, with them. I hope this clears out any confusion.
As if we needed more evidence that John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA, is a racist extremist, Peter Brimelow has put together an anthology of his favorite racist writers for the latest issue of Tanton’s magazine The Social Contract. Eristic Ragemail has previously pointed out that the so-called grass-roots anti-immigrant organizations are in actuality a creature of a select cabal of extremist nutwings. If anybody had any doubt about Tanton’s racist proclivities, this should put them to rest. (Peter Brimelow makes no bones of his racism, defending it as a bulwark against “political correctness.”) John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and a dozen other nativist organizations, still proclaims agnosticism on the inferiority of non-whites, despite statements clearly belying such racism. The whole of the latest issue of The Social Contract exclusively features writings from the extremist website VDare with the unbowed racist, Steve Sailer featured prominently. Take this gem from a recent Sailer article, (one of a racist multitude) “there’s a much simpler explanation for why white kids spend no more time on their homework than black and Hispanic kids, yet score vastly higher on achievement tests: because they are, … smarter.” Next time the media runs a quote from FAIR or NumbersUSA, invite them to peruse this issue of John Tanton’s publication: The The Social Contract loves VDare and its stable of racists.
P.S. All this racist crap is paid for by you, the taxpayer. VDare is a so-called “non-profit” corporation.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform ('”FAIR”) received a good deal of negative publicity after it was disclosed that it had received most of its start-up money from nonprofit Pioneer Fund foundation. The Pioneer Fund has a long history of promoting eugenics and giving funding to researchers who champion white supremacist causes. As well, the Pioneer Fund has provided money to a variety of anti-immigrant causes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have both condemned FAIR and the Pioneer Fund as promoting racist hate views. Most critically for the present discussion is the role of eugenics and immigration. Eugenics is broadly defined as follows:
Eugenics: Literally, meaning normal genes, eugenics aims to improve the genetic constitution of the human species by selective breeding. The use of Albert Einstein's sperm to conceive a child (by artificial insemination) would represent an attempt at positive eugenics. The Nazis notoriously engaged in negative eugenics by genocide.
The word "eugenics" was coined by Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) to denote scientific endeavors to increase the proportion of persons with better than average genetic endowment through selective mating of marriage partners.
The practice of eugenics was first legally mandated in the United States in the state of Indiana, resulting in the forcible sterilization, incarceration, and occasionally euthanasia of the mentally or physically handicapped, the mentally ill, and ethnic minorities (particularly people of mixed racial heritage), and the adopting out of their children to non-disabled, Caucasian parents. Similar programs spread widely in the early part of the twentieth century, and still exist in some parts of the world. It is important to note that no experiment in eugenics has ever been shown to result in measurable improvements in human health. In fact, in the best known attempt at positive eugenics, the Nazi "Lebensborn" program, there was a higher-than- normal level of birth defects among the resulting offspring.
During the first decades of the century… major political figures such as Henry Cabot Lodge had unblushingly defended Anglo-Saxonism, the superiority of the “original” American stock. The eugenics movement flourished in these years. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embraced racist theories; Henry Adams, Henry James, the president of Harvard, and other cultural heavyweights did the same. Many key members of the new generation of social scientists, including E.A. Ross and John R. Commons, doubted the intellectual capacity of racial and ethnic minorities. These pioneers in sociology and economics provided additional authority to nativists’ arguments. As late as the early 1920s, when the prominent social psychologist William McDougall proposed a racist interpretation of history based on the results of intelligence tests, when Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color found a wide audience of college-trained readers for their racist theories, the “genetic case” for nativism remained a position that could be defended in rational discourse. (“The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Bovement,”David H. Bennett (Vintage Books 1988) p. 283)
Eugenicists generally hold that certain people (mostly northern-hemisphere Caucasians) are superior in a variety of qualities to other people (mostly non-Caucasians and non-Anglos such as Jews). The latter are said, by eugenicists, to be innately inferior. Eugenicists, therefore believe that the inferior members of the human species must be controlled by a variety of methods ranging from birth control to sterilization and, in extreme cases, extermination. The superior members of the species must, in turn, be encouraged to breed and must not sundry their superior genes by association with inferior members (miscegenation or race-mixing). Given that the Nazis carried these programs to their logical conclusion, the mass extermination of inferior human beings, eugenics has come to be viewed as scientifically indefensible and morally repugnant.
"American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro..."
