American Renaissance magazine
Vol 11, No. 11	November 2000

 

CONTENTS

The New Nationalist Music
White Nationalist Lyrics
Birth Rates: Who is Winning the Race?
The Clamor for Reparations
Hate Crimes 101 (Video Review)
Letter From Zimbabwe
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The New Nationalist Music

Adolescent rebellion or racial commitment?

by Eric Owens

Popular music has had a heavy, leftist overlay since at least the 1950s. Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan made protest a central part of their message, and performers who are not as explicitly political continue to give popular music an unmistakably lefty slant. Like Hollywood, the recording industry has had a deliberately corrosive effect on every sentiment and tradition healthy nationalism requires. This is still true for most commercially successful performers but there is a growing musical subculture that reflects something entirely different: a resurgence of patriotism, national identity, and even racial consciousness. The mainstream media and the music press have carefully avoided publicizing this trend, but it is growing so quickly below ground that it cannot help occasionally breaking the surface.

What kind of music is this? Who are the performers? Is this just adolescent rebellion or do white power bands reflect real racial commitment? Most people have heard about skinheads but very few know about Apocalyptic Folk, NR, or Black Metal music. I have been part of this movement myself — first as a fan, later as an active performer — and believe I can report with some authority on a phenomenon nonparticipants are not likely to understand.

The skinhead movement began in England in the late 1960s when young people emerging from the Mod (short for Modern) youth culture followed the lead of rock groups such as The Who, and wore Mod clothing draped in the Union Jack. Skinheads took most of the Mod style — Doctor Marten boots, short hair cuts, patriotism, a penchant for scooters, loud music, and violence — and carried it even further.

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s the skinheads were, for the most part, non-ideological toughs, known for football hooliganism (rioting at soccer games) and Paki-bashing (beating up Pakistani or Indian immigrants). Among the first skinhead bands were Slade and Dexy’s Midnight Runners, the latter to become known for their international hit “C’mon Eileen.”

By the mid- to late 1970s the skin-heads were beginning to become politicized, and were welcomed by the Young National Front, the official youth wing of the National Front, which started enthusiastically promoting skinhead music. By the 1980s the term skinhead was firmly associated with nationalist groups like the National Front and the British National Party. There is still some association between skinheads and the British National Party, but the decline of the once-powerful National Front was due, at least in part, to a falling out with the musicians, who had been some of the party’s best youth recruiters.

It was during this period of political activism that a new skinhead-specific music movement took shape. This movement was called Oi! which was the Cockney word for “Hey!” and was a kind of white working-class battle cry for musically-oriented skinheads. It was by means of this music that skinhead politics went international. Thus, through the 1980s and 1990s, the movement was no longer associated specifically with England, but with disaffected white youth worldwide. By the 1990s, Oi! had largely faded in favor of even more racially charged music styles such as RAC (Rock Against Communism/Capitalism) and Hate Core (the latter being mostly an American phenomenon.) The most popular skin-head bands today are Skrewdriver, (England) Brutal Attack, (England) and Bound for Glory (USA).

Another less well known but highly influential development of the early 1980s National Front-era of British-turned-pan-European music is what is called Apocalyptic Folk. This movement draws less aggressive and often more intellectual audiences, and grew up around a little-known London-based punk band called Crisis. Tony Wake-ford, who had left Crisis to form a National Front band calledAbove the Ruins, rejoined Crisis bandmate Douglas Pearce in 1981. The group changed its name to Death in June, began to dabble in openly Nazi imagery, and started a movement.

Death in June began recording songs about the catastrophic effects of the Second World War on Europe and the decline of Western Civilization. Songs like “Death of the West” and “We Drive East” lamented the devastating conflict between Russia and Germany that ended the war, and the lack of honor, discipline, and high standards in modern European institutions. It is highly reflective music, mixing modern and medieval folk with more modern electronic sounds.

Besides Death in June, the biggest bands in this genre are Sol Invictus (Latin for Unconquerable Sun, a name for the Persian God Mithras revered by Roman soldiers), and Strength Through Joy (Ireland). Death in June and Strength Through Joy recently drew a crowd of 600 at the historic El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, to the dismay of the media and despite leftist threats.

A more recent form of music has sprung up around the French National Front. It is called NR music (short for Nationale révolutionaire). While its roots are in the Italian right’s Alternative Music from the 1970s, it has really begun anew in France with the help of National Front radio programs such as “Radio Courtoisie.” These bands avoid overtly racial themes, preferring to concentrate on the French Nationalist struggle. This music, also known as Rock identitaire (Identity Rock) often has a more pop-rock sound. These groups often work French medieval songs into their sets, a practice common in National Romantic movements the world over. The leading bands of this type are Ile de France, Vae Victus, and In Memoriam.

Yet another genre that has surfaced more recently is Black Metal. As its name suggests, it evolved from Heavy Metal. This movement didn’t really take off until the 1990s, and has just begun to go global, but is now one of the fastest growing underground music movements. From the beginning, Black Metal was a backlash against mainstream music. It sneered at the mainstream music industry’s watered down, effeminate rock musicians, and its performers tried to put a violent manliness and aggression back into rock music.

When Black Metal began in Norway it was openly Satanic, but has matured over the past several years. It is no longer so concerned with shock value, and has developed an ideology that has taken a hard turn to the right. Beginning with the bands Burzum (its name is a made-up word from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkein and signifies eternal darkness) and Dark Throne, the movement has traded in much of its alarming Satanism for aggressive nationalism, racial consciousness, and a celebration of Norse culture.

Like the Apocalyptic Folk bands, it is now quite common for Black Metal bands to include traditional folk songs on their albums. The cover art on their CDs is of traditional statues, artifacts, and nature scenes from the native countryside. Varg Vikarness, lead singer of Burzum has been chided by the music press for his unabashed racial statements, and violent nationalistic rhetoric.

Aside from ideology, an important development in this music has been its turn towards a medieval folk sound. One leading band, Ulver, known for fast, aggressive guitar and unearthly shrieking vocals, recently released a completely acoustic CD with medieval chorus, flutes, and classical guitar, in an amazing show of virtuosity that rivals any classical CD.

Storm, a group that broke away from Dark Throne, describes itself in its premier CD as National Romantic Music. This CD celebrates the glory of Norway and of Norse culture, including proud chants of “Hail Norway!” in its own brand of neo-traditional, folk-influenced, heavy-metal music. Half the songs are Norwegian folk tunes, played electrically and aggressively. This has been a very influential CD, with new bands such as Sweden’s Vintersorg imitating this medieval-operatic heavy-metal style. The leading racial Black Metal bands are Graveland, Veles, and Gontyna Kry.

While MTV would lead us to believe that young people want nothing but self-indulgence, tens of thousands of aggressively patriotic and racially conscious CDs are sold every year on independent record labels — without any mainstream publicity. Some of these sentiments have occasionally appeared above-ground.

Until just a few years ago, the Englishman, known only by his performing name “Morissey” and former front man of The Smiths, was topping charts all over the world. That was until the 1992 release of possibly his best-produced, most well thought out and musically advanced CD to date, “Your Arsenal.” On this CD Morissey voiced concern for the future of his country with songs like “National Front Disco,” and there are clearly nationalist sentiments throughout the album. The same British press that used to fawn over him quickly dubbed him a fascist and consigned him to worldwide obscurity.

Some may remember the Swedish group Ace of Base whose CD “The Sign,” released in 1994, was the number-one selling album in the world. At the height of its popularity, with multiple hits to its credit, it came out that founding member Ulf Eckberg had a history as a racial activist in Sweden. While Madonna, and even nonentities like Cher continue to churn out uninspiring CDs for decades and get endless air play, a racially-conscious past guarantees any musician, no matter how talented, a one-CD career.

The rock group Ultima Thule from Sweden recently had a number-one hit on the Swedish charts, by electrifying and performing an Oi! version of the Swedish national anthem, “Du Gamla Du Frig.” This chart-topper got Swedish youth tapping their toes to their national anthem and brought the Swedish flag and the Thor’s Hammer pendant back into vogue until a smear-by-association campaign ended a short-lived but highly successful musical career. Critics discovered that Ultima Thule used to be on a white power record label from Germany called Rock-O-Rama, and had appeared on a white power compilation called “No Surrender!” along with British National Front bands such as Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, and Above the Ruins. On their own albums Ultima Thule had never mentioned non-whites or used racial slurs.

