sabotabby: raccoon anarchy symbol (Default)
[personal profile] sabotabby
First of all, in the "what the hell are you smoking?" category, we have this loverly article, courtesy of ARA.

White Nationalist Conference Ponders Whether Jews and Nazis Can Get Along
By JONATHAN TILOVE
March 3, 2006
NY Weekly

For the small, hardy band of right-wing Jews who attended this past weekend's American Renaissance Conference, the biennial gathering of white nationalists ended on a sour note.

The events Saturday, February 25, passed without major incident. But then, late Sunday morning, none other than former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke approached the microphone on the floor during the question-and-answer session for French writer Guillaume Faye. After congratulating Faye for stirring remarks that "touched my genes," Duke asked if there weren't an even more insidious threat to the West than Islam.



"There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and our spirit," Duke said.

"Tell us, tell us," came a call from the back of the room.

"I'm not going to say it," Duke said to rising laughter.

But Michael Hart, a squat, balding Jewish astrophysicist from Maryland, was not amused. He rose from his seat, strode toward Duke (who loomed over him like an Aryan giant), spit out a curse - "You f...ing Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting" - and exited.

As it happens, only a few minutes earlier Hart, a mainstay of American Renaissance conferences, had been trying to reassure Herschel Elias, a first-time attendee from suburban Philadelphia, that he should not let his observation that the meeting was "infiltrated by Nazis and Holocaust deniers" ruin his impression of American Renaissance.

"The speakers aren't Nazis," Hart assured him. "Jared isn't a Nazi."

Jared is Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance magazine. He founded the publication 1990, and since 1994 he had sponsored the biennial conference that bears its name. A former liberal, Taylor is glib, gracious and genial, capable of putting his white nationalism in the most benign and commonsense terms.

"We mean well to all people," he said in his address at this year's conference, "but our own people come first."

The conference has attracted ever larger crowds, with this year's event drawing about 300 people - all white (no more than 5% Jewish) and most of them male. The attendees are united by a common belief in black intellectual inferiority, opposition to non-white immigration and ardor for maintaining America's white majority. By the end of this seventh biennial conference, however, the delicate state of his coalition seemed apparent.

Hart, who spoke at the 1996 conference about his plan for a racial partition of the United States, said that Taylor now had to face the fact that he must purge the Nazis or lose the Jews. "He can't expect Jews to come if there are Nazis here,'' Hart said.

And therein lies Taylor's dilemma.

From the start, he has been trying to de-Nazify the movement and draw the white nationalist circle wider to include Jews of European descent. But to many on the far right, taking the Jew-hatred out of white nationalism is like taking the Christ out of Christmas - a sacrilege. Actually inviting Jews into the movement is an act of lunacy, or betrayal, to them.

Still, just before dinner Saturday, Taylor sounded resolute.

"Ultimately, for all the things I care about to happen, Jews must be part of the movement," he said in an interview. The reason, he added, is that Jews have influence and are widely seen as "the conscience of our society."

For example, Taylor said, without Jewish support it will be nearly impossible to restrict immigration. Besides, the conference organizer said, as far as he is concerned, a white Jew is white.

In its dossier on Taylor, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report speculates that his conspicuous lack of antisemitism "may be related to his wife, who some in the movement have said is Jewish." The Atlanta-based organization, which monitors hate groups, has described Taylor as "the race hater."

"What kind of 'intelligence' is that?" Taylor asked. He said that his wife, Evelyn Rich, is not Jewish.

According to the Intelligence Review: "Evelyn Rich became well known because of her 1985 and 1986 interviews of Duke, conducted as part of her dissertation research... [which] were used by anti-Duke forces to make radio ads attacking Duke during his run for Louisiana governor in 1991." This may help explain the wary relationship between Duke and Taylor, opposites in many ways.

In May 2003, American Renaissance published a piece by Michael Berman about his racial awakening, headlined "I Was a Red-diaper Baby."

Son of a card-carrying Communist, Berman marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. But, he wrote, that was before two of his sisters were raped by black men and before he served eight years as the dean of boys at Brooklyn's George W. Wingate High School, where "we averaged five arrests a day." These days he attends American Renaissance conferences, and this year he brought a likeminded former teaching colleague to serve as his shabbos goy.

"It has not been easy for me as a New York Jew, embracing the views that I do. I am regarded as a pariah," Berman wrote in his 2003 essay.

