The Islamic Republic of Iran is replete with beautiful mountain vistas, a clean subway system and keen scholarly discussion, if the Institute for Historical Review’s (IHR) Mark Weber is to be believed.  The country is also the victim of the harmful depredations of a “Zionist-controlled Hollywood,” according to Weber.  He and more than 40 other non-Iranians gathered with their Hollywood-hating Iranian peers for a four-day February conference in Tehran.  Speakers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East claimed that Hollywood did everything from pollute their cultural environment to promote war with Iran.  If you thought Americans were all skinny, that was a false impression caused by Hollywood.  And if you looked around and thought about sex, well that too was the fault of Hollywood. 

On the eve of the most widely anticipated conservative event of the year, the group responsible for organizing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC 13) has chosen to feature the work of a controversial white nationalist professor on its website.

As of February 27, the American Conservative Union (ACU) website features an article by Dr. Robert Weissberg, a retired University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign political science professor with a second career as a white nationalist. Since the first CPAC conference in 1973, the American Conservative Union has been the principal sponsor of the gathering. ACU has a staff person, Vinh Nguyen, listed as a “CPAC producer.” And ACU’s executive director and chairman call the event to order and provide the initial welcoming remarks. Weissberg’s essay was found on the front page of the ACU’s site, just beneath a big banner advertising CPAC 13.

Based on the uttering of one self-identified “Exalted Cyclops,” a mass of television, internet, and print reporters have declared that Klansmen will be coming to Memphis, Tennessee and protest the renaming of several Confederate memorials in that city.  The number “5,000” is usually floated along with this “fact.”

The article below ran in the January 2013 edition of Searchlight, an anti-racist, anti-fascist magazine published monthly in London with international distribution.  It analyzes Klan, neo-Nazi and Tea Party activity during 2012, and recounts some of the movement's most violent episodes.  At the end, please note the data that points towards problems in the future.

2012: A Year in Review

The year began with whimpers from white nationalists about the decay of their supposed civilization.  And it ended with a bang from gunners screaming about their rights after yet another mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. Election year events dominated the ebb and flow of the far right, the racists and the bigots.  In between, skinheads and assorted Aryan-types were arrested and convicted in multiple instances of horrific violence. 

Monday, January 21, is the national holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday anniversary. If he had not been horribly murdered by an assassin in 1968, or struck down in some other fashion, he would be 84 years old. Across the country, in every major city and most medium-sized towns there will be at least some kind of event. In Kansas City, where I am now sitting, multiple events have already happened as I write these words.

IREHR's Leonard Zeskind gave a workshop on "White Nationalists and neo-Nazis in the Kansas-Missouri Region" at a Day of Discovery held at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas.  Among those white nationalists he highlighted in his talk were the National Socialist Movement, the Council of Conservative Citizens, Alex Linder's website Vanguard News Network website, and Jamie Kelso's radio program.  He cited Eric Bishop's refusal to follow in his father's Tim Bishop's "stormtrooper" path, and other signs of opposition to white nationalism.  Around 50 people attended the workshop.

That the American Renaissance 2012 conference took place at all was a cause for minor celebration by the participants. The scientific racists, academics, lawyers and assorted white nationalists who attend these events had been frustrated for the several years by the anti-racists who had successfully protested their events, rendering it nearly impossible for them to fool a private hotel in a big city into booking their confab. So, this time the so-called racial realists retreated to the Tennessee woods. Specifically, American Renaissancers had to drive almost an hour west of the Nashville airport before they got to Montgomery Bell State Park, where they parked over the 16-17 March weekend. They were all pleased with the results: A quiet affair amidst beautiful surroundings with little noise intruding from the outside.

In the month since the tragic shooting in Sanford, Florida of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, sustained pressure by the NAACP and local civil rights advocates has brought national attention to the killing, and the way the incident was handled by local law enforcement. More than two million signatures have been collected on an online petition seeking justice for Mr. Martin. Rallies for justice in Florida have been amplified by scores of rallies in cities and towns across the country. A renewed discussion of race and racism has emerged in this presidential election year.

Into this increasingly complex situation, white nationalists have sought to inject their poison. They have defamed Martin, concocted false allegations and amplified racial stereotypes of young black men—in effect, putting the victim on trial in the court of public opinion. Even before Florida officials started leaking negative "information" about Trayvon Martin, white nationalists were portraying Mr. Martin as a scary black man who deserved what he got.

Consumed recently by primary politics and internal squabbles, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) are going back to the beginning. Just when the vicious fight over health care seemed to be in the country's rear-view mirror, Tea Partiers are hoping to jumpstart their movement by returning to the battle they lost two years ago: the fight over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACT)—or what they've derisively labeled "Obamacare."

As the Supreme Court prepares to take up the issue next week, TPP will kick off a week of anti-health care protests in Washington DC with a rally on March 24. The "Road to Repeal" rally is billed as "the first stop on the road to repeal Obamacare," and is the first major event since co-founder Mark Meckler publically broke from the Tea Party Patriots.

ProEnglish executive director Robert Vandervoort’s inclusion on two panels was apparently not a matter of controversy inside the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference. Not one word questioning his participation was uttered publicly by any of his co-panelists, and one and all treated him with respect. Indeed, all of his co-panelists, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Florida Representative David Rivera were glad to shake his hand.

Outside the conference was a different matter, however. After IREHR raised concerns because of Vandervoort’s white nationalist attachments, a significant discussion ensued. It was often coupled with an intersecting debate about the appearance of Peter Brimelow, after People for the American Way noted the author’s white nationalism. The Kansas City Star, the Wichita Eagle and Mother Jones were among the publications to take note of these events. American Spectator, a decidedly conservative periodical weighed in with the comment that “if Vandervoort indeed organized events for an American Renaissance affiliate … he should explicitly and publicly renounce his old associates; that is a crowd that no one should touch with a ten foot pole.”[1]

In the interest of answering these questions raised by American Spectator, among others, IREHR provides the following information about Vandervoort’s relationship to American Renaissance as well as his own re-articulation of white nationalist dogma.