June 2000

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 11, No. 6 June 2000

 

CONTENTS

Heart of Darkness
Hitler’s Rise to Power
Violence and Anarchy
What the Gonzalez Nonsense Really Means
Write Off the Liberals
Book Review: Opening Fire 
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Heart of Darkness

Pushing whites out of Africa.

by George Kimble

Zimbabwe — the former Rhodesia — is sinking into violent anarchy as its aging autocrat stirs up hatred against the remaining whites. In neighboring South Africa whites look on in horror as rampaging blacks kill and dispossess farmers in a nightmare they persist in believing could never be visited upon their own country. And in a perfect parallel to their treatment of non-white degeneracy at home, the American government and media have said next to nothing about this continuing outrage.

Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe

Part of the problem is 76-year-old Robert Mugabe, leader of the ZANU-PF party, who has ruled the country for 20 years. His “leadership” has slowly destroyed a once-prosperous economy, left one quarter of the adult population with AIDS, and encouraged corruption at all levels. He is running out of booty to distribute to his supporters and hopes to plunder the one remaining efficient sector of the economy: commercial farming. Some 4,500 large-scale farmers — almost all of them white — grow wheat, tobacco, and other crops that account for 40 percent of the country’s exports.

Last February, Mr. Mugabe held a referendum to approve constitutional changes that would have broadened his powers and given him the right to seize white-owned land without compensation. The measure was defeated, largely because of the rise of a serious opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai and supported by many whites. Mr. Mugabe was furious at the defeat and responded by encouraging Dr. Chenjerai Hunzvi to lead a movement to occupy white farms and drive out the owners. Dr. Hunzvi, who likes to go by the name of “Hitler,” is thought by some to be the second most powerful man in the country. He is a shady operator (see: Hitler’s Rise to Power) who claims to speak for black veterans of the insurgency that ended white rule in Rhodesia 20 years ago.

Swarms of blacks calling themselves “war veterans” are now squatting on approximately 1,000 (some reports put the figure at 700) commercial farms, egged on by Mr. Mugabe’s denunciation of white farmers as “enemies of the people.” Arriving in government-supplied convoys, they camp out on private property, demand food and drink, and intimidate farmers and their black employees. Many admit they are being paid by the government. Often roaring drunk and brandishing clubs and knives, they sometimes make the farmers’ wives and daughters dance for them or sing songs praising Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF. At their worst they kill, burn, rape, and loot (see: Violence and Anarchy). It is a miracle that so far only three farmers have been murdered, but many have been beaten, held hostage, or forced to sign documents transferring ownership of their farms to the occupiers.

One reason there have been so few deaths is that farmers have put up no resistance and many have abandoned their farms and fled to safety in the homes of friends in the cities. In some cases blacks have looted and ransacked unoccupied homes, killed livestock, and burned farm buildings and crops. Squatters have frequently vented their wrath on the blacks who live and work in the farms, beating them and burning their houses.

Many whites have farmed the same land for three generations and are very attached to the blacks who have also worked there for generations. Sixty-two-year-old Lorna Coleman says these attachments would make it hard to leave Zimbabwe no matter how great the danger. “One of my biggest worries is what will happen to our staff. We have 70 people working for us and their families live on our property. I take that responsibility seriously. I don’t want to abandon them.”

The “war veterans,” — most were not yet born or were in diapers when the insurgency was actually going on more than 20 years ago — imitate a Red Guard tactic from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After they beat up one group of farm workers they load them onto trucks, drive to the next farm and make them beat up the workers there. This is supposed to raise political consciousness. “We are forced to beat our own friends,” says one terrified worker.

The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe has declared the occupations illegal and ordered Mr. Hunzvi to get his people off the land, but the court cannot enforce its order. The police, whom whites now dismiss as “coat hangers for uniforms,” stand by idly in the face of rampant lawlessness. Mr. Mugabe himself has no regrets about the killings and beatings. “We warned the white farmers,” he says. “We cannot protect you if you provoke the war veterans. You must accept the consequences.”

On April 28, although he did not suggest that the squatters go home, “Hitler” Hunzvi publicly called for an end to violence and the occupation of more farms. Some hoped this might ease the crisis but it did not. Farm invasions, beatings, and crop burnings continued, fueled by Mr. Mugabe’s increasingly shrill denunciations of whites. Farmers have now concluded that even if Mr. Hunzvi actually wanted to stop the violence he doesn’t have the authority.

It is hard to believe he wants to. On May 8, after the third farmer was beaten to death, he called for all Zimbabweans who hold British passports to be rounded up and deported. Anyone who didn’t want to go, he said, should be killed.

Members of the opposition MDC have suffered worse than the farmers. ZANU-PF activists have killed at least a dozen: party administrators, declared candidates for office, and ordinary supporters. They have beaten up and intimidated uncounted thousands. On May 5, police even held MDC leader Mr. Tsvangirai for seven straight hours, though they did him no violence.

The MDC salute is an open-handed raised arm. In some areas blacks have stopped waving to each other for fear the gesture could be misread and invite attack. Funerals for murdered MDC supporters have been hush-hush, stealthy affairs rather than typically African large-scale observances. “No one must mourn a member of the MDC,” explained the daughter of Peter Kariza, an activist murdered by Mugabe supporters. “If they do, they’ll be killed.” Mr. Kariza’s widow, who was herself badly beaten, saw her home burned down and her cows and goats stolen. She must now care for her eight children alone.

David Coltart, an official in the MDC says the violence is vastly underreported: “They attack families every night, beating everyone they can lay their hands on. The trouble is that this happens deep in the rural areas. By the time they are reported, there is nothing fresh for television cameras.” In early May police admitted that for a month they had not even told anyone about the murders of three MDC activists, much less captured the killers.

New elections are expected in June, but the chances of a fair vote are zero. “People might value their vote, but they value their life more,” says political scientist Alfred Nhema at the University of Zimbabwe. “Many would rather lose the election than die.” He confirms that, as is common throughout Africa, many Zimbabweans think the Mugabe forces have magical powers and will know if they vote for the opposition.

On May 6, a Mugabe supporter addressed this paean to democracy before a crowd of 700 at a political rally about 40 miles north of Harare: “If ZANU-PF loses this election, you will not say that I did not warn you. If we lose, we will get out our guns. . . . We will be at the voting stations. If ZANU-PF loses, the way forward will be filled with war.”

MDC supporters are hardly saints either. On May 7, at an MDC rally they beat two men who made the mistake of wearing ZANU-PF T-shirts.

Gedahlia Braun, an American academic who has lived many years in South Africa and has written occasionally for AR, argues that many Africans are incapable of understanding elections as anything other than a form of warfare. Political opponents are no different from battlefield enemies and might as well be killed.

The crisis has been something of a battle for journalists, too. The “war veterans” rightly see them as unsympathetic and have often barred them from covering farm invasions. One South Africa-based reporter who wanted to talk to squatters 25 miles east of Harare changed his mind when “war veterans” threatened to kill him. They seized the two blacks he came with, handcuffed them, and beat them with iron rods. Both men were badly hurt and one may have gotten a fractured hip.

On April 28, the secretary general of the War Veterans Association insisted that blacks own the land, and lashed out against “false reporting:” “With immediate effect, if we hear any journalist saying we are squatters, there is going to be war here. There will be severe punishment.” Many white farmers have stopped talking to reporters for fear of reprisals and mob violence.

Although many Zimbabweans now despise Mr. Mugabe for the ruin and lawlessness he has brought to the country, African heads of state stand by him. On April 22, after the murders of two farmers, the leaders of South Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia gave Mr. Mugabe a ringing endorsement of his handling of the “land problem.” They accept his view that whites are clinging to unearned privilege and must be taught a lesson. To the dismay of his own whites, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has yet to pronounce a single word critical of Mr. Mugabe, though on May 6, Nelson Mandela spoke pointedly from retirement about African despots who cling to power until they die.

The United States has officially condemned “violent attacks against farmers” and called for Zimbabwe “to restore the rule of law.” It plans to keep the annual aid budget at $12 to $14 million but has canceled plans for an increase. A State Department spokesman promises a “wait and see” approach, saying there might be further action if the elections this summer don’t appear to be fair. The killings don’t seem to be of much interest to him.

Britain, the former colonial power, has been so stupid as to call the violence “incomprehensible.” It has cut off arms sales to Zimbabwe, and got the Commonwealth to issue a condemnation (though it agreed not to invoke economic sanctions or try to have Zimbabwe thrown out of the Commonwealth). Mr. Mugabe scoffed at the scolding, saying “Britain has nothing to teach us.” He closed a two-hour May-third speech with his fist jabbing the air, shouting “Down with British imperialism and neo-colonialism.”

The British had promised $57 million over the next two years to buy some of the land now farmed by whites, but will not hand it over if illegal occupations continue. Mr. Mugabe wants the money without conditions, and promises to drive whites off the land without compensation anyway. Those who oppose him, he says, can leave the country.

There has been an increasing flow of Zimbabwean asylum-seekers to Britain, with 50 arriving in March. The British have said they will offer entry only to whites who have ancestral ties to England — anyone else is out of luck. Britain and the European Union have, however, discussed setting up contingency plans to evacuate whites to South Africa if the violence gets worse.

Needless to say, farm occupations are wrecking the cash-crop economy. This is the season tobacco farmers auction their crops but squatters have burned thousands of bales and halted all work on many farms. Only a tenth of the usual tonnage has made it to market (though some farmers are delaying sales, in the expectation of another devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar). Tobacco accounts for the bulk of Zimbabwe’s annual export earnings and 20 percent of its gross domestic product, so the disruption is significant. The vice president of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, a Mugabe supporter, says he knows why so little tobacco has gotten to market: “The war they [white farmers] are fighting by withdrawing their tobacco is so that they can destroy the economy and push Mugabe out of power.”

Now is the time farmers should be planting winter wheat but many cannot. Not only are operations paralyzed by squatters, an estimated 30,000 farm workers — one in ten — have fled for their lives. This sudden work stoppage raises the specter of serious food shortages by December.

The crisis in Zimbabwe is lapping into South Africa. The Rand has hit a record low against the dollar, and already-wary foreign investors are appalled by what they see across the Limpopo river.

The cruel fact is that Mr. Mugabe and the “war veterans” are going after the land of white farmers not because there is not enough to go around but because whites made the land productive. Estimates vary enormously but whites are said to own 30 to 70 percent of the most fertile farmland. Over the years the government has used British aid money to buy 1,120,000 acres of formerly white-owned land, and “redistribute” it. The theory was that large farms were going to be broken up, Marxist-style, into thousands of small holdings. In fact, the 1,120,000 acres have gone to only 400 people — 2,800 acres per person. The 400 people are, of course, Mugabe’s cabinet secretaries, retired generals, family and friends. Moreover, the government already has millions of acres of undeveloped land it could distribute any time it liked. What it wants is more land already improved by whites and now recognized as some of the most productive in the world. Past experience shows that once whites leave and their farms are turned over to blacks, crop yields rapidly go downhill.

Those with long memories have noted a certain grim parallel with South Africa. Twenty years ago, when Rhodesians buckled under world pressure and gave power to blacks, Robert Mugabe was the darling of the West. He was intelligent, well-spoken, and had several advanced degrees. World opinion greeted his 1980 election as president with something like the rhapsodies they later lavished on — well — Nelson Mandela. His Marxism, we were told, would quickly wear off, he wanted only peace and reconciliation with whites, and Africa would have a chance to show the world the kind of enlightened leadership of which it was capable. It certainly got that chance.

Some of the sheen wore off in the mid-1980s when Mr. Mugabe turned out to be a bit of a primitive after all. A member of the Shona tribe, he sent his notorious, North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to slaughter an estimated 20,000 Ndebele who had the temerity to think their tribe should have a say in government, too.

At age 70 he married his 30-year-old secretary, with whom he began several years of dalliance while his wife was dying of a protracted kidney disorder. Grace bore him two children before the wife finally died and is now famous for extravagant shopping sprees at upscale London shops. She is known in the British and African tabloid press as “Zimbabwe’s Imelda Marcos.” But what has most upset Mr. Mugabe’s liberal admirers is his attacks on homosexuals, whom he calls “worse than pigs and dogs.” If the 20,000 Ndebele he killed had been homosexuals, the West might have forced him from power.

In 1980 there were more than 200,000 whites in Rhodesia. After the capitulation, two thirds ignored the West’s ecstatic predictions of love and prosperity, and fled the country. The remaining 70,000 are now less than one percent of the population and completely at the mercy of black-run institutions.

Perhaps they might have listened to an Africa hand from an earlier time, Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965). The much-beloved musicologist, theologian, and doctor was known as “the greatest Christian of his time” and won the Nobel Peace Price in 1952 for missionary work in Africa. Near the end of his life he wrote:

The negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes then, I have coined the formula: ‘I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.’

George Kimble is a businessman who has lived for several years in Africa.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

Hitler’s Rise to Power

Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi is a medical doctor who received his training in Poland. He took the name Hitler during the guerrilla war against white rule during the 1970s. He is now leader of the Zimbabwe War Veterans Association and leads the farm invasion movement that has thrown the country into chaos.

Zimbabwe has a War Victims Compensation Fund from which blacks are paid substantial sums if they can prove they were wounded in the war. Dr. Hunzvi rose to power by making himself useful to Zimbab-we’s ruling elite: He certified that dozens of people in the Mugabe circle had imaginary but profitable war wounds. He discovered wounds for himself and his own circle, sometimes without even bothering with examinations. He has been charged with fraud, and has actually made court appearances during the current crisis.

He showed up for a May 3 court date with 600 screaming supporters who delayed proceedings for two hours before they could be packed away out of earshot. In their anti-white fervor, they mobbed Mr. Hunzvi’s own lawyers, whose fate might have been uncertain if their client had not identified them and called off the crowds. War veterans have also accused Mr. Hunzvi of looting several million Zimbabwean dollars (Z$38.35 = US$1.00) from Zexcom, an investment trust set up to benefit ex-guerrillas.

At the very least, Mr. Hunzvi has diverted money from the war-wounds compensation fund, leaving less for those who were actually wounded. At worst, he has stolen from a fund set aside to benefit veterans. In Africa, this is the sort of man who leads the farm invasion campaign in the name of just compensation for old soldiers.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

Violence and Anarchy

Martin Olds was alone on his farm 400 miles southwest of the capital, Harare (formerly Salisbury). There had been threats of danger, so he had sent his wife and two children to relative safety with friends. At dawn on April 18, hundreds of armed men arrived at his farm house in a convoy of 14 cars and a tractor trailer. They attacked the 42-year-old former soldier, who held them off for several hours with a rifle and a shotgun. At one point a rifle bullet shattered his leg and he radioed a neighbor: “I’ve been shot and I need an ambulance.”

Farmers rushed to his assistance, but were fired on when they approached his compound. They reported that many of the blacks were drunk. Mr. Olds splinted his own leg and went on fighting, wounding several attackers. The two-hour gun battle ended when the blacks set his house on fire and he was forced out into their hands. They beat him to mush and then shot him twice in the face at close range. The “war veterans” then got into their vehicles and drove away.

Just a few hours later, Robert Mugabe gave a television address that some had hoped would be a plea for peace and reconciliation. Instead, he said: “Our present state of mind is that you [whites] are now our enemies because you really have behaved as enemies of Zimbabwe. We are full of anger.”

Not long after this speech, blacks attacked an isolated cottage a few miles outside of Harare, where they beat a white man unconscious with a brick, then tied up and raped the man’s 25-year-old wife and her 18-year-old sister. After the rape they poured what they thought was gasoline on the wife and tried to light it, but it was furniture polish and would not burn. The blacks ransacked the house, loading up the man’s pickup truck with loot and then tried to burn the house down. They failed at this, too, and then drove away in the stolen truck. Throughout the assault on the women they accused them of being enemies of Mr. Mugabe and of supporting the MDC.

Another farmer, David Stevens, was summarily shot by a gang of men who said they were supporters of Mr. Mugabe. When five other white farmers went to his assistance the attackers threatened to kill them. They fled to a police station, seeking refuge. The police did nothing as the blacks dragged them from the station and beat them.

In the latest killing of a white farmer, on May 8, Alan Dunn was at home with his wife and three teenage daughters when a man knocked on his back door and asked him to come outside. Five men then beat him to death, fracturing his skull and breaking his arms. Mr. Dunn was a regional executive committee member of the MDC.

When “Hitler” Hunzvi, who has been leading the farm invasions, was asked to comment on the murder, he said: “There is nothing to say. He is dead.”

Shortly after the killing, in the first alleged case of violence by whites, a black claimed from his hospital bed that he was set upon by a group of white farmers who first asked him if he had known Mr. Dunn.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

What the Gonzalez Nonsense Really Means

When the chips are down, Cuban-Americans are Cuban, not American.

by Jared Taylor

Map of Cuba

The absurd flap over what to do with Elián González has been publicized, analyzed, and dramatized nearly to death. But the saturation coverage has generally missed the most significant aspect of the struggle: What it says about the irreconcilable racial and ethnic divisions in Miami and the rest of the country. This exhausting, expensive, no-end-in-sight battle arises out of the very “diversity” that is supposed to be America’s great strength. It shows that Americans, like people everywhere else, think with their blood. It shows that when the chips are down Cuban-Americans are Cubans, not Americans.

To begin with, opinion over what to do with the boy splits starkly along racial lines. A newspaper poll of Miami-Dade County residents found 83 percent of Cuban-Americans want young González to stay in America. Seventy-six percent of non-Hispanic whites want to send him back to Cuba, as do an overwhelming 92 percent of blacks. Non-Cuban Hispanics are more sympathetic towards their fellow Latinos, with 55 percent saying the boy should stay.

Whites and blacks who live in Miami are considerably more likely than whites and blacks in the rest of the country to want to send Elián home. This is because they deal with Cubans all the time, which makes them less rather than more likely to support their interests. It is a universal rule: the more real contact groups have with each other the worse their relations.

The huge number of blacks, in particular, who want to give the boy back to his father does not represent love of family so much as resentment of Cubans. Miami blacks are unhappy that Cubans scrambled up over their backs and now run the place. Cubans are also harder to hustle and intimidate than whites. “We have had more problems with Cubans in power than with whites,” complains Bishop Victor Curry, president of the Miami-Dade County NAACP. Blacks also resent the fascination for one six-year-old Cuban when no one cares about the thousands of black Haitians bounced back to their miserable homeland every year. They complain — mistakenly — that the U.S. government would crush open ethnic resistance if it were mounted by blacks.

Cubans have vowed not to forget what blacks have been saying. “People will pay for this,” warns Miami businessman and activist, Ramon Suarez-Del Campo. “When black politicians come to Cuban politicians asking for favors or some help in the future they are going to say, ‘Where were you for Elián?’”

Whites were unnerved as their Cuban-run city seemed to secede temporarily from the Union. In March, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Alex Penalas, said his police force would not cooperate if the feds came to take the boy away, and all but predicted violence if they tried. Miami Mayor Joe Carollo also promised that the local police would not cooperate.

