O Tempora, O Mores! (November, 2004)
American Renaissance, November 2004
Two nationalist German parties won seats in eastern German state assemblies in elections on September 19. The National Democratic Party (NPD) received nine percent of the vote in Saxony and twelve seats, the first time it has won seats in any election since 1968, when it had brief representation in seven state parliaments. The German People’s Union (DVU) won six percent of the vote and six seats in Brandenburg. The parties had agreed not to run against each other in the same states. The NPD also did surprisingly well in the western German Saar region in Sept. 2 elections, picking up four percent of the vote, which was just under the five percent necessary to win seats in the assembly. [German Far Right Makes Poll Gains, BBC News, Sept. 20, 2004.]
Both parties want to curb immigration and deport foreigners who are already in Germany. The NPD calls its political philosophy “social-revolutionary nationalism,” and its officials emphasize the “bio-cultural roots” of the German nation. Admitting Turkey into the European Union threatens “the continent of white nations with disintegration and decomposition.” An NPD campaign poster with the caption “Have a good trip home!” showed Turks carrying bags and walking towards a minaret.
“The NPD stands for Germany for the Germans,” says party leader Udo Voigt. “We have a situation now where we have six million foreigners in Germany. We do not need them. By 2030, the majority of people living in Germany will be foreigners. I do not want a doner kebab (a popular type of fast food introduced by Turkish immigrants) stand on every corner. It will end our German culture.”
Mr. Voight is also critical of American influence and excessive globalization. “We want to be sovereign, not under America,” he explains. “We want our national sovereignty back. There is too much in the hands of the Americans and too much of our economy is being taken over by foreigners. German companies should invest in Germany, not abroad.”
The party has other plans. It wants to overthrow Germany’s “liberal-capitalist system,” and Holger Apfel, one of the party’s Saxony candidates, wants to restore Germany’s 1945 borders, which would mean taking land back from Poland and Russia. “Nothing and nobody will keep us from our struggle for the Reich,” he proclaims. The party is also very anti-Jewish, describing the Torah as “the original document of Jewish national hatred.”
Last year, the German government tried to ban the NPD on the grounds that it was responsible for attacks on Jews and foreigners. However, the court threw out the case when it found that some of the party’s most extreme members were paid police informers.
The DVU is run by Gerhard Frey, who publishes an anti-immigration newspaper called the National-Zeitung. The party’s posters demanded “German jobs for Germans first” and the expulsion of criminal foreigners. The party was founded in 1987 and won 12.9 percent of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony Anhalt in 1998. [Allan Hall, Quest To Ban Neo-Nazis Ends In Farce, Scotsman.com News, March 19, 2003. Far-Right Expected to Make German Election Gains, Expatica.com, Sept. 7, 2004. German Reform Anger Triggers Far Left, Right Surge, Expatica.com, Sept. 20, 2004. German Far-Right Parties To Form Election Alliance, Expatica. com, Sept. 23, 2004.]
The elections were also good for the Democratic Socialists, successors to the East German Communist Party. They received 28.5 percent of the vote in Brandenburg and 23 percent of the vote in Saxony. The two mainstream parties of the left and right, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Union, lost support in both states. In fact, the Social Democrats, Germany’s ruling party, won only 9.5 percent of the vote in Saxony, scarcely more than the NPD.
The political establishment is furious. Before the election, Saxony’s premier said if the NPD made it into parliament, he wouldn’t bother going to the United States anymore to promote his state. Party leaders walked off the set of a roundtable discussion of the elections, to which the NPD’s Mr. Apfel was also invited, because they could not stomach his presence.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s leftist Social Democratic Party fears the success of the NPD will scare off foreign investors. Martin Gillo, minister for labor and economic development, puts it this way: “People overseas will ask, ‘What’s going on in Saxony? What is a right-wing party that was on trial and at risk of being banned doing in the Saxon Parliament?’”
Others say the NPD has profited from the frustration many Germans feel towards Schroeder’s government and his failed economic reforms in the east, where unemployment hovers around 20 percent. “It’s a mixture of social rage, and the abuse of this rage by extreme right-wing, neo-Nazi groups,” says Hajo Funke, a political science professor at the Free University of Berlin. “They present themselves as ordinary people, but they have this right-wing, anti-foreign, anti-Semitic language.” [Judy Dempsey, German Nationalists Count on Resentment, International Herald Tribune (Paris), Sept. 17, 2004. Mark Landler, Rightists Make Strong Strides in Eastern German State Elections, New York Times, Sept. 20, 2004.]