The German group Böhse Onkelz (the Evil Uncles) hit number two on the German charts, and suddenly disappeared from view just like Morissey, Ace of Base, and Ultima Thule after the discovery of similar past associations. In the United States as well, Time Warner dropped the heavy metal band Morbid Angel shortly after the lead singer expressed certain views publicly.

A couple of fairly mainstream American heavy metal bands have narrowly escaped the media blacklist, largely because they’ve not quite reached superstar status. Pantera, possibly one of the biggest and longest-running heavy metal bands in America got into trouble when singer Phil Anselmo sported a T-shirt emblazoned with the three-pronged symbol of the South African Afrikaner Resistance Movement during an MTV interview. Mr. Anselmo also went on a couple of racial tirades from stage while on tour, but with a lot of back peddling he was able to save his career.

A group called Type O-Negative, has been made to answer a lot of questions about some extremely racially provocative songs they recorded previously under the name Carnivore. Unlike most bands,Type O-Negative offered no apologies and still enjoys as much success as its talents merit.

Not so lucky was the well-known heavy metal performer Glen Danzig. He expressed racial views publicly in magazine interviews, and even went so far as to record a song called “White Devil Rise!,” which he later declined to release on CD. He was dropped from American Records shortly afterwards.

Finally, the old standby, Ted Nugent, hardly a representative of any New Right youth movement, was recently threatened by the League of United Latin American Citizens for declaring that anyone in America who doesn’t speak English should leave. Mr. Nugent also made no apologies.

Thugs or Thinkers?

So what do we have here: a bunch of drunken thugs out to shock their parents or a thriving underground of racially-conscious young people making and listening to their own brand of exploratory music? Both, really. Something people must understand about these movements is that they are meant to shock. They are rebellions and draw rebellious young people. Many of their followers will never straighten out their lives no matter what kind of music they like. They were corrupted by MTV, bad parents, and a miserable public school system long before our music reached them. We can’t expect more from the average skinhead than we can from the average white American of any kind.

The importance of these movements is that they offer ideas to many middle-class whites who may simply be passing through a period of teenage rebellion — ideas to which they might not otherwise be exposed. I myself was brought into racial consciousness through the skinhead movement and through music in particular. When today’s teenagers go on to college or a career many will hold on to the ideas they picked up during their rebellious youth. Just as the corrupt ideology of the drug-filled hippie and communist movements of the 1960s did not fade away, but instead moved quietly into positions of power, one can already distinguish the rise of an intellectual and successful youth elite in the racial movement in America. These are not people who would have joined the Klan in the 1960s or 1970s, and I believe they will be able to give far better racial leadership than they ever received.

There are also benefits for the more mediocre fans who will never amount to much. They learn to take pride in their race, not to miscegenate, not to take drugs (though there is much drinking of alcohol), and not to practice abortion. Outsiders have no idea how militantly the overwhelming majority of skinheads follow these rules. So, while these music cults may not be Ph.D. training camps, they are the one organized means today of fostering racial consciousness in young whites. For the worst among them, it also offers a life without drugs, and for those who will be more successful it lays the groundwork for a racial worldview that will guide them through life. These young people have a fierce and troubled appearance, but ideologically they are much better off than the average teenager.

However unpleasant much of this music may sound to the older generations, it reaches the MTV generation in a way that books do not. It is all very well for their racially conscious elders to write carefully-footnoted research papers about immigration or IQ, but they have been doing this for years with few results.

The older generation complains about the biased media but the skinheads and other youth cults have succeeded where their elders have failed: They have created their own media. With glossy color magazines like Resistance and slickly packaged, well produced recordings, they have completely cut the mainstream music industry out of the picture. So, while we complain about the state of our media, and continue to give money to Time Warner they give a large amount of their entertainment budget to a pro-white industry owned by pro-white organizations.

Even its most hostile detractors must recognize the powerful appeal of this new music. It has become widespread despite the fact that in Europe and Canada it is illegal to express certain racial ideas, and you can get fines and jail sentences for possession of these CDs. In Germany, France, and many other European countries, white power CDs are treated as contraband, just like drugs. Customs officials confiscate packages with addresses from known white power distributors or directed to suspected European distributors. Police routinely raid the homes of young people they think are selling these CDs. People caught with what is judged to be a commercial quantity get fines up to the equivalent of $10,000 for the first offense, and may be jailed at the court’s discretion. Young people will not take risks of this kind to distribute books by Philippe Rushton or Arthur Jensen.

The entertainment industry is profitable. Because the mainstream media will not touch white racial consciousness, it means that this important source of funds stays entirely within our movement. For whatever it’s worth, the Anti-Defamation League’s estimate of the annual revenues of Resistance Records is one million dollars. And Resistance is just one of many magazines and record labels around the world.

Today’s huge media corporations promote black performers who encourage drug-taking, violent abuse of women, murder, and hatred of whites while they vilify any white who dares sing about love of country and culture, or respect for veterans, the elderly, women, family, children, hard work, and racial heritage. The media and the music industry have succeeded in turning morality on its head. Racially-conscious music could help set things straight again.

Eric Owens is a Los Angeles-based Celtic folk musician and poet.

ARTICLE

White Nationalist Lyrics

The following lines from some of the bands mentioned in this article contrast sharply with the sentiments expressed by rap groups and widely promoted by the entertainment industry (see AR May, 2000, and July, 2000).

God save queen and country,
So once again, we can run free,
And raise our flag! Hang it high,
And with it will fly our English pride!
“Take a Better Look,” Brutal Attack

It’s a time when our old people cannot walk the streets alone.
They fought for this nation. Is this all they get back?
They risked their lives for Britain, and now Britain belongs to aliens.
It’s about time that the British went and took their Britain back!
“Voice of Britain,” Skrewdriver

400 men surrounding a cabin,
In the land of the free. Tell me how can this happen,
Murdering women and children in the name of humanity.
Who are the true masters of hate,
A separatist family or a police state?
Tell me, who would you brand the public enemy?”
“Judgment Day,” Bound for Glory

He went looking for Europe. He took love in his hand
With eyes of sunlight, like burning sand.
He went to the west. He rode to the east.
He heard of life and honour, and looked in the eyes of the beast.
He stood in a city, in the gold house of whores.
He said I’m looking for Europe. Then you’re looking for war!
He sat in the throne of Arthur, and held Boadicea’s sword,
Kissed the flags of the great, beneath the towers so tall.
He stood on the hillside, where the eagles still fly.
He said I’m looking for Europe. Then be ready to cry.
We walked to the forest, to the lair of the wolf.
He said I’m looking for Europe. I’ll tell you the truth.
Some find it in a flag, some in the beat of a drum,
Some with a book, and some with a gun,
Some in a kiss, and some on the march,
But if you’re looking for Europe, you’d best look in your heart.
“Looking for Europe,” Sol Invictus

Here we go again,
the same old lies again,
the empty words again,
the pigs can fly again.
From Wall Street to your heart,
neon Hollywood lights the dark.
Hear the bleating of the sheep,
at the jokes of a media creep.
“Media,” Sol Invictus

The gods looked down and they sighed.
The gods looked down and wondered why
That like the flowers, we bloom and die,
That however strong our arms, we let our hands be tied.
Why we build great walls, but for our sins,
We open up the gates and let the assassins in.
The gods looked down and they sighed.
The gods looked down and they cried
For the ruins that once stood tall,
For we slaves that once ruled all.
“The Gods Looked Down,” Sol Invictus

Dresden burning in the night
Coventry is still alight.
Above the blood, the pain, and fire,
There rose a sigh. We’re ruled by liars!
She took me from the village square,
Through fields the color of her hair,
Where arrows crossed point to the sky,
Where fathers, brothers, and lovers lie.
She stopped and turned to look at me,
But only sorrow, no hate I see.
She said to me Please, and all you others,
No more wars amongst brothers!”
“Fields,” Death in June

They’re making the last film, they say it’s the best,
And we all helped make it. It’s called the Death of the West.
The kids from Fame will all be there, free Coca-Cola for you,
and all the monkeys from the zoo. Will there be extras, too?
A star is rising in our northern sky,
And on it we’re crucified.
A chain of gold is wrapped around this world.
We’re ruled by those who lie.”
“Death of the West,” Death in June

We will never hide from our obligation.
We will lay down our lives for our race and nation.
The red, white and the blue is flying overhead.
With true undying loyalty to victory we are lead.
“Red, White and Blue,” Brutal Attack

Your honor stands unbroken.
Your swords point the way,
We’ll meet you once again, on heroes day.
“Heroes Day,” Sol Invictus

ARTICLE

Birth Rates: Who is Winning the Race?