When the INS finally struck, the aftermath said a great deal about Cuban-“Americans.” The feds gave Miami Police Chief William O’Brien (no Cuban, he) advance warning about the operation. This was because city officers had been standing round-the-clock guard at the González house, controlling protesters, and there was no telling what they would do if federal agents suddenly burst on the scene, guns drawn. Chief O’Brien sent the number-two man in his department to ride with the INS and reassure officers on the scene that the operation was on the up and up — but he didn’t tell Cuban officials about the raid ahead of time. He knew they would probably have tried to put enough protesters around the González house to thwart the snatch. Cubans were furious over the boy’s removal and rioted in their frustration. They bayed for Chief O’Brien’s head which, of course, they got. To no one’s surprise, the new chief, Raul Martinez, is Cuban.

A few wags have noted that the U.S. has not seen such fierce defiance of federal power since the days when white Southern governors blocked school integration. This, though, is not a case of states’ rights but national rights.

The people tramping the streets of Little Havana may be American citizens but they are Cubans-in-exile through and through. That is why they wave the Cuban flag rather than the American flag, and sing the Cuban national anthem, not “The Star Spangled Banner.” In today’s America, no one seems to think it odd that keeping the boy in the United States is a show of Cuban, not American patriotism. In some cases, it went even further. In the emotions after the raid, Cubans burned the American flag and flew it upside down.

This actually roused a few natives. An April 29 “Pro-American” rally in South Dade drew a mostly-Anglo crowd waving American flags for a change, and carrying signs that read: “Stop the Banana Republic,” and “This is America. Speak English.” One man told a reporter he had said to his wife, “We’ve got to get out of this place because those Cubans are totally out of control.” The rally, publicized by word of mouth, drew 2,500 people but the media mostly ignored this uncharacteristic stirring of white discontent.

“Blood is a very special kind of sap,” Göethe once observed, and the sap has been running high at the other end of the country, too. Last July, the American women’s soccer team faced China in the Rose Bowl for the World Cup final. The Chinese team was from the Communist mainland, whereas most Chinese-“Americans” are from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The American women were playing a foreign opponent and the Chinese-“Americans” were U.S. citizens. It didn’t matter; they rooted passionately for the Chinese team.

“There are political differences, but because the team is Chinese, that’s all we think about,” explained Louis Wong, a 27-year-old Chinatown news vendor. “I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m Chinese,” pointed out businessman Edward Chang. Of course. What could be more natural?

These days it is no longer permitted to wonder how various “Americans” would react to a real crisis with a foreign country, to something more important than a little boy or a soccer game. America is just a place on the map, after all, with nice welfare benefits and a useful blue passport. When it really matters, you can always go back to being Chinese — or Cuban or Mexican or Haitian or Filipino.

SIDEBAR

El Niño Milagro

If the Cuban excitement over Elian Gonzalez sometimes seems crazy it’s — well — because it is. All sorts of looniness is now on the loose about the boy. There are claims that an image of the Virgin Mary appeared in a Little Havana bank window in the wake of his arrival. Many people believe dolphins warded off the sharks during the two days he floated on the ocean in an inner tube. Followers of Santeria — an Afro-Cuban animal-sacrifice religion popular in Miami — believe the boy embodies a spiritual emissary named Elegua, and that Fidel Castro will fall if he doesn’t get the boy back. Another theory is that he is a Cuban Moses sent to lead the exiles back to Havana.

Plenty of people have lost their marbles over the boy. “God has made a gift to us in this community of a miracle of saving a kid who was two days in the sea and was not hurt,” says Catholic priest José Luis Menendez who has been ministering to the boy. El niño milagro  — the miracle boy — has a real hold on his imagination: “This is a special kid. He was lost for two days without anyone else. But his skin was like a baby. It was not burned by the sun.”

Miracles don’t come cheap. Young Gonzalez has already cost Miami more than $800,000 in police overtime alone. No one yet knows what the INS snatch job cost or how much state and federal courts have spent wrangling over him. And there is no end in sight.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

Write Off the Liberals

Big government now requires immigration.

I couldn’t disagree more with the April cover story, “Don’t Write Off the Liberals.” Racial consciousness might have been common on the left a hundred years ago, but how many racially conscious lefties are there today? I’d rather look for the Holy Grail. Liberals love big government. Big government is our enemy. Ergo, liberals are our enemy. Let me explain why they can never be our friends.

In 1950 — after a half-century of two World Wars — Europe still held 22 percent of the world’s population. After 50 years of peace (and almost as many years of birth control and abortion), the proportion is now down to 12 percent. Remember all those exhortations for Zero Population Growth a few decades ago? You can’t say the Europeans didn’t do their part.

Italy’s birthrate is now 1.2 per woman, among the lowest in Europe. If this birthrate is unchanged, the population of Italy will drop from 57 million to 41 million in 50 years. Italy is not an anomaly. Some of the rates for other countries are: 1.07 for Spain, 1.26 for France, and 1.3 for Germany. Given that a rate of 2.1 per woman is considered the minimum necessary for population replacement, not one country in Europe is even sustaining itself.

You might say, “So what?” The Europeans will have a little more elbow room. The Black Death killed an estimated one third of all Europeans, but the continent survived. An important difference is that in the 14th century there was no big government. There was no social security, no socialized medicine, no welfare, no Medicare, no public education, no unemployment insurance. The 21st century Social Democrat knows that if the population is allowed to decline, social engineering programs will be in trouble. The welfare state needs a high birthrate, with plenty of young workers paying taxes. How do you maintain — much less expand — the welfare state with European-style falling birthrates? You can boost taxes only so much before people drop out of the system or work to subvert it.

The welfare state will not preside over its own dismantling. If whites will not have more children the solution is immigration: more people, more workers, more taxes. Immigrants bring a host of problems with them, but the welfare state welcomes social problems because they justify its existence. So we get more love-thy-neighbor exhortations, more hate crime laws, more diversity seminars, more tolerance exhibitions, more minority-friendly history, and endless opportunities for moral posturing.

Every indication is that folks in Europe are no happier with immigration than we are, but God help the public figure who lines up with his constituents. We know what happened to Jörg Haider. The European Union bureaucrats know that if Mr. Haider can hold the line on immigration in Austria, it can be held elsewhere in Europe, and if it can be held in Europe, it can be held everywhere. Then the lights will go out for big government. The welfare state will wither away because there won’t be enough people to sustain it.