Some ordinary Germans are unhappy, too. Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police as they protested the results in the Saxon capital, Dresden. [Kate Connolly, Far Right Surges as Schröder Feels Fury of the East, Telegraph (London), Sept. 20, 2004. Gains By Extremist Parties Trouble Germany, Deutsche Welle (www.dw-world.de), Sept. 20, 2004.]
A Place in the Sun
According to a recent Census Bureau report, more than 292,000 blacks moved to Florida between January 2000 and July 2003. With 2.8 million, Florida now ranks second behind New York (3.6 million) as the state with the most black residents. In 2000, Florida ranked fourth, behind California and Texas.
Many of the state’s new black residents are recent immigrants from the Caribbean or their children, but others are part of a larger trend of blacks returning to the South after decades of out-migration.
Broward County, just north of Miami, attracted more blacks than any other US county from 2000 to 2003 — nearly 70,000, bringing the total number of black residents to 434,985 as of July 2003. [Census: Florida No. 2 in Black Population, AP, Oct. 1, 2004.]
Indian Giver
In 1996, the bones of a 9,300-year-old skeleton were discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Scientists were intrigued by the skeleton’s Caucasian features and were eager to study it, but local Indian tribes claimed “Kennewick Man” belonged to them under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and insisted he be buried without any scientific analysis. After years of legal wrangling, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals finally ruled this summer that since no “direct link” existed between the local Indians and Kennewick Man, scientists could study the remains.
Retiring Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), a member of the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe and chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, wants to reverse that ruling. He introduced an amendment to NAGPRA that would no longer require Indians to prove a direct link between themselves and ancient remains in order to take custody. They would have rights to any finds on land they claimed was “ancestral.” Alan Schneider, an attorney for the scientists who sued to get access to Kennewick Man, calls Sen. Campbell’s amendment “a real sneaky way to amend” the graves law. “Basically all ancient skeletons would be subject to NAGPRA, and under the tribes’ interpretation, you couldn’t study them,” he says.
The Indian Affairs Committee passed the amendment in late September, but the full Senate has yet to act. [Matthew Daily, Scientists Protest Senate Measure, AP, Oct. 3, 2004.]
The Enemy Within
Russian security officers investigating the September massacre at the school in Beslan where more than 300 people — half of them children — were killed have detained a “British” citizen who they suspect is one of the terrorists. Kamel Rabat Bouralha, a 46-year-old father of three, was apprehended trying to escape from Russia into Azerbaijan to seek medical treatment. Mr. Bouralha and two other men suspected of participating in the Beslan massacre, both Algerians, studied together at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, a well-known breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. Muslims recruited at Finsbury Park have been captured fighting US forces in Afghanistan. [Jason Burke, London Mosque Link to Beslan, The Observer (London), Oct. 3, 2004.]
Silver Lining
Last March, American soldiers captured a senior al-Qaida operative in Afghanistan who was carrying plans to poison US military field rations — called Meals, Ready to Eat (MRE) — as they were being prepared at American plants. When federal agents raided the Wornick Co. facility that produces MREs in McAllen, Texas, they found no evidence of poisoning but did discover hundreds of illegal workers. The illegals, mostly from Mexico and Central America but also from the Middle East, had been supplied to Wornick by a San Antonio-based temporary agency, Remedy Intelligent Staffing. In an indictment unsealed on Sept. 30, government prosecutors say Remedy gave the illegal aliens false work papers, and also sent fraudulent employment forms to the Joint Terrorist Task Force. The company denies any wrong-doing.
The war on terrorism has led to other crackdowns on companies that hire illegals. The day before the indictment against Remedy, federal agents raided the Brownsville, Texas, shipyard of defense contractor AMFELS, and netted 41 illegal aliens working for subcontractors. “A secure industrial infrastructure is absolutely essential to the defense of the United States of America,” says US Attorney Mike Shelby. “I intend to use every law the federal government gives me to ensure that nothing we do here at home compromises a single troop or a single sailor who risks their life abroad.” [James Pinkerton, Company Indicted in Worker Inquiry, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 30, 2004.]
Each time Sabrina Varroni walks the streets of her hometown of Drezzo in northern Italy, she risks a $50 fine. A convert to Islam married to a Morrocan, she refuses to obey a 1931 law that prohibits masks or clothing that conceal identity, and insists on wearing a burka that covers her face and body. She has been cited twice but refuses to pay the fine, claiming the law violates her religion. She also plans to sue. The mayor of Drezzo, Cristian Toletinni, says enforcing the law ensures public safety in an age of terrorism, but leftist critics say enforcement is racist.
