Howard Phillips, one of the main architects of the Moral Majority and, more generally, the American religious right, died Saturday at the age of 72. According to the Christian News Network, he had been suffering from dementia.

Phillips had a long history in conservative and right-wing movements, including three runs as a third-party presidential candidate. He sat on the board of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and worked on Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign. He then went on to get involved in the administration of Richard Nixon, who appointed him head of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). ( continue to full post… )

In recent years, globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton has appeared at racist skinhead gatherings (he won a “strongest skinhead” contest at Hammerfest in 2005); co-sponsored lectures with hate groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom; rallied racist skinheads in Russia (where he lives part of the year in an apartment rented from ex-Klan boss David Duke); and been denied entry to the UK to address a festival put on by the neo-fascist British National Party. ( continue to full post… )

American Vision is a hard-line Christian Reconstruction organization whose current leader, Gary DeMar, has said that democracy should be replaced by a theocratic government run by Christians who will impose Old Testament prohibitions and the occasional executions of “sodomites” to drive gay people back into the closet. It’s no surprise, then, that American Vision has involved itself over the years with anti-gay and anti-abortion causes. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: This lengthy story is slated for publication in a future issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, but is published early here because the group it focuses on, Youth for Western Civilization, is holding its first national conference this Friday through Sunday at an undisclosed location in the Washington, D.C., area. To read a summary of the report’s key findings, see here.

By Mark Potok and Evelyn Schlatter

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) — a 5-year-old ultraconservative student group whose national conference in Washington, D.C., this Friday is being billed by its leader as the organization’s “real birth” — asserts that it is “not a racist group.” Its only purpose, says the group that claims a swelling presence on U.S. campuses and even abroad, is to defend “Western civilization.”

But what exactly does YWC mean by that?

The answer to that question was never clearer than this April, when racist ideologue Jared Taylor wrote a cover letter to his subscribers asking for support for YWC and its leader, Kevin DeAnna (pictured at right), who Taylor described as “an eloquent and distinguished young man who knows how important our cultural identity is.”

After reminding his backers that “race and race conflict” are at the core of the problems the West faces, Taylor said DeAnna “has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren.” For his part, DeAnna warned in an accompanying letter of the perils of “radical multiculturalism,” boasting that he had “defended western culture” against the “far left” that is trying to “destroy our people and culture.”

DeAnna’s fundraising partner, Jared Taylor, edits American Renaissance, a journal that specializes in issues of race, intelligence and the “psychopathology” of black people. In it, Taylor once mused: “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” Taylor’s biannual conferences have featured a Who’s Who of radical-right leaders, including former Klan boss David Duke and an array of leading neo-Nazi activists.

YWC is not some tiny Klan group on the margins of society. It claims a presence at nearly a dozen American universities, along with others in Canada and the United Kingdom. It appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a key Washington political venue, in 2009 and 2011, when it sponsored a panel on immigration. In 2010, it launched its own Internet radio show, “Western Resistance Radio.” Its honorary chairman is former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a well-known immigration opponent and Tea Party favorite. Perhaps most worrying of all are YWC’s close ties to The Leadership Institute, an organization with a budget of some $10 million that claims to have trained close to 100,000 “future conservative leaders” — people like top Bush advisor Karl Rove — and that now employs DeAnna as a leading official of its campus leadership program.

The key question, as YWC attempts to organize new campus chapters through this week’s national conference, is whether it will continue to grow. ( continue to full post… )

University of Toledo law student Kyle Bristow discusses his book White Apocalypse and controversy over his leadership of Michigan State University’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, which the SPLC listed as a hate group while he was chairman.
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Saul Anuzis, leader of the Michigan GOP until last year, announced earlier this week that he would be challenging Michael Steele for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Anuzis had made a failed but significant run against Steele, the party’s first black leader, for the same post in 2009.

Writing about his hopes for the RNC, Anuzis, an avid Twitter user and blogger, especially emphasized his tech-savviness at online social networking as an asset for making electoral gains for the party. What Anuzis didn’t mention was the kind of contacts he cultivated offline in Michigan, in particular his vocal support of the right-wing extremist Kyle Bristow. Bristow led the Michigan State University campus branch of Young Americans For Freedom (MSU-YAF) and was so virulent in his politics that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began listing it as a hate group in 2006. Bristow also served as a Republican precinct delegate.