Unfortunately, the white folks in Europe have gotten used to entitlements. Even the slightest cutback — or even a reduction in the rate of expansion — brings out the socialist in everybody. But if there aren’t enough natives to keep the gears of state turning, then the statists will bring in people of all nations and hues as exotic cuisine for Leviathan. What is true of Europe is true of the United States. Our birthrates are not as low as those in Europe but only because we have so many fertile Third-Worlders living here already. White American women are pretty much in line with their European cousins. And we are just as used to suckling at the public teat: What about my Social Security? My veteran’s pension? My Medicare? My kids’ guaranteed college loans?

This is why the liberal is our enemy and can never be our friend. He has created the big government programs and he wants more government, not less. If the locals won’t procreate enough, he will bring in outsiders. It makes no difference if most of them are non-white, non-Christian, and non-English-speaking. If that bothers you, you are a racist, and you are the problem, not the immigrants.

Arch Stanton lives in Dallas, Texas.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

BOOK REVIEW

Opening Fire

Another debate in which the facts don’t matter.

More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws, John R. Lott, Jr., University of Chicago, 1998, 225 pp., $23.00

How strange it must be to be a liberal. Driven by slogans, blinded by superstitions, dazzled by fantasies, the liberal stumbles through life oblivious to facts. There is almost nothing the liberal thinks he knows about race, social policy, sex roles, individual differences, and even history that is not some combination of slogan, superstition, and fantasy. John Lott’s soberly brilliant More Guns, Less Crime could not possibly be a more convincing demonstration that what liberals think they know about guns is fantasy, too.

More Guns Less Crime by John Lott

The liberal view, of course, is that private citizens should not have guns and that gun control will stop violence. Prof. Lott, who teaches law and economics at the University of Chicago, makes an air-tight case for the opposite view: that when citizens carry concealed weapons criminals are afraid to attack and violence declines. Prof. Lott’s approach is to track violent crime rates over time in those parts of the country that have liberalized gun laws as opposed to places that have not.

The most significant recent turning point in gun ownership regulation was the Florida legislature’s 1987 decision to adopt a “shall issue” policy on concealed-carry permits. Unlike the then-widespread practice of granting permits only to security guards and other select groups (which often included state officials), the new law ordered that local jurisdictions “shall issue” permits to everyone not obviously disqualified by such things as insanity or a criminal record. Any normal, law-abiding man or woman could get a permit to carry a concealed firearm. This was perhaps the first time that a state with large cities and lots of crime had reversed course on concealed carry.

Percent change in the crime rate with respect to differences in the percent of a county’s population that is black.

In 1985 there were only eight states with “shall issue” laws but now there are 31. This means we have a great deal of information on what happens to violent crime rates when there are suddenly a lot more guns in responsible hands, and the results could not be clearer: When citizens might be carrying pistols under their coats, the brutes think twice about doing them mischief.

Not surprisingly, the decrease in crime has been greatest where there was the most to begin with, and this means cities with large black populations. As Prof. Lott explains, “While many blacks want to make guns harder to get, the irony is that blacks benefit more than other groups from concealed-handgun laws.” As he notes, the percentage of young blacks in an area is the single variable that best predicts the level of violence. If the non-criminals in these places start carrying weapons it evens the odds and discourages predators — just as it does everywhere else — and there are more predators to discourage.

The graph on this page shows the average drop in violent crime the year after passage of a “shall issue” law, as a function of the percentage of the population that is black. The blacker the population the greater the benefit. Washington and New York City, which have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, would benefit greatly from letting honest citizens carry guns.

As the graph makes clear, for areas with few blacks the declines in violence are modest, but for the country as a whole, the effect is certainly significant. Prof. Lott concludes that if the entire country had liberal concealed-carry laws, in 1992 there would have been 1,400 fewer murders, 4,200 fewer rapes, 60,000 fewer aggravated assaults, and 12,000 fewer robberies.

This makes perfect sense. What criminals fear most is the possibility that an intended victim will pull a gun and blaze away. This fear is so great that changes in concealed carry laws have a measurable effect even when only a small percentage of people actually carry guns. Once the bad guys know that people might be armed, it pays to assume everyone is armed.

Criminals have always adjusted their tactics according to the likelihood of being shot. In Canada and Britain, about half the burglaries are “hot,” or committed while people are on the premises. In the United States, where people have always had guns at home even if they couldn’t carry them in the street, only 13 percent of burglaries are “hot.”

Prof. Lott points out that it is partly due to the quiet, undramatic way in which civilian gun ownership works that makes it easy for liberals to ignore its benefits. He explains that the best survey data suggest that 98 percent of the time, when someone uses a gun to deter crime he doesn’t even have to fire it. All he has to do is show it. Prof. Lott notes that while the media love to trumpet the 30 or so times a year that someone kills an innocent he mistook for an intruder, they pay almost no attention to what may well be millions of crimes prevented every year because someone waved a gun at a bad guy.

Although women are among the most crazed gun control advocates, they benefit the most from having guns. If a woman is attacked, she is least likely to be seriously injured if she resists with a gun. If she puts up no resistance she is 2.5 times more likely to be seriously injured than if she uses a gun. If she fights back without a weapon or with something other than a gun, she is four times more likely to be seriously injured than if she uses a gun.

For men, having a gun is not as effective in reducing the chances of injury because unarmed men are better prepared to resist attack than unarmed women. Resisting with a gun is always best, but a man who puts up no resistance is only 1.4 times more likely to be injured seriously in an assault than one who resists with a gun.

Even when the law permits it, women are less likely than men to carry guns. Prof. Lott finds that combined with the greater odds-evening effect for women, this means any given armed woman has a greater deterrent effect than any given armed man: “One additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3-4 times more than one additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.”

Percent change in crime rate with respect to differences in the percent of a county’s population that is black.

In the hysteria that accompanies any debate about passing “shall issue” laws, people always predict that armed citizens will get into gun fights over traffic accidents. Prof. Lott notes that there has been only one known case of a permit holder using a concealed handgun after an accident. The other driver savagely attacked him and he used his weapon only in extremis in what was found to be justifiable self-defense. No permit holder anywhere in the country has ever been known to shoot a police officer, though permit holders have certainly saved the lives of officers.

These findings justify the pro-gun slogan “if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.” Criminals carry and use guns no matter what the law says. People who go through an application process and are found not be crazy or criminal use guns responsibly. Prof. Lott notes that very few murderers, for example, would even qualify for a concealed-carry permit, much less bother to get one. Eighty-nine percent had criminal records before they became killers.

Do concealed carry laws have costs? Unlike the dire predictions of gun control advocates, they have no effect at all on accident or suicide rates. They do, however, have a spillover effect, both geographically and in type of crime. If one jurisdiction issues permits and a neighboring one does not, violent crime — quite logically — increases on the side of the border where citizens cannot protect themselves. Criminals prefer unarmed prey.

Another effect is that malefactors who are now afraid to attack people go after property instead. When the costs of one kind of crime go up, they try something else and again, the effect is greatest where there is the most crime. The graph on this page shows the increase in property crime that accompanies the decrease in violent crime after the passage of “shall carry” laws. Like the previous graph, the change is shown as a function of the percentage of the population that is black. The increase is unfortunate, but for most people, more car theft is an acceptable price to pay for less murder or rape.

Prof. Lott found another interesting effect of concealed-carry laws. They can cause a short-lived increase in mass shootings — the kind in which someone blazes away randomly at a crowd — which is soon followed by a decline. Prof. Lott suspects that some number of mass killers are prompted by the new laws to get on with the mayhem before too many permits are issued and the chances of return fire become too great.

More Guns, Less Crime also concludes that several other policies people think make a difference do not. He finds that imposing waiting periods or restricting the number of guns people can buy in a month does not reduce crime. Nor are concealed carry laws any more or less effective when they require permit holders to go through gun safety training. Like so much of what government does, this is pure eyewash. Though Prof. Lott does not mention them, many other much-ballyhooed anti-gun measures like bans on “assault weapons” and limiting magazine capacity have probably been just as meaningless.

Prof. Lott finds that arming the citizens is sound policy from every angle: “[C]oncealed handguns are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime that has been analyzed by economists; they provide a higher return than increased law enforcement or incarceration, other private security devices, or social programs like early educational intervention.”

But does a case for more guns have even a ghost of a chance of getting a fair hearing? The more irrefutable it is, the worse its chances. Prof. Lott presented his central findings in a research paper before he wrote this book, and recounts some of the lessons he learned about the liberal approach to facts:

I never would have guessed how much people fear discussion of these issues. I never would have known how much effort goes into deliberately ignoring certain findings in order to deny them news coverage. Nor would I have seen, after news coverage did occur, how much energy goes into attacking the integrity of those who present such findings, with such slight reference — or no reference at all — to the actual merits of the research. I was also surprised by the absolute confidence shown by gun-control advocates that they could garner extensive news coverage whenever they wanted.

Here in a nutshell is both the liberal mindset and the liberal advantage: Ignore all research that undercuts the orthodox view. If it can’t be ignored, attack the researcher rather than the findings. In all cases, stamp out dissent with barrages of friendly news coverage, which can be called in at any time.

As it is with so many of the important questions of our time, good policy is crushed under superstition and fantasy. Blacks and women — people about whom liberals claim to care deeply — benefit most from the right to bear arms, but thousands are murdered, raped, robbed, and assaulted for no other reason than nanny-state bigotry. As has happened over and over, the left wins and the people lose.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Hoaxing Spree

In April, the University of Iowa was wracked with racism. Someone put a bowl of red noodles outside a black student’s door with a note saying they were the brains of a dead black man. Then someone set fire to a lab coat at the school of dentistry and sent an email to minority students threatening violence and bombings, and asked, “Are you going to take us seriously, now?” A thousand people duly rallied on campus to protest these horrors. The university set up video surveillance and caught a black student, Tarsha Campbell, who confessed to sending the e-mail and making the threats. Police have charged her with a felony for the bomb threat, but university officials cannot think of a motive. After the arrest, University Relations Vice President Ann Rhodes said she never would have guessed the culprit would be a black woman: “I figured it was going to be a white guy between 25 and 55 because they’re the root of most evil.” Miss Rhodes later apologized for her remark. (Greg Smith, Black Student Arrested in Racist Threats at Iowa Dental School, AP, April 20, 2000. Scott Hogenson, College Official Calls White Men ‘Root of Most Evil,’ CNSNews.com, April 21, 2000.)

Winfred L. Stafford is a student at Hastings College in Nebraska. In March, the 24-year-old black man claimed several whites briefly abducted him at gun point and that he was getting hate mail. The police investigated these incidents as hate crimes but learned that Mr. Stafford imagined them all. Police are now describing the case as “a domestic matter rather than a racial incident.” The college is considering how to discipline Mr. Stafford. (Todd Von Kampen, Hate-Crime Incident a Hoax, Omaha World-Herald, April 13, 2000, p. 15. Cops Say Student Lied About Threats, Las Vegas Sun, April 12, 2000.)

In 1997, Tonica Jenkins, a black woman, was in the graduate program in neurobiology at Yale University. She had a full scholarship with living expenses, thanks to good grades and glowing recommendations from Cuyahoga Community College and Central State University, both in Ohio. She failed to take the exams for her courses, claiming illness. Yale became suspicious and found she forged her transcripts and had never earned her bachelor’s degree. She pleaded guilty to larceny and forgery, but in 1998 she missed a court appearance, claiming she had been abducted, raped, and stuffed in the trunk of her car. A judge didn’t believe her and sent her to prison. In the pokey she got into more trouble when she assaulted three guards who were escorting her to the shower. She also bit the finger of a guard who was trying to fingerprint her. Now she is out of jail on three years probation and is under orders to repay Yale $16,000. She is also to undergo psychological treatment. (Yale Imposter in More Trouble, AP, Aug. 6, 1999. Yale Scam-mer Must Repay Scholarship, Washington Post, April 7, 2000.)

In Berinsfield, in Oxfordshire, England, a 17-year-old mulatto claimed he was attacked by whites who sprayed him with gasoline and tried to burn him. The community erupted in indignation and the police went into high gear, assigning a large number of officers to the case under the direction of a senior investigator. They found that the attack was a hoax, and charged Chris Barton and two adult confederates with conspiracy to commit criminal deception. (Colin Blackstock, Three Held as Police Say Race Attack Bogus, News Unlimited (UK), April 13, 2000.)

Too Bad if You’re White

The final adjudication in the above cases will doubtless be rather different from what has happened to Brian Swetnam of Bowie, Maryland. In June, 1997, he and three other whites were outraged when black students at Bowie High School attacked a white student. They decided to burn crosses and Mr. Swetnam, a juvenile at the time, built three crosses in the back of the school for the others to burn. He then drove to Ocean City, Maryland, with the intention of establishing an alibi while the others committed the crime.

Mr. Swetnam pled guilty under federal hate crime laws, which apply when an act of racial intimidation occurs in certain public places, including schools. He also fell afoul of a federal law that requires a mandatory 10-year sentence if someone uses fire in connection with a federal felony, and has been sentenced to serve without possibility of parole. Bill Lan Lee of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice is delighted with the outcome: “This kind of racial intimidation will not be tolerated,” he says. “We remain deeply committed to vigorously investigating and prosecuting individuals who engage in this kind of behavior.”

Mr. Swetnam is said to have a record of racially-motivated offenses, but in this case he was a juvenile at the time, did not actually light the fire, and his crime was an expression of an idea, not an act of violence. He could have burned the flag with impunity, but for burning a cross he will do ten full years of hard time. (Press Release of U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Lynn A. Battaglia, Feb. 23, 2000.)

‘A Lot of Black Love’

In April, a crowd of 10,000 to 30,000 gathered in Biloxi, Mississippi, for Black Spring Break 2000. The revelers ignored official events such as concerts and sports and spent most of their time “cruising” along U.S. 90, which is one of only two major east-west highways on the Mississippi Coast. Cars were so backed up that even the police were sometimes immobilized. A convenience store owner ignored police suggestions that she close and saw her shop ransacked. “My bathrooms are ruined,” said Gwen Edwards. “I didn’t believe people would be mean and ugly.” Men stripped women and videotaped them. One man said blacks followed his wife into the bathroom and wanted to videotape her. At one point the crowd spotted a white woman and shouted “there’s a white girl, there’s a white girl” as they tore her clothes off, leaving her weeping. Some of the blacks complained about an oppressive police presence. According to one party-goer, “What you have here is a lot of black love.” (John DeSantis, Revelers Bring Party, Chaos to Streets of Biloxi, Sun Herald (Mississippi), April 16, 2000.)

Chaos in Daytona Beach

Last year blacks sued the Adam’s Mark hotel chain claiming it discriminated against them during the 1999 Black College Reunion in Daytona Beach. They claimed they got bad service and were made to wear wrist bands identifying them as hotel guests. As part of an $8 million settlement, the Florida Attorney General’s office is monitoring the hotel’s procedures to ensure that it sins no more.

Daytona Beach hosted the black reunion again this spring, and about 120,000 visitors came for what amounts to a weekend-long street party. Hotel personnel could take only minimal security measures because of the settlement, and before long blacks had taken the elevators to the top floors and refused to send them down. Two dozen sheriff’s deputies had to quell a near riot as more than 200 people milled angrily around the lobby waiting for elevators. Guests broke furniture and hotel workers had to collect mounds of garbage from elevators, hallways and the lobby. There was vomit and urine in the stairwells and the smell of marijuana wafted through the hotel. Adam’s Mark founder and CEO Fred Kummer was furious: “There is no way anyone is safe. There is no security, no access to do anything. Everything in this building is out of control . . . All I can do is stand around and watch it.”

NAACP spokeswoman Cynthia Slater knows why it all happened. “I think they were too afraid to do anything so they let them destroy the place just so they could say that [we] were wrong.” (Phil Long, Disputed Hotel Disturbance Caps Black Reunion, Miami Herald, April 3, 2000, p. 1B.)

Is There a Doctor in the State?

A group of about 400 foreign doctors, mostly Cubans and Nicaraguans, has badgered the Florida legislature into opening a back-door route to certification as physicians. They flunked the national examination all American doctors must pass, and then complained it was biased. Florida obligingly spent $2.4 million drafting and administering an easier test that would let them practice medicine only in Florida. Last May, about 250 took the test, and almost all failed. The Florida Department of Health then decided to water down the test further by taking out most of the science questions, translating the test into Spanish, and giving the doctors a special refresher course. Last November the doctors took the new exam — and 90 percent of them flunked again. What did the state decide to do? Water down the test yet again, and let the would-be doctors try again in May.

Ninety-five percent of foreign and American doctors pass the national exam on their first try. This group has failed that test and most have failed the twice-made-easier and translated-into-Spanish Florida test. Foreign doctors in Florida who passed the national test are afraid people will think they are no better qualified than this bunch of losers but the state seems determined to let them be doctors. (Susan Lundine, Docs Flunk, and Flunk Again, Orlando Business Journal, April 7-13, 2000.)

Regregation to the Rescue

The prison race wars continue. For three successive days, April 24 to 26, hundreds of black and Hispanic prisoners battled each other at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, California. More than 80 men — almost all black — were injured in the fighting, with one in critical condition. Several Hispanics smashed his head repeatedly against the floor, fracturing his skull. Hispanics outnumber blacks two-to-one, and some have a policy of going on the attack whenever they outnumber blacks in a dormitory by more than a 60:40 ratio.

There have been over 150 major race-related disturbances at the Pitchess facility, which houses more than 10,000 inmates in a sprawling, four-jail complex. This time the fighting was so bad guards finally decided to do something they have long resisted: segregate prisoners. As Sheriff’s Chief Taylor Moore-head explained, “it would be foolish to do anything but segregate,” but insisted it would be a temporary measure. (Jeffrey Gettleman, Racial Brawls Continue to Rock County Jails, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2000. Jeffrey Gettleman, Jail Inmates Segregated to Stem Riots, Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2000.)

A few days later, half a dozen mothers of black inmates spoke out in favor of the measure. “I know that people say segregation is not fair, whatever, whatever, but segregation is safer for our boys,” explained Ethel Fuqua. “Can you imagine how it feels to go and visit your son and see 43 stitches ‘cross his face?” asked Janice Cooper. Christopher Darden, who helped prosecute O.J. Simpson for murder, said he is considering suing the county for inadequate protection of black prisoners. “If it takes segregation, then that’s exactly what the sheriff should do,” he said. (Jeffrey Gettleman, Women Seek Segregation of Blacks in Castaic Jails, Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2000.)

Other states have the same problem. On April 25, a fight started at the Smith Unit in Lamesa, Texas, when a Hispanic inmate told a black to stop fondling himself in front of a female guard. This soon escalated into a riot involving 300 prisoners, in which inmates hacked at each other with garden tools. One person was killed, several critically injured, and a kitchen went up in flames before 300 guards managed to stop the riot. Whites stayed out of the fighting. (1 Dead, 31 Injured in Rioting at Prison, Washington Times, April 27, 2000, p. A6. UPI, One Dead, 31 Injured in Texas Prison Riot, April 26, 2000.)

In Oregon’s Snake River Correctional Institution a race riot put two guards in the hospital and did not stop until a guard fired a warning shot into the ground. The fighting began when a black sat down in a Hispanic area. (Michael Wilson, Gang Turf Dispute Sparks Snake River Inmate Uprising, The Oregonian, April 9, 2000.)