Nations are made in the maternity ward.

by Anthony Brown

The demographics of the future depend on the birth rates of today. Who is having children in America? In March the government released complete statistics on the 3,941,553 births registered in 1998. We also have preliminary figures for 1999, but they indicate little change since 1998.

Since 1980, the government has recognized four races: white, black, American Indian, and Asian/ Pacific Islander. In 1989, the government began distinguishing ethnicity: Hispanic and non-Hispanic, both of which “can be of any race.” The vast majority of Hispanics are classified as “white,” so reports often provide data for “non-Hispanic whites,” which include North Africans, Middle Easterners, and (in most states) people from the Indian subcontinent. In the statistics that follow, “white” includes all these people in addition to Europeans but does not include Hispanics.

To summarize the 1998 birth statistics: 1) non-whites are out-breeding whites by a considerable margin, and 2) as a nation, we have an increasingly careless attitude towards childbearing, as shown by unprecedented levels of illegitimacy and teenage births.

Family Values?

In 1998, 1,293,567 births — nearly one in three — were to unmarried women. The graph on the left shows blacks had the highest illegitimacy rate, an astonishing 69.3 percent. The government report also tells us that 90.1 of every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women — nearly one in ten — had a child. This was the lowest rate reported since 1990, but was still more than three times the white rate. Seven percent of unmarried black women had children.

Twenty-two percent of the women who gave birth in 1998 had not finished high school and only 23 percent were college graduates. Forty-nine percent of the 700,000 Hispanic women who gave birth in 1998 hadn’t finished high school, compared to 13 percent for whites. The median educational level for all mothers was 12.9 years. The graph below shows the percentage of college-educated mothers in each race.

Five percent of all American teenagers gave birth in 1998. The next graph shows the white teenage birthrate was lowest, at 3.52 percent. Nearly one in ten Hispanic girls aged 15-19 had babies in 1998.

Despite this high teenage pregnancy rate, the median age for a mother’s first child has increased from 22.0 years in 1972 to 24.2 years. Whites in particular, are paralleling a European trend; as women enter the work force, they wait longer to have children, and have fewer children. Because non-whites start having children at a younger age than whites, they have shorter generations, which is an added factor in population differentials.

The Health of Infants

Premature birth and low birth weight (LBW) suggest the likelihood of medical problems in infants. In 1998, 17.6 percent of black babies completed fewer than 37 weeks of gestation, compared with 11.4 percent of Hispanics and 10.2 percent of whites. These figures do not take into account the fact that blacks have a slighter shorter gestation period that whites.

In 1998, 7.6 percent of all babies were born weighing less than 5.5 pounds, which is considered a dangerously low weight. The graph below shows LBW by race. The median birth weight for “white” babies, including Hispanics, is 7 lb, 8 oz; for black babies, it is 7 lb, 1 oz.

Babies are more likely to have LBW when their mothers smoke, and the graph above shows that this is overwhelmingly a white problem. Twelve percent of the babies of mothers who smoke have low birth weight, as opposed to only 7.2 percent of babies whose mothers do not smoke. White babies have the lowest LBW rates despite the large number of smokers smoke. If white mothers stopped smoking, the racial differences would be even greater.

Of roughly four million births in 1998, 2,361,462 babies were to whites, 593,127 to blacks, and 734,661 to Hispanics. For now, whites are having more children than the black and Hispanic populations combined. However, the 70 percent of the population that is white is producing only 60 percent of the next generation, and both those figures are declining.

As of 1998, the total fertility rate — the number of children the average American woman will have during her life — was 2.06. Because more boys than girls are born, and because some number of children do not survive to reproductive age, the total fertility rate must reach 2.1 for a population to sustain its numbers. The US rate has been below “replacement level” since 1971, when it was 2.27. Our population grows despite this because of immigration.

The large graph below shows total fertility rates for different American groups. For whites, the 1998 level was 1.84, well below replacement level. The Asian rate is only slightly higher. Interestingly, Hispanics of different origins have widely varying total fertility rates, with the Cuban rate even lower than the white rate.

Changes in fertility rates have dramatic consequences. In 1998, 150,000 fewer white American babies came into the world than in 1989. From 1990 to 1997 the white birth rate (defined as the percentage of women who gave birth) declined 9 percent, continuing a trend that dates back to the mid-1950s. In 1955, whites had 113.7 births per 1,000 females aged 15-44, slightly higher than the present Mexican-American birth rate. Today, the birth rates of Amerinds, Asians/ Pacific Islanders, and whites are all below replacement level. However, in 1998 as well as in years past, the rate has been well above replacement for Hispanics and blacks. The graph below shows birthrates for America’s three main racial groups.

According to May, 2000, census estimates — generally thought to be accurate — the white population (including Arabs, Middle-Easterners, etc.) is now 71.4 percent, followed by blacks at 12.2 percent, Hispanics at 11.7 percent, Asians at 4.1 percent, and Amerinds at 0.6 percent. The median ages of these racial groups tells an important story. For whites the median age is 38.4 years; for Asians 32.3 years, blacks 30.5 years, Amerinds 28.4 years, and 26.6 years for Hispanics. Since the white population is relatively old and producing relatively few babies, it is aging rapidly.

Because of immigration and birthrate differentials, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that with middle-level immigration whites will be a minority in this country by the year 2060, not even a century after President Johnson opened the doors to non-white immigration. At that time, in 1965, the country was close to 90 percent white. Although this projection distinguishes whites from Hispanics, it still includes Arabs, Middle-Easterners, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and other non-Europeans.

Anthony Brown lives in Washington, DC.

ARTICLE

The Clamor for Reparations

A black woman explains why the push is on now.

by Elizabeth Wright

Several bills on reparations for slavery have been floating around the House of Representatives for at least a decade. I have been receiving the literature of various advocates for reparations for years, and at one time it seemed the movement would die under its own lack of steam.

However, lately, black elites have decided to speed up action on this legislation. Why? Because it has finally dawned on them that they won’t have Whitey to kick around for much longer. They have begun to listen to President Clinton’s gushing predictions about how the coloreds will dominate in just a few years. If the figures are right, this means Hispanics will be holding most key positions. It means that easily-manipulated whites, who make it so clear they will capitulate to any black demand, must be squeezed now.

Would any group other than fearful whites even consider dumping millions of dollars on blacks because of some past grievance? Will Hispanics have the patience to listen to sob stories about slavery and Jim Crow? Black elites are beginning to wonder about the color composition of Congress in future years, and they’ve got to get all the goodies they can while the compliant white man is still in charge.

Many white nationalists are keenly aware of what is going on. Is it any wonder they are full of rage, as they watch the country of their ancestors being raped over and over again? Is it any wonder they grow furious as they watch compliant whites, who simply want to keep the peace with blacks, give away the store? Whites who vigorously protest outrageous capitulations to blacks and to other “aggrieved” groups are denigrated and called, if not “racists,” then “white separatists” — as if either of these were not constitutional options. The general population is reminded again and again of how “hateful” such whites are. Nobody asks these dissident whites for their advice on social or political issues, so why should they quietly accept extortion, shakedowns and con games?

Now, you may ask why an American black cares about this issue in this way. Well, there are quite a few of us out here who never wanted to be ruled by the creatures who usurped leadership from the decent blacks — blacks who had no desire for forced integration, but just wanted fair treatment under the Constitution. Such blacks had no intention of undermining constitutional law and never dreamed of trampling on the religious or social sensibilities of white Americans. Nobody asked me or my kind of black if we wanted to be ruled by the NAACP. This is why I understand the fury of the white nationalists; I share their rage.

I have ceased to be stunned by the transformation of whites that has happened over so short a period of time — just 30-odd years, actually. It is hard to believe that any of today’s whites are actually descended from those fierce, tough men who traveled thousands of miles into the unknown, saw a land they wanted, and took it. Then they went on to form for themselves and their progeny an amazing system in which the people, not monarchs, would be in charge. It took the ability to be mean and even cruel when necessary, because they were men and they understood how the real world works.

Because today’s Western white man has forgotten the basic rules of how the world works, he is coming swiftly to his demise. The coloreds are soon going to remind him about those rules, but even if the white man awakens momentarily, it will be too late to reverse the downward spiral that, through his weakness, he has set in motion. It’s a sad scene to observe.

