Invited White Nationalist to Speak to Federalist Society Friday

The Dallas chapter of the conservative legal group, The Federalist Society, is holding a debate Friday on “Birthright Citizenship for Children of Illegal Immigrants.” Participating on the panel is prominent white nationalist Peter Brimelow, who runs the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. Also on the panel are Jim Ho, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk and former Solicitor General for the State of Texas and University of Texas School of Law Professor Lino Graglia, who the Federalist Society announcement describes as “one of the most conservative law professors in America.”

Brimelow is a remarkable choice for such a panel given his unrelenting hostility towards immigrants, in particular those with dark skin. In 1995, for instance, he published Alien Nation, a book that argued that America is historically white-dominated and should stay that way. Although the book was well reviewed in some places, it included strong veins of racism and xenophobia. In its pages, Brimelow described the role of race in society as "elemental, absolute, fundamental." He said that white Americans should demand that U.S. immigration quotas be changed to allow in mostly whites. He argued that spending tax dollars on anything related to multiculturalism was "subversive." He called foreign immigrants "weird aliens with dubious habits."

At one point in the book, he compared an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room to walking into a New York City subway — "you find yourself in an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored." In 1997, Brimelow warned that by 2008 the GOP would no longer be able to compete in presidential elections because the racial makeup of the electorate would be changed by non-white immigration.

Brimelow's hate site, VDARE.com, is named for the first English (that is, white) child born in America, Virginia Dare. Brimelow’s posting on the site today complains about the cancellation by a Charlotte, N.C., hotel of a white nationalist conference. It also laments the fact that the GOP no longer openly supports “pro-white views.” Finally, Brimelow defends the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group that “oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind” and whose website has described black people as "a retrograde species of humanity."

VDARE carries archives of columns from prominent white nationalists like Sam Francis, the late editor of the newspaper of the CCC. It has run articles by Jared Taylor, the editor of the racist American Renaissance magazine, which specializes in dubious race and IQ studies and eugenics, the "science" of human "race betterment" through selective breeding. (It was American Renaissance whose Charlotte hotel reservation was cancelled recently.)

More recently, VDARE.com has even begun to publish the writings of Kevin MacDonald, an anti-Semitic psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach. MacDonald accuses Jews of "dominating" the "movement to change the ethnic balance of the United States by allowing mass, non-traditional [i.e., non-white] immigration." MacDonald writes that Jews, believing "the masses ha[ve] to be deceived," frame their appeals in universalistic language that Jews would never apply to their own community. Behind those appeals is "the Jewish agenda." MacDonald also mentions "the famously heavy Jewish role" in television news.

An E-mail today requesting comment from the chapter president, Cameron Kinvig, was not immediately answered. The Federalist Society is well known as an extremely conservative group, but it has not been publicly associated with racism or white nationalists like Brimelow.

Update: This E-mail was received last evening from Cameron Kinvig:

"The Federalist Society does not take a position on the issues presented at our panel discussions / debates, nor does the Federalist Society endorse the views (perceived or otherwise) of any particular speaker or participant at such events.  The Federalist Society's goal is to provide a forum where divergent views and ideas can be debated, compared, and critiqued.  That is what tomorrow's forum hopes to accomplish."