More than 260 people gathered at the Hyatt Dulles hotel in northern Virginia over the weekend of Feb. 20-22 for the 2004 American Renaissance conference. Guests came from all parts of the United States, as well as Canada, Britain, France, and even South Africa and Australia to make it the best-attended AR conference ever. From beginning to end, there was an invigorating sense of solidarity and conviviality, as AR celebrated the tenth anniversary of its first meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. As one participant put it, “it’s great to be among the living again.”
The conference began on Friday evening with a cocktail reception and welcoming remarks by the AR staff. Jared Taylor provoked much hilarity by challenging the spy from the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League who always attends AR conferences to reveal himself. “Why do you sneak around like a thief?” he asked. “We know you’re here, so I’m giving you an opportunity to do something honorable and manly, and identify yourself.” The spy remained silent.
Afterwards, conference guests socialized late into the evening, enjoying the camaraderie that marked the entire weekend.
On Saturday morning, syndicated columnist Samuel Francis began with an analysis of white resistance to racial consciousness. He reported that many of his correspondents say there can be no significant racial differences in behavior because the genomes of different races differ by only a fraction of a percent. Others argue that racial differences are meaningless because all people have a common African origin. One of his readers claimed we are all black because we came from Africa; Dr. Francis commented that this was like claiming we are all fish because we once came from the ocean.
Some of Dr. Francis’s readers quote Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Dr. Francis remarked that people who like this passage do not seem to realize it could be used to undermine the case for the state of Israel and even defend homosexual marriage.
Some readers do not believe a white race even exists, that we are instead a diverse collection of Frenchmen, Poles, Lithuanians, and so on. It is a mystery to Dr. Francis why national identities are acceptable, but a racial identity is not. Another common argument is that whites should deny themselves racial consciousness because it leads to the unique wickedness of the Holocaust and slavery. Dr. Francis noted that in the long sweep of history that includes Mongol and Muslim attacks on Europe, it is only very recently that whites started killing more non-whites than the other way around.
Conservatives often say they are afraid where racial consciousness would lead, imagining slaughter and slavery rather than immigration reform. “All you have to do is ring the bell, and conservatives salivate the way the leftists trained them,” he said, noting that the history of egalitarianism is much bloodier than that of in-egalitarianism. These arguments are so flimsy they must surely be a cover for “irrational and emotional fixations,” he said. They show that whites “are willing to grasp at any straw to deny the reality of our problems.”
Paul Fromm, president of the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee and the Canadian Association for Free Expression, announced that his two overriding concerns were immigration and free speech because in Canada there is too much of one and too little of the other. Almost 12 percent of Canada’s population is from the Third World, and if immigration and fertility rates stay constant, Canada will lose its white majority about the same time as the United States, in the middle of this century. Canada accepts about 235,000 immigrants every year, or almost twice as many per capita as the United States. Eighty-five percent are from the Third World, and this has brought profound demographic change: Toronto, for example, was one percent non-white in 1961, but is more than 60 percent non-white today.
It can be dangerous to criticize this process. Mr. Fromm pointed to the case of Brad Love, who was sentenced under hate speech laws to 18 months in prison for writing rude letters to politicians about immigration.
Politicians and the media insist that Canada has always been multicultural, but until recently, there was no question that Canada was a country for Europeans. Robert Borden, prime minister from 1911-1920 said bluntly that it was a white man’s country. Canada’s traditional flag, the Red Ensign, bears the coats of arms of the British, French, and other European pioneers. The maple leaf flag, which Mr. Fromm likened to a modern corporate logo, was adopted in 1965.
The current immigration minister has said she does not see herself as a gate-keeper, but as a facilitator and social worker. Asylum seekers automatically get welfare until their cases are heard, and Canada grants asylum to women with abusive husbands, and homosexuals from macho cultures. Forty-five percent of these immigrants cannot speak English or French, which means they probably cannot be employed.
