Jean Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor and probably the most important race scientist in North America, died of cancer Tuesday night in Canada. The man who sparked a firestorm of controversy and protest in the late 1980s with his theories about the correlation between genital size and intelligence, and in later years was the head of a right-wing fund that has long supported the research projects of academic racists from around the world, was 68.

“He’s the end of an era of academic racists of his style and notoriety,” Barry Mehler, professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris State University in Michigan, said today. “I don’t think we’ll see that again.’’ ( continue to full post… )

In one of the more volatile recent periods of racial unrest in this country, some of the most inflammatory incitement is coming from an odd little corner of academia.

An influential, tenured university psychology professor is on the airwaves claiming Trayvon Martin was a “thug,” a “hoodlum” and a drug dealer who was shot while he was suspended from high school after being caught with stolen jewelry and a tool used for “breaking and entering.” California State University, Long Beach, Professor Kevin MacDonald made these and other allegations about the slain teen on David Duke’s nationwide radio program yesterday morning. ( continue to full post… )

Frank Borzellieri is making a “desperate appeal” to supporters of the academic racist group American Renaissance to back his legal defense fund. Borzellieri was fired last August from his post as principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in the Bronx after his connection to American Renaissance and his racist views were made public by the New York Daily News. His opinions were deemed “incompatible” with Catholic teachings by the Archdiocese of New York.

In 2004, Borzellieri wrote a book, Don’t Take It Personally: Race, Immigration, Crime and Other Heresies, in which he declared “diversity is a weakness” and claimed that rising black and Latino populations in America will lead to a “New Dark Age.” He had spoken at American Renaissance conferences and been published in its newsletter, which argues that blacks and Latinos are inferior to whites.

While serving as principal for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade, Borzellieri reportedly pushed to ban a biography on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., remove an openly gay teacher and gay-rights activist from the classroom at Public School 199 in Sunnyside and bar school employees from making any references to homosexuality. He also introduced a resolution calling for students to be taught that U.S. culture is superior. ( continue to full post… )

The Dallas chapter of the conservative legal group, The Federalist Society, is holding a debate Friday on “Birthright Citizenship for Children of Illegal Immigrants.” Participating on the panel is prominent white nationalist Peter Brimelow, who runs the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. Also on the panel are Jim Ho, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk and former Solicitor General for the State of Texas and University of Texas School of Law Professor Lino Graglia, who the Federalist Society announcement describes as “one of the most conservative law professors in America.”

Brimelow is a remarkable choice for such a panel given his unrelenting hostility towards immigrants, in particular those with dark skin. In 1995, for instance, he published Alien Nation, a book that argued that America is historically white-dominated and should stay that way. Although the book was well reviewed in some places, it included strong veins of racism and xenophobia. In its pages, Brimelow described the role of race in society as “elemental, absolute, fundamental.” He said that white Americans should demand that U.S. immigration quotas be changed to allow in mostly whites. He argued that spending tax dollars on anything related to multiculturalism was “subversive.” He called foreign immigrants “weird aliens with dubious habits.”

At one point in the book, he compared an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room to walking into a New York City subway — ”you find yourself in an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.” In 1997, Brimelow warned that by 2008 the GOP would no longer be able to compete in presidential elections because the racial makeup of the electorate would be changed by non-white immigration. ( continue to full post… )

The Founding Fathers as white racist poster boys?

Do a Facebook page search of the name Thomas Jefferson, and the very first listing that will appear is Thomas Jefferson – American. You can click to join 11,753 people who “like” the page.

Well, congratulations. You just signed onto fan pages sponsored by the racist National Policy Institute (NPI), a think tank dedicated to the preservation of America as a nation of, for and dominated by white people. NPI has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group since publishing heir William H. Regnery founded it in 2005. ( continue to full post… )

Hard to believe there’s a need for yet another far-right magazine or conference, but now there are both. Richard Spencer, who was editor at “Taki’s Magazine,” an online paleoconservative magazine, is now executive editor of a new online magazine called “Alternative Right.” He calls this venture “an online magazine of radical traditionalism” that hopes “to forge a new intellectual right-wing that is independent and outside the ‘conservative’ establishment.” It also is loaded with contributors who, like Spencer, have long lamented the white man’s decline.

Meanwhile, Joseph Farah, founder of the conspiracy-laden WorldNetDaily website, says he is organizing a conference to be held in September called “Taking America Back.” Farah says the conference is a response to what he describes as the shabby treatment accorded him by the director of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was held last month. “This one is about the ultimate issues of God, the Constitution, the tea-party uprising, freedom and justice,” Farah wrote in a WorldNetDaily commentary.