Matteo Salvini, a Northern League member of the European Parliament, hopes Milan, Italy’s second largest, will start enforcing the law. He says so many Muslims in Milan wear burkas and other distinctive clothing that parts of the city are beginning “to look like Kabul.” “If I go to a mosque,” he adds, “I take off my shoes because I respect their laws. I’m asking them, with other traditions, to respect our laws. It’s that simple. The problem is, they don’t want to mix with Italians. They want to stay apart.” Given the number of suspected terrorists operating it Italy, Mr. Salvini says it would be foolish to let people move about in public in “disguise.” [Tracy Wilkinson, In Italy, a Clash on Burka Ban, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 26, 2004.]
Each year, more than 200,000 people tour the Slave House on Goree Island, Senegal, where millions of Africans supposedly passed through the “door of no return” onto slave ships. “After walking through the door,” says tour guide Aladji Ndiaye, “it was bye-bye Africa. Many would try to escape. Those who did died. It was better to give ourselves to the sharks than be slaves.” Slave House guides tell of the suffering of 20 million slaves who languished in holding cells. Many visitors leave in tears.
The Goree Island Slave House, declared a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1978, has attracted such luminaries as Pope John Paul II and President George W. Bush. In 1998, President William Clinton gave a speech on the island in which he all but apologized to Africa for America’s role in slavery. American blacks make pilgrimages to Goree Island in search of their roots.
There is just one problem with the Goree Island Slave House: “The whole story is phony,” says Philip D. Curtain, a retired history professor at Johns Hopkins University. Goree Island was never a slave transport center; Senegalese slaves left from barracoons on the Senegal and Gambia rivers. As for the Slave House, it was the beautiful home of a wealthy merchant and would never have been used to warehouse slaves. The “door of no return” through which slaves stepped onto the decks of waiting ships is also a fraud. Prof. Curtain points out there are so many boulders in the water by the house it would be impossible to dock a ship.
Abdoulaye Camara, a historian and curator of the Goree Island Historical Museum, near — but not affiliated with — the Slave House, says the story was invented in the 1960s to drum up tourism, but now serves as an emotional shrine for descendants of slaves. “The slaves did not go through that door. The door is a symbol. The history and memory needs to have a strong symbol,” he explains. “You either accept it or you don’t accept it. It’s difficult to interpret a symbol.”
Some Western tour books have caught on to the hoax. “Goree Island’s fabricated history boils down to an emotional manipulation by government officials and tour companies of people who come here as part of a genuine search for cultural roots,” says Lonely Planet’s West African guide book. UNESCO hasn’t changed its tune. “We are certain that the House of Slaves had something to do with the slave trade,” says a spokesman. [John Murphy, Slave Portal has Mythic Power, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 8, 2004.]
Say it in Swati
One of the most cherished plans of the black government of South Africa is the rehabilitation of native languages supposedly suppressed by whites during apartheid. The government recognizes eleven official languages — English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Pedi, Tswana, Sotho, Tsonga, Swati, Venda, and Ndebele — and under the National Language Policy Framework, all important government documents will be translated into all eleven. The government also promises to support more than a dozen non-official languages. Deputy president Jacob Zuma says the new policy will “complete restoration of the pride and dignity of all our people.”
Not everyone agrees. “It’s not practical,” says Shelagh Blackman of AngloGold, a large mining company. “I don’t think South Africa can afford that many languages. I understand the spirit, but you can’t have eleven official languages. It’s enriching to have more than one, but coping with too many is a problem.” AngloGold and other companies believe English should be the lingua franca. “It’s the language of business, technology, commerce,” Miss Blackman explains. “In South Africa, it’s the language of opportunity.”
Miners and white foremen have long communicated in “fanagalo” a simple pidgin mix of Zulu, Xhosa, and other languages, but English is rapidly replacing it. Instructions for operating modern mining equipment are in English, and fanagalo cannot express complicated ideas. “How do you teach a person in fanagalo to operate a personal computer?” asks AngloGold training officer Benade Baird.
Many blacks want the government to promote English. “With English I can enter any office and solve any problem,” says mineworker Daniel Methula, a native Swati speaker. I feel proud because I can speak for myself and I don’t need someone to speak for me. English is the best language because English can unite us.” [Laurie Goering, S. Africa Asks Diversity, but English Rules, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 3, 2004, p. 7.]
