Juvenile Bravado Undercuts NPI Conference Triumph, And VDARE.com
11/22/2016
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VDARE.com readers came up to me in consternation at the end of the National Policy Institute's very well-attended conference in Washington DC when Richard B. Spencer concluded his emotional defense of whites with the words, apparently extemporized: "Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!" He got a standing ovation, but several in the crowd added Nazi salutes. We had been assured that the press had been excluded but experience has taught this cannot be relied upon. We also knew what Richard's words, themselves quite edgy enough, would be transformed into: Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory,’ by Joseph Goldstein, The New York Times November 20, 2016.

Needless to say, my own speech during the conference itself bore absolutely no resemblance to any of this. (We'll post a transcript as soon as possible). From the NYT report:

...for much of the day the sentiments were expressed in ways that seemed intended to not sound too menacing. The focus was on how whites were marginalized and beleaguered.

One speaker, Peter Brimelow, the founder of Vdare.com, an anti-immigration website, asked why, if Hispanics had the National Council of La Raza and Jews had the Anti-Defamation League, whites were reluctant to organize for their rights. Some speakers made an effort to distance themselves from more notorious white power organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. [Link in original]

A point generally suppressed in the MSM reports: the relentless weekend-long attack on the NPI conference by an organized "Anti-Fascist" Leftist gang—always described euphemistically as "protestors." They intimidated two restaurants into cancelling the Friday night dinner and, when a third was found, actually invaded it and sprayed participants, including Spencer, with some fecal-smelling liquid. They besieged the Reagan Center, which NPI is forced to use because as a federal facility it is compelled to honor the First Amendment, obscenely harassed conference attendees regardless of age or sex, and assaulted at least one of them, bloodying his face.

The D.C. police offered only perfunctory protection. I see no report that anyone has been arrested, or that the two briefly detained after the assault were charged, or even that the gang's leadership is being questioned, despite flaunting its presence on the internet.

Years ago in Alien Nation, I described America's immigration disaster as "Hitler's posthumous revenge." And so it continues to be, evidenced by the hysterical accusations against  reasonable critics of immigration policy, behavior extending all the way up to Hillary Clinton.

What I did not anticipate was that this continued vilification has resulted a younger generation of Americans who, 71 years after the end of World War II, are clearly indifferent to accusations of Nazism, even if just out of bravado. This, too, is the fault of the Left and the gatekeepers of our public debate.

But the fact remains that this juvenile bravado undercut NPI's conference triumph, the cause of immigration patriotism, and VDARE.com.

For the record: VDARE.com thinks Hitler was nearly as bad as Stalin.

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