Outrage of the week last week was the shutting down of the American Renaissance conference by anti-racist activists.
It impacted my schedule. I was planning to attend the conference (which was scheduled for Feb. 19 to Feb. 21).
It would have been a first for me. I’ve been a subscriber to the AR magazine since the mid-1990s, when I read Jared Taylor’s 1992 book Paved With Good Intentions. Jared is the moving spirit of American Renaissance (and a former National Review contributor). I debated — as in: took an opposing point of view to — him in 2006 at an event since made famous by 14-year-old Trotskyist Max Blumenthal, who knows absolutely everything about the world. The transcript of my address is here. You can hear a recording of the entire event here.
I’ve encountered Jared half a dozen times since then, and had dinner with him once when he was in New York. I like the guy a lot. He’s terrifically well-read and well-educated. Quite a good orientalist, too: he grew up in Japan — I think his parents were missionaries — and we once spent a happy half-hour comparing the odd semantic shifts between Japanese kanji and the ancestral Chinese ideograms. He’s also fluent in French: studied at the Sorbonne, I believe. I visited at his home once: Jared was raising his younger daughter — she was four years old at the time — to speak French. She chirruped “Bonjour, Monsieur” at me when I met her, with a very authentic accent. I consider Jared a fine American gentleman and patriot, with the exquisite manners of the old South, and the strong devotion to his family that a man should have.
My fondness for Jared notwithstanding, I don’t really think of myself as an American Renaissance type. For one thing, there is that ethos of the South, which I don’t really … get. I wonder if a foreigner ever can get it. It’s as odd and particular, in its own way, as Tibetan Buddhism.
For another thing, there is the antisemitism of the AR followers, which rubs me the wrong way. I fall in line with the long tradition of British philosemitism (Cromwell, Victoria, Lloyd George, Maggie Thatcher), and just have no patience with the other thing. I’d excuse Jared from that: in several hours of private conversation with him, I’ve never caught a whisper of antisemitism. The only remark I ever heard him make on the subject, to a third party, was: “They look white to me!” He has in fact taken pains to get Jewish writers and speakers into AR. His enemies say this is cynical “covering,” but my best guess, from my acquaintance with the man, is that it’s sincere. (My car-pool ride down to the AR conference, by the way, was to have been with Bob Weissberg.)
I had therefore turned down Jared’s invitations to the AR conference (which is held every other year). I wasn’t planning to attend this year, either. Then I read on one of the paleocon websites that the conference hotel had canceled AR’s booking after harassment by some hostile activists. I thought this was very shocking. Whatever you think of the AR ethos, they are genteel types (including a lot of academics, like Bob) who would no more think of burning a cross on someone’s lawn than they would of garotting their own grandmothers. They are people with opinions, that’s all — opinions, furthermore, that were perfectly mainstream 40 or 50 years ago. Well, they found another hotel.
In a fit of righteous indignation on hearing of the first cancellation, I had signed up for the conference & been duly registered. I set up the car pool with Bob and told Mrs. Bradlaugh I’d be away for the weekend. Then on Tuesday of the week of the conference, I got an email from AR saying the new venue had also canceled, after more intimidation from the anti-“hate” thugs. The email said AR would refund our conference fees, but I donated mine to AR in disgust.
The next day another email came saying that AR had found yet another hotel and the conference was on after all. This new hotel (we were assured) would stand up to any threats. In the event, they didn’t, and the conference was finally and thoroughly off. Jared set up some sort of truncated event, with some of the speakers, but by the time I found out about it, it was too late to go down to Virgina. He put out a press release through one of the regular services, but only Breitbart seems to have picked it up.
It is a shameful thing that the AR conference was shut down — an ominous thing too, in that this is the first time it’s happened. We may be losing our freedoms of speech and association, as they have in Britain and Europe. So much for American exceptionalism.
And just as shameful as the success of the anti-racist bully-boys is the utter silence of the media. I haven’t even heard one of those “First they came for American Renaissance …” admonitions. It’s as if the AR people are utterly beyond the pale. Yet why should they be? If they are wrong, why not expose their error in open debate, as I tried to? Isn’t that the civilized way to do things? (When I took on Jared in that 2006 debate, the organizers told me they’d invited a number of conservatives, but all had backed out when they heard they’d be sitting in a room with Jared. What on earth is the matter with people?)
