Saturday, January 13, 2007

When Good Writers Go Racist - The Case of Peter Brimelow

When I was younger (so much younger than today) I used to love reading Peter Brimelow's pieces in Forbes. In fact his work was one of the reasons that I was a subscriber. He was always cutting against the grain, making novel arguments for free market solutions and coming up with unique solutions to supposedly difficult issues. When Brimelow put out his book Alien Nation I stuck with him. Nonethless parts of Alien Nation made me feel uncomfortable. There was one passage in which he reflected on what kind of future awaited his blue-eyed boy in society being swamped by immigrants. Then he started up the anti-immigration site VDARE. Again I stuck with him, but I started to keep my distance. There is nothing wrong with an honest immigration debate, particularly once it comes to assimilation but the tone of VDARE started to concern me. Then Brimelow embraced Jared Taylor and the racist American Renaissance (Jack Kemp should have trademarked that, damnit). I can't possible support Brimelow and VDARE now.

I mention this for no other reason that I went on VDARE today and saw another Taylor piece on Hispanics. As for American Renaissance if you aren't sure they are racist just check out the comments posted by their readers. I love one genius bemoaning the fact that right wing members of the EU Parliament don't use "biological origin" to unite and line up support. You'd think they would at least try to hide the fact that they are racists.