Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance
Last week, for the second year in a row, the American Renaissance Conference was canceled. American Renaissance (AmRen) is an organization run by white nationalist Jared Taylor. His conferences are well-known and attract some of the biggest players from white nationalist circles around the world.
Last year, AmRen tried to hold its conference in Washington D.C. only to have it canceled after anti-racist activists convinced four successive hotels to deny AmRen a venue. In 2011, Taylor decided to move the conference to Charlotte, North Carolina, perhaps thinking that a southern location would be more successful.
However, it was not just local activists but a Charlotte city councilman who succeeded in canceling the conference.
Naturally, there was outrage within the white nationalist community. Some bashed Taylor for his naivety in thinking that the conference was safe from “enemies’ in North Carolina. Some like Matt Parrott, the leader of Hoosier Nation, the Indiana chapter of the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens, decided to go to Charlotte and organize a get together for would be American Renaissance Conference attendees.
Richard Spencer, the founder of the white nationalist online magazine Alternative Right, decided to create a separate blog to comment on the conference debacle. Spencer’s organization, the white nationalist National Policy Institute (NPI), was planning to stream the AmRen conference live and defiantly stated, “Each scheduled talk will be remotely web-cast and filmed in high definition for subsequent download.”
The streaming of the speeches, for whatever reason, never happened.
The creator of the white nationalist blog Occidental Dissent also had a lot to say about the canceled conference. Hunter Wallace first posted a series of questions regarding the cancellation of the conference.
Two days later he posted answers to his own questions in which he defended Jared Taylor and ridiculed other white nationalist organizations in Charlotte. Wallace is upset that they did not come to Taylor’s aid when the conference was in jeopardy.
In one question he asks, “Why hasn’t the White Nationalist movement succeeded in organizing the 1/5th of the White population (at a minimum) that agrees with us on our most important issues?”
In a response to his own question Wallace stated, “The vast majority of White Nationalists are content to post anonymous comments on the internet. Their participation in the movement is limited to venting their frustrations in cyberspace under pseudonyms.”
Ironically, “Hunter Wallace” is a pseudonym for a man whose real name is Brad Griffin. Here is a picture of him.
The work of communities to shut down the AmRen Conference for the second year in a row is a noteworthy achievement. But AmRen is only one of the dozens of white nationalist conferences that take place every year. Groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens still hold conferences each year with little opposition.
Perhaps the cancelation of this year’s AmRen Conference will inspire other communities to take a stand against hate.