Bristow, left, with Anuzis

Bristow’s MSU-YAF engaged in extensive racist activities. One of its first stunts was presenting a 13-point agenda that would have established a “Caucasian caucus” at MSU and, in turn, eliminated all student government representation for practically every other non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male or non-Christian student group at the university. Bristow was on record saying, “Homosexuality kills people almost to a degree worse than cigarettes. … these [pro-gay rights] groups are complicit with murder.” MSU-YAF sponsored a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contest, held a “Koran Desecration” competition, jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to Native American students, and posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus. Bristow’s YAF also brought several extremists to speak at the MSU campus, including Holocaust denier Nick Griffin, leader of the whites-only British National Party (for more on YAF, read here). ( continue to full post… )

It should surprise no one that former hate group leader Kyle Bristow has self-published a white nationalist novel that features the graphic assassination of a character based on a prominent Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) figure. After all, Bristow has an ax to grind with the SPLC and first attained notoriety for promoting a video game centered on killing Mexicans.

What is somewhat surprising are some of the names that appear among the dozen gushing blurbs praising the violently racist novel, White Apocalypse. ( continue to full post… )

Globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton (at right, showing the flag at a 2007 white nationalist rally in Moscow) was barred from entering the United Kingdom last week by Home Office authorities at London’s Heathrow Airport. Wiginton, a U.S. citizen, was trying to enter the U.K. to address the racist throngs at the tenth annual “Red, White and Blue” summer festival put on by the neofascist British National Party, or BNP.

The Home Office stated that it denied entry to Wiginton because it deemed his presence in the U.K. would not have been conducive to the common good. Wiginton has a close relationship with BNP chairman Nick Griffin, as well as ultra-right politicians and white nationalist academics and activists in Russia, the Texas native’s adopted homeland. (Wiginton resides part of the year in a Moscow apartment he sublets from ex-Klan boss David Duke.) Wiginton also brags about friendships with the leaders of violent neo-Nazi skinhead gangs in Russia, and claims that he pumps $50,000 a year of his own money into the global white supremacist movement.

In the U.S. in recent years, Wiginton has appeared at racist skinhead gatherings and co-sponsored lectures with hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom.
( continue to full post… )

Michigan State University (MSU) mechanical engineering professor Indrek Wichman made international headlines in February 2006, when, using his faculty E-mail account, he sent a blistering E-mail to the university’s Muslim Student Association, calling on Muslim students to either accept Western cultural standards or return to their “ancestral lands.”

“I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems … [i]f you do not like the values of the West — see the 1st Amendment — you are free to leave,” Wichman wrote. “I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option.”

Although Provost Kim Wilcox formally admonished Wichman, the anti-Muslim professor remained on the MSU faculty. Now, he’s apparently taken on a new role in the MSU campus community: faculty adviser for the MSU chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF, an extreme-right student organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated MSU-YAF a hate group for its hosting of white supremacist lecturers and repeated bigoted statements against Muslims and Latinos, among other groups.

According to the MSU Department of Student Life guide for the upcoming academic year, Wichman has replaced William Allen, a professor of political philosophy, as MSU-YAF’s faculty adviser. ( continue to full post… )

A well-funded new organization whose stated purpose is to launch a “right-wing youth movement” will make a splashy debut tonight at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Washington, D.C. CPAC is billed as “the largest annual gathering of conservative students, activists and policymakers.”

According to CPAC materials, the group, Youth for Western Civilization, is one of the official co-sponsors, or major donors, of this year’s conference. The group has a booth in the CPAC exhibition hall, and its “Inaugural Reception” is scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. EST in the Palladium Ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

In the past, CPAC organizers have shielded the reputation of their mainstream conservative enterprise by forbidding racist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens from participating. They may want to take a closer look at Youth for Western Civilization (YWC).

One of the group’s founders, Marcus Epstein, is a frequent contributor to the white nationalist hate website VDARE.com. (Editor’s Note: In Sept. 2009, Hatewatch was informed that Epstein now claims he was not a founder of the group, even though he had said so earlier.)

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable,” Epstein wrote in one VDARE.com essay. “Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

Epstein is also the head of the Robert A. Taft Club, a Washington, D.C., group whose events regularly feature prominent academic racists like Jared Taylor, the editor of the overtly white supremacist journal American Renaissance.

Another Youth for Western Civilization founder, Kevin DeAnna, has posted several times in recent years to the Spartan Spectator, the website of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF.

In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified MSU-YAF as a hate group after it organized a “Catch an Illegal Alien Day” game, sponsored a “Koran desecration contest,” jokingly threatened to distribute small-pox infected blankets to Native American students, posted “Gays spread AIDS” fliers, called Latino students and faculty members “savages,” and invited Nick Griffin, the chairman of the neofascist British National Party, to speak on the MSU campus.

“The point is that all Christians, and white Christians in particular, don’t owe any deference to the self-defined racial separatist customs of other people,” DeAnna posted to Spartan Spectator in July 2007.

( continue to full post… )