AR’s position, in a nutshell, is that if it’s OK for blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. to organize in defence of their group interests, and to promote pride in their ancestry, why isn’t it OK for white Americans to do the same? It seems to me there is no very satisfactory answer to this question. The one usually given (by the aforementioned Blumenthal wunderkind here, for example) is that whites are a majority and the others are minorities, so it wouldn’t be fair. But this is already untrue in four states, and by 2042, according to the Census Bureau, will be untrue of the entire nation. Will American Renaissance be respectable then ? If not, why not?
My own strong preference, as I argued in that debate with Jared, would be for everybody to shut up with the race business. There doesn’t seem to be much prospect of this happening, though, so it’s not hard to see the AR-ers point of view. In any case, I say again, whatever you think of that point of view, it’s a point of view. It shouldn’t be shut out of the public square; and if it is so shut out, by goons phoning in death threats to hotel employees, there ought to be a fuss made. Well, here I am on Secular Right, making a fuss as best I can. Freedom of speech! Freedom of assembly! Liberty! Liberty!
I sympathize with the liberty argument; the proper outlet for such protest is to wave anti-racism signs and denounce hatred outside the conference. That said, I hardly think this compares to the moral travesty of a once-great political party advocating deliberate torture.
How long until we outlaw “hate-speech?” I have some reservations with the biologic determinism they promote at AmRen but am sympathetic to people whose desire is to preserve their national identity. I see most of our “race” problems as cultural problems while most of the AmReners put more emphasis on biology.
Also, I’ve found that the more educated White Nationalists are far from anti-Semitic and even sympathize with the State of Israel, seeing parallels with their shifting ethnic composition and our own.
One way or another these anti-racist thugs are nothing but wannabe-though-police, it’s a very disappointing development. Where’s the ACLU when you need them?
Yes, Obama’s government needs to stop its torture of the American people and the American economy. The torture simply has to stop!
But you cannot blame the entire Democratic Party for Obama and Pelosi’s excesses. They are clearly extreme and more in keeping with the radical left pro-torture of Americans faction.
Americans (including some conservatives and libertarians) take freedom of speech for granted. But America is one of the few remaining Western countries where a race realist group such as American Renaissance can meet without state prosecution. As it turned out, freedom of speech is necessary but not sufficient. The non-interference of the mainstream Left when it comes to “progressive” hooliganism (violent protests, threats, squatting etc.) is no news to observers of European politics.
It is no surprise that conservatives do not come to the defense of American Renaissance. Mainstream conservatism is mostly career-driven. What kind of ambitious conservative writer or politician would come to the defense of an organization that questions the existing orthodoxy on race?
Most religious conservatives also do not feel comfortable with the role biology and evolution play in the arguments of race realists. So it is no surprise that this event is covered on a blog for secular conservatives.
As John notes, whites are not permitted to express themselves in ways that are allowed (and encouraged) for other ethnic groups. Whites are only allowed to talk about themselves in explicitly negative terms. In his 1998 speech Jared Taylor gives some disturbing examples of how whites signal their moral superiority by celebrating their own demise:
http://www.amren.com/conference/1998/1995jared_taylor.mp3
Disingenuous snark does not a moral justification make. George Washington expressly forbid the torture or cruel treatment of captured British soldiers, even during the darkest days of the war when the British were torturing Americans. Those who supposedly respect the wisdom of the founders would do well to consider his words. If a more recent example is required, I believe Ronald Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture. Last time I checked, he was a respected figure among conservatives.
It is an utter travesty that Americans have fallen to such depths of despicable cruelty. The failure of the Democrats to denounce and prosecute the initiators of such actions renders them culpable as well. That we have given up our aspirations to become the shining city on a hill is reflected in this as well as the thuggery Bradlaugh describes; both are unworthy of our nation.
I’m with you Derb, but am becoming so viscerally nauseated with the Occidental Dissent types that I honestly couldn’t care less if Korah’s hole opened up and swalled them alive into hell.
