James Edwards

His show has featured a wide roster of white supremacists, anti-Semites and other extremists, such as the longtime Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust denier Willis Carto. Its mission statement says it “stands for the Dispossessed Majority” and is “pro-white.”

In His Own Words:

“A lot of their motivation is that they hate Christianity. They hate what we call the WASP establishment … and they’re using pornography as a subversive tool against us. Jews are by and large dominant in the porn industry. … You know, connect the dots and look at the names of people controlling our media, and you find out what the common denominator is. … These Zionist Jews are more interested in subverting the dominant culture, which would be the European culture here in America, than they are in helping us and assimilating into our culture.”
– On “The Political Cesspool,” Feb. 20, 2007

“Crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go. And if you think that is racist, then spend some time on the mean streets of south Memphis.”
– On CNN, April 4, 2007

“Whites are in for the fight of their lives. America is becoming balkanized. We are being robbed of having a future in the very nation our ancestry carved from the wilderness.”
– On CNN, April 4, 2007

“The reason why America was a First World nation was because we had a First World population, and as we continue to be inundated with people from Third World nations we are going to become a Third World nation. … America is on the verge of collapse, as is Europe, as is the rest of the First World. We have to answer the question of whether white Americans and Europeans are going to survive to see another generation. … Desperate situations call for rash action.”
– On “The Political Cesspool,” May 18, 2007

“I am firmly of the belief that race relations were better during Jim Crow, and even better in the antebellum south, than they are now.”

--On “The Political Cesspool,” March 21, 2015

Background

James Edwards is the host of “The Political Cesspool” an overtly racist, anti-Semitic radio show. The three-hour weekly show can be heard on its flagship station, the Christian station WLRM-AM in Millington, Tenn., just outside of Memphis, on stations affiliated with the Liberty News Radio Network, and on the Internet. Among its sponsors is the crudely racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The show has become the nexus for radio-based hate in the United States. Edwards is a national board member of the CCC and a principal member of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (formerly the American Third Position).

Edwards’ has hosted an all-star cast of extremists on his show, including CCC leaders Gordon Baum and John Weaver; Holocaust denier Mark Weber; Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm; American Renaissance editor Jared Taylor; neo-Nazi activist April Gaede; Stormfront webmaster Jamie Kelso; League of the South President Michael Hill; sometimes Klan lawyer Sam Dickson; Holocaust denier and anti-Semitic publisher Willis Carto; British National Party leader Nick Griffin; militant anti-abortion activist Michael Bray; anti-Semitic attorney Edgar Steele, and Klan leader David Duke.

“The Political Cesspool,” which is tailored for a Southern, neo-Confederate, white nationalist audience, was founded by Edwards in 2005. Its mission statement says it “stands for the Dispossessed Majority” and is “pro-white.” It says the show rejects “homosexuality, vulgarity, loveless sex, and masochism” and believes “secession is a right of all people and individuals.” It add: ‘We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.” Its website also boasts that “we’re the only voice that our People have on the mainstream AM airwaves.” 

On April 4, 2007, CNN’s Paula Zahn hosted an hour-long panel on “self-segregation” that featured Edwards, billed disingenuously as simply a radio talk show host. He earned the ire of regular CNN contributor and fellow panel member Roland Martin, who said, “It is offensive to project this level of ignorance on national television.” Martin was referring to a statement about “the failed civil rights movement” and that “[f]orced integration is not a path to equality, it’s a march towards totalitarianism.”

On Feb. 15, 2008, two weeks after he announced that his show would be syndicated through Dixie Broadcasting, an Internet radio outfit run by the chairman of Georgia’s League of the South chapter, Edwards informed supporters that the show would be shut down. In an E-mail with the subject line “All Good Things Come To An End,” the host explained that his father’s illness, as well as strain on his marriage, led him to the decision. Edwards made good on his farewell promise that, “In no way, shape or form have you heard the last from James Edwards as a European-American activist. Similar to the Great White, I’d die if I were not contributing to the survival of our race.” He brought the show back a mere four months later, again on WLRM-AM.

