“Pro-Labor,” “Pro-Western Civilization” Taylor Rose Runs in Flathead House District
Taylor Rose, a political activist with a past that has taken him from Montana, to Washington, D.C., to Europe is gaining attention in a Northwest Montana state house district for his unorthodox style and views on everything from economics, to culture, to the labor movement.
The liberal blog Montana Cowgirl even calls Rose “Montana’s Most Extreme Legislative Candidate.”
In a sit-down interview with Media Trackers, Rose, 27, made it clear that he eschews typical left-right, Republican-Democrat labels. He is a social conservative who strongly criticizes the federal government’s policies in Montana. However, he also calls himself a “pro-labor” Republican who offers high praise of unions. He says he is proud of his heritage and wants to defend the “values of Western Civilization,” though he denies accusations that he is some kind of “white nationalist.”
“I guess you could call me an old-school ‘Reagan Democrat,'” Rose told Media Trackers. “My family are [sic] all very blue collar, hardworking, Reagan Democrats.”
Rose is running as Republican in House District 3, which covers the Northwest Montana communities of Columbia Falls, Hungry Horse, Martin City, and Coram. It is typically thought to be one of the most conservative house districts in the state. However, the district surprisingly voted Democratic in 2014 electing Zac Perry over incumbent Republican Jerry O’Neil — who has received a large amount of negative attention for odd antics as a state legislator.
The candidate spoke strongly about the importance of creating jobs through natural resource development, particularly in Northwest Montana where federal land management policies have hampered the once mighty timber industry, saying that jobs and the economy are his top issues as a candidate. Rose also offered plenty of criticism of the feds, calling them “almost an occupying force.”
However, as is somewhat atypical for a Republican, Rose sees a strong labor movement in Montana as going hand-in-hand with natural resource development. Rose said he is a “big fan of private sector unions.”
“I’m a pro-labor Republican,” he said. “I think the record is clear in history that the best jobs are union jobs with higher wages and benefits.”
When asked whether or not he would, as a state legislator, support a “Right-to-Work” (RTW) law which would allow workers in unionized industries to choose for themselves whether or not to join the union, Rose said that he goes “back and forth” on that issue, saying that he understands the desire to give workers the right to choose membership, though he say he worries that RTW laws only serve to “empower corporate elites.”
“I lean ‘no’ on Right-to-Work,” he said. “However, I can’t make a commitment yet, because every Right-to-Work bill is different.”
When asked about the propensity of labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO and SEIU, to use membership dues to support left-wing candidates and causes that many union members — and Rose himself — may disagree with, such as amnesty for illegal immigrants, Rose said that he viewed those matters as “issues for members to deal with internally.”
Growing up, Rose split his time between Marion, MT and Gresham, OR before attending Liberty University. At Liberty, Rose became involved with an organization called Youth for Western Civilization (YWC). YWC is now defunct. However, it was a controversial group that some have called “radical right-wing” and has been accused of promoting a “white nationalist” (i.e. racist) ideology.
His connections to YWC and groups in Europe that critics say promote “white nationalism” has gotten him attention in Montana’s liberal blogosphere, and has also caused concern among some Republicans who worry that Rose does not hold “mainstream conservative” views.
Rose laughed off the notion that he or those in YWC were any sort of white nationalists, insisting that their ultimate goal is simply the protection of “western values.”
“YWC was a student organization designed to basically provide a defense for Western Civilization,” he said. “The values, traditions, and identity of Western Civilization, so that means, for us in the English speaking world, the Magna Carta, constitutional history, and also remembering other things like remembering the explorers that came over here and the heritage they brought with them. The principles of Christianity, and how that plays into it.”
“We were also reacting against a lot of the post-modern, left-wing values of multiculturalism, mass immigration,” he continued.
An MSNBC report on YWC from 2011 noted that liberal groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center consider such language to be a kind of “code language” for white nationalism.
Rose said that each chapter of YWC was a little different from the next, but a number of people at the chapter at Liberty were non-white. He also noted that one chapter goals at Liberty was to defend the right of Israel to exist.
“For those who want to make racism accusations, I ran a student organization dedicated to the defense of Western Civilization made up of students and professors from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds in defense, in part, of a Jewish state,” Rose said.
Rose’s involvement with YWC eventually connected him to a right-wing party in Belgium called Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”) which led him to a period of involvement with European right-wing groups. Vlaams Belang is a party that advocates for an independent Flanders, rejects multiculturalism, proposes strict immigration limits, and is euro-skeptic.
Rose, who is fluent in German, participated in a number of rallies and efforts to combat what he calls the “Islamization” of Europe, and lived in Germany for a time. He is a vocal critic of the European Union, and while he is aligned with the right in Europe, Rose has also offered praise on social media to the left-wing government of Alex Tsipiras in Greece for its fight against EU policies.
On foreign policy, Rose offers strong criticism of the United States for continually getting involved in conflicts across the world and “destabilizing” places such as Syria and the Ukraine. While making it clear that he does not endorse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s autocratic style, he praised Russia for getting involved in Syria and stated that the US should be fighting with Russia against Islamic extremism.
“Russia should be our best friend against international jihad,” he said. “We are a common civilization, we have a common Christian heritage, we are two societies that should be getting along after the fall of the Soviet Union. I don’t understand why we have to regard Russia as our enemy.”
A prolific writer, Rose has written a book called The Return of the Right: How the Conservative Movement is Taking Back Western Civilization. He also spent time as as staff reporter on Capitol Hill for WorldNetDaily, and has written for the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research, a Washington D.C. think tank that which shares similar goals to Youth for Western Civilization.
During the 2014 election cycle, he worked as a staffer for the Montana Republican Party, covering Northwest Montana.
Tags: Campaigns, HD 3, Jerry O'Neil, Montana, Montana Cowgirl, Taylor Rose, Zac Perry