A natural extension of the eugenicist view is that the superior members of the species should not be outnumbered by the inferior members. In order to prevent an influx of inferior members, eugenicists promote measures to prohibit or sharply curtail immigration. Such measures found voice in the restrictive and racist Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924. The Act sharply curtailed immigration by countries with undesirable members like immigrants from Latin Countries, Eastern Europe, Russia and Jews. “The [Immigration and Restriction Act of] 1924 act, following a barrage of eugenicist propaganda, reset the quotas at 2 percent of people from each nation recorded in the 1890 census (Southern and eastern Europeans arrived in relatively small numbers before then)… Cynical, but effective. “America must be kept American,” proclaimed Calvin Coolidge as he signed the bill.” ( (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 262) As stated by one of the eugenicist social scientists who backed race and national origin restrictions on immigration:
The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it. There is no reason why legal steps should not be taken which would insure a continuously upward evolution.
The steps that should be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency. Immigration should not only be restrictive but highly selective. And the revision of the immigration and naturalization laws will only afford a slight relief from our present difficulty. The really important steps are those looking toward the prevention of the continued propagation of defective strains in the present population. (Brigham 1923) (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 260)
The Pioneer Fund, which almost exclusively funded FAIR in its early years, was instrumental in promoting eugenicist views and the enactment of eugenicist laws. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, a Pioneer Fund president, was a life-long eugenicist, who was part of the Eugenic Research Association (“ERO”), a government project that promoted eugenics laws among the states.
A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that FAIR founder, Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf Hitler
From the time he moved to New York in 1910 until his death in 1943, Laughlin committed himself to a search for patterns of bad heredity or “dysgenesis.” Even more impressive than the abundance of statistical material collected during Laughlin’s research was his success in translating the implications of eugenical theory into law. The ruling passions of his career as a eugenicist were immigration restriction, eugenic sterilization, and prohibition of interracial marriage.
Laughlin’s efforts at immigration restriction included an attempt to survey every public charitable institution or mental hospital in American. He combined those data with material on the number of foreign-born persons in jails, prisons, and reformatories to provide a basis for testimony to Congress as its appointed “Expert Eugenics Agent.” Reflecting in large part Laughlin’s testimony, Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was consciously drawn to block the flow of Jews and Italians from 1900 to 1920.
Hitler praised the racist features of American immigration legislation in Mein Kampf even before he came to power. He condemned the automatic grant of citizenship, extended indiscriminately to “every Jewish or Polish, African or Asiatic child” born in Germany as “thoughtless” and “hare-brained.” America, “by simply excluding certain races from naturalization,” was making “slow beginnings” toward a vision Hitler could support. A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf Hitler. "The American Breed" (“The American Breed”: Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund, by Paul A. Lombardo, J.D., Ph.D., Albany Law Review (2002) (emphasis added)).
Today’s nativist agenda is no different than the one that animated the nativists who helped enact the restrictive 1924 immigration act. Nor is there a difference in the latent racism inherent in such views. “Earlier generations of Americans knew that in most cases, what are now called Third World populations, by their very nature, are temperamentally different from the European Christians who settled North America, fashioned the United States, devised its system of laws, and fathered its free institutions. .. We must never, never, never shrink back in craven fear of the imbecilic words that our adversaries hurl at us -- "racist," "bigot," "fascist," and such rubbish ” Father James Thornton
Tanton had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel
John Tanton, perhaps more than any other person, is the architect of the modern nativist movement. In a recent article, Tanton, who rarely grants interviews, forthrightly admitted as such:
The success of U.S. English taught Tanton a crucial lesson. If the immigration restriction movement was to succeed, it would have to be rooted in an emotional appeal to those who felt that their country, their language, their very identity was under assault. “Feelings,” Tanton says in a tone reminiscent of Spock sharing some hard-won insight on human behavior, “trump facts.
More than anyone, Tanton served as the liaison between the “mainstream” anti-immigration movement, whose arguments were still rooted in population and job concerns, and its natural allies on the far right, who saw an epic struggle to maintain America’s national and racial character. He courted mainstream conservative donors, like the Scaife family, as well as the fringe Pioneer Fund, whose current president argues that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites. He had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel about a wave of Indian immigrants overrunning France. In 1996, Tanton coauthored The Immigration Invasion with Wayne Lutton, who sits on the advisory board of a publication put out by the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens. Editor of the Social Contract Press since 1998, Lutton now occupies an office just a few feet from Tanton’s.