Mr. Fromm also suggested Oriental immigrants are forming a fifth column in Canada and reducing Canadians’ control over their country. They already own a great deal of real estate, and they are in the process of buying Air Canada.
University of Delaware history professor Raymond Wolters marked the 50th anniversary year of Brown v Board of Education by noting that American schools have gone from desegregation to forced integration and then back to desegregation. Although the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was written by men who plainly supported school segregation, NAACP attorneys managed to convince the Supreme Court through historical and legal deception that the equal protection clause required desegregation. Still, the Brown decision did not require forcible integration; it merely prohibited schools from refusing admission to students because of race. Little changed after Brown. Most schools remained overwhelmingly white or black because Americans preferred it that way.
This did not satisfy civil rights activists, who thought segregation harmed black students. So, in 1968, the Court held that Brown required school districts that had discriminated in the past to correct this by promoting integration. Busing did not have the intended effect: Black academic performance failed to improve, and whites never accepted school assignment by race. Districts that required integration lost an average of 50 percent of their students to white flight. In the 1990s, the Rehnquist court returned to the original understanding of Brown, and schools once again reflect neighborhood segregation.
Prof. Wolters also described the role of academics in school integration. Intellectuals are overwhelmingly on the left, and their writing “combines righteous indignation with emotional commitment.” They reward mediocre scholars who praise integration, and punish excellent scholars who criticize it.
The NAACP hired several historians to argue that the 14th Amendment required desegregation. They duly prepared papers to support this claim, even though the evidence was against it. Three have since admitted their fraud, conceding that they let politics distort their perspective, but this has in no way hurt their careers.
Psychologist Kenneth Clark provided the social rationale for the Brown case with his notorious doll studies that claimed to show blacks suffered psychological damage from segregation. These studies were later discredited — if anything, they showed integration damaged blacks — but they played a large role in winning the Brown case, and Clark enjoyed an extremely successful academic career. Kenneth Coleman, a sociologist who produced thorough and sound work demonstrating that integration lowered the quality of white education without raising that of blacks, suffered a long period of academic isolation, and some colleagues even likened him to a Nazi.
The next address was by Philip du Toit, president of the Zimbabwe Victims’ Coalition. He has just published a book about South Africa’s “land restitution,” and argues that agriculture is headed for collapse because blacks are incapable of modern farming. He described the great suffering that has followed the transfer of power to blacks in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Blacks have killed 1,600 white farmers in South Africa since black rule began in 1994, making farming in South Africa the most dangerous peace-time occupation in the world. The killings have scared many whites off their farms; in ten years their numbers have dropped from 56,000 to 35,000. Squatters steal from them and kill their cattle, but the incompetent South African police catch only an estimated 10 percent of career criminals. Commercial farmers also must pay high taxes. Dr. du Toit showed a film about the farm killings, in which one expert claimed this could be the beginning of full-scale genocide. At the same time, the black government now practices such ruthless preferences it is practically impossible for whites to get scholarships, and job prospects are increasingly dim. Now that the schools are black-run, many black 8th-graders cannot read.
In Zimbabwe, the eviction of 4,000 farmers has brought disaster. More than 150,000 black farm workers have lost their jobs, and the economy is on the rocks. Mr. du Toit ended his speech with a call for more international cooperation among whites.
Jack Loggenberg of the Transvaal Agricultural Union continued the discussion of South Africa. The goals of his organization are to protect the willing seller-willing buyer principle of property exchange, to ensure the maintenance of South Africa’s food and fiber production, and to ensure that commercial farmers are able to live without fear of theft and violence.
Mr. Loggenberg spoke not only about the physical, but the psychological aspects of the current campaign against South African whites, which is meant to destroy their sense of peoplehood. Blacks in authority call whites “colonialists,” “invaders,” and “land-grabbers,” discredit their heroes, and tear down their monuments. Cities, towns, streets, and buildings once named for whites are now renamed for black “freedom fighters.” White children must attend integrated schools that actively try to stamp out any aspect of European culture or achievement, and that have pushed out Christianity in favor of some vague universal religion. Mr. Loggenberg also stressed the importance of world-wide white solidarity.
