As we’ve noted, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has long had a fraught relationship with conservative LGBT groups, but at the same time has been very welcoming of another subset of the conservative movement: white nationalists.
For the past several years, CPAC has been partially sponsored by the English-only group ProEnglish which, along with promoting an anti-immigrant agenda, is led by Bob Vandervoort, an activist with a history as a white nationalist organizer. This year, CPAC once again allowed ProEnglish to host a booth in the event's exhibit hall, which entails a $4,000 sponsorship.
But white nationalism isn’t just a part of the past of one of the group’s leaders. As our friends at the Anti-Defamation League have pointed out, ProEnglish board member Phil Kent is a prolific writer who especially likes to rail against the scourge of “multiculturalism.”
In an interview with a Georgia radio station last year, promoted on ProEnglish’s YouTube channel, Kent warned that “multiculturalism, this virus that has been injected into our system, is destroying what we call the quote-unquote ‘United States of America.’”
“The multicultural lobby is, to use your words, effectively destroying our culture and breaking our middle class and of course massive illegal immigration is doing it,” he told host Greg Howard.
In an undated column on his website, Kent frets about the United States reaching a “‘tipping point’ when minority babies outnumber white babies,” after which he fears, among other things that “[t]elevision and movies will increasingly have diverse casts-- with whites downgraded”:
If this trend is not reversed-- and it could be if an immigration moratorium were imposed-- what Vassar College author Hua Hsu labels America’s white “centrifugal core” will slowly disappear. This leads to big questions: What will be the values and ideas of a multicultural America? What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the cultural mainstream?
Hsu notes that a glimpse is seen with the popularity of black-originated hip-hop. It opposes the pop mainstream and isn’t assimilating into a traditional, single white iconic image of style— and growing numbers of young whites purchase such music.
Television and movies will increasingly have diverse casts-- with whites downgraded. New York radio personality Peter Rosenberg gushes that it is “now very cool and in to have multicultural friends.” The advertising world will radically change. Brown Johnson, a Nickelodean executive speaking before the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, touts TV characters who don’t conform to “the white, middle class mold.” Hispanic marketer Rochelle Newman-Carrasco further notes “it has become harder for the blond-haired, blue-eyed commercial actor.”
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It may be instructive to reflect on the 1990s transformation of South Africa from white to black rule in a majority black country. Ironically, black activist Winnie Mandela recently complained that whites “still dominate” that country economically. So while whites may be a minority in the U.S. by mid-century, their influence will still be enormous because of their economic and monetary clout. But in the new non-white country, will the poorer majority rest content with a wealthy white minority, or will it find ways to expropriate that wealth?
In another column, Kent warns that multiculturalism has brought about “rising gang violence”:
Unless there is a moratorium on legal immigration coupled with stepped-up enforcement efforts to significantly curb illegal immigration, then this country will be radically transformed demographically. It will be highlighted by more and more gang atrocities like that at Richmond High which, by the way, rarely occurred in the United States before “multiculturalism” and “open borders” became liberalism’s dominant dogmas.
Back in 2011, civil rights groups protested when Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal named Kent to the state’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board. He told a local TV station at the time that he feared increasing diversity in the U.S. could lead to violent conflict:
