American Renaissance Conference Cancelled

According to an E-mail sent today and signed by Jared Taylor, head of the white nationalist American Renaissance, the group will not be holding its 2010 conference. The conferences are usually a major hit in white nationalist circles and feature as speakers prominent white supremacists, academic racists and other extremists from around the world.

In the past few weeks, anti-racist activists had already persuaded two Washington D.C.-area hotels to cancel their contracts with American Reniassance. Taylor’s E-mail claims that the third hotel scheduled to hold the event, the Four Points Sheraton at the Manassas Battlefield, cancelled because “Hostile callers phoned the hotel and threatened employees with death.” A hotel representative refused to speak on the record about what led to the cancellation but did verify to Hatewatch that the event was cancelled.

Meanwhile, one of the participants scheduled to speak at American Renaissance, Nick Griffin, who has denied the Holocaust and heads the racist British National Party, was disinvited from a speaking engagement at Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio. Griffin was asked to speak at the campus by Taylor Somers, a student and head of the Robert A. Taft Society there.

Somers put out a statement apologizing profusely for the invite and thanking his fellow students for showing “we were on the wrong course.” Somers promised to “embark on a path of radical self-examination” and claimed “I'm not a bigot, fascist, or totalitarian, but rather, perhaps, more of a contrarian.” “The Taft Society will exercise better and more sensitive judgment with regard to who we bring to campus,” Somers promised.