The media and academia are escalating the negrification of American culture and the feminization of its men, while teaching new generations to care more about strangers in foreign lands than for their own. Where can this possibly lead? Black elites now see power on the horizon that they never dreamed possible, and they’re going to go for it all. The real culture war is just getting under way, and so many whites do not even realize it. What I’d give for such a sheltered existence!

Miss Wright is the editor of Issues and Views. This text has been adapted, with the author’s permission, from a private exchange with a white person sympathetic to black demands for reparations.

BOOK REVIEW

Hate Crimes 101

‘Teaching’ police about hate crimes.

Responding to Hate Crimes: A Police Officer’s Guide to Investigation and Prevention, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2000, 20-min. videotape

reviewed by James P. Lubinskas

Recently, a few mainstream conservatives have begun to wonder if there is a double standard for hate crimes. Paul Weyrich and Richard Poe, writing respectively in the Washington Times and on Frontpagemag.com, have noted the obvious: The media ignore black-on-white hate crimes but give massive coverage to white-on-black hate crimes. As Jared Taylor wrote in “The Color of Death” in the September issue, the press has its own reasons for this, but there is evidence the police are being trained to the same double standard.

Responding to Hate Crimes is a 20-minute training video produced by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, an agency within the Department of Justice. Two booklets come with the video: a police officer “pocket guide” to the video and an instructor’s guide. These materials are the official DOJ word on investigating hate crimes, and police agencies around the country have received more than 14,000 sets. What are police being taught?

The video is narrated by Joseph Carter, Vice Chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Civil Rights Committee and Chief of Police for Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts. Chief Carter is black, which seems to be his main qualification as a specialist in hate crimes. He introduces 17 short dramatizations of hate crimes, in which thugs do such things as harass Third-World immigrants, taunt Asian shopkeepers, burn black churches, and deface synagogues. All the miscreants are whites (usually with shaved heads and giving ‘white power’ salutes), with the exception of two blacks who taunt an Asian shopkeeper. None of the victims is white. The video says homosexuals and even the handicapped can be hate crime targets but never mentions white victims.

Aside from these scenes, the video is essentially a review of basic police work. It reminds officers to secure the scene, ensure safety, identify evidence, and arrest perpetrators if there is enough evidence. Chief Carter mentions the need to get interpreters for non-English speaking victims — perhaps a signal for police to look more closely at crimes against non-white immigrants — but never suggests there might have to be interpreters for non-English speaking perpetrators. The video urges officers to help victims contact community support groups. Presumably, they send Hispanics to MALDEF or La Raza, blacks to the NAACP, and homosexuals to local activist groups. Where do they send white victims?

The instructor’s guide promotes the same biases. It lists questions officers are likely to ask, and offers answers for instructors. If a policeman says there are no hate crimes in his community, the instructor is to reply that they can happen anywhere:

The country’s experience in recent years underscores this point: James Byrd, Jr., an African-American man, was dragged behind a truck and killed in Jasper, Texas, a small, rural town; Matthew Sheppard, a gay student, was beaten and left to die on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming, a large college town; Ricky Birdsong, an African-American man, was shot to death in suburban Chicago by a man who had first shot at several Jewish men and boys and then at a Chinese-American couple; and Joseph Santos Ileto, a Filipino-American mail carrier, was shot to death in Los Angeles by a man who previously had opened fire at a Jewish community center. What police departments have found in communities like ours is that the lack of reported hate crimes often means that citizens are not reporting them or officers are failing to identify bias indicators — not that hate crimes never occur.

Needless to say, every perpetrator in this list is white. Somehow Reginald Denny and the people Colin Ferguson killed on the Long Island Rail Road don’t make the hate crimes hit parade. At one point the guide does concede there are anti-white hate crimes but says they are “far less common than hate crimes targeting persons of color.”

If someone asks whether hate crimes are ever hoaxes the official answer is:

Fabricated complaints occur but only very rarely. Police have found that victims often are reluctant to report hate crimes or even acknowledge that what appears to others to be a hate crime is, in fact, motivated by bias. The fear and isolation felt by hate crime victims more often leads to underreporting than to fabrication.

As Laird Wilcox has shown in his excellent monograph, Crying Wolf , hoaxes are far from rare.

The instruction guide concludes with three sample incidents to be used for discussion about how to identify and investigate a hate crime: a white drives his car across the lawn of a black family, two teenagers beat a man they think is homosexual, and an immigrant storekeeper has the windows in his shop broken. All perpetrators are understood to be white.

Reinforcing Bias

This video suggests the police and the media work to reinforce each other’s biases. Police are trained to assume hate crimes against whites are a minor problem, and they often appear reluctant to look for bias motivation when whites are victims. The media in turn downplay the few anti-white outrages the police report.

One result is that although hate crime laws theoretically protect whites they are rarely invoked against non-whites. In December, 1999, a black man forced a white woman into an alley at gunpoint, yelled racial slurs at her, punched her in the face and raped her. Police said it was not a hate crime. Last April, two blacks saw a white man with a black woman at a bar in New Jersey, and told the woman she should be with them instead. A surveillance camera caught them as they beat the white man unconscious, but this was not a hate crime either. Also in April, a black man slashed an eight-year-old white boy’s throat as he played in a residential neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia. Not only have the police been reluctant to pursue the incident as a hate crime, they deliberately withheld the fact that the black attacker yelled racial slurs as he killed the boy.

Despite this squeamishness about classifying anti-white crime as “hate,” the FBI’s 1997 statistics reported 1,629 black hate crime suspects as opposed to 5,344 “white” suspects (this number is artificially inflated by including Hispanic perpetrators, whose numbers are not known). Given that there are about six times as many whites as blacks in the United States, blacks are, on a per capita basis, twice as likely as whites to commit officially-recognized hate crimes.

The real number of anti-white hate crimes is probably much higher. Every year blacks commit about 1.5 million violent crimes against whites (including Hispanics), whereas whites (including Hispanics) commit only about 170,000 such crimes against blacks. If anti-white violence were scrutinized for bias as carefully as anti-black violence, the FBI’s figures would surely change substantially.

Needless to say, there is essentially no public scrutiny of the built-in biases in the way hate crimes are identified and reported. Without such scrutiny, neither the police nor the media are likely to change their ways.

“Responding to Hate Crimes” is free. Please call (800) 851-3420 to order a copy, and make sure to ask for the training guides as well.

ARTICLE

Letter From Zimbabwe

The World shows no interest when victims are white.

This is a letter from a white farmer in Zimbabwe, Cathy Buckle.

Dear family and friends,

Sorry for my silence and no letter last week. Aside from the fact that the telephone went down and the phone company was out on strike, we had reached the point where insanity was drawing frighteningly close so took ourselves off to Mana Pools for a few days to try and get our thoughts together and put things into perspective. We have now very reluctantly made the final decision to leave our farm and will spend the next few weeks (assuming we have that long) selling all the remaining livestock, disposing of mountains of farm related bits and pieces which have accumulated to alarming proportions and generally closing our operation down.

This has been an incredibly painful decision but perhaps for the best as the future of commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe seems to be drawing to a close. Sadly we are not alone in our decision; our immediate neighbor has already left his farm, another plans to leave within the next few months and a third has started winding down his operation as well. It seems without doubt that this was the ultimate aim of the war veterans — simply wear us down, cripple our operations, drive us to the edge of bankruptcy until we gave up and now they have won.

Insane as it may sound, I am going to attempt to put our farm on the market. We have still not been listed for compulsory acquisition, have still not received the dreaded Section 8 letter informing us of impending government takeover. An estate agent has first to apply to the government for a Certificate of No Interest [no liens or other encumbrances] and it will be interesting to see what happens when they try on our behalf.

Our squatters are now living permanently on the property, driving vehicles across the fields and felling the timber, stripping its bark and piling up great heaps of prime gum poles. We are absolutely helpless and I find it hard to describe the feelings that churn in my gut as I see trees that I planted with my own hands, pruned over the years, weeded and protected for all this time and now have to watch as they simply take them.

Last Saturday a great crowd of people gathered in our fields and waited for the arrival of the Zanu PF MP for Maron-dera East to arrive. The esteemed gentleman had apparently sent word that he would himself be sharing out our farm on that day, but as the day wore on and he didn’t arrive, people became restless. Finally a messenger came to say that the MP wouldn’t be coming, he had rolled his brand new government Pajero five times a few kilometers from here and was dead. It obviously took the locals a couple of days to work out the implications before they must have realized that this now means a by-election — back to square one with the intimidation, the rallies, the beatings and finally the voting.

