The American Conservative Union has already taken heat early into this year’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference for banning a pro-gay conservative group while welcoming a speaker with controversial views against multiculturalism that progressive advocacy groups have branded “white nationalist.”
U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) speaking on a CPAC 2012 panel against multiculturalism, left to right: ProEnglish's Robert Vandervoort and Rosalie Porter, and Peter Brimelow; click to enlarge (AMERICAN INDEPENDENT/Sofia Resnick)
ProEnglish Executive Director Robert Vandervoort, who moderated a panel discussion Thursday titled “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity” told an overflowing room he was flattered by so much interest in the dangers of multiculturalism. But really, most people were there to hear British writer and activist Peter Brimelow, the founder and editor of VDARE.com, a website that has published articles with anti-Semitic and racist tones.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has named VDARE a “White Nationalist” hate group and has documented controversial statements made over the years by Brimelow and his VDARE writers. According to SPLC, he once wrote that the New York City subway is the same as an immigration waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.” He was once quoted by Forbes magazine encouraging the Republican Party to focus on winning the white vote.
Brimelow began his speech on Thursday’s panel thanking CPAC for resisting demands by liberal groups to kick him out of the event (People for the American Way was one group that called on GOP presidential candidates to denounce Brimelow’s presence at CPAC). He warned that the U.S. is losing its Anglo identity and spent most of his time talking about what he perceives as a failed system of biculturalism in Canada.
Brimelow said that in the U.S., bilingual education and policies that require translations of voting documents are products of liberal “elites” and argued that the policies hurt the country’s non-immigrant working class. His only example of this was that Americans are being shut out of jobs at McDonald’s because they don’t speak Spanish.
“In 50, 60 years, the Montreal Anglos have gone from being Romans to being Anglo-Argentineans … they’re essentially assimilated,” Brimelow said. “I think that something like that is going to have to be done [in the U.S.]. It’s not enough to have official English at the government level. I get email all the time from people at eastern Washington state and places like this, who say that kids can’t get jobs at McDonald’s and places like that because they don’t speak Spanish. Essentially this is a ferocious attack on the living standards of the American working class … just as immigration policy in general is.”
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U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) made a surprise appearnce on the panel to endorse a federal bill he’s sponsoring called “English Language Unity Act of 2011.” His bill would declare English the official langage of the United States and would “establish a uniform English language rule for naturalization.”
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Brimelow operates on the line between the mainstream conservative movement and an openly racist fringe. His book “Alien Nation,” for instance, advanced the thesis that “Race is destiny in American politics,” and that policies altering the American complexion are both wrong and against what voters desire. His website, VDare, regularly hosts more openly racist work, like Kevin MacDonald’s claim that “Jewish activity collectively, throughout history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host societies.”
King added that he wasn’t totally familiar with Brimelow’s work.
“I’ve taken so much criticism on my life that has just been completely unjustified, you know, a fabrication of the hardcore left,” King said. “I’d want to see whatever evidence that is before I comment on it.”
When told that the white nationalist designation had come from the Southern Poverty Law Center, King laughed.
“I wouldn’t take them seriously,” he said. “No, not at all.”
SPLC lists on its website a few excerpts from articles written by VDARE writers, including:
“Whites are doing something no other people have ever done in human history. Our rulers and elites welcome replacement by aliens, they vilify our ancestors and their own, they sacrifice our interests to those of favored minorities, and they treat the entire history of the West as if it were a global plague of rapine and exploitation. This is a disease that is killing us, and we must fight it head on.”
— Jared Taylor, VDARE.com, July 4, 2008“America was defined — almost explicitly, sometimes very explicitly — as a white nation, for white people, and what that means is that there is virtually no figure, no law, no policy, no event in the history of the old, white America that can survive the transition to the new and non-white version.
— Sam Francis, VDARE.com, July 21, 2003
My name is Catherine Stewart and I am a blue book and Daughter of the American Revolution member,
How dare you claim any right over mine? I came here first, my family is foremost so how dare you attack immigrants you common ant and un-sovereign soul?
Go ahead, I own more of American History than
your ever will answer me back coward