Last week, in a column that implicitly called for a former Taliban spokesman now enrolled at Yale to be "beaten more senseless than he already is," conservative columnist Ann Coulter asked, "Where are the skinheads when you need them?"
Now, Coulter's answered her own question -- apparently, she's found the skinheads, because she relies on them to supply the basis for her column this week.
The skinhead in question is one Peter Brimelow, who runs VDARE.com. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists VDARE as a hate group, and, as I've written here before, the SPLC has good reason to do so.
Reasons like Jared Taylor, a "white nationalist" who Brimelow has praised as "perhaps the most brilliant and accomplished figure among White Nationalists." Taylor runs a magazine called the American Renaissance, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as promoting "'genteel' racism: pseudoscientific, questionably researched and argued articles that validate the genetic and moral inferiority of nonwhites and the need for racial 'purity.'"
One of Taylor's articles posted on VDARE contains these lovely little sentiments:
"The reason blacks and whites do not enjoy similar outcomes despite similar treatment by society is that the black and white populations are not equivalent. ... Our government has permitted a huge influx of non-white immigrants who threaten to reduce whites to a minority by the middle of this century. In their bones, whites know this will not be a good thing. They know that an increasingly Third-World America will slip into Third-World habits of corruption, poverty, and violence."
And there are other writers of Taylor's ilk on VDARE, writers like Joseph E. Fallon, who has warned that "when the United States will have a 'Hispanic' majority population and officially become an 'Hispanic' country ... the success of Jamestown will have been replaced by the failure of Santa Fe, the liberties under common law by the tyranny of the Inquisition and the First World by the Third World. And the United States will enter the new Dark Ages."
Fallon has also proclaimed himself no fan of the 14th Amendment -- the post-Civil War, post-slavery "Equal Protection" amendment that says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
"The government of the United States, as established by the U.S. Constitution in 1789, was effectively abolished by the 14th Amendment," Fallon has written, "... Thanks to folly, hubris, and the 14th Amendment, the government of the United States is faithfully following in the footsteps of ancient Rome--from republic to empire to oblivion."
But heck, why focus on Brimelow's contributors when there's so much material from Brimelow himself? In fact, the article of Brimelow's that Coulter cites is itself rife with examples of Brimelow's racist, xenophobic rhetoric.
Take this, for example:
"[A]sking people if they want their communities to be overwhelmed by weird aliens with dubious habits is a stupid question. The answer is inevitable. ... the greater the number of immigrants, and the greater their difference from the American mainstream, the louder and ruder the answer will be." (Emphasis mine.)
Or this, fitting with a theme commonly espoused on VDARE, that non-whites are incapable of civilization (VDARE has pushed, for instance, a book purporting to show that the average person living in sub-Saharan Africa is mentally retarded):
"[I}t should not be necessary to explain that the legacy of Shaka and Cetewayo--overthrown just over a century ago-is not that of Alfred the Great, let alone Elizabeth II or any civilized society."
Yup, it looks like Coulter found her skinheads. And it looks like she's quite happy with them.
(Update: David Neiwert, one of the blogosphere's foremost experts on hate groups, and one of my favorite bloggers, pointed out to me, quite rightly, that I should have been more precise in my language.
In the strict sense of the word, Peter Brimelow is not a "skinhead" - he's not shaving his head and going out to beat up the first non-white person he sees. What Brimelow does is in some ways more insidious - he provides a nice, soft, pseudo-intellectual cover for the people who do go out and beat up non-whites. And because skinheads aren't taken seriously by mainstream society, but former editors at Forbes are, Brimelow is in one sense actually more dangerous than your average skinhead. See my newest post for more on this phenomenon - specifically how some at Fox News, like Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson, are peddling what I call this "cute and cuddly" brand of racist rhetoric.
Also, while I'm updating, kudos to commenter StanGoff for an insightful comment - some seem to think it's alright to sink to Coulter's level, attacking her on the basis of her gender. We all should be better than that. Thanks, Stan, for reminding us.)