Day Labor Pests
Residents and businesses across the country are complaining about illegal immigrant Hispanic day laborers who congregate in public places to look for work. The problem is worst in California. In San Bernadino, day laborers outside a Home Depot drink, deal drugs, urinate in public, and make sexually suggestive comments to women. They stop cars and mob the drivers asking for work, which blocks traffic and annoys the drivers. In the San Gabriel Valley as well, Hispanic day laborers gather on corners and in parking lots, leave trash, and harass women. They give the area a bad image and lower property values. Residents have the same complaints in Concord. “My wife doesn’t feel safe going to work,” says one man. “The high concentration of day laborers seems to make the neighborhood less attractive to prospective buyers and businesses.”
Towns have tried several solutions. Many have passed anti-solicitation and public order legislation so that police can fine the laborers. In San Bernadino, for example, police recently handed out tickets of up to $340 for blocking the sidewalk and threatened fines of up to $2,000 for soliciting. Such laws are on shaky legal ground, however. In 2000, a Los Angeles judge struck down a local law barring day laborers from soliciting work on streets on the grounds that it violated their rights to freedom of speech and association. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund calls the laws racist, and threatens to challenge them. A San Bernadino city councilman also calls the penalties for the laborers racist and urges greater understanding of their plight: “What are we, Nazi City? These people are trying to make a living. We’re going to pound them because they’re trying to get a job.”
Some cities have built day-labor centers where no one asks for papers, but no one likes them. Residents complain of drinking and public urination. The men often avoid the centers because they are poorly run and corrupt. Often, managers give jobs only to friends or take bribes to move a man’s name to the top of the hiring list. Also, the centers can usually find jobs for only a fraction of the people who want work. [Karin Ruben, Workers Unwanted, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, March 20, 2004. Tyche Hendricks, More Workers than Work, San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, 2004. Stephen Wall, Day Laborers Ask Nonprofit for Help Against Recent Sidewalk Citations, San Bernadino County Sun, Sept. 26, 2004.]
Residents sometimes ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement to investigate the men, but the agency says it does not have enough jail space or money to do anything. Many Border Patrol officers would like to crack down on day laborers, but their supervisors forbid it. This policy was the result of a scandal over the Border Patrol’s inland sweeps for aliens (roundups far from the border) in June. In two weeks, a newly-formed mobile unit based at the Temecula, California, station caught 500 illegal aliens in inland cities. Immigrant advocates immediately demanded that the sweeps stop, and Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border security at the Department of Homeland Security, complied. The total number of apprehensions by Temecula agents fell from 711 in June to 349 in July. One agent says, “If we are driving by a day-laborer hiring spot, we can’t stop to check anyone for documents. Those orders come from current station management.” [William Finn Bennett, Staffing Shortage Hits Border Patrol, North County Times (Escondido), Sept. 7, 2004. Cathy Cobbs, Residents: Workers, Move On, Dunwoody Crier (Cal.), Aug. 31, 2004.]
Brave Hart
James Hart, the Republican congressional candidate for Tennessee’s 8th district in the north west of the state, is an unapologetic believer in eugenics and the inequality of the races. He believes whites and Asians are the “favored races,” and blacks the “less favored races.” If the favored had integrated with the less favored centuries ago, he says, there would never have been automobiles, electric lights, or airplanes. Unless the less favored stop outbreeding the favored, America will end up like Detroit. The way to shift birthrates to benefit the favored races is to eliminate welfare and immigration, and to give productive and creative people economic incentives to have children. [Amber McDowell, Eugenics Backer Causes Stir in Tennessee Race, AP, August 4, 2004.]
The district in which he is campaigning supports Democratic incumbent John Tanner so overwhelmingly that the Republicans did not even field a candidate. Mr. Hart needed only 25 signatures to qualify for the Republican primary, which he won unopposed. The Republicans realized what was happening only after it was too late to file papers, but tried to organize a write-in campaign. It failed, and Mr. Hart won the primary with 79 percent of the vote.
Mr. Hart always wears a bulletproof vest and carries a gun as he campaigns door-to-door. He chooses only well-kept neighborhoods, assuming the residents will be mostly white. If a white answers when he knocks, he says, “I’m James Hart, and I’m running for Congress. I believe white children deserve the same rights as everyone else.” If a black answers, he leaves campaign literature and moves on. He is relieved when no one is home because he finds it unpleasant to tell people things they do not want to hear. Nevertheless, some voters agree with him and pledge their vote. Indeed, an alderman in the town of Dresden named Terry Odle says, “I like what he stands for. White folks are getting the shaft here lately. We’re a minority [in the heavily black area]. It’s time to get back on track.”
