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).
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 [Klansman] Black and his cohorts.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.