Author and history professor Roger McGrath described the decline of the white hero in American culture. Before the 1960s, Americans revered statesmen and warriors like Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt, and exaggerated their virtues; now these men are criminals. Washington owned slaves; Jefferson slept with them; Jackson uprooted Indians; Roosevelt proclaimed white superiority. Just as in South Africa, the names of white icons are coming down. Prof. McGrath gave the example of a majority-black elementary school in New Orleans, that changed its name from Washington because Washington owned slaves. Noting the school’s terrible student performance, he said it may be just as well that it no longer bears Washington’s name.
Lincoln has survived as a hero because he liberated the slaves, and cultural Marxists downplay his conviction of Negro inferiority and opposition to integration. The left loves Lincoln because he destroyed Southern culture, increased the power of the federal government, and created “the secular religion of egalitarianism.”
Prof. McGrath spoke admiringly of the masculine virtues of the great American statesmen who are now so despised. He praised Washington’s military acumen and Andrew Jackson’s bravery in duels. He spoke reverently of World War II heroes, like Audie Murphy and Colin Kelly, and deplored the fact that they are not even mentioned in today’s history books. Strength and courage in white men are today called “militarism” and “fascism.” “It is difficult not to conclude,” he said, “that authors and publishers fear portraying white men in a heroic light, because such portrayals just might inspire boys today to behave in a manner admired by their ancestors.”
There followed three brief presentations by activists. Perry Lorenz described his campaign for the Fort Collins, Colorado school board, in which he pointed out it was unrealistic to expect schools to close the achievement gap between white and black students because of innate differences. There was the predictable outcry, but he still won over 20 percent of the vote. Gordon Baum, CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, noted that today’s young people are much more racially conscious than their parents. He says the Confederate flag is increasingly popular among young men. Lou Calabro, president of the European/American Issues Forum, described a photo exhibit called “European Americans Among Us” that he had put on at the San Francisco Public Library to encourage pride in white achievement.
The cocktail reception before the Saturday evening banquet was serenaded by the dance band, The Nitehawks. Conference guests were pleasantly surprised by Jared Taylor’s solid clarinet and saxophone performances in swing classics like “Song of India” and “American Patrol.”
After the banquet on Saturday night, columnist and author Joseph Sobran spoke on “The Alien State.” He said America is going through a “statist revolution” on the pretext that it must pass regulations to protect us. “If you think the state wants to protect us,” he said, “look at Waco!” Regulations serve only to control our lives, and one of the primary vehicles of such control is “minority rights.” The state uses its mandate to protect minorities to limit our freedom of association and to control the way we speak and think. “The term ‘minority’ is not a matter of numbers,” he said. “It’s a moral claim.” The government has become so obnoxiously intrusive that a conspiratorial view of the world is justified: “It isn’t crazy to be paranoid about the government,” he said. “What’s crazy is to trust it.” The state’s attitude towards minorities is driven by a philosophy of “alienism,” or the prejudice that the abnormal is always to be preferred to the normal. He elaborated on homosexual and Jewish activism as examples of this trend.
Jared Taylor began the Sunday morning session on a note of optimism. He said the common view was that whites have no right to pursue racial interests but saw many signs of white revolt. He saw nascent racial consciousness in the widespread indignation over the Bush amnesty proposal. Americans say they oppose it because it rewards law-breakers, but deep-down there is a racial fear that America will become Mexico if we let in too many Hispanics.
There are much clearer signs of racial awakening in Europe, where there are strong nationalist political parties. The Swiss People’s Party, whose campaign posters showed dark hands tearing up a Swiss flag, is now the most popular in the country. Russian politics is solidly nationalist: not only is Vladimir Putin’s party nationalist by American standards, but the number two and number three parties are even more so.
