The following article describes activities by Jared Taylor in France and England earlier this year.  Taylor is not unknown to regular readers of www.IREHR.org.  He is the founder of a scientific racist outfit known as American Renaissance, has been a leading figure in the ranks of the Council of Conservative Citizens and an editor for other white nationalist enterprises.  Leonard Zeskind’s book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, available from IREHR, includes the first and most comprehensive treatment of Taylor—including his friendship with Holocaust denier Mark Weber, his stint as the West Coast editor of PC magazine, and a description of American Renaissance’s first conferences.  The following is taken from an article in Searchlight magazine by Ray Mount.  IREHR congratulates Searchlight for nearly 50 years of monthly anti-fascist and anti-racist publication. Leonard Zeskind added to Ray Mount’s reporting, using material from other sources.

It was May 1, 1988 in Paris, and I watched as Jean-Marie Le Pen, a young girl dressed as Joan d'Arc, a line of sash-wearing dignitaries, and 40,000 Front National supporters marched through the streets in a May Day parade. It was the moment that the Front National's racist nationalism broke into the middle of French politics, after years (decades) on the margins. Le Pen won 4.4 million votes, about 14.7% of the total, in the first round of the presidential elections that year. At the time, I was used to monitoring Klan rallies in the American South, which never approximated the size and power of the rally that day. The Front National's fortunes have waxed and waned over the next two-plus decades since. Now, with a stunning six million votes (17.9% of the total) in the in the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen has re-established the Front National as a leading voice for racist, anti-immigrant politics in Continental Europe.