Mr. Hart does not expect to win the general election. He decided to campaign mainly to publicize his ideas, but also to do penance for the suicide of his son, who shot himself three years ago. He blames himself and his generation for creating a culture in which his son could find no reason to live, and thinks he would never have shot himself in the suburban, all-white world of Mr. Hart’s childhood. [Richard Locker, GOP Group Snubs ‘Hate’ Candidate, Commercial Appeal (Memphis), July 22, 2004. Vanessa Gezari, Race, Fear Collide In Campaign, St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 5, 2004.]
Crying Racism
Arizona’s Proposition 200 is a ballot initiative that would deny illegal aliens state welfare benefits and require proof of Arizona citizenship to get a driver’s license or register to vote. The proposition would make it a crime for public officials to fail to verify citizenship when providing these services and would allow citizens to sue the government for lax enforcement of immigration laws. The group Protect Arizona Now (PAN) created and is campaigning for the initiative, on which Arizonans will vote this month.
Unlike Proposition 187, a similar California initiative passed in 1994, this initiative targets only state benefits, but would do nothing to deny illegal aliens federally-mandated services, such as education and emergency medical care. Prop. 200’s backers believe that limiting themselves to state benefits will help them avoid the legal problems that led to the invalidation of most of Proposition 187.
The measure is very popular with voters, regularly winning 3-to-1 support in polls. However, it is opposed by virtually the whole of Arizona’s political and business elite, including its governor, its entire Congressional contingent, the state’s Chamber of Commerce, and its hospitals. They complain Prop. 200 will do nothing to curb illegal immigration, require a new bureaucracy to verify citizenship, and make Arizona look anti-Hispanic. [Mike Sunnucks, Scottsdale Chamber Opposing Prop. 200, Phoenix Business Journal, Oct. 4, 2004.]
One of PAN’s advisors is Virginia Abernethy, an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt who is on the advisory board of the Council of Conservative Citizens and writes for nationalist publications like The Occidental Quarterly and Middle American News. The campaign’s association with her has caused controversy. The Center for New Community, called an “anti-bigotry group” in a newspaper article, broke the news about her association with PAN in early August. “With charges of racism already swirling around [PAN],” read its report, “[PAN] has taken the surprising step of choosing a leading figure in the white supremacist movement to chair its new national advisory board.”
This was followed by a number of newspaper editorials and press releases expressing shock and dismay. One came from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a restrictionist lobbying group that helped gather signatures for the initiative. Their press release said Dr. Abernethy’s views were “repugnant, divisive, and do not represent the views of the majority of Arizonans who support Proposition 200.” They called on both Dr. Abernethy and Kathy McKee, the director of PAN who appointed her, to resign from the campaign. An editorial in The Washington Times said Dr. Abernethy’s “repulsively un-American” views were a legitimate reason to oppose the initiative. [FAIR Press Release, What FAIR Believes . . . One Unified American Community, Aug. 9, 2004 . . . While Arizonans Debate Illegals, Washington Times, Sept. 25, 2004.]
Both women have responded to these attacks with great poise. In response to the Center for New Community, Dr. Abernethy said she was not a supremacist, but rather a separatist. “We’re not saying anything about supremacy, not at all. We’re saying each ethnic group is happier with its own kind.” The group had merely resorted to name calling because it had no valid arguments against the measure. Ms. McKee said, “I think we’ve all been called [racists] and it’s getting to be really old.” [Yvonne Wingett, Protect Arizona Now Advisor Denies Racism Charge, Arizona Republic (Pheonix), Aug. 7, 2004.]
Dr. Abernethy further defended herself in a letter to The Washington Times. She pointed out that the integrationist ideal no longer governs America. Rather, the current ethos is multiculturalism, in which “each ethnic group identifies with its own and battles for privilege and power on the basis of ethnic identity.” While this was sad for America, “I have to play the multicultural game, at least defensively, or I and my family and kin will lose out. It is what every ethnic group except, in the main, European-Americans, does these days.” European-Americans are late to the game, but “the many instances in which European-Americans are discriminated against in education, the job market and the criminal justice system — including various lies spread about me and the organizations to which I belong — should be a wake-up call.” [Virginia Abernethy, Letter to the Editor, Washington Times, September 30, 2004.]
There is no sign Dr. Abernethy’s association with Prop. 200 has decreased its support.
