Bob Vandervoort is scheduled to moderate a Thursday afternoon panel at the CPAC 2012 conference, entitled, “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening the American Identity.” Vandervoort listed his organizational affiliation as executive director of ProEnglish—an English-Only outfit founded by John Tanton. What he left out of his bio is that he was also the organizer of the white nationalist group, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance, while he lived in Illinois.
During that period Vandervoort was at the center of much of the white nationalist activity in the region. While he was in charge, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance often held joint meetings with the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. He also made appearances at white nationalist events outside Illinois, for instance participating in the 2009 Preserving Western Civilization Conference.
Vandervoort’s position at ProEnglish is not surprising, given his familiarity with the Nativist Establishment. He and several Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance members attended a March 22, 2005 Federation for American Immigration Reform meeting at the Lincoln Restaurant in Chicago. At a November 13, 2004 FAIR “Midwest Immigration Reform Summit” in Rosemont, Illinois, Vandervoort attended and passed out leaflets to the crowd announcing a local American Renaissance event.
Vandervoort was hired during the autumn of 2011, by the Tanton-founded English-Only group ProEnglish, after the organization lost three other executive directors in less than a year. Shortly after Vandervoort took the job, ProEnglish hired Phil Tignino as the group’s web master and social media coordinator. Tignino was the former head of the Washington State University chapter of the white nationalist college group, Youth for Western Civilization.
Other panelists at the Thursday afternoon event include: Peter Brimelow, editor of the white nationalist website VDARE; Serge Trifkovic, an Islamophobic Serbian expatriate who before becoming the foreign affairs editor at the paleo-conservative magazine Chronicles was a spokesman for the convicted war criminal Biljana Plavsic; ProEnglish board chair, Rosalie Porter; and John Derbyshire, a contributing editor at National Review.