Though he plays the victim, Tanton wants it both ways: harnessing the political power that comes from tapping into nativist grievances and building bridges with outright racists, while at the same time dismissing any of the negative consequences that might come from such partnerships. Perhaps Tanton shares the views of his allies, or perhaps he simply understands that if what people like Taylor euphemistically call “cultural” issues were taken out of the equation, there wouldn’t be the same flood of phone calls to senators. “If the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country were all good-looking, English-speaking, white people,” Taylor told me, “the opposition to illegal immigration would be considerably less.”
Aside from Tanton, the other person most identified with what is euphemistically called “white nationalism” but is in reality “white supremacy” is the British expatriate, Peter Brimelow. Brimelow penned the anti-immigrant book, Alien Nation and founded the forthrightly racist website VDare.com. Brimelow has stated that the United States is a white Protestant country and that it must keep its whie character by sharply limiting immigration of non-whites. Among the racists that Brimelow regularly features on his VDare and who also contribute to John Tanton, periodical, The Social Contract, are the following:
The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenics
John Tanton and Peter Brimelow, despite being racist extremists, are not marginal figures in American politics. Tanton’s organization, FAIR, testifies often before Congress and it is regularly quoted in the mainstream press. Brimelow has been affiliated with The National Review and was a journalist for Forbes magazine. Both Tanton and Brimelow are regulars on the talk show circuit and their cronies are regularly featured on the right-wing cable “news” shows. Each has made racist statements but it is Brimelow who pushes a far right agenda that explicitly embraces racism and anti-Semitism. These extreme views have constantly challenged organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch and the Anti-Defamation League. In a recent posting on SPLC’s website, they articulated their reasoning behind listing FAIR as a hate group.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is almost certainly the most-quoted immigration restriction organization in America. … In the past six years, FAIR officials have testified at least 30 times to Congress. Day in and day out, FAIR is taken seriously as a mainstream commentator on the immigration debate…
The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenics — the pseudo-science of breeding a better human race that was utterly discredited by the Nazi euthanasia program. It spreads racist conspiracy theories. Its political ads have caused numerous politicians, Democratic and Republican, to denounce it.
Much of this has been known for years. But last February [2007], underlining the way that FAIR does business, its leaders met with the leaders of Vlaams Belang — a hastily renamed Belgian party that under a prior appellation, Vlaams Blok, was officially banned by the Belgian Supreme Court as a racist and xenophobic group. It was, for some, a final straw — the Rubicon of hate, as it were. When FAIR officials met with Vlaams Belang leaders to seek their “advice” on immigration, we decided to take another look at FAIR. When our work was done, it was obvious that FAIR qualified as a hate group.
The identification of FAIR as a bona fide hate group is important. FAIR is the hub of the American nativist movement, the group that more than any other has contributed to the rancid turn the national immigration discussion has taken. With FAIR fanning the flames of xenophobic intolerance, hate groups, hate crimes and hate speech directed at foreigners and Latinos continue to rise in America.
It cannot be gainsaid that FAIR, NumbersUSA, VDare and the coterie of anti-immigrant organizations have an agenda which is larger than merely restricting immigration. Nativist writers such as Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald fervently believe that blacks are of inferior intellect, that Jews are controlling the media and that the white race should be protected from nonwhites. Their ideology is exactly the same ideology that led to the Nazi Nuremberg laws. They have used immigration as a gateway to the mainstream, witness Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity preaching their gospel of hate to millions every single night. Unless and until these modern day eugenicists are marginalized, the way David Duke and the Aryan Nation have been marginalized, these extremists will continue to influence public policy to the peril of a great many Americans.
Orginally published On Black Agenda Report (hyperlink in title)
by Lee Cokorinos
It is true that growing immigrant populations are transforming the United States, but one ancient aspect of Americana remains intact: racial supremacist dreams of a "white" nation. The notion that the United States was and should forever be a White Man's Country - once the accepted creed and rationale of the Republic - resurfaces in hysterical form and very prominent places in the national discourse. In academia, electoral politics, mass media, and revived racist movements on the ground, corporate-funded anti-immigrant forces combine with age-old anti-Black formations to rally against diversity as "a dire threat to ‘the core culture.'" White "nativist movements" are once again called forth to confront the "mortal danger" posed by The Other.
The Racist Roots of the Anti-Immigration Movement by Lee Cokorinos
"Two broad strains of anti-immigrant racial supremacism, one based on culture and the other on heredity and genetics, seem to be converging."