Let me be clear: These are people who believe that there is a conspiracy of Jews to acquire all sorts ofd goodies and power for their fellow Jews. Their evid2ence is the number of Jews among Grand Master Chess Champions, I mean Nobel Prize Physicists, I mean wealthy Hollywood and Wall Street types. Yeah, that’s the one. Fischer and Feynman are just noise that cover up the ethnic conspiracy that’s the TRUE cause of some Jews’ success in various business endeavors.
Bradlaugh, I’m not kidding here. These are people who blame their erectile dysfunction, taxes and slutty daughters on ME. They believe that on account of my Yiddish speaking, Holocauast-surviving, grandparents I’ve been offered privileges that they haven’t. They believe that the asshole who pushed Affirmative Action have a special exception for Jews written in.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours communicating with these guys and I should note that not all of them are “exterminate or exile” fanatics, quite a few of them are willing to allow Jews to stay in certain geographical regions of the US… for the time being.
So, again, I decry and deplore the shutting down of the conference and would have enjoyed attending it myself but the hatred that the MAJORITY of these people have for me and my family is amply reciprocated and I wish them every pox they wish on me.
That these hatreds are in part caused by the sickening Abraham Foxmans of the world who give these ARs every reason to believe the conspiracy theories that dominate their non-World-of-Warcraft hours gives me no ess reason to wish them all the worst. They are a danger to me and to my children and if some evil law arises that has them all tossed into Bubba’s crib I’ll have to highly ambivalent about the thing.
mnuez
Excellent post. We need thousands more like this. Kudos to Derbyshire (and to Heather Mac Donald too) for consistently telling the truth about race.
A comment of mine to the recent post here on immigration in Britain was deleted by the moderator, apparently because I said, politely and respectfully, that I care about race not just culture, and that I want America (and Britain etc.) to stay white. So Jared Taylor’s views are censored at Secular Right as well.
Jared Taylor is a hero of the right. Same with then-mainstream people like Sam Francis who had the courage to speak at AR conferences. I agree with Derbyshire that what he calls the DZGD is fundamental to post-World-War-2 liberalism. Attacking the DZGD on empirical grounds is the best way to attack liberalism.
As I said in my re-post to the other thread at this blog (the re-post didn’t get deleted because I took out the part about race), immigration is the biggest problem facing the West, and alongside that issue, differences between the secular and religious right fade into insignificance. Perhaps I can say here, that religious and secular conservatives should unite around race as well.
Speaking of Sam Francis, I have a piece in the next issue of The American Conservative riffing on Sam’s theme of “Middle American Radicals,” in relation of course to the Tea Party movement.
Yes, a good post. I agree that the anti-semitism of some of the American Renaissance group is repulsive, tending toward paranoid. And yet the leaders of the group are willing to speak out about important problems which the mainstream of conservatism or libertarianism are too afraid to mention.
Affirmative action and the neotribalism of multicultural legislated ethnic and gender preferences are viciously divisive to the body politic. The denial of aptitude gradients that roughly but consistently track ethnicity, is a serious weakness of any political philosophy.
And they’re right, to an extent. As a Jew, you grew up in a success-oriented culture and you’re more likely to have had successful relatives who were willing to encourage you and help you out.
I may be behind the fashion on this, but I think the latest buzzword among the professional antiracists – the Tim Wises of the world – is “white privilege”. This seems to have superseded “institutional racism” as the concept of choice for special pleading. Seems to me that a good way to argue against claims of white privilege is to point out that white gentiles are not the most successful group, and to ask, “What about Jewish privilege, Korean-American privilege, etc.?”. These privileges undeniably exist as much as white privilege does, but an antiracist could not acknowledge their existence without being “racist” or “anti-Semitic” as well as undermining his own anti-white argument. Exactly because of the shockingly sinister sound of a phrase like “Jewish privilege”, that concept would be a good rhetorical counter to white-privilege arguments. That is, if people on different sides of the issue were ever to actually talk to each other, which they don’t.
Indeed, Aaron, the ratio of pose-and-shriek to think-and-talk is higher in this zone than any other. I may regret having opened the floodgates here … but one can’t sit silent while this sort of bullying goes on.
kme wrote:
“I hardly think this compares to the moral travesty of a once-great political party advocating deliberate torture.”
