The American Renaissance anti-Semite saga continues

The immensely long and still running discussion about Jews and anti-Semites at the American Renaissance website now includes a higher proportion of those who oppose and even disdain the anti-Semites, but the thread is still filled with the latter. I wonder if Jared Taylor has any notion of the extent to which this anti-Semitic outpouring, this self-revelation of an entire community of mentally deficient and morally depraved Jew-haters in the precincts of AR, taints his publication. While AR itself has never been anti-Semitic, the world is now seeing, as never before, the roiling anti-Semitic sea in which AR floats, and from which Taylor has declared himself to be totally unwilling to extricate it.

This is the very outcome that the people who wrote the letter to Taylor urging him to condemn anti-Semitism were trying to prevent. Anti-Semitism is a rat hole—and once a person goes down that hole, he is lost to anything useful in this world. Hitler, by associating race with the evil of extreme anti-Semitism, discredited normal racial consciousness and set the West on the path to racial and civilizational suicide. The anti-Semites and philo-anti-Semites of our time seem bent on replicating the same demonic folly, over and over again.

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Anthony J. writes from Europe:

Dear Mr. Auster:

Comments left on the American Renaissance website can be left by anyone, and are not necessarily representative of the subscribers to the periodical. Further, some subscribers themselves may not support the views of American Renaissance, but may subscribe for other reasons. If a significant number of subscribers cancel their subscription as a result of Mr. Taylor’s recent article, your assertion that

“While AR itself has never been anti-Semitic, the world is now seeing, as never before, the roiling anti-Semitic sea in which AR floats”

may be correct, but making such a deduction from posts which can be made on a website is unjustified.

I believe and have written to Mr. Taylor that the comments left on the website is the least palatable part of that which I know of the American Renaissance organisation (Having never been to a conference I cannot comment upon that). I do believe that anti Semitism has no part to play in American Renaissance or any other such group.

However, even without Mr. Taylor’s recent statement, it is clear that Mr. Taylor intends that American Renaissance includes the contributions of Jews as well as Gentiles, and, given that American Renaissance issues the publication and organises conferences, has taken sufficient steps to make this position clear.

Mr. Taylor is not responsible for the opinions of his subscribers or conference attendees, and those opinions can only be tested by the reaction of subscribers. I do think that the comments section could be better moderated, and have thought that long before this recent controversy. I think it is a mistake to equate these people to the support of American Renaissance.

Best wishes, and thank you for your contribution to our defence of Western Civilisation,

Dear Mr. J:

Thank you for this. Your points are all fair and reasonable. But I would make these qualifications to what you have said.

First, I am obviously not saying that the anti-Semites constitute the entirety or even the majority of the AR community, but that they are a very large part of it, and that Taylor’s refusal to draw a line between AR and anti-Semitism means that this will continue to be the case.

Second, as I have argued in detail, Taylor’s statement that he welcomes Jews, combined with his continued openness to and his refusal to criticize even the most extreme anti-Semites, people who regard all Jews as simply and unchangeably the ENEMY, is an absurd and contradictory position.

Third, it’s not just nameless people posting at the online forum that is the issue, it’s the people who attend conferences, and it’s the bigwigs of the anti-Semitic movement, many of whom come to AR conferences and socialize afterward at Taylor’s home. Taylor is entirely comfortable with these people. For example, he socializes with the likes of Don Black, the founder of the Nazi website Stormfront, who recently posted a comment describing his conversations with Taylor. Taylor is a close personal friend of Mark Weber, editor of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review.

Thus, even if openly anti-Semitic statements are not made at conferences, the environment and undercurrent of the conferences and the AR community and of Taylor’s own social contacts continues to be deeply intertwined with extreme anti-Semitism. This taints AR irrevocably. This is what our letter was warning Taylor about. The problem that 11 years ago I was warning Taylor about privately and individually (which finally forced me to dissociate myself from him and the AR community), is now being seen by the whole world.

Thanks again for writing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 20, 2006 01:27 AM | Send