Prominent leaders of the anti-immigration movement would have us believe that not an ounce of racism lies behind their efforts. The most media-visible figures in this camp, such as Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo and Victor Davis Hanson may argue the case for restricting, deporting, rounding up and cutting off public services to those "illegals" stigmatized as culturally backward, unhealthy potential terrorists. But they protest that their motives for doing so are as pure as the driven snow.
In their writings and media appearances, the leaders of the anti-immigration movement claim their politics are based not on a hatred of the racial Other but on their commitment to the rule of law, the integrity of "our culture," the objective findings of social science, or better employment prospects for American workers.
On page after page of In Mortal Danger, Tom Tancredo's diatribe against non-European immigrants and multiculturalism, the presidential candidate and congressman repeatedly complains that he and his colleagues have been unfairly painted as racist or had their arguments misconstrued as racist.
"Tancredo's book drips with cultural condescension toward Mexican-Americans, Muslims and African-Americans."
But alongside these complaints Tancredo's book drips with cultural condescension toward Mexican-Americans, Muslims and African-Americans. While he claims that illegality is the problem, Tancredo soon moves past this and calls for revoking the legal citizenship of what he terms Mexican-American "anchor babies." Conjuring up racist and sexist imagery, he declares that "gravid wombs should not guarantee free medical care." One wonders whether Tancredo, both of whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, would apply such terminology to his parents, and thus forfeit his own citizenship.
"Clarity of Thought"
Beset by a "malignant multiculturalism," the "vast majority of Americans" are, according to Tancredo, forced to deal with its "raging intolerance of traditional America." This leads to such outrages, he tells us on the following page, as VanderbiltUniversity renaming its Confederate Memorial Hall dormitory to Memorial Hall just "because the word 'Confederate' made some people uncomfortable."
It apparently doesn't make him feel uncomfortable. Tancredo addressed a meeting bedecked with Confederate flags and promoted by the neo-Confederate League of the South last year. Dr. Michael Hill, the League of the South's president, has warned that the U.S. faces the prospect of "being overrun by hordes of non-white immigrants."
In his book, Tancredo also reaches back into history to embrace the crudest forms of colonial racist rhetoric. He points to what he calls a "very poetic speech" delivered in 1899 by Winston Churchill against Muslims' "degraded sensualism," "fearful fatalistic apathy," "improvident habits," "slovenly forms of agriculture," etc. These, of course, are exactly the kinds of taunts that the racial nativists of the American past directed at Tancredo's Italian forebears when they reached the U.S.
"Tancredo reaches back into history to embrace the crudest forms of colonial racist rhetoric."
Casting about for more current action heroes, Tancredo settles on "noted constitutional attorney" Ann Coulter. Coulter, a former staffer with the Center for Individual Rights, has defended Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's The Bell Curve, which links race and IQ, and regularly heaps racist abuse on Muslims and others, as in "I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about 'camel jockey'? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"
Although Tancredo claims that individuals should be judged on their actions and merits rather than their group identity, he takes up Coulter's proposal that everyone from "suspect countries" should be immediately deported. Tancredo has also proposed wholesale deportation of undocumented immigrants. "If only our political leaders possessed" Coulter's "clarity of thought," he writes.
The Suburban Plantation
Victor Davis Hanson, author of Mexifornia: A State of Becoming and another prominent think tank/TV talking head in the immigration debate, also argues for a radical cutback in Mexican immigration and vigorous efforts to root out multicultural thinking. At the core of his approach is an imperious demand that immigrants conform to his narrow, Anglicized view of American culture.
He also abuses his progressive critics for allegedly falsely charging the anti-immigration movement with racism. "To discuss the issue rationally," he claims, "is to expect charges of racist and nativist." He then blithely condemns American schools for promoting "the fiction of cultural equality."
Hanson, a senior fellow at the right wing Hoover Institution, comes from a long line of California Central Valley growers and occupies a special niche in the firmament of reaction, providing a philosophical bridge to earlier forms of anti-immigrant ideology. One of the more enduring mythical themes in the cultural history of white supremacism in the United States has been the idyllic nature of the Southern plantation, where everyone knew his or her place in the racial pecking order. In exchange for accepting this social order the laboring classes, according to this mythology, would be rewarded with a stable existence, leading to a "natural" harmony.