Really? So water boarding some Hitler-worshiping, child-killing member of a deadly 7th-century blood cult who would like nothing more than to whack out my entire family is a travesty, but denying free speech to American citizens who pose no harm to anyone is a minor annoyance?
Wow. When they decide your views are beyond the pale I wonder if you’ll be so casual about it.
*YAWN*
Oh yes, free speech…run that by me again? What state action was there caused this event to go into the crapper?
*Crickets chirping*
Basically, some genteel race-obsessives lost their meeting hall because some other presumably less genteel race-obsessives yapped loudly about the race-obsessiveness of the genteel race-obsessives. Unlike say “McCarthyism”, where there was state action aplenty (HUAC and the like), here it is one private group hard-hardballing another. Sometimes a free society is an ugly thing to watch, but there you have it. Obviously if “death threats” were made, they should be investigated and, if substantiated, prosecuted. If they are not, and particularly if not because government is favoring one group of racial obsessives over another, then that is a genuine scandal that should be fully aired.
But that aside, since I find both groups despicable per se given their obsessions, I find it really hard to get worked up about it. One side “won” and another side “lost”–boo hoo hoo, Happens all the time.
And John, saying that the views of AR were “perfectly mainstream” 40 or 50 years ago is really, really lame. Someone who advocated a return to slavery could have said the same thing in 1900. A Nazi could have said the same thing in Germany in 1980. The fact that each of these repugnant worldviews were overthrown by massive force, and that AR’s predecessors were defeated by far less violent means, is a credit to the 20th century United States. And those far less violent means including boycotts and loud denunciations of genuine, de jure racism, particularly in AR’s beloved South. So while I dislike the less genteel race-obsessives, their tactics (putting aside the “death threat” issue, as I have), have a perfectly respectable heritage in this country.
I’m not sure about the specifics of this group, I’ve never heard of it before, but the important thing to remember about the ‘Left’ or ‘politically correct people’ or to use the best term to describe them ‘liberal idealists’ is that the ‘Left’ is fundamentally a religious enterprise. Per a lefty, ‘hate speech’ is their name for ‘heresy’ and per them ‘Error has no rights’ and making heresy formally illegal is perfectly OK with them.
Lefties don’t see themselves this way, but thinking that ‘if lefties don’t see themselves this way therefore this way of seeing them is therefore incorrect’ is a sound pattern of inference won’t survive a conversation about ‘ideas’ with any actual lefties.
If I were the hotel manager and my employees were facing death threats, then I would cancel the event and hand the evidence of the threats over to the police. Their safety is more important than the money I would earn by hosting the event.
It is important to remember that the hotel also has freedom of association. Nobody should be forced to provide commercial services to anyone. The hotel is private property, and the managers should have the right to determine its use.
Regardless of the merits of American Renaissance, the bullying tactics of left-wing radicals which usually are quietly condoned by the mainstream are a major problem. It all seems fine and dandy as long as its the AmRen types who get hit by it but just go to Europe and you will see the same and worse tactics employed against groups that in America would be in the mainstream of conservative opinion. It is a slippery slope argument but by no means a far-fetched one.
Are American left-wingers too good-natured to ever take it that far? Of course not, just look at some of the shenanigans surrounding Prop 8 in California. It’s hardly a coincidence that the Left nearly constantly tries to paint ALL conservatives as racist, sexist bigots – once put into that drawer it becomes “acceptable” to use intimidation and bullying against them. In environments where they succeed with such agitation, like some university campuses, being an outspoken and active conservative already carries some risks.
By going “well yeah but Am Ren are total nazis, so whatever, let them throw in their windows at night with bricks, it’s none of my business” you’re just encouraging this lot.
Mike H, unless the state is involved, either actively or by omission (e.g., failing to prosecute crimes against either AR or its would-be host sites), then all you are really saying is that AR and its ilk are going to lose because they can’t stand up to other side effectively. In a free society it is not a crime to urge boycotts, jawbone, rant, rave, throw a tantrum or play hardball in a 1000 ways.
AR’s problem is that they have no respectable friends to stand up with them, and that is purely a function of what they advocate, and the people they attract. You want to push repugnant views, get used to it. And for God sake’s, have them (or John) spare me the unfairness of how other equally repugnant groups are not as ostracized–just get to work ostracizing THEM.
What a nation of crybabies we’ve become. I expect it on the left, that is their ideology, essentially. But it really makes me puke hearing it from “the right”.
I don’t believe John was calling for prosecution of these individuals, he was calling for tolerance of unpopular viewpoints and a more civil discussion. A very liberal (in the classic sense) idea. I don’t know why that is necessarily controversial, you however seem to believe that having non-mainstream views i.e. views others find repugnant, makes someone fair game for pretty much anything as long as the state doesn’t get involved and no crime major enough to be prosecuted is committed.
That might be right effectively on a legal level, but on a moral and political one it seems rather detestable. I don’t care for what AmRen stands for but I say let them have their conferences in peace. I am not going around looking for Maoist or Trotzkyist meetings to crash either, and trust me, there’d be no shortage of them to crash where I live. Maybe that is an anachronistically bourgeois point of view to take but I’d err on the side of that.
We’re not talking about simply “ostracizing” a group through legal means, Mark. The conferences were shut down because of death threats to hotel employees. If the groups get away with it with AR today, they’ll move on to other groups, like the Tea Partiers down the road: thus the frantic efforts to pain the Tea Party movement as “racist.”
By failing to investigate and prosecute threats of violence, including death threats, by left-wing fanatics, the government is complicit in suppressing the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly of Jared Taylor and AR.
No, Mike, the point is this: I don’t care about fights among race-obsessives. Period. They deserve each other, and worse. And yes, they are pretty much targets for just about anything that is (a) not from the state and (b) not criminally or civilly actionable. Everybody is. It is just in the case of people with these views, I repeat: I don’t care–let them suffer the slings and arrows of a free society. There are too many other worthy causes to concern myself with.
Polichinello and SMK–did you read what I wrote about these alleged death threats? Let me repost it for you:
“Obviously if “death threats” were made, they should be investigated and, if substantiated, prosecuted. If they are not, and particularly if not because government is favoring one group of racial obsessives over another, then that is a genuine scandal that should be fully aired.”
So, I guess we agree on the obvious.
Mark, first, I was responding to your last post, so I didn’t read what you wrote. Not that it really matters, as it was nothing CYA throat-clearing. It was the threat of violence that killed the conferences. I see no reason to doubt that, and unless you can substantiate a fraud, you’re simply squirting squid ink to play the tiresome “less racist than thou” game.
Really, it’s not just AR that’s the problem. Ann Coulter requires a bodyguard when she speaks on campuses. Other less famous speakers have been physically blocked time and again, so enough with your high-minded temporizing and throat-clearing. When you’re defending civil freedoms you often have to defend scoundrels, because they’re generally the canaries in the coal mine.
Unlike say “McCarthyism”, where there was state action aplenty (HUAC and the like), here it is one private group hard-hardballing another.
What meeting or conference did McCarthy or HUAC shut down?
I think that the support for American Renaissance should not just be confined to their right of freedom of speech and association. One can reject the concept of white nationalism but value the organization’s contribution to raises awareness of the double standards about race. You can be against white advocacy but against the ethnic masochism that the cultural and political elite requires from whites. You can be against white politics but favor an open discussion of the science of race and heritability. There are few, if any, intelligent publications willing to discuss these issues.
It might be better if everybody would “shut up with the race business.” The problem is that this is not happening at all. Whites are encouraged to see themselves as individuals but other “oppressed” groups are encouraged to express their interests in ethnic terms. What will be the long term effects of such double standards? This is not just a question that is relevant to the AR crowd. It has consequences for those who consider themselves individualists as well.
To the average progressive the people of American Renaissance are not different from mainstream conservatism but just more honest. Which conservative or libertarian writer has not been accused of racism? That is why the slippery slope argument is quite relevant here. If people are able to shut down the “explicit” racists they feel more encouraged to go after the “implicit” racists. This is not speculation. Is it is happening in Western Europe as we speak.
Well, after your oversight, I guess you had to say something. Mission accomplished.
@Polichinello
Couldn’t name you one off hand. People who went jail, plenty.
Also FBI agents visiting employers, etc. Do you understand the concept of “chilling” vis-a-vis the First Amendment?
