VDARE

VDARE is an American website focusing on opposition to immigration to the United States and is associated with white supremacy,[1][2][3] white nationalism,[4][5][6] and the alt-right.[7][8][9] Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia describes VDARE as "one of the most prolific anti-immigration media outlets in the United States" and states that it is "broadly concerned with race issues in the United States".[10] Established in 1999, the website's editor is Peter Brimelow, who once stated that "whites built American culture" and that "it is at risk from non-whites who would seek to change it".[10]

VDARE
Founder(s)Peter Brimelow
URLVDARE.com
Launched1999 (1999)

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes VDARE as "an anti-immigration hate website" which "regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites", including Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor, J. Philippe Rushton, Samuel T. Francis, John Derbyshire[11] and Pat Buchanan.[12] Brimelow acknowledges that VDARE published writings by white nationalists but has said that VDARE is not a "white nationalist Web site".[13][14][15]

History

Peter Brimelow, who edits VDARE, is a former editor at the National Review[16] and Fortune.[10] The English-born Brimelow founded the website in 1999 under the auspices of the Center for American Unity, a Virginia-based organization that he also founded[12] in 1999.[7] VDARE was founded as an outgrowth of Brimelow's anti-immigration activism and the publication of his book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster.[6] The website says it is concerned with the "racial and culture identity of America" and "honest consideration of race and ethnicity, the foundations of human grouping, that human differences can be explained and their social consequences understood, whether those differences are philosophical, cultural or biological."[17]

Brimelow was president of the center,[7] which funded VDARE.com until 2007, when the center announced an intent to focus on litigation.[12] The VDARE Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, was formed by Brimelow to take the place of the center as the website's sponsor.[12] Brimelow's wife, Lydia Brimelow, is VDARE's advancement officer.[6]

The name VDARE and the site's logo, the head of a white doe, refer to Virginia Dare, the first child born to English settlers in the New World in the late 16th century.[7][18] Dare disappeared along with every other member of the Roanoke Colony.[10] Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia explains that "For Brimelow, Anglo-Saxon Americans and their culture are in danger of disappearing like Virginia Dare; he writes that he considered adding a fictional vignette at the end of his book Alien Nation (1995), in which the last white family flees Los Angeles, which had been overrun by the crime and pollution caused by its non-white residents."[10]

Brimelow has written on the site that United States immigration policy constitutes "Adolf Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America". In a radio interview with Alan Colmes, he said he wished to return to the US immigration policies before 1965, when restrictions to non-whites were lifted, as "the US is a white nation."

In February 2020, the VDARE Foundation purchased the Samuel Taylor Suit Cottage (also known as the Berkeley Castle or Berkeley Springs Castle), a Medieval-style castle located on a hill above Berkeley Springs, in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

Hate speech and white nationalism

Designation as a hate website

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist groups in the United States, wrote that VDARE was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page" but had become "a meeting place for many on the radical right" by 2003.[7] The SPLC describes VDARE as "an anti-immigration hate website" which "regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites".[7] The SPLC cited examples such as a column concerning immigration from Mexico that warned of a "Mexican invasion" where "high teenage birthrates, poverty, ignorance and disease will be what remains", and an essay complaining how the U.S. government encourages "the garbage of Africa" to come to the United States.[7]

The SPLC has described VDARE's contributor list as "a Rolodex of the most prominent pseudo-intellectual racists and anti-Semites. They include people such as Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald.[7] Taylor (who Brimelow acknowledges is a "white nationalist")[12] once wrote that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization, while MacDonald is a retired professor who wrote a trilogy claiming that Jews are genetically driven to undermine the Christian societies they live in. Another (former contributor), Sam Francis, was the editor of a newspaper published by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group.[7] Francis died in 2005.[12]

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) similarly concludes that "VDARE posts, promotes, and archives the work of racists, anti-immigrant figures, and anti-Semites".[19][20]

In November 2019, The Guardian identified VDARE as one of several white nationalist websites which had remained active on Facebook, contrary to Facebook's stated intention to ban such material.[21] In May 2020, VDARE and the similar website The Unz Review were banned by Facebook. According to Facebook, the sites formed a network of "coordinated inauthentic behavior" intended to influence the 2020 election via fake accounts.[22][23]

Attempted delisting

In June 2020, the domain registrar Network Solutions announced plans to terminate the account for VDARE. An attorney for Network Solutions cited a policy prohibiting customers using its domains from "display[ing] bigotry, racism, discrimination, or hatred in any manner whatsoever".[24] They have not yet been delisted.[25]

