The Southern Poverty Law Center published an article on February 8, 2010, detailing the efforts of a progressive human rights group, Responsible for Equality and Liberty (REAL) headed by Jeffrey Imm, to prevent Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance from holding its biannual conference. American Renaissance’s parent organization is the New Century Foundation, which was making the booking arrangements.

(Click here for SPLC article)

Imm’s group contacted local hotels and described the views of Taylor’s organization and the purpose of the conference.  Two hotels refused to rent to Taylor’s group.  Eventually, Taylor’s group found a hotel (undisclosed) and the conference will proceed in mid-February.

American Renaissance’s conferences, according to the SPLC, “has traditionally featured racist speakers” such as former Ku Klux Klan leader turned political candidate David Duke (more on him later). A separate SPLC background report on American Renaissance described the group thusly: “Founded by Jared Taylor in 1990, the New Century Foundation is a self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites — although in hifalutin language that avoids open racial slurs and attempts to portray itself as serious scholarship. It is best known for its American Renaissance magazine and website, which regularly feature proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists.”  The SPLC background report provides ample evidence based on writings and speeches to substantiate its finding.

(Click here for SPLC background)

The Southern Poverty Law Center took no position on which, if any, legal or constitutional issues, may or may not be involved in this dispute between Imm and Taylor.  Nothing I write here should be used to imply that they did or they should have.  They reported the facts. Nor, do I know if there is a legal issue.  I suspect there could be—but what do I know.

I left a comment on the SPLC’s article in their comment section (see end of article).  It got me to thinking about what I have been researching for my book and what I have published on PoliticalChili.  I wanted to approach the issue abstractly so that I could attempt to be objective and clarify my own thinking.  I am not a lawyer and I am certainly not an expert on constitutional law.  I pay attention to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jonathan Turley at George Washington University, and Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. I confess my ignorance on legal issues.  And, as to political philosophy or philosophy in general, I will again profess my ignorance.  There is so much that I do not know, that I do not know what I do not know.  With that in my mind, let me voice my opinion. I am sure that I will annoy someone or everyone at some point here.

I will exaggerate for effect the Imm versus Taylor dispute.

My thought experiment was this:  Suppose in a society there was a Truth that was nearly universally believed.  This Truth was conceptually elegant, rigorously logical, empirically supported, and morally and ethically correct. There was also a dissenting minority believing the opposite which I shall call the Untruth.  Thus, the Untruth, for sake of argument, was not conceptually elegant, was not rigorously logical, was not empirically supported, and was not moral or ethical.

Assume that the society is a democracy and all persons have the freedom of speech and the freedom to assemble.  In such a society, would it be proper for those believing the Truth to restrict the rights of those believing the Untruth by denying them the right to publish?  Or, denying them the right to speak their views?  Or, denying them the right to gather to discuss their views?

I would think not.  Others may think otherwise.  But, I would suggest that in the suppression or the restriction of such speech, considered broadly, by the believers of Truth against the believers of Untruth, that is the root of totalitarianism whether of Communism and Socialism on the Left, Fascism on the Right, or orthodox Christianity from its founding to the present.  All three totalitarianisms suppress—by exclusion, torture, or death or some other means—those deemed to be heretics and blasphemers.

I am not a big supporter of Ayn Rand.  But, I took from her books the defense of the right to think and the defense of reason.  The rest is pretty much rubbish. And, of the philosophers that I was most influenced by when I was young, I would name three: Walter Kaufman who published The Faith of a Heretic in 1959, Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer published in 1951, and all of George Orwell, especially his shorter works.

(Click here for Walter Kauffman’s article taken from his book)

As I noted in my comment on the SPLC site, I hope Jared Taylor and Jeffrey Imm debate.  But, I do not believe it is right to deny them a place to hold their conference.

Moreover, as I have written on PoliticalChili in about three articles, I see a danger of the totalitarian impulse in the Christian nationalists, the views of Republican voters, and the reception of Christian theocratic views at the Tea Party convention.

In the intelligence business, one of the tools used to understand future course of events is the construction of scenarios of the future.  We try to understand the “known unknown.”  In a sense, a philosopher might call them a “thought experiment.”

Let’s suppose that through stealth the believers of the Untruth come to power via elections.  They are now the Great and the Good and they are holders of the Truth, though in terms of public opinion they are very small statistical minority.  The statistical majority of people in terms of actual beliefs, secular or religious, are now deemed by the new Great and the Good to be believers of the Untruth. The statistical majority are now heretics.

In this scenario and thought experiment, imagine Joseph Farah’s future electoral victory and his strategy for dealing with Democrats, liberals, and all those who do not subscribe to his interpretations of scripture or his belief system or his political program.  Farah is an open advocate for a totalitarian Christian theocracy. But, he is just a small part and not even a big leader in Christian nationalism’s dominionism.  He’s a small-fry among the big fish. Anyone taking issue with this broadly held Truth are the believers in the Untruth—heretics. Now, it does not make any difference that the Untruth believers are in fact the majority of the populace.  Terror and violence and intimidation work wonders in controlling a population, especially when civil institutions are being destroyed.