Four of the 10 speakers were Jewish at the first conference in 1994 in Atlanta, including New York writer Lawrence Auster and City College philosophy professor Michael Levin. The after-dinner speaker that year was Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a teacher at Yeshiva University High School for Boys who believes in racial separatism. Schiller brought a cadre of yeshiva students with him. Kosher dinners were provided.

At the 2000 conference in Herndon, Robert Weissberg - a political scientist who then worked at the University of Illinois - delivered a speech titled "Jews and Blacks: Everything the Goyim Want To Know but Were Afraid To Ask." His thesis was that although Jews and blacks loathe one another, Jews remain frightened of the white right.

Weissberg delivered his remarks with his trademark blend of erudition, Yiddishisms and Borscht Belt timing. He was not a big hit. Taylor heard the complaints: "Now the Jews want to take over this, too."

Weissberg, who is living in New York once again, keeps coming to the conferences. He enjoys the open talk about race, perhaps also the whiff of intellectual danger. At the Saturday morning session, the man sitting next to him doodled on his pad: "No good Jew."

Despite such sentiments, Taylor is not the only one looking to include Jews.

Gordon Baum, the amiable, chain-smoking CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, said that his organization has good Jewish members, including a member of the board from St. Louis. "We're in Mensa together," Baum said. He also said that obsessing over Jews "sidetracks you from the real issue."

But Louis Calabro, a retired San Francisco police officer who heads the European/American Issues Forum in the Bay Area, said his sense is that most of those at the conference consider Jews a problem. He revealed that, in his own experience, any time he does anything to rally white European American pride, those who object are almost invariably Jews.

There is also the question of whether any subordination of antisemitism is merely strategic.

Nick Griffin has been credited with trying to root out antisemitism from the British National Party, which he leads. But in answer to a question at the recent conference, he said: "The proper enemy to any political movement isn't necessarily the most evil and the worst. The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat.''

Faye, the French writer, offered a similar response to Duke's not-so-veiled reference to Jews.

"The danger of the Jews is not the same as danger of the Arabs,'' he said. He continued: "The Jew is" - and here he had to have Taylor interpret a French expression - "the hole in the dike."

"The water is immigration," he continued. "We must fight on two fronts, but not by the same means. We must be very acute in our strategy. The best thing is to not speak about the Jews. They don't exist. For me, they are like Eskimos."

Not everyone at last weekend's meeting could stay cool on the Jewish question. Before Faye spoke, Michael Matthews, an attendee from New Jersey, passed Michael Berman in the hotel foyer.

"Are you a Jew?" Matthews demanded. "I don't think you should be here."

Berman was hurt.

"You see, there's no home for me,'' he sighed after Matthews had left. "I'm like a black sheep here and everywhere I go."


Then, via Pandagon, An American soldier who assaulted and raped a Nigerian woman in Italy had his sentence reduced because he was desensitized to human life after murdering a bunch of Iraqis. Oookay, then. Then again, this is Italy, where if a woman wears tight pants, she's asking for it.

Ugh. I can't deal. Here's a bunny.

For the women of South Dakota, permission slip for an abortion.

It's a little thing, I know, but I'm really glad to be going to the IWD march this weekend.

On a much lighter note, if it wasn't $45, I would totally need an Eat Flaming Death, Fascist Media Pigs! t-shirt. Hopefully, it'll go down in price at some point like their other shirts. Short of that, I'm making it into an icon. (Hat tip: [livejournal.com profile] lovableatheist.)

Finally, please sign this.

Date: 2006-03-08 03:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jenlight.livejournal.com
I'm voting Mississippi and South Dakota out of the union.

Date: 2006-03-08 03:48 pm (UTC)

Date: 2006-03-08 03:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] burkesworks.livejournal.com
Nick Griffin has been credited with trying to root out antisemitism from the British National Party

Credited by whom? Nick Griffin himself?
Yes, the BNP do make much play of the fact that one of their municipal councillors in Barking, Essex, Pat Richardson, was born Jewish, but underneath Griffin's Savile Row suits and Cambridge degree the BNP are still the same bone-headed, thuggish, anti-semitic and thoroughly unpleasant organisation they've always been ever since the days of Colin Jordan and his ilk.

Date: 2006-03-08 03:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lemur-man.livejournal.com
Oy, and indeed, vey.

Date: 2006-03-08 04:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mr-flabulous.livejournal.com
i can't bring myself to bang my head against the desk cause it's glued in place, staring at the screen in disbelief.

they are all kicked outta the tribe, retroactively.