Three days after the death of our MP, the youngster who pulled a gun on me some weeks ago moved onto our neighbor’s land, started felling the trees on their 300 acre plot and building himself a hut in their cattle paddock. Until now largely untouched by the W. V.’s, our neighbors in their 70s have now to endure the rape of their land for the third time. They lost everything in the Mau Mau in Kenya [the 1952 uprising against British settlers], lost everything again in Nyanga in the Zim war [guerrilla war for black rule] in 1980 and now it starts all over again. We all begin to feel more than a little like the Jews who were stripped of their human rights, property rights and then their lives in Nazi Germany.

We can only hope and pray that for us we can get off our land with our lives and can remain in the country of our birth and try and rebuild. Ethnic cleansing — such a strange term, how terrifying to be the victims of it. So now, for the first time in 10 years I am going to attempt to find a job — a scary prospect having been a boss for a decade. Even scarier the thought of living in a little box in a town, but after this six months of hell, even a smallholding has lost it’s appeal as perhaps those little pieces of land will be next on the list.

For Zimbabwe I weep. What is to become of her and her people when, by this time next year it won’t only be diesel and paraffin they are queuing for but bread, sugar, maize meal, meat, etc. etc. etc. There are now so many farmers doing what we are doing. Agriculture has become untenable, there is no end in sight, there is no one that seems able to quell this utter insanity. How very, very sad that it has come to this and to think of what it will be like in a few months from now.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Europe Speaks

Swiss voters have rejected a plan that would have limited the number of foreigners in their country to 18 percent. The “no” vote got 63.7 percent, and won a majority in all 26 Swiss cantons. This is the sixth time the Swiss have voted down referenda that would have restricted immigration. Foreigners are now about 19.3 percent of the population, a figure higher than in virtually any other European country. The Swiss cabinet and all mass media opposed the initiative, which was supported by only one of the four current government coalition members, the Swiss People’s Party. The government launched a major propaganda campaign against the measure, under the slogan “Xenophobia is un-Swiss.”

Interestingly, those who opposed the limits were not generally quoted as saying foreigners were good for Switzerland. Instead, they said the initiative would make Switzerland look “racist” or that it would encourage the allegedly growing neo-Nazi movement. [Alice Ratcliffe, Swiss Reject 18 Percent Foreigner Limit, Reuters, Sept. 24, 2000. Reuters, Swiss Papers Laud ‘No’ Vote to Limit on Foreigners, Sept. 25, 2000. Fiona Fleck, Swiss Voters Reject Cut in Number of Foreign Residents, Telegraph (London), Sept. 25, 2000.]

The Danes, on the other hand, have voted 53 to 47 to keep their own currency rather than adopt the Euro. Nationalist groups argued openly that the closer Denmark gets to other European countries the more immigrants it will get. The vote was a slap in the face to both the government and to all major media organs, which argued that Danes should give up the Krone. [T.R. Reid, Denmark Voters Reject Common EU Currency, Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2000, p. A1.]

In the meantime, the Vlaams Blok was poised for another electoral breakthrough in the October 8 municipal elections in Belgium. Its power is limited to Flanders, but it is already the biggest party in Antwerp, and has 22 of 130 seats in the Flemish federal parliament. The other parties have kept it out of power — just as they kept the French National Front out of power — only by bizarre coalitions specifically directed against it. The party was established only in 1978 but has since made gains in every election. A recent Miss Belgium has just signed up to help campaign.

The Vlaams Blok’s motto is Eigen Volk Eerst, which means “Our People First,” and it means it. The party would not just end immigration but reverse it. It would boot out illegal aliens immediately, and let legal aliens stay only if they met strict conditions. They would have to learn Flemish, know the country’s laws and history, and be approved by Flemish neighbors. Very few of the thousands of Turks and Moroccans who now live in Flanders could meet that test, and the party makes no secret it wants them out.

One of the party’s leaders, 37-year-old Filip Dewinter, adds that any foreigner who is unemployed for more than five months should have to leave. He notes that immigration is nothing more than “importing poverty,” and that immigrants have “ethnically cleansed” many neighborhoods of Flemings because of their crime and degeneracy. Mr. Dewinter makes a clear distinction between Europeans and non-Europeans and would grant amnesty only to the former. He accuses the current government of handing out citizenship “like confetti” so as to dilute the Vlaams Blok’s election results.

Within Belgium, the party wants separation from French-speaking Wallonia and eventual independence for Flanders, with Brussels as its capital. One of the first acts of an independent Flanders would be to expel thousands of European Union bureaucrats, who would be urged to set up their headquarters in Strasbourg, France. [Martin Fletcher, Support is Growing in Belgium for Filip Dewinter and His Far Right Vlaams Blok Party, Times (London), Sept. 14, 2000.]

The most dramatic European development, of course, has been the uprising in Serbia that ousted Slobodan Milosevic, the former Communist who had ruled Yugoslavia since the late 1980s. The great irony is that the new leader, Vojislav Kostunica, whom the United States and the rest of the West are treating like the new Messiah, is a nationalist who, at first blush, seems little different from Jörg Haider, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Filip Dewinter whom we are supposed to hate. In their enthusiasm, liberals are saying Mr. Kostunica is a “different kind of nationalist” whose sentiments do not threaten his neighbors — as if the National Front or the Vlaams Blok threatened their neighbors. Whatever happens, it is a choice moment to see Madeleine Albright gurgling happily over the victory of a man she would denounce as a threat to democracy if he had came to power in France or Germany. Economic sanctions are expected to be lifted soon.

Diversity in Libya

Libya’s oil wealth has attracted a large number of immigrants from black Africa, many of them illegal. They have not won the love of Libyans who, in late September and early October, rose up and started beating and, in some cases, killing them.

Simmering resentment reportedly came to a head when a business disagreement between Libyan and Nigerian drug dealers in the Gregarish area turned violent. This prompted race riots in several Libyan cities, including the capital Tripoli, in which any black appears to have been fair game. Libyans attacked blacks from Ghana, Gambia, and Chad as well as Nigerians, and on Sept. 26 an armed group attacked the embassy of Niger but were repelled by Libyan soldiers. The government responded to the chaos by rounding up thousands of blacks and putting them in a camp near Tripoli. The camp, built on a huge garbage dump, is reported to be miserable and overcrowded.

The Nigerian government’s reaction has been surprising. Presidential spokesman Doyin Okupe said thousands of Nigerian criminals living in Libya had become a burden to their host country, and conceded that some had killed Libyans. He explained that his country would bring them home: “Rather than allow them to continue to soil the good name of Nigeria and risk lives abroad, the government decided that they be brought back home to join hands with other compatriots and contribute their own quota to the current effort at nation building.” The first installment of 700 prodigals arrived back in Nigeria on October 2nd and 3rd, looking disheveled after as much as two weeks of internment in Libya.

Other black African countries are concerned. On October 4th an eight-member team from Ghana flew to Libya to investigate charges that several thousand Ghanaians had been attacked in the riots. Gambian officials were reported to be considering bringing home the estimated 1,000 Gambians now in Libya. [Federal Government to Repatriate Nigerians From Libya, This Day (Lagos, Nigeria), October 2, 2000. Repatriation of Nigerians in Libya Begins, Panafrican News Agency, October 4, 2000. Gambians Injured In Libya, Daily Observer (Banjul, Gambia), October 4, 2000.]

Deservedly So

McDonald’s Corporation and Coca-Cola have sponsored production of a packet of materials called Little Known Black History Facts, which they have mailed to 18,000 high schools all around the country. In the cover letter they write, “our hope is that this program will become a catalyst to saluting African American history throughout the school year.”

The packet consists of a slim pamphlet of 16 little-known facts, along with a slightly fatter teachers’ guide. We learn, for example, that: Peter Hill was born a slave but learned clock-making from his master, and one of his clocks is in the Smithsonian. “Peg Leg” Bates lost a leg in an accident but went on to become a popular tap dancer. Herman Petty was the first black to get a McDonald’s franchise (in 1968, in Chicago). Romare Bearden was born in 1912, became a collage artist and said, “art is the soul of the people.” The first American black to get a college degree was Alexander Twilight, who graduated from Middlebury College in 1823. Raymond Jones was a Harlem politician who supported Adam Clayton Powell and was known as “the Harlem fox.” The first “historically black college” was founded in Philadelphia in 1832 as the Institute for Colored Youth and is now called Cheyney State University. In his day, Marshall Taylor was the fastest bicyclist in the world and was the first black to win a national title in any sport (1898). Susie King Taylor, the army’s first black nurse, treated colored troops during the Civil War and wrote a book called My Life in Camp, etc. for a total of 16 facts. This stuff is, indeed, little known, and likely to stay that way.