Ronald you said:
“I think that the support for American Renaissance should not just be confined to their right of freedom of speech and association. One can reject the concept of white nationalism but value the organization’s contribution to raises awareness of the double standards about race. You can be against white advocacy but against the ethnic masochism that the cultural and political elite requires from whites. You can be against white politics but favor an open discussion of the science of race and heritability. There are few, if any, intelligent publications willing to discuss these issues.”
Sorry, don’t John and Heather, among many others, do these things already in various publications (NR, CIty Journal, etc.)? Why should I feel compelled to make common cause with AR–just because they are being bullied? Here’s a suggestion: hold less obnoxious views and they’ll get more allies.
Your kind of implicit “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” argument has led many a fine mind into a dead end–witness Joe Sobran winding up before the IHR. Embarrassing.
I’ll pass.
And if you yourself are obsessed with race obsession, then you are doubly obsessed, and no doubt deserve twice as much as what is coming to you.
America is not Europe where they jail people for saying mean things about Muslims or imprison people for denying the holocaust. Free speech is not just for people you happen to think are nice.
But then, if you are so easily intolerant of others’ speech rights, perhaps you are not actually an American at all. Or perhaps you are a college professor. Either would explain the intolerance, but only the latter would explain the obsessive verbal diarrhea. 😉
Don’t worry! The AR conference took place as planned and the young of the group have gathered today to discuss it.
Enjoy.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2010/02/23/district-of-corruption/
All I’ll comment on here is how repulsed I am by Jews who lack the balls to sufficiently hate their enemies. As noted above (and all over the goddamn internet) I happen to agree with a great deal of the views of these guys but, unlike a great many of my coreligionists, I’m not so in need of friends that I’ll bend over backwards to take ramming after ramming from these people just so that they’ll consider me “not as bad” as the odious Foxman (who indeed, along with most of the other people and groups who CLAIM to speak for AllJewsEverywhere are odious). “Jewamongyou” and a whole bunch of other repulsive wormy sycophants ARE however quite that desperate and depraved.
Again, look at this comment thread and take note about what caused it. The post had absolutely nothing to do with Jews and thus, along with the videos in question, remains uncommented-on.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2010/02/23/district-of-corruption/
I don’t know what Derb meant by the Southern bit as I happen to quite like Southerners but I do know what he meant by the “Jew thing”, only I imagine that it’s gotten quite a bit worse since the last time Debr checked in on this crowd.
And again, regardless of the reasons for their misperceptions about myself and my children, these people have chosen to make themselves my bona fide enemies and I have enough self respect to return the favor.
@Al Fin
Wow, maybe I am a bedwetter, too.
@mnuez
C’mon, man–just hold your nose. The mean ol’ lefties are beating them up. It is your duty. Remember: no enemies to the right.
One other thing–maybe it is just our lousy educational system, or just the desperate need of some to try to defend the indefensible when they secretly and ashamedly admire it, but the stunning lack of comprehension here about what the phrase “freedom of speech” entails is really mind-blowing.
Here’s a clue: without state action, it never arises. Period. You are, or are supposed to be, guaranteed freedom of speech from state interference–that’s it. The rest is your fight. It has always been thus in this country.
Well, after your oversight, I guess you had to say something. Mission accomplished.
And you refusal to deal with the issue continues.
@Polichinello
Which issue is that? I promise to correct my oversight.
Couldn’t name you one off hand. People who went jail, plenty.
Innocent or guilty?
Also FBI agents visiting employers, etc. Do you understand the concept of “chilling” vis-a-vis the First Amendment?
The people in question were involved with an organization whose avowed aim was overthrowing the constitutional government and was taking orders from Moscow. None of this applies to AR and none of this has anything to do with the First Amendment.
Really? Attending some half-assed red-front meeting in 1937 or so, and being hectored about it 15 years later by your government, has nothing to do with the First “freedom of assembly” Amendment?
So much for the canary in the coal mine argument….
But I do agree with you that nothing about this AR contretemps has anything to do with the First Amendment. Thanks.
