I can see the article's lead sentence already: "White supremacists from three continents gathered in the Washington, DC area over the weekend to vent their hatred of minorities and bemoan their loss of privileges"!
That will be the spin that the Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC) will put on the upcoming American Renaissance (AR) conference, to be held in the DC area February 19-21. And the Washington Post won't be far behind in suggesting that we were only barely able to suppress our urge to goose-step around the conference hall and shout "Sieg Heil!"
That is what liberals do when whites get together to talk about their interests as a people.
I should know. This will be the ninth AR conference since we started having them in 1994. (I wrote about them in VDARE.COM in 2008, 2006, and 2004). There is a substantial portion of the population—diminishing in number, to be sure—whose brains stop working when they hear the word "white" associated with otherwise respectable words like "heritage", "pride", "survival", or "rights." Every other group in the country can talk about these things. But as soon as whites do, it is pure evil.
This has been official doctrine ever since the '60s or '70s. And this official doctrine is dying a particularly lingering death.
Virtually all whites prefer the company of other whites—just look where they live and where they send their children to school—but all is forgiven so long as they pretend to love diversity. It is the idea of 300 of us all in the same room, laughing openly at the idea that diversity is a strength, that is more than the hypocrites who run the country can stand.
Our conference will also attract a fragrant band of protestors who will march around outside, braying about how bad we are, and who will promote "tolerance" and "diversity" by trying to shut the conference down. These protestors are devoted to us. We can reliably count on them to provide free entertainment for conference guests and to ensure plenty of press and TV coverage. It just wouldn't be an AR conference without them.
For 2010 we have a first-rate lineup of speakers.
Nick Griffin, Chairman of the British National Party, could be our top draw. Fresh from his victorious campaign for a seat in the Euro-Parliament, he will speak about the wisdom British voters showed in rallying to the view that Britain has the right to remain British. The United Kingdom faces the same problem we do: waves of Third-World immigrants who care nothing about the traditions of the host country and are changing it beyond recognition.
As Mr. Griffin found when he recently waded into the piranha pit as a guest on BBC TV's flagship politics program, Question Time, nothing enrages the established parties more than outsiders chewing into their monopoly. Conservatives and Labour alike are reduced to cries of "Nazi" as they see their voters defecting to the one party that really cares about the future of their country.
Another star speaker: filmmaker Craig Bodeker. His A Conversation About Race, which exposes the double standards and sloppy thinking about race and "racism", won the expected praise from dissident media such as VDARE.COM and American Renaissance but is so deft and convincing that even James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal admitted he found the documentary "fascinating" and wrote that "Bodeker makes a compelling case that much of what he calls the 'conventional wisdom' about race consists of . . . unthinking assumptions about the nature of American society and the racial attitudes of others". [In Defense of Carol Swain, October 26, 2009]Even the $outhern Poverty Law Center conceded that Mr. Bodeker "comes across as an affable guy intent on using logic and facts to debunk what he sees as the myth of racism".
It takes an unusual guy to win plaudits from such a variety of sources. Mr. Bodeker will tell us how he did it.
Hugh Kennedy is a prominent legal scholar who will talk about the Left's strategy of chipping away at the First Amendment. Champions of "diversity" and "tolerance" are never happier than when they are muzzling opponents, but they haven't quite figured out a way around the Constitution. Mr. Kennedy will explain what stands between them and the thought-crime laws they are itching to pass, and what we will have to do to keep sites like VDARE.COM safe from back-door censorship.
Another speaker will be Dan Roodt, a leader of the beleaguered Afrikaners of South Africa. If you think we have a worrisome future, imagine what it is like for Africa's white tribe: a proud, pioneering people with a 400-year history, trying to maintain their culture and traditions in the face of a hostile black majority. Since 2000, Mr. Roodt has led the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group. This role has given him such notoriety that he has sometimes had to give speeches surrounded by bodyguards. He will talk about the roots of the mentality that seems to be driving whites all around the world towards surrender.
And there will be many other excellent speakers. Donald Thomas will expose the shocking machinations behind what is known as "refugee resettlement".
Your servant and occasional VDARE.COM contributor will talk about just what is at stake if we continue to drift towards dispossession. David Yeagley—also a VDARE.COM contributor—will offer a Comanche's appraisal of the white man's plight. Raymond Wolters of the University of Delaware, one of America's most courageous academics, will describe the will 'o the wisps the educational establishment has been chasing in its great and futile effort to "close the gaps". The inimitable Sam Dickson will close the conference, as he always does, with what amounts to a benediction for heretics—the heretics we find ourselves to be as soon as we stray from today's secular religion of race.
The real conference, however, will take place as always in the halls, at the bar, during coffee breaks, and late into the night, as people from nearly every American state enjoy the heady atmosphere that only the undeceived can create.
Perhaps it is because we have a black president, or perhaps because immigration is now spreading from the coasts to every part of the country, but unprecedented numbers of whites are coming out their coma and beginning to realize where our country is heading. The result is energy, ideas, activism, and commitment on a far greater scale than at any time in the 20 years since American Renaissance began publishing.
These are still very dark times in America. But the movement to speak out in the name of our nation's founding stock—to put our house back in order—is building up to critical mass. It helps, of course, that we have history, morality, and human nature all on our side.
Do you care about the America you will be passing on to your children and grand-children? Then join us in February!
More details here! Register online here!
Jared Taylor (email him) is editor of American Renaissance and the author of Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America