The materials come with a poster that includes artists’ conceptions of nurse Taylor and clock-maker Hill, and a large picture of two fashionable, turn-of-the-century blacks doing the cakewalk, in which “dancers arched their necks and backs, stuck out their chests and behinds at the same time, and pranced with high steps like a drum major.” Although many American high school students can’t find Australia on a map or know who Joseph Stalin was, the teachers’ guide suggests such things as asking students to write and perform 10- to 15-minute skits about the subjects of these little-known facts and to participate in panel discussions about them.

The Power of Sentiment

Until recently Dan Ponder was a Georgia state legislator from a rural, conservative part of the state. Nine of his great-great-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy, and from Revolutionary times all his ancestors have lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. On March 16, 2000, he gave a speech in the statehouse in support of hate crimes legislation. This is excerpted from his speech:

There was one woman in my life that made a huge difference and her name was Mary Ward. She began working for my family before I was born. She was a young black woman whose own grandmother raised my mother. Mary, or May-Mar as I called her, came every morning before I was awake to cook breakfast, so it would be on the table. She cooked our lunch. She washed our clothes. But she was much more than that . . . She was never, ever afraid to discipline me or spank me. She expected the absolute best out of me, perhaps, and I am sure, even more than she did her own children. She would even travel with my family when we would go to our house in Florida during the summer, just as her own grandmother had done.

One day, when I was about 12 or 13, I was leaving for school. As I was walking out the door she turned to kiss me good-bye. And for some reason, I turned my head. She stopped me and she looked into my eyes with a look that absolutely burns in my memory right now and she said, ‘You didn’t kiss me because I am black.’ At that instant, I knew that she was right. I denied it. I made some lame excuse about it. But I was forced at that age to confront a small dark part of myself. I don’t even know where it came from. This lady, who was devoting her whole life to me and my brother and sister, who loved me unconditionally, who had changed my diapers and fed me, and who was truly my second mother, that somehow she wasn’t worthy of a good-bye kiss simply because of the color of her skin. Hate is all around us. It takes shape and form in ways that are somehow so small that we don’t even recognize them to begin with, until they somehow become acceptable to us.

It is up to us, as parents and leaders in our communities, to take a stand and to say loudly and clearly that this is just not acceptable. I have lived with the shame and memory of my betrayal of Mary Ward’s love for me. I pledged to myself then, and I re-pledged to myself the day I buried her, that never, ever again would I look in the mirror and know that I had kept silent, and let hate or prejudice or indifference negatively impact a person’s life, even if I didn’t know them.

This is why we must have hate crime laws.

Mid-East in Mid-Town

Gun battles that erupted in early October between Israelis and Palestinians over Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount have had echoes in increasingly diverse New York City. On October 4, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called a meeting of local Jewish and Arab leaders in an attempt to calm tension between the two groups after a series of attacks on Jews that appeared to reflect tensions overseas. Some of the attackers waved Palestinian flags, and police reported a handful of other incidents they thought were a reaction to mid-East violence. The mayor has stepped up police patrols around synagogues and Jewish schools. [Frankie Edozien, Rudy Urges Calm as Conflict Hits Home, New York Post, Oct. 4, 2000.]

Putting it in Black and White

Many American states, particularly in the South, included anti-miscegenation clauses in their constitutions. In 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that miscegenation was a right under the Constitution, thereby overturning prohibitions then in force in 16 states. Since then, some states have gone through the often cumbersome process of amending their constitutions but others have not. One of these is Alabama, where a Nov. 7 ballot proposal was to give citizens an opportunity to vote on a change. The offending clause is in section 102 of the constitution, written in 1901, which bars the legislature from enacting any law “to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a Negro or descendant of a Negro.” According to polls, 64 percent of voters favor changing the constitution, 19 percent oppose doing so, and 17 percent are undecided or do not plan to vote. [Bob Johnson, Ala. May Allow Interracial Marriage, AP, Oct. 4, 2000.]

Homosexuals Welcome

Albert Gore says homosexuals should have the same “marital” immigration rights as heterosexuals. In other words, a foreign homosexual who is party to a “civil union” with an American should have the same rights as a heterosexual spouse. Current immigration law recognizes marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman,” but President Gore would change all that. In July, Vermont became the first state to recognize homosexual marriage, so if the Democratic candidate had his way, any foreign homosexual who found a Vermonter to “marry” could apply for permanent residency. [Devlin Barrett, Gore Comes Out for Gay Immigration Rights, New York Post, Sept. 27, 2000.]

‘Unfair Trade Practices’

The “reparations” tax credit is back again. Once more, a crook has convinced blacks there is a tax dodge for the “descendants of slaves” that will net them thousands. This time it is Susan Sanchez of Biscayne Park, Florida, who has been trolling black churches, persuading a steady stream of customers the IRS will pay $40,000 in “slavery reparations” if they file an amendment to their 1999 tax return. She was touting a 100 percent “recovery rate” and required a $100 money order (no personal checks, please) to start the process. Although the state of Florida apparently cannot send Miss Sanchez to jail for this caper, it can fine her up to $10,000 for each violation of the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. [Lesley Clark, Tax-credit Scan is Alleged, Miami Herald, Sept. 27, 2000.]

Wicked Whites

Cheryl M. Mewborn, 42, has been suspended from her teaching duties at Bryant Elementary School in Cobb County, Georgia. Miss Mewborn, who is white, gave her mostly black students a little lecture about how they shouldn’t call each other “nigger” and in so doing pronounced the forbidden syllables herself. Black parents raised an outcry, and Miss Mewborn will be out of the classroom until school authorities complete an investigation. [Mary MacDonald, Teacher Put on Leave While Racial Slur Probed, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 16, 2000, p. E2.]

Sages are Baffled

Antonia Novello is a Puerto Rican who served as President George Bush’s Surgeon General. She is now health commissioner of the State of New York, and has decided to change the name of the Office of Minority Health to Office of Emerging Majorities. Sheldon Silver, speaker of the New York State Assembly, says he “just doesn’t understand” why Miss Novello would make a change like that. [Frederick Dicker, PC Does it as Commish Renames Office, New York Post, Sept. 19, 2000, p. 2.]

Iowa Follies

From 1980 to 1990 Iowa and West Virginia were the only states in the union whose populations declined. In the decade just past, however, Iowa reversed that trend and grew by 3.3 percent. Still, the population is aging, young people are leaving for other states, and unemployment is at only two percent. Democratic governor Tom Vilsack says Iowa needs more people and thinks immigrants are the solution. He wants the federal government to declare his state an “immigration enterprise zone,” and for it to be exempted from immigration limits. He hopes for 310,000 newcomers over the next ten years. A poll taken by the Des Moines Register found that 58 percent of Iowans — 96 percent of whom are white — oppose the idea, 34 percent approve, and the rest aren’t sure. [William Claiborne, Iowa Looks Abroad for Workers, Washington Post, Sept. 16, 2000. A3.]

Celebrating the Decline

On Sept. 20, the Hispanic Caucus Institute, which is a group set up by the Hispanic congressmen, held its 23rd annual gala. The crowd of 2,000 included William Clinton, Albert Gore, Janet Reno, and cabinet secretaries William Richardson, Rodney Slater, Alexis Herman, and Norman Mineta. Mr. Gore addressed the gathering, saying “We might not share a common past, but we all share a common future.” Mr. Clinton mused that he is likely to be the last President who does not speak Spanish. [Roxanne Roberts and Janelle Erlichman, Politics With a Latin Beat, Washington Post, Sept. 21, 2000, p. C1.]

Eat or Be Eaten

Although American Indians have been stoutly denying it for years, the evidence continues to mount that their ancestors were cannibals. Scientists in south-west Colorado recently discovered four systematically butchered human bodies in “pit houses” occupied around 1150 by the Anasazi, forerunners of the present-day Zuni, Hopi and Pueblo Indians. They also discovered human myoglobin — a protein found only in skeletal and heart muscles — in the desiccated feces of the people who probably did the butchering. The only way to get myoglobin into your feces is to eat someone.