I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 04:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] locustinferno.livejournal.com
Eventually, they'll designate the Chinese as being white and try to bring them into the white nationalist fold.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 11:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Also nothing new. We actually see a lot of that in Russ Bellant's book Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party. Fascist groups or parties existed in every industrialized country in the 1920s and 30s. When Nazi panzers rolled in, these parties formed the puppet governments. When their governments fell to Soviet tanks, they fled to North and South America. See also Christopher Simpson's Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-09 12:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Hence Polish fascists, Romanian fascists, Lithuanian fascists, etc. etc.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 06:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marlowe1.livejournal.com
But then that means they'll kick the Jews out again. That's no fun.

But I want to know if someone will coordinate the schedule so that there are meetings with Nation of Islam to agree about evil Jews and then meetings with Jews to agree on bad blacks.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 07:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Well, of course: The Nazis designated the Japanese as "Honorary Aryans" and rightist Japanese still describe themselves as, "The White Men of the East." Whiteness has always been an elastic category. During WWI, some British troops referred to their French hosts as "niggers" and the Irish were not always considered "white." Likewise the Klan's definition of whiteness sometimes includes Native Americans. This elasticity has always been the case. This still surprises people?

And that some in the American Renaissance group should welcome Jews is hardly surprising since The Bell Curve is their Bible and one of the groups they designate as naturally smart are European Jews. If I recall correctly, Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray's co-author, was Jewish and gave same ideological autobiography as the guy in the article: A supposedly former liberal Jew turned right wing by black on white crime. It's just a more overtly racist version of the David Horowitz story.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 07:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhfurnish.livejournal.com
Fuck David Horowitz.

But in the meantime:

You said: "Likewise the Klan's definition of whiteness sometimes includes Native Americans. This elasticity has always been the case. This still surprises people?"

The Klan is not uniform in its policies for several reasons.

In the case of both Canadians and Americans, and in fact in the case of both white and black C's and A's, there crops up Native heritage in those whose families go back more than two hundred years as often as not. It's so in my case, who am part Cherokee - my father's family started in Georgia and my ancestor married in before the Trail of Tears. The Klan has argued over this and generally they come to the conclusion that too many Americans have some scant (or more) Native blood in them to make a fuss about it if they want reasonable membership. It's something they're willing to ignore if the individual in question "looks white and fights for white." I read this on an Alabaman Klan site. (I believe in keeping an eye on these bastards and I do wish to know the intricacies of their thought.)

Remember that today's KKK is not the original organization. The original was banned in 1876 by the US Congress as a terrorist organization, which it was. Even its founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest (a defeated Confederate general and an avowed white supremacist) believed it was becoming too brutal and voluntarily disbanded it. Then of course they founded the NRA and took the guns away from the blacks via law.

The KKK of today was founded in the 1920's by a capitalist opportunist who walked around America selling memberships to the Klan, which had been defunct for about fifty years. Depending on who was hated (most) in a particular neighborhood, that's who this guy preached on when he sold the memberships and set up the Klaverns. Some were specifically antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti- a particular stripe of immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, etc. Of course there were plenty of anti-Blacks in the South to make it a return to an old theme, and hate walks arm-in-arm with hate often enough that these groups were easily strung together later on, as they are today.

The fact that this new hatenik group is having friction over Jews isn't surprising, but I'm surprised that the Jews trying to enter that movement are surprised.

Since the original Jewish people are not white, how do these guys account for that? How do they relate to true semitic Jews? I'm curious about that.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 09:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
The Klan has argued over this and generally they come to the conclusion that too many Americans have some scant (or more) Native blood in them to make a fuss about it if they want reasonable membership.

That is precisely my point: There is always some sort of political consideration or triangulation behind deciding who is white and who isn't: In the case you describe it is recruitment goals. Blacks just might be the only people who have never been considered "white" at one time or another, although guys like Justice Clarence Thomas have been giving it a shot on an individual basis. Likewise, the Patriarchy approves of abrasive, bullying women such as Ann Coulter and Dr. Laura having important, influential jobs so long as they attack feminism.

Remember that today's KKK is not the original organization.

That's like saying The American Nazi Party is not the original organization. It's a legal distinction but nothing more. If you are going to pick up somebody else's mantle by reviving their organization and using their name, you claim their baggage with it.