"Hanson condemns American schools for promoting ‘the fiction of cultural equality'."
This thinking was championed by mid-20th century adherents of the so-called "Southern Agrarian" movement such as Richard M. Weaver, one of the founding intellectual figures of modern conservatism. Skirting around the questions of slavery and Jim Crow lynching, they romanticized the supposed gentility and "small is beautiful" values of "civilized" southern life. Hanson extends some these Agrarianist themes, such as the dignity of manual labor, to the farms and ranches of the southwest, worked largely by immigrant workers from Mexico.
While he does not embrace the philosophy of antebellum plantation idealism, Hanson's writings, particularly the early chapters of Mexifornia, are filled with misty Agrarian school images of the alleged nobility and order of a fading rural California farm life (e.g., his nostalgia for "the good times of our agrarian past").
In southern California the Agrarian mythological tradition has played out in odd and sinister ways (a eugenics movement was part of it, as Matt Garcia recounts), combining misplaced nostalgia for social relations on the small commercial farm and, in its more recent incarnation, a celebration of the bucolic white suburbs as the pinnacle of civilization.
For Brian Janiskee, Hanson's Claremont Institute colleague, "the seemingly quiet and bland order of the California suburb is, in effect, a metaphysical affirmation of the revolutionary core of the American regime."
Needless to say, an intense and sometimes nasty struggle for cultural hegemony and economic and political power is taking place in the California suburbs between a shrinking and resistant white population and a growing Latino community. Journalist Roberto Lovato reports that one participant at an Anaheim city council meeting said California is becoming "ground zero for America's second civil war."
"Imperatives to be Honored"
This rural/suburban reality sits rather incongruously with Hanson's shifting claims that racism is either no longer a big deal (it "belongs largely to the past") or is immutable ("mankind by its very nature is prone to be murderous, racist and sexist"). "Today's Big Lie," he tells us, is that "racism, discrimination [and] labor exploitation" have been "the burdens of the Mexican-American experience."
"Ward Connerly and Glynn Custred have jumped on the anti-immigration bandwagon by linking it with their assault on affirmative action."
Such arguments, of course, have long been directed at African-Americans, and have a strong appeal for right wing opponents of a strong and effective government role in promoting racial justice. As they pour out of the think tanks and media outlets of the right, they are feeding increasingly coordinated populist assaults on African-American and immigrant communities.
Veterans of the Prop 209 campaign in California, such as Ward Connerly and Glynn Custred, and others now backing Connerly's "Super Tuesday" multistate campaign, have also jumped on the anti-immigration bandwagon by linking it with their assault on affirmative action.
On the back cover of Mexifornia Linda Chavez of the misnamed Center for Equal Opportunity, which has been waging war for years against the gains of the civil rights movement in law, education, employment and fair housing, dutifully endorses Hanson's view of what she calls "disturbing trends among Mexican immigrants."
This despite the fact that Chavez seems to have had her own misgivings about anti-Mexican bias among her right wing colleagues. She specifically calls out "a fair number of Republican members of Congress, almost all influential conservative talk radio hosts, some cable news anchors - most prominently, Lou Dobbs - and a handful of public policy 'experts' at organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, in addition to fringe groups like the Minuteman Project."
Those who thought these words might signal a welcome move toward multiculturalist rationality among the anti-diversity crowd were soon to be disappointed. Chavez quickly retracted them.
Praising Hanson's book in the Wall Street Journal for its "highbrow, agrarian outlook," Chavez' sidekick Roger Clegg offers his own racialized and imperious endorsement of "the core values that define American citizenship," such as "don't demand anything because of your race or ethnicity" and "don't view working hard and studying hard as 'acting white.'"
These are not a matter of choice for free individuals in a democratic society, but, he sternly instructs us (acting white?) "habits to be inculcated and imperatives to be honored."
Clegg's "core values" are an open book. "I have a lot of sympathy," he tells us, "for those who want to recognize the heroism of Confederate soldiers, and even more for those who have a reflexive and negative reaction to the NAACP's pronouncements these days. My father's parents were from Mississippi, and my parents and I are Texans, and in all my years growing up and playing army I can never remember choosing to be a Yankee rather than a Rebel."
