Today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the group ProEnglish organized the panel, “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity,” and host Robert Vandervoort thanked CPAC for hosting the panel despite the work of “leftist thugs” who are trying to “shut down freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.” Vandervoort is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance, a racist magazine published by fellow White Nationalist Jared Taylor. Presumably, Vandervoort was referring to the efforts of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which issued an alert on his background, and People For the American Way, which called on Republican leaders attending CPAC to denounce another panelist, Peter Brimelow, founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE.
In 2009, Brimelow reflected on CPAC after “Obama’s racial-socialist coup” and expressed his fear that the U.S. is doomed to face a “minority occupation government.” He called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.”
Prior to Brimelow’s talk, Vandervoort delivered a rambling speech from Serge Trifkovic (who wasn’t able to attend) that focused on how the “cult of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual victimhood” and “multiculturalist indoctrination” is ruining the West. “The native Western majorities will melt away,” Trifkovic’s speech concluded, “Europeans and our trans-Atlantic cousins are literally endangered species. The facilitators of our destruction must be neutralized if we are to survive.” Afterwards, Rosalie Porter bemoaned the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act for giving too much political influence to minorities.
Brimelow stayed on message and warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress traditional American (read: white) groups. He claimed that Canada, which is officially bilingual, was a good example of how bilingualism becomes a tool of elites to help minorities (Quebecers) at the expense of the majority, and went on to call multiculturalism and bilingualism a “ferocious attack on the working class.”
But the surprise guest of the panel was the fiercely anti-immigrant Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who came to discuss his bill to make English the official language of the U.S.
During a panel discussion, Brimelow said that the Democratic Party has “given up on the white working class” and is using immigration to “elect a new polity,” i.e. increase the number of ethnic minorities. Before he could turn to King, the congressman giddily told Brimelow, “I read your books!” King went on to say that Brimelow “eloquently wrote about the balkanization of America.”
Following the panel, King dismissed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s classification of VDARE as a hate group in an interview with BuzzFeed, saying, “I wouldn’t take them seriously.”
With the blessing of a leading Republican congressman, it looks like Brimelow’s dream of having a conservative movement which focuses on challenging cultural diversity may finally be coming to fruition.