White nationalist writings

VDARE is regarded as a white nationalist website.[4][5][26][27][28][29] David Weigel wrote in 2010 that the site "is best known for publishing work by white nationalists while maintaining that it is not a white nationalist site".[30]

Brimelow "denies that the organization itself is white nationalist, but he admits that VDARE.com provides a forum for a variety of viewpoints, including white nationalism".[10][13][14] Of individuals like Taylor, Brimelow has written they "aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists. They do not advocate violence. They are rational and civil." As immigration from the developing world increases, he believes "this type of interest-group 'white nationalism' will inexorably increase."[12] Brimelow has participated on panels multiple times with Taylor and Richard Spencer on the aims of the alt-right.[17]

References
  1. Mudde, Cas (October 25, 2019). The Far Right Today. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-5095-3685-6. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  2. Sam Frizell, GOP Shows White Supremacist's Tweet During Trump's Speech. Time, July 21, 2016
  3. Arnold, Kathleen (2011). Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 89. ISBN 9780313375224. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
  4. Holly Folk, The Religion of Chiropractic: Populist Healing from the American Heartland (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), p. 64: "the white nationalist website VDARE.com."
  5. Robert W. Sussman, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea (Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 299.
  6. Kristine Phillips, Resort cancels 'white nationalist' organization's first-ever conference over the group’s views, The Washington Post (January 26, 2017).
  7. Beirich, Heidi; Potok, Mark (Winter 2003). "'Paleoconservatives' Decry Immigration". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center.
  8. Stephen Piggott (December 21, 2016). "Ann Coulter Attends VDARE Christmas Party – Her Second White Nationalist Event In Three Months". Southern Poverty Law Center.
  9. Hannah Gais (December 11, 2016). "Cucking and Nazi salutes: A night out with the alt-right". Washington Spectator (republished by Newsweek.
  10. Rebecca Nelson Jacobs, "VDARE" in Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (ed. Kathleen R. Arnold, Vol. 1: A-R), pp. 481-82.
  11. John Derbyshire at VDARE
  12. "Extremist Files: Groups: VDARE". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  13. Brimelow, Peter (July 24, 2006). "Is VDARE.COM "White Nationalist"?". vdare.com.
  14. Brimelow, Peter (July 23, 2006). "VDare.com is no 'white nationalist Web site'". Rocky Mountain News. p. 5E.
  15. Michael Kunzelman, White nationalists raise millions with tax-exempt charities, Associated Press (December 22, 2016): "Brimelow has denied that his website is white nationalist but acknowledged it publishes works by writers who fit that description "in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites."
  16. Sanneh, Kelefa (July 24, 2013). "A Sermon on Race from National Review". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 20, 2015.
  17. Coaston, Jane (September 24, 2018). "Peter Brimelow and VDare, the white nationalist website with close ties to the right, explained". Vox. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  18. "Why VDARE.COM/The White Doe?". VDARE.com. Archived from the original on March 14, 2012. Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  19. Brenda Walker and Dan Amato Inject Anti-Immigrant Fervor into the Blogosphere, Anti-Defamation League (2012).
  20. Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream, Anti-Defamation League (2008), p. 11: "VDare, a Web site that publishes racist, anti-Semitic, and antiimmigrant articles."
  21. Wong, Julia Carrie (November 21, 2019). "White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act". The Guardian. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  22. Sommer, Will (May 5, 2020). "Facebook Bans Anti-Immigrant Group VDARE for 'Inauthentic Behavior'". The Daily Beast.
  23. "April 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report". About Facebook (Press release). May 5, 2020. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  24. Kunzelman, Michael (June 23, 2020). "Online registrar threatens to drop anti-immigration website". Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  25. "Vdare.com is not dead yet". Retrieved July 8, 2020.
  26. Alan Rappeport, Hillary Clinton Denounces the 'Alt-Right,' and the Alt-Right Is Thrilled, The New York Times (August 26, 2016), A11: "The white nationalist website VDare..."
  27. John Woodrow Cox, The financial secrecy behind white-nationalist group known for 'Hail Trump,' Nazi salutes, The Washington Post (December 1, 2016): "Three white-nationalist nonprofits similar in size and mission — the VDare Foundation, the New Century Foundation and the Charles Martel Society..."
  28. Caitlin Dewey, Amazon, PayPal and Spotify inadvertently fund white supremacists. Here’s how. Washington Post (March 17, 2015): "VDARE, a radical white nationalist site"
  29. Flynn, Kevin (July 15, 2006). "Funding questioned; Critics say some Defend Colorado money tainted". Rocky Mountain News. Denver, Colo. p. 4.A.
  30. David Weigel, An immigration restrictionist chart at Mint.com, Washington Post (June 18, 2010).
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