After right-wing propagandist Jerome Corsi, author of the inflammatory and factually inaccurate The Obama Nation, backed out of his scheduled appearance on Edwards’ show on Aug. 17, 2008, the host became uncharacteristically defensive, issuing the claim, “We’re a mainstream voice for European-Americans. … We’re the show of record for the paleo-conservative right,” not a bunch of “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.” The previous week, “The Political Cesspool” had come under fire as racist and anti-Semitic.

Unlike many of his guests, Edwards has always been careful to avoid evoking racial epithets and crudely derogatory language on his show and in public. Like his steadfast supporter David Duke’s famous plea for Klan members to “get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms,” Edwards aims to lend a veneer of credibility to his hate-riddled ideology. (Duke has appeared on “The Political Cesspool” a handful of times. Edwards also spoke at Duke’s 2004 European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) conference in New Orleans that produced the “New Orleans Protocol” – a solidarity pledge and code of conduct among hate groups of different ideologies.)

Guests on Edwards’ show have also included more mainstream figures such as Pat Buchanan. Edwards served as a volunteer for Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign. After Buchanan’s Oct. 22, 2008, appearance, Edwards and his followers gloated. In an E-mail to his followers, the host told his constituency to listen closely and “hear their [liberal media’s] howls, as we are currently under a vicious and hateful attack from the supposed advocates of ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity.’” In a separate E-mail to Edwards’ fans, longtime white supremacist Winston Smith declared that “when the likes of Pat Buchanan agrees to be on your program, he does so only after his people have researched the program and decided it’s in their interest.”

In 2009, Edwards self-published a book titled Racism, Schmacism: How Liberals Use the “R” Word to Push the Obama Agenda. The core argument is that liberals have defined the term “racist” to mean “any conservative white person” – rendering the tag inescapable. The solution, according to Edwards, is for conservatives to embrace race consciousness.

In 2010, following Phil Mickelson’s victory at the Masters Golf Tournament, Edwards celebrated the golfer for not being black like Tiger Woods and for preserving “civilization” through his win. “Golf is the ultimate European sport,” he said, and the Masters “is the closest picture we have of what the modern world might be like had the old South survived.” He went on to call the tournament “civilized” and at risk of being trampled by Jews and liberals. Edwards referred to Woods, who has won the tournament four times, as a “mixed-race Negro with the skills to break down the last sport of white refuge, golf, and its citadel, Augusta National. … He was the black messiah of sports. The long-awaited one who would tear down the last remnants of segregation.” The outburst was particularly telling of Edwards, who typically hides his racist beliefs behind a veneer of legitimacy.

In 2012, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) appeared on “The Political Cesspool” to discuss legislation he co-authored accusing Obama of committing impeachable offenses in Libya. Jones later claimed to have not understood the ideological leanings of the show despite a mission statement that reads, “We represent a philosophy that is pro-white.”

 On July 16, 2013, in the wake of a jury verdict finding George Zimmerman innocent in the controversial killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, Edwards published a piece on “The Political Cesspool” website entitled, “How the media incites violence and racism in the Zimmerman case.” In the post, he commended David Duke’s recent video that “reveals the real and violent racism that pervades our society.” According to Duke, it is the “Zio-Hollywood moguls” who are responsible for “media that promotes violence, drugs, alcohol abuse, sexual degeneracy and disrespect of women,” resulting in violent racism and, according to Edwards, the fact that “African Americans kill ten times more of each other than the number of victims killed by other races.”

Four days later, on July 20, 2013, Edwards hosted a show with program mainstays — Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank,  Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, Sam Dickson, and Kyle Rogers of the Council of Conservative Citizens — to discuss the Zimmerman verdict and the implications of media coverage of the case.  

 “The Political Cesspool” celebrated its 10^th anniversary in October 2014 at an invitation-only conference and celebration in Memphis, Tenn. The event reportedly had over 90 attendees including well-known movement figures such as Sam Dickson, Matthew Heimbach, Brad Griffin, and Renee Baum. It concluded with a salute to the Civil War general and first grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose legacy Edwards compares to that of a mythological god.