Africans A-comin’

This year about 18,000 African refugees will find new homes in America. Most are Ethiopians, Somalians and Nigerians fleeing tribal and civil wars. More than 300 will come to Nashville, Tennessee, which already has anywhere from 9,000 to 20,000 African immigrants. Nashville has an African Chamber of Commerce, a “PanAfrica” association, and bars, shops and restaurants established by refugees.

In order to qualify as refugees, the head of each family must convince United Nations officials that they will be persecuted if they stay put. But once a household gets the nod, strangers often rush to join the family. In Kenya, so many phony brothers and sisters were appearing that officials had to stop posting public interview schedules because this gave people time to buy or bully their way into promising families. In Nashville, relief agencies have struggled to find outsized housing for huge families only to watch most of the “family” disappear without a trace.

Once they are here, frauds can be deported but in countries with no family records it is hard to prove who is related to whom. Mooncalves just smile at fraud. “I don’t feel betrayed or mad about it at all,” says Holly Johnson who is director of Refugee and Immigration Services for Catholic Charities. “I feel sad they want to get out.”

The US government pays for relocation to America, and private charities offer many additional services, but beneficiaries aren’t always grateful. “I found that we are really the victims of discrimination, first as a black person and second as a foreigner,” says Bekele Gebre who could not get work as a journalist or economist and must now drive a taxi. (Monica Whitaker, Nashville Becoming Haven for African Immigrants Who Lie to Gain Entry, Nashville Tennessean, March 26, 2000.)

Back to the Jungle

Samuel Brown is a Mandingo tribesman who fought in the Liberian army during the civil war nearly ten years ago. In 1996 he arrived in New Zealand on a false passport and applied for refugee status but was turned down. He appealed the decision, but in February was ordered back to Liberia. The Refugee Status Appeals Authority reported that Mr. Brown has admitted taking part in war atrocities:

‘The strategy was to surround a village and to take the civilian population alive. The objectives (apart from the eradication of non-Mandingo tribes-people) were to loot the village and to kill the captives by cutting out their hearts while they were still alive. The hearts would then be eaten and the victims blood drunk.’ Mr. Brown and his friends sometimes took captives back to camp for ritual killing. He says he ate plenty of hearts and drank plenty of blood, including those of a pregnant woman and her child.

Mr. Brown’s New Zealand wife of 6½ months, Eliza Nganwoo, is appealing the deportation order. She says hubby made up the cannibalism stories because he thought they would improve his chances of being admitted as a refugee. He “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she explains. (Rebecca Walsh, Blood-Drinking Soldier Told He Must Leave NZ, New Zealand Herald, April 19, 2000.)

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to address the American Renaissance conference in April. I had hardly any time in the US, but the time I did manage to spend there was well worth the effort. The hotel was buzzing with ideas and serious intellectual debate.

The crude and inconsistent attempts to prevent me from attending, the sort of pressure, which, I am certain, would emphatically not have been applied had I been addressing an American audience on the evils of “institutionalized racism” in Britain, have badly shaken my confidence in the commitment of British universities towards freedom of speech.

I had a lot of support from students and from others outside, most notably the editor and readers of [the British magazine] Right Now, but not a single member of the faculty at my own university expressed any support. Granted, many do not share my views on multiculturalism and feminism — publicly at any rate — but none seems to be aware that a university administration that can use bureaucratic and administrative measures to silence and intimidate me can use the same measures against them. An attack on my academic freedom is manifestly an attack on theirs. Were they just too cowardly to stand up and be counted?

On a positive note, the support I received from all those at American Renaissance and elsewhere in the US who wrote to the university administration on my behalf was inspiring. I thank you all. My only regret was that I had insufficient time to discuss a whole range of issues with the conferees and thank people personally.

As an Englishman concerned about the fate of the West, I support the aims of AR and all the other like-minded North American defenders of Western Civilization. If we do not defend our culture, language, history and traditions, who will? It is about time that we in Britain woke up to the dangers facing us and started to fight the good fight.

Prof. Frank Ellis, Leeds, UK

---

Sir — I am writing to congratulate you on the success of the American Renaissance conference. The speakers were uniformly excellent, and I hope some of the speeches will be reprinted in AR.

Daniel Kelley, Chicago, Ill.

---

Sir — American Renaissance is a great periodical but I disagree with the implication of the “O Tempora” item on page 16 of the May 2000 issue called “Presidential Leadership.” There is one point on which I tend to agree with Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president. Wrong as he may be about everything else, I think he is right when he says AIDS is a political issue, not a health issue.

AZT is a dangerous, even lethal, drug. It was developed in 1964 by Jerome Horowitz as a cancer treatment but killed patients and was abandoned. It was resuscitated with the help of the drug company Burroughs-Wellcome. It does not cure HIV carriers — it kills them. HIV is found in a fraction of the world’s healthy population and, if untreated, the carrier is likely to die of old age. Thabo Mbeki and his spokesmen know what they are talking about when they speak of “the mysteries” of the virus.

The best source of information about this is Dr. Peter Duesberg’s book Invent ing the AIDS Virus. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor of molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Name Withheld, Miami, Fla.

---

Sir — Michael Levin offers an effective rebuttal to Randal Robinson’s claim that whites owe blacks. Whites are already paying “reparations” in taxes and affirmative action. Prof. Levin could have further strengthened his case by listing the fruits of civilization blacks enjoy, thanks to whites.

Dr. Arthur White, Tiger, Ga.

---

Sir — I disagree completely with Melinda Jelliby’s April article “Don’t Write Off The Liberals.” She may indeed be one of those rare birds, a racially-conscious white liberal. However, I am under no illusions that there will ever be significant numbers of them.

In her article Miss Jelliby mentions prominent liberals/socialists who had racially conscious views. The problem is that virtually all her examples are from the late 19th century or early 20th century. The current crop of liberals are a different breed. For the most part they are trendy featherbrains who believe whatever the media or education establishment tells them. These institutions are firmly in the hands of our enemies. Miss Jelliby implies that we are excluding liberals, but this is not true. They can join us any time, but won’t because it is not trendy. I can think of no strategy that would make our movement more appealing to them. They will not flock to our side until there is some catastrophic event like a racial civil war, and by then it may be too late.

Name Withheld, Milwaukee, Wisc.

***
• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

Help Wanted!

AR is looking for an assistant editor to work in our Virginia office. The ideal candidate writes well, has a strong commitment to what we stand for, understands computers, and knows something about running an office.

Please send your resume to:

2717 Clarkes Landing
Oakton, VA 22124