Racial Nationalism and Immigration
Pat Buchanan, a veteran figure in anti-immigration politics, has a substantial following among the "pitchfork brigade" at the grassroots of the populist right, and is also a regular presence on MSNBC. His sister Angela"Bay" Buchanan served as chair of Tom Tancredo's Virginia-based Team America PAC, which promotes anti-immigration candidates, and has now joined his presidential campaign team. Bay Buchanan and Tancredo attended the Tombstone, Arizona kick-off rally of the Minuteman Project in April 2005.
Although he pays lip service to the legal changes brought about by the civil rights movement from the mid-1950s onwards, in his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, Pat Buchanan deplores what he calls America's "national guilt over racism."
Buchanan believes this guilt is leading toward national and racial suicide ("demography is destiny"), a theme once championed by Theodore Roosevelt that has a long history in the American nativist movement. In attempting to explain this guilt phenomenon, he points to the "seminal" work of Peter Brimelow, who argues that America's alleged obsessive guilt about racism was caused essentially by an overreaction to the genocidal crimes of the Nazis.
"Pat Buchanan deplores what he calls America's ‘national guilt over racism.'"
By committing to "cleanse itself from all taints of racism and xenophobia," Buchanan quotes Brimelow, the "U.S. political elite" eventually "enacted the epochal Immigration Act of 1965," which did away with a quota system based on national origins that favored European immigration.
Brimelow, an English immigrant who runs VDARE, a website filled with white supremacist and anti-Semitic material, has called the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that has backed racial eugenics research, a "perfectly respectable institution." Buchanan writes a regular column for VDARE, for which Tom Tancredo has also written.
In the acknowledgments section of State of Emergency, Buchanan singles out the late Sam Francis (who edited the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens' paper, The Citizens Informer) and Brimelow as the vanguard of the anti-immigration movement. And while he praises the leaders of the anti-immigrant think tank infrastructure, such as Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies and Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), he cites a slew of VDARE columnists in the book and thanks James Fulford of VDARE for help with the manuscript.
The racist roots of the anti-immigration movement run deep. In his important study of American immigration politics up to the 1920's, Strangers in the Land, John Higham identifies two broad strains of anti-immigrant racial supremacism, one based on culture and the other, with the rise of Social Darwinism, based on heredity and genetics. These trends now seem to be converging, and are being mainstreamed into the American media through Buchanan's high visibility.
Nativism Goes to Harvard
As Higham points out, anti-immigrant racial nativism was not restricted to populist demagogues who directed their appeals to poor and working class whites (e.g., an anti-immigrant Minute Men organization was formed in 1886 in New York). Powerful strains of racially-charged propaganda directed at immigrants have also emanated from the political elite and top universities.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., stood up in the Senate in 1896 and warned in a debate over imposing literacy tests on immigrants that America's national character was in danger of being "bred out." Francis A. Walker, the president of MIT, developed a theory in the late 1890s that "beaten men from beaten races" were, with their higher birthrate, dooming white America.
Books such as Madison Grant's 1916 The Passing of the Great Race, proclaimed that "democracy is fatal to progress when two races of unequal value live side by side." The book helped spur a nativist movement, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, that contributed to the passage of draconian restrictions on immigration in 1924. The new nativist movement of today has also spurred a resurgence of the racist Klan.
Grant, a lawyer and president of the New York Zoological Society, was vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, which was, Higham tells us, "born at a meeting of five young blue bloods in the law office of Charles Warren, later a noted constitutional historian." All five had attended Harvard together in the 1880's and had gone on to do graduate work at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School or its law school.
"The new nativist movement of today has also spurred a resurgence of the racist Klan."
The IRL, which eventually turned to eugenics and briefly considered renaming itself the Eugenic Immigration League, quickly developed close ties with the leading nativist factions and lobbyists in Congress and went on to fight immigration under the direction of prominent attorney Prescott Hall and Harvard professor Robert DeCourcy Ward.
"Pat Buchanan with Footnotes"
A century after the formation of the IRL, the tradition of highbrow panic about the perils of immigration still finds a home at Harvard. In Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, Samuel P. Huntington, arguably the leading political scientist in the U.S., strikes the very same themes that Buchanan, Tancredo and Hanson do in their less footnoted (or in the case of Hanson, non-footnoted) nativist diatribes: white Protestant culture, which forms the core of America's identity, is being marginalized by immigration, multiculturalism, and (Huntington adds) the "denationalization" of American elites.
For good measure, he produces a lengthy section on how affirmative action has contributed to the "deconstruction of America" through its alleged abandonment of the intent doctrine, starting with the labor department's enforcement of the anti- discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and continuing through the Supreme Court case Griggs v. Duke Power (401 U.S. 424, 1971).
