Seventy people, including a few well-known mainstream academics, joined prominent white nationalists and academic racists gathered in the Four Points Sheraton at the Baltimore/Washington International airport last month for the first-ever “Preserving Western Civilization Conference.” Its aim: to defend “America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity.” But not much civilized was said there. Rather, the discussion centered around claims that blacks are not as intelligent as whites, immigrants are destroying America, and Islam is no religion of peace — it’s expansionist, intolerant, militant, and seeks to destroy.

The conference was convened by Jewish astrophysicist Michael Hart, author of the racist book Understanding Human History, which focuses on alleged differences in intelligence between various ethnic and racial groups. In the past, Hart was a regular at the biannual conferences put on by American Renaissance, a racist publication that wrote, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that “[w]hen blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” Though few in number, Jewish academic racists were active in American Renaissance right from the start, welcomed by that group’s leader, Jared Taylor, who even once arranged for kosher meals. But Taylor has also welcomed as speakers outspoken anti-Semites, including Holocaust denier Sam Dickson and neo-Nazi activist Steven Barry, making for a potentially volatile situation.

In 2006, the explosion went off, and the façade of civility that Taylor had tried to maintain by requiring polite language and professional attire shattered. The conflict was trigged by former Klan boss and professional anti-Semite David Duke, who attacked Jews, telling the crowd, “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 spirit.” Though Duke didn’t directly say Jews were that power, everyone in the crowd, which included several members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, knew exactly who he meant, and many cried for more.

Hart couldn’t take it. He stood up and yelled at Duke, “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!” and stormed out. As many as 50 people at the conference then began to jeer and point at the rapidly disappearing Hart.

Hart and other Jewish academic racists left American Renaissance shortly thereafter, when Taylor declined to explicitly ban anti-Semites. But Hart was apparently not ready to give up public discussion of the superiority of the white race. Hence, “Preserving Western Civilization,” Hart’s Jewish-friendly replacement for the American Renaissance conference.

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Southern Poverty Law Center president Richard Cohen and Mark Potok, editor of this blog and the Intelligence Report magazine, will host a live webcast at 2 p.m. (EDT) on March 18 to discuss the SPLC’s recently released annual count of hate groups.

This year’s report documented 926 hate groups operating in the United States, representing a 54 percent increase since 2000. Potok and Cohen will discuss the factors fueling the growth of hate groups in the United States.

They will accept questions before and during the 30-minute audio webcast.

This event is closed. An audio archive is posted on iTunes (links below).

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Immigrant rights advocacy groups accused the Center For Immigration Studies of employing “fear tactics” with a new study claiming that 300,000 jobs created by the economic stimulus package will go to illegal immigrants.
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One day after the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee revealed plans to hold congressional hearings about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration sweeps.
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The U.S. Justice Department has begun an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department after months of complaints that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies are routinely committing civil rights violations during immigration enforcement sweeps.
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San Diego Minutemen leader Jeff Schwilk has long taken pleasure in harassing immigrants.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that he wrote a vicious E-mail to supporters threatening a federal judge who ruled in favor of an undocumented immigrant killed by a Border Patrol agent.

“This judge should be immediately dragged out, arrested and sent to Gitmo for crimes against our country!” Schwilk wrote in the E-mail titled “Death Penalty for Rock Throwers.” “Or better yet, tie him to a post near the border fence in Douglas [Ariz.] and attach 10 burritos to him as bait for these innocent little Mexican rock throwers! Put a sign next to him that says, ‘I work for the U.S. Border Patrol.’ He wouldn’t last 10 minutes. Bastard!”

Along with his comments, Schwilk forwarded an Associated Press article about the ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by the victim’s family, who was awarded $350,000. According to the AP story, U.S. District Judge Raner Collins decided that the Border Patrol agent used excessive force when he fatally shot an undocumented immigrant, 22-year-old Ricardo Olivares Martinez. The shooting occurred after an agent encountered a group of undocumented immigrants near the Arizona-Mexico border in 2003. Among them was Martinez, who tossed rocks at Agent Cesar Cervantes even after he was ordered to stop. Cervantes said he responded with deadly force because his life was in danger. The judge disagreed, saying the agent “was not in imminent danger from the deceased.”

Schwilk took exception to that finding. “If an illegal alien ever throws a rock (deadly weapon) at me, he’s a dead man! Only lethal force will be used in deadly situations. This is absolutely outrageous!”

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He’s been dead nearly two years, but there’s a fight brewing in the white nationalist movement over one of its heroes, David Lane.

Actually, the brouhaha is over only a part of Lane. About one-fourteenth of him. That portion of his ashes is reportedly in Perth, Western Australia, more than 9,000 miles from where he died in Indiana. The last time a dead man’s ashes traveled this far may be when the cremains of LSD devotee Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into orbit in 1997.

How Lane’s ashes got all the way to Perth is a matter of controversy. Women for Aryan Unity activist Victoria “Vickie” Cahill is accusing members of the Australian division of the violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 of misappropriating the ashes “through lies” and then “sending rape threats, threats of beatings” to Cahill and other WAU members when they protested.

“We want those ashes back,” Cahill posted to Stormfront and her MySpace page March 9.

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About 30 Minutemen held a counter-protest near a yearly pro-immigration reform rally that drew 400 supporters.
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Veteran neo-Nazi activist Elton Hall joined 100 to 200 members and supporters of the nativist extremist organization United for a Sovereign America for a counter-demonstration in support of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio while 3,000 to 4,000 civil rights marchers protested Arpaio’s racial profiling and immigration sweeps.
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Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is balking at new Homeland Security guidelines directing him not to have immigrants arrested solely for being in the country illegally.
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