Events in Holland are particularly heartening. Holland has had one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, but in January, parliament issued an all-party report saying that the attempt to create an integrated multi-ethnic society had failed. The Dutch were delighted when the government recently announced it would deport 26,000 bogus asylum seekers. The city of Rotterdam will no longer issue residence permits to anyone who doesn’t speak Dutch, and will build no more cheap housing. These measures are openly described as designed to keep out immigrants. Denmark is another encouraging example.
Political progress is more rapid in Europe because of proportional representation, which makes it easier for small parties to gain influence. Mr. Taylor also saw a “virtuous cycle” developing in Europe. When one country closes its doors to immigrants or expels them, they try to get in elsewhere, which prompts other countries to restrict immigration.
Psychologist Donald Templer followed with a scathing and hilarious attack on the blindness of his profession. He has been fascinated by group differences ever since he was a child, and this interest has shaped his academic career. He says denying group differences in ability is costly because it puts unqualified blacks in positions of authority. Whites are twenty times more likely than blacks to have IQs of 130 or above, and these are the people who should be decision-makers.
“There are too many psychologists who poison the minds of their students,” said Prof. Templer. By refusing to acknowledge innate intelligence differences, psychologists encourage white guilt that weakens a psychologist’s capacity to deal with the social problems that blacks pose. Also, it is absurd to blame test bias for low IQ scores. “If blacks score low on an intelligence test,” said Prof. Templer, “I would say that constitutes powerful evidence for its validity.” Many psychologists enjoy giving racial sensitivity training, but it would be much more useful if they treated white guilt. Many psychologists recommend psychological therapy for black prisoners, but Prof. Templer disagrees: “They need 60 hours a week of work therapy. That would give them less time for manufacturing alcohol and weapons, trafficking drugs, and giving each other AIDS.”
Prof. Templer was just as scathing about the grievances of blacks against whites. Many claim high incarceration rates are genocide because they prevent blacks from having children. In Prof. Templer’s view, “the reduced procreation of criminals of all colors is a beneficial side effect of incarceration . . . If imprisoning criminals is genocide, then I am for genocide.” If Americans are serious about deterring crime, they should farm criminals out to Third World and Communist countries “that have real prisons and real punishment.”
Sam Dickson concluded the conference with “A Secular Benediction,” in which he lambasted the “silly right.” The conservatives currently in power “major in the minors and minor in the majors,” devoting their energy to insignificant problems and ignoring things of vital importance. The Bush administration did not breathe a word of protest at the Supreme Court’s decisions on racial preferences last year, and its amnesty plan would only make the immigration crisis worse. There has also been little protest against the Supreme Court’s limitations on political advertisements, which diminish the power of minority political movements. The only issue on which the silly right has taken a strong conservative stand is homosexual marriage, a trivial problem compared to the non-white invasion.
Americans have been duped by the silly right into thinking America must police the Middle East. The costs of war, together with the forces of decay within America could precipitate a disaster, but such a disaster might doom multiracialism and globalism and set America on a sounder course. Mr. Dickson also disagreed with libertarians who think limiting government will solve our problems. Solutions will require the extensive and vigorous use of government powers.
Mr. Dickson concluded by urging whites to greater solidarity. Although he admired individualism when he was younger, he has since come to see it as a weakness. A healthy person is grounded in the broader life of his people and aware of its history. When an entire people faces problems, they cannot be dealt with individually but must be faced collectively. As an example, he proposed that “if more whites contributed a little bit of money to organizations like AR, they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money on private schools.”
The conference adjourned with many participants expressing the wish that the event be held every year. The next day, there was an article about the meeting in the Washington Times, and the Indonesian newspaper Suara Pembaruan covered the conference for the second time in a row. An independent film crew from Boston that is making a documentary on immigration reform filmed the talks and interviewed many people in the audience.
We are deeply grateful to all our readers who attended the conference, and who made it such a success. We look forward to seeing you again when we hold the next conference in 2006.