Posted on May 21, 2017

American Renaissance vs. the Far Left

Chris Roberts, American Renaissance, May 19, 2017

One of the most bizarrely enduring political myths is that there is some kind of shady link between high finance, big business, and white advocates. Leftists seem to believe that the corporate board of Walmart is full of race realists, that the Koch brothers have a vendetta against black people, that Goldman-Sachs funnels money to militias, etc.

It is all a fantasy, of course. With vanishingly few exceptions, the wealthiest people and organizations in the world support more immigration, affirmative-action and integration, and oppose any kind of white identity. This is public information. You can look up how many Fortune 500 companies donate to the NAACP, La Raza — and to the foundation behind AmRen, the New Century Foundation (zero, of course). You can also just as easily find out which companies filed amicus briefs in favor of affirmative action and against President Trump’s attempted travel bans.

No matter what Noam Chomsky or Louise Mensch think, AmRen does not receive any money from Russians, Wall Street, or a secretly sympathetic FBI. Our money comes from white people who believe in us. Big money opposes us at every turn.

There are far-left political websites that are also entirely reader supported, such as The Baffler, Jacobin, Current Affairs, Dissent, n+1, In These Times, and New Inquiry. Ferociously pro-Bernie sites, always brimming with sardonic cultural criticism, do not get checks from the “one percent.” This really does set them apart from mainstream leftist media. The largest investor in the New York Times, for example, is Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, one of the richest people on Earth. Vox is funded largely by media companies and venture capital groups.

Naturally, The Baffler et al. claim that their lack of support from “Davos Men” makes them more authentic, courageous, and truly left-wing. But for all their “anti-system” posturing, they get a great deal of mainstream coverage and respect, if not money.

For example, their print publications are carried in elite liberal arts college libraries and plenty of public universities. Indeed, n+1 is so popular in universities that they brag about it on their webpage, where they offer institutional subscriptions for $150.00 a year. The strong ties most of these magazines have with universities isn’t surprising, since so many of their contributors are academics. Byline after byline at each of these sites shows a university connection.

These magazines are also carried in bookstores. Their articles rail against capitalism, retail chains, and big box stores, but step into any Barnes & Noble and you’ll find Jacobin, The Baffler, and n+1 every time, and all the others most of the time.

They also have stronger ties to the hated “mainstream” than they’d like to admit. Vox says nice things about them, while the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic sometimes publish their writers, and The Guardian does so very frequently. Even the Wall Street Journal has published the more famous authors in these unabashedly Marxian circles. All of these mainstream outlets regularly review books associated with these far-left publications.

Credit Image: © Guiziou Franck/Hemis/ZUMAPRESS.com

American Renaissance never gets this treatment. Jared Taylor is not invited to write for the Wall Street Journal, much less the New York Times or the Washington Post. The last time a book associated with AmRen was reviewed by a mainstream publication was in 1992, when Peter Brimelow reviewed Jared Taylor’s Paved With Good Intentions for National Review. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Brimelow was pushed out of that magazine for being too much of an immigration patriot.

In the over 20 years that AmRen was a print publication, the only bookstores that ever carried us were a few, small independent shops in the South, certainly not Barnes & Noble. Not one university or public library ever carried us. These days, many colleges block our website, as do many public libraries. When our flyers are posted on campuses, universities hold meetings to discuss how evil we are.

Despite how rebellious the writers for lefty magazines think they are, they are welcome wherever degrees are sold. Adam Kotsko, a New Inquiry writer, can tweet out jokes about whites committing mass suicide, or claim the writers of Charlie Hebdo had it coming after they were butchered by Islamic terrorists. The position he holds as a professor at Shimer College isn’t even tenured, but his job is not at risk. Gavin Mueller, who writes for Jacobin and In These Times, likes to tweet similar things, and his untenured job is safe, too. George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel University and Jacobin contributor, has tweeted enthusiastically about white genocide. He, also, has kept his job.

As P.T. Carlo of Thermidormag put it:

[W]hen was the last time someone was fired from their job for being a “leftist?” The answer is: sometime in the late 1950s. Contrast this with the status of right wing Samizdat, possession of which will almost certainly lead to immediate dismissal in almost any professional position.

All this is to say: Despite having some fundraising difficulties, the Marxian Left enjoys much better treatment and attention from the mainstream than does the racialist right. Indeed, the mainstream and the supposedly “far-left” regularly play footsie through universities and media.

Why do I bring this up? To brag!

Despite this uneven playing field, AmRen is more popular than all of the publications listed above, with the exception of Jacobin.

According to the website popularity indexer Alexa, AmRen ranks as the 19,225th most popular site in the country, and 66,517th in the world.

The closest to us is Current Affairs, which, despite having offices in Washington, DC, and London, is less popular both nationally and internationally than AmRen, with its lone office in Northern Virginia.

Then comes The Baffler. Its ranking is particularly shameful given that it raked in $3.5 million in 2015.

Next is New Inquiry.

After that is In These Times. Much like The Baffler, they rank poorly despite 2014 revenue of $3.3 million.

N+1 isn’t even close to our numbers:

Nor is Dissent.

So, cheers to our readers! You are the wonderful people behind these figures. And three cheers to our donors, for keeping our lights on and investing in an organization that punches well above its weight.