Just days after White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was pushed from his post after revelations that he appeared on a panel with the white identitarian author Peter Brimelow, the name of the alt-right’s favorite uncle popped up again in Trump news, appearing at a birthday party for Larry Kudlow, director of the president’s National Economic Council.
In an interview with The Washington Post’s Robert Costa, Kudlow protested that he knew nothing of Brimelow’s views on immigration and race when he invited the champion of the white cause to his home. Kudlow told Costa that he knows Brimelow “forever” as a financial journalist and nothing more.
Brimelow runs the white-identitarian website, Vdare.com, which promotes the views of outright white nationalists, and is favored by members of the so-called “alt right.”
In November 2016, Brimelow appeared as a featured speaker at a conference convened in Washington, D.C., by the white nationalist Richard B. Spencer, which ended famously with Spencer’s “Hail Trump” speech, and a few shouts of “sieg heil” from raucous attendees.
Richard Spencer, left, with Peter Brimelow at a conference convened by Spencer's National Policy Institute on Nov. 19, 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: A.M. Stan)
Opening his speech earlier that same day, Brimelow told the Spencer groupies, “If you can’t understand me, or you think I should speak more directly at the microphone, or anything helpful like that, please raise a fiery cross or some other cultural symbol, and I will redouble my efforts to assimilate acoustically.”
Right Wing Watch's Peter Montgomery noted Brimelow hanging out with Spencer earlier that year in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, at a "Gays for Trump" party hosted by Milo Yiannapoulos, then of Breitbart News.
And at the 2015 American Renaissance conference in Tennessee, Right Wing Watch reported, “Brimelow argued that instead of promoting unity, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ‘has just turned into anti-white indoctrination.’” He went on to advocate that Texas secede from the United States. In the same speech, he complained of not receiving adequate credit for having coined the phrase “War on Christmas,” which is the way more famous right-wing figures, such as Bill O’Reilly and President Donald Trump characterize the use of the more inclusive phrase, “Happy Holidays.”
Another Trump-booster who credits Brimelow with helping to shape her views is Ann Coulter.
Speaking to the Post’s Costa, Kudlow said if he had known about Brimelow’s views on race and immigration, “we would have never invited him,” Kudlow said. “I’m a civil rights Republican,” Kudlow added.