At “Alternative Right,” Spencer’s senior contributing editors are Peter Brimelow and Paul Gottfried. Brimelow founded VDARE.com, an anti-immigrant website, and he has described “Alternative Right” as a project of the VDARE Foundation. Gottfried has been a contributor to “Taki’s Magazine” and has spoken at conferences of the white nationalist American Renaissance magazine, whose editor has written that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization. Gottfried gave a speech at the inaugural meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club in November 2008 titled, “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right.” Brimelow was the keynote speaker at that event, and Spencer the master of ceremonies. Spencer and Gottfried also appeared together last October on “The Political Cesspool,” a racist and anti-Semitic radio program.

One of the bloggers at “Alternative Right” is Richard Hoste, who recently wrote that “low-IQ Mexican immigration is the greatest threat to America.” He also wrote: “Schools should stop wasting time trying to close achievement gaps. And not only do whites have nothing to feel guilty about, they are the best thing to ever happen to blacks. Even ignoring race, humanity will not move forward through equality or by raising up the really stupid to the level of just plain stupid.” Finally, Hoste had this pithy observation: “While there’s more miscegenation [interracial sex] than in the past … we should be heartened that white teenage girls aren’t passing themselves around in black neighborhoods.” ( continue to full post… )

Fresh off American Renaissance’s embarrassing debacle last week in which it was forced to cancel its biannual confab of academic racists and other extremists, one of the white nationalist group’s members has proposed a solution that can circumvent nervous hoteliers in the future.

Chicago lawyer and American Renaissance member Reilly Smith, writing in the current issue of American Renaissance’s magazine, says that he and three others formed Chicagoland Friends of AR a few years ago, and he provides tips on how like-minded people who wish to be “free from the chains of racial orthodoxy” can do the same in their communities.

Smith’s piece was penned before American Renaissance was forced to cancel its three-day conference scheduled last weekend in Washington, D.C. when a hotel pulled the rug out from under its reservation. He sees American Renaissance clubs as supplementing, not replacing, the conferences that have been held since 1994. But in light of what happened last week, plus the troubles that have dogged other white supremacists trying to book hotel meeting rooms, Smith may have described the future of American Renaissance. ( continue to full post… )

After being jilted by yet another hotel, the white nationalist American Renaissance conference was cancelled again last week — this time, for good.

The conference, scheduled for Feb. 19-21, had been held biannually since 1994 and featured prominent academic racists, far-right politicians and other extremists from around the world. Over the past several months, however, anti-racists persuaded four Washington D.C.-area hotels to drop the conference, infuriating American Renaissance leader Jared Taylor. ( continue to full post… )

After being cancelled because its organizers couldn’t find a venue willing to host it, this weekend’s white nationalist American Renaissance conference is back on again — this time at a Washington D.C. hotel where two similar events were recently held.

Jared Taylor, who heads American Renaissance, told conference registrants yesterday that the group had booked the Capitol Skyline Hotel near downtown Washington. The conference was dropped by three other area hotels following a campaign by anti-racist activists. “We have found a venue with backbone and the conference will take place!” Taylor wrote. “Hotel management is prepared for the worst and will not back down!”

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According to an E-mail sent today and signed by Jared Taylor, head of the white nationalist American Renaissance, the group will not be holding its 2010 conference. The conferences are usually a major hit in white nationalist circles and feature as speakers prominent white supremacists, academic racists and other extremists from around the world.

In the past few weeks, anti-racist activists had already persuaded two Washington D.C.-area hotels to cancel their contracts with American Reniassance. Taylor’s E-mail claims that the third hotel scheduled to hold the event, the Four Points Sheraton at the Manassas Battlefield, cancelled because “Hostile callers phoned the hotel and threatened employees with death.” A hotel representative refused to speak on the record about what led to the cancellation but did verify to Hatewatch that the event was cancelled.

Meanwhile, one of the participants scheduled to speak at American Renaissance, Nick Griffin, who has denied the Holocaust and heads the racist British National Party, was disinvited from a speaking engagement at Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio. Griffin was asked to speak at the campus by Taylor Somers, a student and head of the Robert A. Taft Society there.

Somers put out a statement apologizing profusely for the invite and thanking his fellow students for showing “we were on the wrong course.” Somers promised to “embark on a path of radical self-examination” and claimed “I’m not a bigot, fascist, or totalitarian, but rather, perhaps, more of a contrarian.” “The Taft Society will exercise better and more sensitive judgment with regard to who we bring to campus,” Somers promised.