This weekend in Washington DC, activists are planning to hold a protest against “the American Renaissance Conference 2008.” The conference is organized by the prominent racist Jared Taylor–who is scheduled to speak in Michigan at Michigan State University in March. The conferences, which have been happening since the 1990s, often function as a sort of “who’s who” of the racist movement, attracting representatives and activists from across the racist right. In 2006, David Duke attended, in 1998 it attracted a variety of racists in what the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education termed “A Convocation of Bigots,” and it was more of the same in 2000 and 2002), and 2006. The conferences frequently draw protests, who like the organizers of this year’s protest cite American Renaissance’s white supremacy as a reason to disrupt the conferences:
“The AmRen conference organizers call for a white supremacist society and political order. American Renaissance (AmRen) editor Jared Taylor states: “If whites permit themselves to be displaced, it is not just the high culture of the West that could disappear but such things as representative government, rule of law and freedom of speech, which whites usually get right and everyone else usually gets wrong.” Among past and present participants in this gathering are Klan member David Duke, Don Black, the operator of the white supremacist website Stormfront.org, former NY state prosecutor Michael Regan and Nick Griffin of the neo-fascist British National Party.
American Renaissance is a monthly magazine promoting an agenda of white supremacy through eugenics, faux science, and what they call “race realism.” In attempts to appeal to the middle and educated classes of white America, AmRen seeks to establish scientific “truths” such as eugenics by creating non-existent links between race and IQ, and by creating even more non- existent links between race and the predisposition to “negative social behaviors”. AmRen advances the racist beliefs of “Racial differences in IQ”, the “costs of diversity,” and the “challenges of non-white immigration.” One quick glance at their website reveals articles with titles like: “A Defense of White Racial Consciousness”; “The Biological Realities of Race”; “Multiculturalism and the War Against White America”; and “The Color of Crime.””
Aside from the protests against the conference offering an example of how activists in Michigan may want to meet Taylor’s March appearance at Michigan State University, looking at the American Renaissance conference allows us to further sharpen our understanding of Taylor’s racism.
This year’s conference has the theme “In the Name of Our People,” which of course means white people exclusively. According to the conference website, the conference will explore how “whites are afraid to speak out in their own interests” despite white “civilization” being threatened by “racial differences in IQ, the costs of ‘diversity,’ the challenges of non-white immigration.” Like its newsletter which relies heavily on statistics and faux-academic arguments, the conference has a line-up of speakers offering what appear to be academic talks on “The Heritability of World IQ Differences,” “Why is There so Much Resistance to Race Realism,” and “Understanding the African Mind.” Of course, the conference program leaves out the fact that many of the speakers are well-known racists that both promote abhorrent views and actively organize in a variety of groups. A sampling of the speakers includes:
* J. Phillippe Rushton is a professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada who does research attempting to prove there are differences in intelligence between races. Rushton has received extensive support from the Pioneer Fund, an organization that has for years funded research aimed at proving differences between races. Rushton now chairs the Pioneer Fund.
* Sam G. Dickson is a member of the racist Council of Conservative Citizens and is on the board of the Charles Martel Society a racist group similar to American Renaissance.
* Bruno Gollnisch is a leader in the French National Front political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Gollnisch has questioned the Holocaust, stating, “I do not question the existence of concentration camps but historians could discuss the number of deaths. As to the existence of gas chambers, it is up to historians to speak their minds.”
* Ashley Mote is a British politician who in 2007 joined a neo-fascist political grouping in the European parliament called Identity, Tradition, and Sovereignty. The group was criticized for being “xenophobic, anti-semetic, and racist” before falling apart in late 2007 for
* Michael Walker is a British writer who is part of the so-called “European New Right” is the editor of The Scorpion, a white nationalist newsletter. At the 1998 American Renaissance conference, he praised the French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