Mark, Being such a personal enthusiast of free speech I’d like to believe that it’s better for all involved if free speech is never curtailed, even by social norms (provided that everyone also has freedom not to listen of course). I would like to believe that if there were a group of people with an Anti-Mnuez platform it would even be better for ME if they were allowed to air their grievances and plans publicly rather than allow them to fester where they can become overgrown with paranoia and mental illnesses of other forms.
That’s what I would like to believe but I recognize that I may be biased by the fact that I adore free speech and fear it (or worthy ideas by others) being denied me once it starts being denied others.
I wonder if there’s any way to quantify the effects of the curtailment of free speech and whether such curtailments positively or adversely affect the groups or people who would otherwise be the negative obsession of such speech.
In any event, I should also note that of course you’re right about this not being an ACTUAL curtailment of free speech being as there’s no governmental involvement but, at the same time, as one with old-fashioned (or european) Libertarian sensibilities I recognize that there are powers other than government and that the lines that demarcate “State Powers” are hard to define. If the zeitgeists is such that AmRen has three sympathetic convention halls cancel on them there’s what to be concerned about for a Free Speech enthusiast, likewise when Facebook took down page after page of Joe Stack memorials the day that he flew his plane into the IRS building.
Without getting into the particulars of either of these examples, I think it’s important that we notice that our freedoms are not only potentially curtailed by people who are paid directly by our tax dollars but by other groups, clearly defined or more more amorphous, who wield extraordinary power in our society.
Finally, I’d like to note again that I emphatically empathize with many of the concerns of the OD/AmRen crowd. I believe that the business and governmental elites in this country are not patriotic (as in, caring first and foremost about their fellow citizens) but are more than willing to score a few moral points among themselves and dollars for their pockets by encouraging the massive immigration that is so plainly harmful to their fellow citizens. Furthermore I believe that Affirmative Action based on race (rather than socioeconomic background) causes unfair hardships to a great many individuals who happen to have been born with the wrong skin color, etc. (I happen to advocate more socialistic policies than we currently have which is something of a divider between my own current preferences and the current preferences of most ODers and other assorted “right wingers”, but that’s a wholly separate point from the many areas of agreement that we hold.)
That being the case, I’m sure that I would have enjoyed attending the conference myself and, in addition to the more morally pure reasons mentioned above, regret their enforced exile. I only note, as you (Mark) correctly pointed out, I’m not going to go to the barricades for people who regard me as some sort of demonish creature who needs to be “dealt with”. A fellow could share every one of my views and I might wish he had the right to speak for both proximate and ultimate reasons (say, my interest in hearing him and the potential effects of muzzling him) but if he also happens to have an interest in placing my children in a ghetto and frighteningly denies that my grandparents were thus placed then while i might abstractly reject those powers that denied him his venue, I certainly won’t go out of my way to salve his wounds or mourn his momentary suffering.
mnuez
The meeting already happened? What’s to chill?
At any rate, if you attend a meeting of an organization involved with documented anti-American activities, like espionage (some of which benefited the Nazis during the Nazi-Soviet pact years), you should expect the feds to ask a few questions. Really, the FBI would have been negligent not to look into matters like this.
Which issue is that? I promise to correct my oversight.
The issue is the thuggish behavior used to shut down the AR conference. You put out the usual ass-covering lip service, and then went on for paragraphs telling us how icky you think AR is, which is really all you cared to do. The fact is you’re more annoyed that John brought up the issue than you are with the thuggish behavior itself.
For those who agree with some of American Renaissance’s positions but are suspicious of the anti-semitic tendencies of some of its supporters I should point out Ian Joblin’s website:
http://whiteamerica.us/
In his own words: “White America is dedicated to combating leukophobia—the fear and loathing of the white race—and promoting race realism.”
Unlike some in the race realist movement, Ian seems to be a classical liberal.
mnuez:
All I am pointing out is that unpopular groups have been bullied from day one in this country. If that is all that happened to them, they were lucky: Mormons, birth control advocates, union organizers, civil rights workers, college Republicans, and on and on and on at various points. That’s the way it ways it goes. And unless the state is involved, or they are being criminally or civilly abused and denied access justice to remedy these abuses, then all to have to play to is our sympathies. And in no way am I sympathetic to AR or its crowd (as a non-secular source once said: “Ye shall know them by their fruits”). I consider them scum. So, I could care less that they are being bullied, just as I don’t care if Nazis or 9/11″Truthers” get heckled and bedeviled. I repeat: if you want allies and sympathy, try not to be, and attract, scum. It is that simple for me.