Partisans of the noble savage are not giving up. Andrew Darling, an archeologist for the Gila River Indian Community, says the site — which appears to be an ordinary dwelling — was a place where witches were executed by ceremonial dismemberment. He says the witches may have eaten human flesh. [Guy Gugliotta, An All-Consuming Debate, Colorado Springs Gazette, Sept. 7, 2000.]

Free Prep for Blacks

The NAACP has long argued that the reason blacks score about 200 points lower than whites on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is that the test is biased against blacks. Their traditional remedies have been to insist that the test be junked or that unspecified (and impossible) changes be made so blacks can score as high as whites. The NAACP’s national council has now voted to approve a new solution: State governments should offer free SAT preparation to blacks. The group wants the rest of the states to follow the example of California, which in 1998 voted $10 million for test prep for “urban and minority” students. [Tessie Borden, NAACP Wants State-Funded SAT Prep Tests For Minorities, AP, Sept. 22, 2000.]

Denny’s Gets Tough

Last month we reported it has finally dawned on the Denny’s restaurant chain that ever since it forked over $46 million in a class action suit for alleged mistreatment of black customers, it has become the favorite target for anyone willing to shout “racism.” We reported that Denny’s used a video tape to prove that a black Miami couple had been well treated and was not kept waiting for an hour as they had claimed. Now the company has announced it is suing the couple for malicious prosecution and wants not only its legal costs back but compensation for damage to its reputation. This tough new approach has begun to work. Spokesman Karen Randall says Denny’s has already recovered money from several fake claimants and expects that once the word gets out the suits will stop. Why didn’t Denny’s think of this $46 million ago? [Denny’s Serves Lawsuit to Pair Who Claimed Bias, NewsMax.com, Sept. 20, 2000.]

Felons and the Vote

On Election Day, 1.4 million black men — about one in eight — will not be eligible to vote because they are convicted felons. This despite the fact that only a few states strip felons of the franchise for life. In these nine states, the number of ineligible black men is much higher than the national average of 13 percent: 31 percent in Florida and Alabama, 29 percent in Mississippi, and 25 percent in Virginia. Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming are the other states with lifetime bans. At the other extreme are Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, which let even prisoners vote. This is the ideal for “civil liberties” groups, which have brought a suit against Florida’s lifetime ban, claiming it has a “disproportionate impact” on blacks. It does, but so do laws against murder.

If current crime trends hold, some 29 percent of black men — about seven times the white rate — can expect to do time for felonies. If all states had lifetime voting bans, it would keep about a quarter of black men away from the polls. [Greg Toppo, Felony Convictions Keep 13% of Black Males From Voting, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 22, 2000.]

Eskimos and Rape

For the last 20 years Alaska has had a higher rape rate than any other state. The current rate is 2.4 times the national average and Alaska also has a high rate of child sexual assault. These otherwise perplexing statistics are explained by the fact that rape is particularly prevalent among Eskimos, or “natives” as they are now called. Eskimo women are only 3.5 percent of Anchorage’s 255,000 residents but are 45 percent of the rape victims. In the last 15 months five Anchorage Eskimos have been both raped and murdered. Rape is a crime that does not usually cross racial lines.

Eskimo women who come to the cities from rural areas are particularly easy targets. Many still have the country habit of flagging down rides from strangers, so cities have started campaigns against hitchhiking. In Anchorage, volunteers tramp the streets giving advice on how to avoid rape and offering rides. Activists have tried to get the Downtown Bar Association to teach bartenders to spot potential rapists. They say any man who buys a woman drinks but is not himself drinking is a potential rapist. Some bars have posted signs in men’s lavatories that say “If you think that waking up with a hangover is bad, imagine waking up as a rapist.” [Mary Pemberton, Police, Alaska Natives Work Together to Reduce Rapes, AP, Sept. 23, 2000.]

Repeat Offender

In March 1992, the raped and beaten body of 18-year-old aspiring model Cari Ann Parnes was found in an Orange grove near Irvine, California. The manhunt went nowhere until police checked DNA taken from Miss Parnes’ corpse against a statewide database of convicted felons. The sample matched that of Leonardo Sanchez, an illegal alien from Mexico who was convicted of rape in 1989. He was on parole at the time Miss Parnes was murdered. Mr. Sanchez, now thought to be in Mexico, has been deported from the United States eight times. [Chelsea Carter, Warrant Issued in ‘92 Model Slaying, AP, Sept. 29, 2000.]

Zimbabwe Rots

As president Robert Mugabe drives his country onto the rocks, international businesses are clearing out. Airlines can pull out quickly, and Austrian Airlines and Air Austral of the Indian Ocean Island of Reunion have stopped flying to Zimbabwe. Quantas of Australia announced its last flight would be October 26. Cargolux, a freight forwarder, has also suspended operations, citing lack of business and deteriorating conditions. Gas and fuel shortages, electricity blackouts, and interest rates at 61 percent have not helped. International investment is at a standstill. Zimbabwe stopped paying its foreign debts months ago, and the World Bank has officially declared it delinquent and no longer eligible for loans. [Zimbabwe Woes Force Airliners, Forwarders to Quit, Reuters, Oct. 2, 2000.]

Light From the West?

Everyone learns in school that the Neolithic revolution — agriculture and domestication of animals — originated in the Near East and spread to the rest of the world. Surprising discoveries on the Mediterranean coast of France may require a reappraisal of this view.

As early as 1985, a people given the name of “Cardials” was confirmed by carbon-14 dating to have lived around 7,000 to 6,000 BC in an area about 35 miles northeast of present-day Mars-eilles. They lived in small stone houses arranged as if on a street, and sheep bones and domesticated grains confirm they were shepherds and farmers. In 1986 French archeologists discovered that “Cardials” settled Corsica around 7,000 BC. They brought their sheep with them in boats that could manage the 125-mile trip from the French coast.

Dates of this kind were beginning to push uncomfortably close to the earliest evidence of the Neolithic revolution — about 8,000 BC — found in Jericho in the Near East, but the traditional view got a boost from 1996-1998 excavations of a Syrian site at Jerf el-Ahmar that was C-14 dated to 9,000 BC. However, an August, 1999, discovery pushes the appearance in Europe of farming and herding back to 10,000 BC. A site at Viols-le-Fort some 40 miles north of Narbonne revealed the same Cardial-style houses, sheep bones and grains. If the dates are officially confirmed, they may require a revision of the accepted view of the origins of civilization.

New discoveries are leading to reinterpretations of older ones. Sites at Pech Maho and Ensérune, also in the Nar-bonne area, were excavated between 1954 and 1979 but were dated to about 2000 BC because both places had alphabetic writing. The script and the language were previously unknown, but the Light-from-the-East dogma was so strong no writing was thought to have been possible in Europe before about that time. The oldest writing was thought to date to about 3 or 4 thousand BC and the closer to the Near East the older it was permitted to be. In light of the Cardial discoveries, archeologists have begun to wonder whether the still-undeciphered script could date back as far as 9,000 BC. [Michael Bradley, A Cradle in the Wrong Place, National Post (Canada), July 5, 2000.]

Rudy Gets it Right

The US Attorney of Manhattan has decided New York City police are guilty of racial profiling when they stop and frisk suspects on the street. They want the Justice Department to monitor the department and make sure it behaves. A furious mayor Rudolph Giuliani has become the first public official we know of to dig in his heels and explain why the police stop so many non-whites: they are the ones committing the crimes. He points out that only 85.2 percent of the people stopped and frisked on the streets are non-white, whereas they account for 89.2 percent of the suspects. He says police are doing exactly what they should, and that he will never accept any kind of federal oversight. [Frankie Edozien and Devlin Barrett, Rudy Blasts Fed’s Profiling Claim, New York Post, Oct. 6, 2000.]

Columbus vs. the Indians

Denver used to have an annual Columbus Day parade until one in 1991 was marred by anti-Columbus demonstrations and arrests. The 1992 parade was canceled for fear of violence, just minutes before it was supposed to start, and the organizers stopped trying to get permits. This year local Italians are fed up with intimidation, and want to march. Hispanics and Indians beefed so loudly the Italians agreed to a March for Italian Pride that would not mention Columbus, and the protesters said they would stay away. Now, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Italians say they will celebrate Columbus after all. They expect about 1,400 marchers, and the newly-galvanized protesters have promised 1,000 screamers. Denver has reluctantly agreed to the new rules, and has promised massive police protection. Colorado Governor William Owen says the National Guard will be available to help if things get out of hand. It’s possible they could. Vernon Bellecourt, a local leader of the American Indian Movement, says Columbus was “a colonial pirate and murderer” and was responsible for vast genocide.

