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10/28/08 - A California Educator Says "Taco Night" May Be All There Is
From: Kidist Paulos Asrat (e-mail her)
I am a regular reader of VDARE.COM. Especially since the editor of the blog was a former Canadian resident, and at times brings some insights that are relevant to Canada that other immigration restriction sites might not do so. I myself am a Canadian.
I am sorry to say that this is not a particularly positive letter.
In recent months, I have read some unusual blog entries and articles which have made me wonder why VDARE.COM is publishing such material.
A Canadian writer, [Kathy Shaidle] writing about freedom of speech, used an admitted Canadian holocaust denier as her main example.
A blog entry supported two asylum-seeking Englishmen who are wanted in their country for writing clearly anti-Semitic (and anti-black and anti-Muslim) material on their blogs.
A creepy blog entry had a link to a song from the film Cabaret, where a Hitler Youth sings Tomorrow Belongs to Me, the excuse being that this song was written by American Jews [John Kander and Fred Ebb] But the context in which the song was presented in the blog was far more ambiguous, since it was about the death of the far-right (and not quite clean) Austrian leader, Jorg Haider.
And finally, I do appreciate the relentless reporting the VDARE.COM writing team does on the various illegal activities of illegal (and legal) immigrants. Some very hard to take. Usually these are blog entries, and your writers do a great job of analyzing these issues in longer, more thoughtful, articles.
But, I thought this article on the terrible conditions in South Africa was out of context for a website on immigration. And, even then, I thought the writer could have used a more empathetic and reformative approach on that tragic situation—e.g. how much did the previous government play in its own dissolution (the original Boers would have never allowed it). Even Ian Smith, after the fall of his beloved Rhodesia, still had some faith in Africa, and lived there even through Mugabe's devastations. Writing about Africa is a special mission.
Sincerely wishing VDARE.COM all the best,
Asrat is a textile and graphic designer who lives in Toronto. She writes that the information in VDARE.COM is "as relevant in Canada as it is in the U.S". Her blog on art, culture and society is here. A previous letter by Asrat about Ethiopia is here.
James Fulford replies: We promise we're not pro-Nazi. In fact, like most people in the Western world, we're anti-Nazi. I once quoted Hungarian-born British subject George Mikes, (author of How To Be An Alien) to the effect that "Hitler was a naturalized German subject. He was the worst bargain in history. No other naturalized person has ever caused half as much trouble to his new fatherland." (Cabaret was an anti-Nazi movie, of course, and I suspect that if it's true that some of Haider's supporters sang the song in question, they were doing it with satirical intent.) But the Second World War ended in 1945, and since then, Nazism is not a threat.
The threat to liberty comes from things like the Human Rights Commissions in Canada, the Commission on Racial Equality in the United Kingdom, and similar bodies in Belgium, et cetera. These commissions always start by attacking the rights of the disreputable, because no one wants to defend them, but carry on by persecuting everyone who departs from an orthodoxy that keeps changing. It's our job to be unorthodox, and our writers have differing ideas about what that unorthodoxy consists of. On our VDARE.com People Page we post this statement: "VDARE is a coalition. Some of us have distinguished oeuvres; some have deviant views (categories not necessarily exclusive.)" We do try, believe it or not, not to be deliberately offensive, but some people are offended by even discussing these questions. And we regard all of it, linked by our interest in what we call the "National Question," as a special mission.