“The issue is the thuggish behavior used to shut down the AR conference. You put out the usual ass-covering lip service, and then went on for paragraphs telling us how icky you think AR is, which is really all you cared to do.”
Umm, the two are linked, inextricably: if I think you a hate-mongering dirtbag, exactly why am I supposed to care if you are treated badly by the world generally, or any part, other then the government?
You missed the obvious: I don’t care what happens to AR. People like them deserve whatever is coming to them, within the law. Period. They are completely unsympathetic to me.
Do you shed tears when some paroled child molester can’t find a willing landlord? Neither do I.
This might be terrible internet etiquette and smack of blatant self promotion but though I addressed my recent comment to Mark, I would definitely like to hear from other readers about the issue as well so if you skipped my recent comment, please give it a read, it’s not Mark-dependent.
It appears to me that one of the points in John Derbyshire’s piece is that Jared Taylor is not a “a hate-mongering dirtbag.” Could you conceive of anyone who does not buy into the “Dogma of Zero Group Differences (DZGD)” who is not a hater or dirtbag? Do you consider scholars like Philippe Rushton, Michael Levin and Charles Murray hate-mongering dirtbags as well? What is it exactly that makes you so agitated about American Renaissance?
I didn’t say Jared Taylor was a hate-mongering dirtbag. He does, however, lead an organization which attracts hate-mongering dirtbags like a magical honeypot, and he is well aware of this. Very, very odd–someone explain this to me. Perhaps all these dirtbags are just incredibly stupid, and are attracted to those who really offer nothing of substance to them. Feel free to make that case if you like.
As far as Jared Taylor’s well-cultured household, and family, blah blah blah. Really, history has not shown this to be a true indicator of much of anything. If you want lurid examples, we can go there, but I will be forced to use the N-word.
“He does, however, lead an organization which attracts hate-mongering dirtbags like a magical honeypot, and he is well aware of this.”
Agreed. But I think you’d agree that even without the anti-semitic and Nazi crowd AR would still be harassed by left-wing protesters and considered beyond the pale by mainstream conservatives and libertarians. I am sure you are aware of the nasty campaigns against people like Rushton, Levin and Wilson?
If mainstream conservatives would take a firmer stand against, what John Derbyshire calls, “The Dogma of Zero Group Differences” then we would not find ourselves discussing how to think about a fringe group with, let’s put it mildly, a rather diverse membership.
But there is one reason why most mainstream conservatives don’t; because they are not *secular* conservatives and the idea of evolutionary arguments is just as abhorrent to them as liberalism. No surprise then that some people who follow this blog express some sympathy for AR writings.
Also, what do we exactly know about the demographics of AR? What kind of change would you like to see there before they no longer “deserve whatever is coming to them?”
Umm, the two are linked, inextricably: if I think you a hate-mongering dirtbag, exactly why am I supposed to care if you are treated badly by the world generally, or any part, other then the government?
Government negligence has been pointed out to you. You’ve brought in the BS about boycotts and ostracism, when no one has made an issue of it. Face it, you’re far more annoyed with Bradlaugh for pointing to the thuggishness than with the thuggishness itself.
Ronald, I appreciate your post, but more what I was asking is WHY does AR attract these people? And given that it does, and its leadership has to know it, how do they rationalize this to themselves? Let’s assume they are people of good will. What does a person of good will think, or do, when they realize they have become a pied piper for neo-nazis? If he is genuinely a man of good will, I am guessing Jared has addressed this issue somewhere (if he hasn’t, I think we can toss the presumption of good will–I mean, it is the 800 pound gorilla in the room). I am sincerely curious on this point.
I realize that all broad-based organizations attract fringe elements–Ron Paul had those Stormfront losers to embarrass him. But AR is NOT broad-based; you pretty much have to seek it out. And the neo-nazis do NOT seem to be a fringe, but a rather significant elelment.
So even giving the benefit of the doubt to Jared and AR’s leadership, I find it all very disturbing.