In my thought experiment, writing only for myself as a liberal, the First Amendment becomes crucial.  Anything liberals do to weaken the First Amendment is wrong.  If Jared Taylor cannot gather to express his racist views with other racists, it means that going towards or actually under a totalitarian Christian theocracy that I and other liberals or freethinkers or whomever might be a fellow traveler from a religious perspective cannot gather to express our views or to formulate our plans. Defending Taylor’s right to a conference is defending my right to a conference.

The Dirty Little Secret of the white nationalists and the Christian nationalists is that they view themselves as the persecuted minority—the believers of the Untruth.  They believe and act upon the belief that the federal government, probably since the time of Lincoln or the time of Franklin Roosevelt, is illegitimate. In fact, some of them believe it goes back to the time of ratification when the Christian theocrats lost the debate with our Founding Fathers. They believe the Constitution has been subverted and is used against them. They believe the government is going to suppress their right to express their opinions and their religious beliefs. They believe the government is going to enslave them. They believe the federal government is going to exterminate them.  The Christian nationalists believe, particularly but not exclusively, that the Constitution has to be replaced with a biblical interpretation of morality and law. In some cases, when I say “is going” they believe “has been and continues to.” All you have to do is listen to the “rodeo clown” or secular “conservative” talk radio, or Christian nationalist television and radio broadcasts.

For this group of heretics, they place all their faith (pardon the pun) in the Second Amendment.

No matter how irrational their beliefs, that is what we liberals have to deal with, if I can be presumptuous. We also have to deal with the fact that their writings and beliefs could lead to totalitarianism. It has in the past (see Helen Elleerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, 1995).

In my former work I studied the dynamics of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. This is an over-simplified, highly reductionist presentation of just one aspect of a very complex situation.

One group, the Serbs claimed that they had been victims of genocide in the past and would be victims of genocide in the future. These claims were conceived and promoted by the political leadership, leading scientific institutes, state media, and the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church. The groups that had been accused of the past genocide and the future genocide became highly suspicious and fearful of the Serbs.  Everything the Serbs said or did was interpreted as a threat.  Everything the two other groups did or said was interpreted by the Serb leadership and populace as proof of future genocidal intentions.  The issue of past genocide, particularly empirical evidence, was hotly disputed and not accepted by one or more sides.  To simplify greatly, everybody saw themselves as holding the Truth, everyone else holding the Untruth, and everybody was suspicious of everybody else. Who was the Other was highly dependent upon the situation. Every ethnic minority saw themselves as holders of the Untruth in somebody else’s Truth society.  Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina took their cues from Belgrade and what was happening in Zagreb and Sarajevo, respectively.

We know how well that all worked out.

One of my favorite quotes that I think is highly relevant to today’s situation in America comes from Noel Malcolm’s book, Bosnia: A Short History (1996, page 252):

“But having watched Radio Television Belgrade in the period 1991-2, I can understand why simple Bosnian Serbs came to believe that they were under threat, from Ustasha hordes, fundamentalist jihads or whatever.  As the independent Belgrade journalist Milos Vasic put it to an American audience, it was as if all television in the USA had been taken over by the Ku Klux Klan: ‘You must imagine a United States with every little TV station everywhere taking exactly the same editorial line—a line dictated by David Duke.  You too would have a war in five years.’” (emphasis added and the return to Duke)

James here: or imagine the overwhelming predominance of “conservative” and Christian nationalist talk radio.

So, for the “rodeo clown” at Clan News, this beer’s for you.

Here are my comments I left at the SPLC website:

ON FEBRUARY 9TH, 2010 AT 3:36 AM

When I was a member of the ACLU, a neo-Nazi group was barred by the city of Skokie, IL, from holding demonstration because it would greatly upset, and naturally so, Holocaust survivors living in the small town.

The ACLU defended the First Amendment rights of the neo-Nazis to march, while not at all agreeing with what they would say or what they stood for. It caused a lot of tension within the ACLU. They lost many members.

I stuck with the ACLU on the Skokie case because the First Amendment is vital to our democracy.

I do not agree with Jared Taylor or his ilk on the issue of race. But, he has the right to hold a conference in order to express his views, no matter how repugnant they are.

If the SPLC were trying to hold a conference and a white nationalist group contacted every hotel to prevent the conference, would one not suspect that a fundamental Constitutional right was threatened or at stake?

In the days of Jim Crow, African Americans could not rent a room in a “white” motel.

Jared Taylor is trying to rent a hotel for a conference.

I am not quite sure I see what the difference is in the two situations, except Taylor is being denied a room on the basis of his beliefs rather than his race.

I am not saying or implying that the SPLC has taken a position on the issue or needs to take a position. They’ve done a service in highlighting the dispute.

I do hope Imm debates Taylor in a public forum that is broadcast widely. Taylor’s views are repugnant. But, he is a very good debater. He’s not a redneck rube. He was on The Young Turks and gave as good as he got, then Cenk kind of lost his cool. To debate Taylor you need to come intellectually armed for bear.

I think if Americans actually heard what he had to say about race, he would be further marginalized and the white nationalist cause given a setback.