A few places have already capitulated to the screamers and downplay Columbus. South Dakota celebrates the second Monday in October but calls it Native American Day. Alabama gives Columbus joint billing in what is called both Columbus Day and American Indian Heritage Day. [Michael Janofsky, A Columbus Day Parade Has Denver on Edge, New York times, Oct. 6, 2000]

Cure for AIDS

A few white men still get respect in South Africa — at least certain dead ones. The word is going around that people with AIDS will be cured if they drink tea brewed from the bones of well-known whites. The farm manager of Hannes Rall, who was a deputy minister of transport in an apartheid administration, helped dig up his former employer’s bones and put them on the market. There is apparently no word on whether the cure will be more potent if the bones are taken from freshly-killed whites. [Grave Robbed to Cure AIDS, Electronic Telegraph, Sept. 25, 2000.]

Proper Sentiments

The press loves to report treacly accounts of whites forgiving and embracing their black assailants. Truck driver Reginald Denny was famous for cozying up to the thugs who nearly beat him to death at the start of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Amy Biehl’s parents went to South Africa to wrap their arms around the blacks who killed their daughter because she was white.

Things are different in Steubenville, Ohio. Terrell Yarbrough abducted two white students at the University of Steubenville, pistol whipped them, forced them at gun point to fellate him, and then shot them. When he got the death sentence on September 27, the victims’ mothers were in court and were not in a hugging mood. One called the killer a “little pathological punk” to his face and added, “You disgust me.” The other stared him down and said, “So, Terrell, it seems your time is up. How does it feel?” She also heaped scorn on the defense, which had tried to portray Mr. Yarbrough as a victim of his upbringing, and scoffed at his family, praying outside the courthouse for his release. “These prayers mock God,” she said. “As if He would want a killer set free.” [Mike Lafferty, Students’ Killer Gets Death Penalty, Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 25, 2000, p. 1.]

Too Demanding

The Illinois High School Association requires players on school athletic teams to have a grade point average of 1.0 (a D average). Proviso Township High School outside Chicago has an overwhelmingly black student body but has higher standards. It requires a 1.7 point (C- average) for players, but this has had a devastating effect on its football team. Of the 115 students who played as freshman, 56 were knocked off the team because of their grades. [Carlos Sadovi, Athletes Aren’t Making the Grade, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 6, 2000, p. 1.]

The City Invincible

Camden, New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia, is stark, Third-World America. Ninety-five percent black and Hispanic, it shows no sign of recovering from years of decay. More than 3,000 houses are vacant, and the number grows by ten percent every year. Seventy percent of high school students drop out and those who graduate know virtually nothing. The poverty rate is 44 percent and the median household income is $17,300. Ninety-four percent of elementary school students are poor enough to qualify for subsidized lunches. Downtown, there is no decent place to stay or eat, and no place to watch a movie. You can walk a mile along Broadway, once bustling with retail, and not find a place to sit down for coffee. Almost all the bank buildings are now churches or liquor stores. An estimated 10,000 people a day come into the city to buy drugs at some 150 street-corner bazaars. Camden would need all the tax revenue it collects in a year just to tear down its derelict buildings, and three years’ revenue just to fix the sewers.

There are flashes of local color. The mayor has been indicted — like two of his four predecessors — and is out on bail. He was caught telling drug dealers when police were likely to make a raid. The city prosecutor was fired for shredding hundreds of uncashed checks from defense lawyers. They were for copies of police reports defendants are entitled to but that could not be produced. When she cleared out her office, the prosecutor left behind three months’ worth of unopened mail. The school super-intendent’s job has been vacant for more than a year and if one is finally hired he will be the fifth in eight years.

It takes about $330 million a year to run Camden but the city can raise only $30 million. The rest comes from the state, which has dumped $2 billion into the place in the last five years and essentially runs the city. Local officials cannot file a lawsuit, hire a clerk, or spend more than $4,500 without state permission. Governor Christie Whitman wants legislation that would give the state power to break certain contracts, evade some civil service rules, and reduce Camden’s elected officials to mere advisors. This would mean a complete takeover of a city that cannot run itself.

In the 1950s Camden was a booming industrial town. It was thriving as early as 1873 when Walt Whitman moved there to sing its praises in poetry. His words are still carved into the granite of city hall: “In a dream I saw a city invincible.” [Rick Hampson, A City Struggles to Survive, USA Today, July 26, 2000. Patrick Cole, Camden, N.J., a Study in Fate of Cities That Lose Industries, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 25, 2000, p. 6.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — The September article on William Buckley was amazing. NR was my entryway into the right wing, and though I quickly went on to stronger stuff I never knew it was once so pro-white or pro-South. I wonder what Mr. Buckley thinks now about his conversion to PC.

Nelson Waller

Sir — Jared Taylor hits the nail on the head when he calls William F. Buckley’s column “meandering.” As someone who practically idolized Mr. Buckley during the 1960s, it pains me to see how far his rhetorical skills have slipped. In most of his recent columns, I fail to see any logical conclusion at all. The magazine has declined just as its founder has and I’m thankful I have found American Renaissance to fill the void.

Richard Brooks, Ridgecrest, Calif.

Sir — I enjoyed the cover article about National Review, to which I just ended my subscription. After all, for how long can you read about tax cuts and assimilation. What was missing from the article, however, was an explanation for the change at National Review. Was Mr. Buckley embarrassed by the tone of the magazine under Mr. O’Sullivan and Mr. Brimelow? Was he not being invited to enough cocktail parties? Did his Catholic faith get in the way of being tough on immigrants, many of whom are Catholic? Is he too old for the fight?

Al Goldman, Summit, N.J.

Sir — In the September 2000 issue, Mr. Taylor justifiably chides white Americans for failing to stand up for their racial interests the way blacks do. But what about the failure of the so-called white leadership? After all, black protesters do not materialize out of nowhere; they are organized by black leaders like Messrs. Jackson, Sharpen, Farrakhan, and others. Where are the white leaders? Sitting around “waiting for the revolution?” Only David Duke comes close to being a real leader, but he has been so demonized by the media as a “Nazi” that many otherwise interested whites avoid him. The C of CC seems more interested in Confederate flag protests than in more important matters like a Kevin Shifflet protest, which would resonate more with white Americans. Most people are followers — they need good leaders to guide them. White folks have none.

E. J. Delahanty, Chicago, Ill.

Sir — Jared Taylor’s September article about the color of death was excellent but I would like to add a few points. Those who have accepted the cliché that all black failure and black crime are the fault of whites will reject any analysis of racial double standards. They think the murder of a few whites is insignificant compared to what they consider to be hundreds of years of white oppression, slavery and murder of blacks. The modern racial insanity of whites makes them think any and all comparisons are illegitimate. It’s a simple argument: “We have sinned greatly and we sinned first, so we should never condemn others.”

Our current racial orthodoxy says all black mischief is caused by the actions of whites, including “the legacy of slavery,” and that black violence is really racial self-defense. Orthodoxy likewise says blacks have a legitimate reason to hate whites. Whites, however, have no reason to attack blacks, so white-on-black violence is a double crime: An individual white has harmed a black, and has also added to the historic ledger of massive white racism. Thus, white offenses are much worse than black offenses. I’ve heard blacks argue that whites should be grateful blacks don’t commit more crime against whites than they already do.

Those who believe whites are responsible for all racial troubles cannot face the only alternative: blaming black failure on blacks. That would suggest that racial differences in IQ, civility and achievement are inherent.

Mark Wellhausen, Naples, Fla.

Sir — I am in complete agreement with your article about Ezola Foster. Why would Pat Buchanan nominate a black as his running mate? If he thinks this will win the black vote he is even more naive than George W. The Democrats have been pandering to blacks since the days of Harry Truman.

I wrote a short letter to Mr. Buchanan expressing my indignation, especially because I contributed $1,000 to his campaign. Like so many of his faithful followers I feel betrayed. I suppose we now have no choice but to vote for George Bush as the lesser of two evils.

Mrs. E. Lee Brown, Mt. View, Cal.

Sir — I greatly appreciated your detailed treatment of the Malice Green affair. The truth has come out in bits and pieces and it is very useful to have the whole story in one place.

Sam Harrell, Royal Oak, Mich.