The KKK of today was founded in the 1920's by a capitalist opportunist who walked around America selling memberships to the Klan, which had been defunct for about fifty years.

Just because a group goes underground or gets less publicity doesn't mean they are actually defunct. Throughout the Nineteen-teens, there was a lynching epidemic. The NAACP marked every individual lynching by hanging a flag saying, "A MAN WAS LYNCHED TODAY" outside their national headquarters. That flag flew every third or fourth day during that decade. I'm not saying that only the Klan lynched, but many of the participants had Klan connections of some sort / time or other. It wasn't defunct.

Depending on who was hated (most) in a particular neighborhood, that's who this guy preached on when he sold the memberships and set up the Klaverns. Some were specifically antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti- a particular stripe of immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, etc.

As far as the 1920s go, yes, the emphasis did indeed shift to being anti-immigrant - by arguing that non-Anglos were not really white. And while the Klan has splintered on many occasions, the 1920s version was powerful and unified. They were organized enough to overtly elect the Governor of Indiana, so they weren't splintered, independent Klaverns. In the 1930s, their primary targets shifted to communists and labor organizers, but that doesn't mean they became a different organization.

And ideological flexibility is one of the ear marks of fascism. To German workers in the 1930s, the Nazis billed themselves as the "national SOCIALIST WORKERS Party" and to industrialists they were the "NATIONAL socialist workers Party." (How do I do tiny font again?)

Are such triangulations controversial within the organizations themselves? Of course they are, as the article [livejournal.com profile] sabotabby posted illustrates. My point was simply that such triangulations are nothing new.

Errata

Date: 2006-03-08 09:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
If you are going to pick up somebody else's mantle by reviving their organization and using their name, you claim their baggage with it.

Of course, by "you" I don't actually mean *you*.

And ideological flexibility is one of the ear marks of fascism.

I don't mean that flexibility makes one a fascist, but that fascist groups have historically been ideologically agile in their quest for power. For example, there was the Night of Long Knives in which the Nazis murdered their anti-capitalist members. Stalin's maneuverings between the "World Revolution" and "Socialism in One Country" camps also fit in this tendency.

Comprehensive

Date: 2006-03-08 11:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] locustinferno.livejournal.com
You pretty much said everything I was going to say in response to your post.

Re: Comprehensive

Date: 2006-03-08 11:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Thanks.

Christ, I hope I'm not coming across as a know-it-all asshole, but a lot of this stuff is all so typical. For example, I love articles written by people who are shocked to learn that so many Skinhead Nazis come from middle class suburban neighborhoods and that they have international pen pals on the internet. Fascist groups in different countries have always compared notes and cooperated. Ever hear of the Axis powers? And while militarism has always been a factor in the fascist mentality, a violent middle class consciousness has always been part of it too. It may recruit laid off members of the proletariat who want to join the bourgeoisie, but its thrust has always been the violent enforcement of the middle class values - hence the rhetoric of defending "good neighborhoods," assaulting "indecent art," etc.

Re: I can already see the next step

Date: 2006-03-08 11:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smhwpf.livejournal.com
This elasticity has always been the case.

I was thinking that the other day. In some ways it's the 'civilised' vs 'barbarian' thing that decides who is allowed to get away with what on the world stage, whose interests matter, who can be called a terrorist, etc. It correlates strongly with colour, but is adjustable to political convenience. Some groups are let in. And some white-skinned folk can still be effectively expelled from the global 'white' club - the peoples of the Balkans, the Chechens, etc.

I think it was David Irving, the Holocaust denier, I remember him saying a few years ago, in expounding his racist theories, that he actually thought East Asians were superior even to Europeans. He had reluctantly come to this conclusion. Y'know, just to prove that he isn't being biased when he says blacks are inferior.

Talking of the Bell Curve, we've just had a story break over here about a racist prof quoting Murray and co. as proof that blacks are less intelligent. At least the students there are having a serious go at getting his ass sacked, but then we're getting the whole 'freedom of speech' thing.

But never mind how right-wing, just how fantastically stupid does a Jew have to be to mix with the KKK? Oy, oy, oy. The mind boggles. There are some sick and stupid people out there.

Date: 2006-03-08 05:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhfurnish.livejournal.com
I've met virulently racist white British Jews. It's very bizarre.

In the meantime, partly because of the Black Metal movement, there's a huge nazi movement complete with nazi skinheads/black metallers in Poland and Russia, also recently Hungary.

