White nationalist Peter Brimelow
The Conservative Political Action Conference has today begun an annual get-together that looks to be even more of a contest in right-wing attacks than usual. American Conservative Union President and long-time lobbyist and Republican heavyweight Al Cardenas got things started with a speech filled with phrases such as demolishing the "subsidized radical left."
In excerpts provided from a prepared speech Mitch McConnell will make, the Senate Minority Leader says that Democratic strategy is to "Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and then polarize it."
“But rarely have we seen those tactics employed with the kind of zeal that we see today. This White House and its lieutenants have made an art form out of the orchestrated attack,” the Kentucky Republican will say, according to excerpts provided to POLITICO.
“They’ve shown they’ll go after anybody or any organization that they think is standing in their way.”
Projection is a chronic ailment of McConnell and his pals.
But he's unlikely to provide the fieriest speech of the conference. In addition to presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, ex-contenders Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, and possible future contenders Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Rand Paul, Peter Brimelow will appear on a panel titled "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity." Brimelow is the founder and chief honcho of VDARE.com, a racist, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant white nationalist website. It is named after Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents to be born in North America, 425 years ago in the short-lived Roanoke Colony.
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Dare did nothing on her own to make her an inspiration. She may not even have survived infancy since the colony itself had disappeared three years after her birth. Nevertheless, she has become a symbol of resistance for some white Americans, especially in North Carolina and other parts of the South. As far back as the 1920s, a group that opposed suffrage for women feared that black women would get the vote. One group in Raleigh, North Carolina urged "that North Carolina remain white ... in the name of Virginia Dare."
Among other things, according to Steve Benen at the Rachel Maddow Blog, Brimelow, himself an immigrant from Great Britain, has said that the New York City subway is "an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored."
It's worth noting that [Brimelow's appearance] represents a disconcerting regression on CPAC's part. Last year, many conference participants made clear that they wanted white nationalists to have no role at the annual event. This year, that's apparently no longer the case.
Also note, radical conspiracy theorist Joseph Farah has been boycotting CPAC in recent years because organizers did not want him to host a panel questioning President Obama's citizenship. This year, Farah has been "welcomed back with open arms."
With radical extremists welcome not just in the audience but also on the program itself, it will be quite educational to hear how much eliminationist rhetoric is spouted at this supposedly respectable conference as the right bends ever-more rightward. Some would say these incendiary words are just talk. But such rhetoric, as many people have learned the hard way, all too often leads to action. That CPAC now openly condones it can only make one wonder what next year's event will include.