In August 2018, White House speechwriter and policy advisor Darren Beattie left the Trump administration after CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported Beattie had been a featured speaker at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference, a conference well-known for attracting white nationalists. Kaczynski provided details of other attendees:
In fact, Beattie appeared on a panel with Brimelow.
Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website Vdare.com, is a “white nationalist” and “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists.
Earlier this year, Brimelow described himself as a believer in “racial nationalism” who sees the future of the United States “precipitating out on racial lines.”
Beattie was apparently A-OK appearing on the same stage as that man! Almost immediately after that CNN report, Beattie was gone, his White House email deactivated and one of the White House spokesliars would only say he “no longer worked at the White House.” Turns out, White House officials asked Beattie to resign and he refused, so he was fired.
Turns out, Beattie is back in the game, this time working for Trump’s biggest mouthpiece in Congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who tweeted today he was “proud” Beattie is joining his team.
Florida resident Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime Guttenberg, was murdered in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, was quick to respond to his fellow Floridian about the hire.
At the time Beattie was fired from the White House, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) asked the White House for more information about exactly why Beattie was hired and fired. No doubt they got zero answers. The ADL noted the origins of the conference. Surely, they will revisit this discussion and ask Rep. Matt Gaetz why he thinks it is appropriate to add Beattie to his staff now? Has Beattie ever explained why he attended a conference so well-known for its racist associations?
Our researchers have been following this organization since its founding in 2008 by Paul Gottfried, a far-right academic and mentor to notorious white supremacist Richard Spencer. Its chief activity has been the holding of annual conferences typically attended by a mix of paleoconservative writers and white supremacists who view themselves as the intellectual vanguard of the far-right.
Richard Spencer has frequently acted as the master of ceremonies at these events, whose attendees have included a number of prominent racists and controversial figures, including Brimelow, John Derbyshire, Robert Weissberg, F. Roger Devlin, Kevin DeAnna, Charles Murray and many others.