It's really sad and bizarre.

Date: 2006-03-08 06:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marlowe1.livejournal.com
Met a bunch of them in Crown Heights. Shocked the hell out of me.

Date: 2006-03-08 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jhfurnish.livejournal.com
I love that avatar, btw. And I love the fuzzy pets in the avatar.

Hey, now that my fiance has moved out with her cat, I can get a second one... if my cat will tolerate a kitten.

Shit, will my cat tolerate a new kitten? If my cat gets to be the dominant one, will she tolerate a lackey?

Hrm.....

Date: 2006-03-08 09:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
When Sketch was a new-found kitten he dominated Merlin immediately and Merlin was twice his size.

Date: 2006-03-08 06:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pretzelsalt.livejournal.com
ummm. . . .

Date: 2006-03-08 06:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pretzelsalt.livejournal.com
"The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat."

That sounds like the US anthem. At least I think I hear it at ball games.

Machine guns vs. one day old kittens is a fun for the whole family kind of war.

The kittens are of course filled with evil and stand against everything loving pie eating machine guns believe.

It's true - I have it written on a Nascar shirt.

Date: 2006-03-08 06:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marlowe1.livejournal.com
I posted that article on [livejournal.com profile] weirdjews2 - it was too funny for words.

Date: 2006-03-08 07:15 pm (UTC)

Date: 2006-03-08 09:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
By the way, the iPod vs. Utilikilt debate continues ...

Date: 2006-03-08 10:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
We have a woman voting for the iPod! And I had answered some additional comments while you were typing the above. ... I'm starting to think my polls are as unbiased as yours.

Date: 2006-03-08 10:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Um, yes, of course ...

Wow 14 comments - I'm practically an LJ celebrity. I should talk about how I cover my ass more often.

Date: 2006-03-09 02:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seaya.livejournal.com
Utilikilt. Because women love them ;).

Date: 2006-03-09 02:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Yes, but you are supposed to say that in my journal - I'm comment whoring. Plus, there is, like, a whole discussion on the products' virtues and on alternate purchasing strategies ... mostly provided by me as I angst out loud, of course.

Date: 2006-03-09 02:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seaya.livejournal.com
Well, you can buy them on ebay for less. The knock off brands aren't as well made, otherwise.

My friend works shows for them.

Date: 2006-03-09 12:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] terry-terrible.livejournal.com
"You see, there's no home for me,'' he sighed after Matthews had left. "I'm like a black sheep here and everywhere I go."


>>>>> Ugh, the irony of that statement is too much at the end. Call the paramedics because I think my brain has just exploded after reading that.

Poor Baby

Date: 2006-03-09 12:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
It's the perfect ending isn't it? There are a thousand appropriate responses such as, "Don't think you know what it's like to be black," or "It's your ideology, you sleep in it," but any one of them would already be redundant.

Date: 2006-03-09 12:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jaymoh.livejournal.com
That's just insane. I really was waiting for the punchline, but it was all punchline! It made me twitch though, and totally nauseous. I just couldn't wrap my head around it, then, Kablooey! Head exploded.

I just posted the same South Dakota thing on my LJ, but I don't have the neat permission slip. Mind if I post that?

That t-shirt is pretty sweet and thank Jebus for bunnies.

Date: 2006-03-09 01:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com
Incidentally, Jared Taylor is from Louisville. His parents are deeply ashamed of him and I think they now do anti-racist work. Jared held his first convention here in town. We protested outside the hotel.

Date: 2006-03-09 01:41 am (UTC)
ironed_orchid: watercolour and pen style sketch of a brown tabby cat curl up with her head looking up at the viewer and her front paw stretched out on the left (Zero Tolerance)
From: [personal profile] ironed_orchid
That's fucking bizarre.

Date: 2006-03-09 04:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lovableatheist.livejournal.com
Jared Taylor was supposed to speak at the University of Ottawa last year (I think), but the student federation and the university pulled the funding when they got wind of who he was. The guy who tried to bring him to campus (who happens to be the brother of the editor of Vice magazine) threw a fit and his oh-so famous brother wrote letters to local papers condemning the university. It was actually quite entertaining. It would have been nice to protest this jackass and be able to see who the right-wingers on campus are.

Date: 2006-03-09 04:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lovableatheist.livejournal.com
also, I really wish that t-shirt wasn't so expensive. It's so great. If I see it going for cheaper, you'll be the first to know.

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