Huntington's notion that the intent doctrine has been abandoned would surely come as a surprise to those who see it as a major legal impediment to challenging racial discrimination. Nevertheless, he writes that affirmative action, along with "the challenge to English" has contributed to the rise of "subnational identities" (African-Americans and Latinos) that are posing a dire threat to "the core culture."
"Hispanization," he tells us, echoing the rhetoric of the Minutemen, is threatening a "demographic reconquista" of the southwest U.S. America's unity, which he falsely sees as based on "Anglo-Protestant" culture, is being undermined by largely Mexican influences. But Huntington, while steering clear of racist pseudo-science, goes beyond the argument about culture to suggest that "white nativist movements are a possible and plausible response" to the prospect that whites may someday become a minority in the U.S.
"Huntington writes that affirmative action, along with ‘the challenge to English' has contributed to the rise of ‘subnational identities' (African-Americans and Latinos) that are posing a dire threat to ‘the core culture.'"
As BostonUniversity political scientist Alan Wolfe has remarked, "the word 'plausible' catches the eye. To say that something is possible or probable is to make a prediction; to call it plausible is to endorse it." Huntington's argument, "at times bordering on hysteria," is "Pat Buchanan with footnotes." Huntington's tacit nod to the white populist movement has been reciprocated by Peter Brimelow, who describes him as "a friend of VDARE."
Racial Nativism and the Conservative Infrastructure
Ideological advocacy has played an important role in the resurgence of racial nativism in the anti-immigration movement. But the conservative think tank and foundation infrastructure has played an important part in this revival, both by mainstreaming its ideas through books, op-eds and media appearances and by supporting the organizations promoting the demographic and other research that has fed it. This intellectual infrastructure feeds this movement at the base.
Charles L. Heatherly, one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation's model for furnishing right wing politicians with actionable policy ideas as editor of several of its Mandate for Leadership handbooks, provided a "priceless contribution" to In Mortal Danger, Tom Tancredo writes. A former staffer for Tancredo, Heatherly now works as a senior aide to the congressman (see his appearance on Tancredo's behalf on YouTube).
Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia was written at the suggestion of Peter Collier, the founding publisher of Encounter Books, which has been backed by the Koch, Bradley and Olin Foundations. It is an expanded version of an article published by Hanson in City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's flagship publication. Myron Magnet, the journal's editor, helped edit the article and book.
"This intellectual infrastructure feeds this movement."
According to Mediatransparency.org, the Olin foundation provided $100,000 in funding for VDARE through Sally Pipes' Pacific Research Institute. Olin also funded the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, of which Samuel P. Huntington is the founding director. The Smith Richardson and Bradley foundations provided support for Huntington's Who Are We?
Bradley also provided support for the Center for Immigration Studies. A report advocating the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, "The Economics of Immigration Enforcement," has been published by Henry Regnery's Georgia-based National Policy Institute. The Pioneer Fund lists the National Policy Institute as its largest grant recipient on its 2005 federal tax return.
Fighting Wedge Politics
The right wing political infrastructure has also fed strategic initiatives designed to polarize the African-American and Latino communities over immigration. The Minuteman movement, which has spread across the country and experienced two major splits, has prominently featured Ted Hayes, an African-American immigration opponent at its rallies. Rosanna Pulido, a Latina, heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, based in Skokie. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, co- founded by John Tanton, the Michigan-based leader of a dense network of anti-immigration organizations, attempted to form a front called Choose Black America in May 2006.
The good news is that efforts to counter the wedge politics of the Minuteman movement and national groups such as FAIR are gaining ground. The Equal Justice Society, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Latino Issues Forum, Greenlining Institute and Centro Legal de la Raza have begun the process of encouraging much-needed dialogue (http://tinyurl.com/2rqq9s) on immigration issues.
In the South, with a growing Latino population, critically important organizing and advocacy initiatives to counter the wedge politics of the right are being led by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Highlander Research and Education Center Institute for Immigrant Leadership Development (INDELI), Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Southeast Regional Economic Justice Network. If adequately funded and supported, this infrastructure can engage the racial nativist movement where it counts most - at the grassroots level and in the media.
Lee Cokorinos conducts political research on right-wing movements and organizations. He is the author of The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice (Rowman & Littlefield), and Target San Diego: The Right Wing Assault on Urban Democracy and Smart Government,
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