Posted on July 18, 2020

Brimelow Vs. New York Times Moves Forward

Peter Brimelow, VDARE, July 16, 2020

It’s been just over four months since I published my detailed explanation of why I, as Editor of tiny VDARE.com, am taking the fraught step of suing the mighty New York Times for libel. In the interim, the world has gone mad—and the New York Times even madder. Thisin my humble opinion, has made Brimelow vs. New York Times even more important.

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{snip} it might seem the NYT has more important problems than the fact that it violated its own guidelines by refusing to acknowledge it stealth-edited a reference to me to remove its smear that I am an “open white nationalist,” or that it has subsequently escalated its libels of me—incredibly, even after being warned we proposed legal action—to include anti-Semitism and white supremacism.

But in fact it has no more important problems. Precisely because the NYT, like the rest of the Main Stream Media, have increasingly interpreted the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous 1964 Sullivan decision as a license to lie, and not just about apparently powerless Politically Incorrect groups like my VDARE.com, political debate in the U.S. has come unmoored from any consideration of truth and increasingly spun out of control. The ironic result: the New York Times itself, and the Establishment Left in general, are now being consumed by Woke golems and dybbuks that they themselves have enabled.

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On May 26, we filed our final amended complaint. You can read it here. On June 18 the New York Times, asked U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla to dismiss the case. You can read its motion here. We must respond by July 21—next Tuesday. The New York Times gets to reply, by August 4. Judge Failla will then rule sometime after that.

I invite comments from readers on these arguments, especially our lawyer readers. (Email me here, our lawyer Frederick C. Kelly here.) In the past, such comments have proved very useful and we’ve been very grateful for them.

VDARE.com does not, to put it mildly, have the resources of the New York Times. But the miracle of the internet makes patriotic Open Source litigation possible—for as long as we can stay online {snip}

Our amended complaint adds the New York Times’ latest smear—on May 5 it published an article (Facebook Says It Dismantles Disinformation Network Tied to Iran’s State Media, Reuters, May 5, 2020, archived on archive.org May 10, now disappeared from the NYT site) blithely escalating its smears of VDARE.com by describing us as “white supremacist.”

As I said in my earlier Sin Of Sullivan articleit was hammered into me throughout my 40 years in the Main Stream Media that continuing an editorial campaign against someone who has already warned you of a pending libel action—let alone intensifying the campaign—could be considered evidence of “malice.”

Evidently this is not a lesson now inculcated in the New York Times’ Woke newsroom.

But, needless to say, the added part in our final complaint that personally delights me addresses the interesting fact (which I had earlier modestly failed to bring to our lawyer’s attention) that in 1995 the New York Times had, not once but twice, respectfully reviewed my book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, from which my website VDARE.com is directly descended. Our lawyer writes:

Plaintiff has had a long and distinguished career as a writer and journalist.  He was a business writer and editor at the “Financial Post,” “Maclean’s,” “Barron’s,” “Fortune,” “Forbes” (where he attained the position of senior editor), and “National Review”; and his book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster was a bestseller.

Indeed, Defendant had implicitly acknowledged the important contribution Brimelow had made to public debate in America with said Alien Nation when Defendant chose to review Alien Nation not once, but twice within the same week, a practice which Defendant usually reserves only for works it considers especially noteworthy.

Specifically, Defendant reviewed Alien Nation not once, but twice within the same week, between April 16, 1995 and April 19, 1995: Nicholas Lemann, Too Many Foreigners, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, April 16, 1995, at 3, section 7; and Richard Bernstein, The Immigration Wave: A Plea to Hold Back, NEW YORK TIMES, April 19, 1995, at 17, section C.

Neither review detected any kind of race hatred or what the Defendant has lately claimed as “White Nationalism.”

However, the second review published by Defendant was especially complimentary. Mr. Brimelow’s writing was declared “powerful and elegant.” Far from denigrating Alien Nation as “White Nationalist” and “Racist and Divisive,” Defendant’s review was lavish in its praise of Brimelow’s work, stating inter alia:

  1. “Mr. Brimelow’s personality also comes through, and it is entirely engaging.”
  2. “…Mr. Brimelow has made a highly cogent presentation of what is going to be the benchmark case against immigration as it is currently taking place. Those who think that the system needs no fixing cannot responsibly hold to that position any longer unless they take Mr. Brimelow’s urgent appeal for change into account.”
  3. “The strong racial element in current immigration has made it more than ever before a delicate subject. It is to Mr. Brimelow’s credit that he attacks it head on, unapologetically.”

[Paragraph numbering omitted, emphasis and links added]

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What has changed since 1995, of course: the immigration debate, at that point dormant for some thirty years, has since come back to life with a vengeance. And the American Left—which emphatically includes the New York Times— has bet everything on repressing this debate until the post-1965 immigration disaster succeeds in Electing A New People.

That, and only that, is the reason I’m no longer considered “entirely engaging.”

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We will comment on the New York Times’ Motion To Dismiss when we file our full response. (I will say, however, that it relies on the “license to lie” argument mentioned above and discussed below in the context of OAN’s suit against Rachel Maddow).

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The ludicrous issue at stake here is well stated by OAN lawyer Amnon Siegel:

The words– “that OAN is really literally paid Russian propaganda”— do not convey an opinion. This is a blatant defamatory falsehood.

As I said in The Sin Of Sullivan, it’s not generally realized that defendants in libel actions brought by “public figures” now habitually make no effort to defend the truth of what they’ve said. They just assert it’s an expression of their opinion—i.e. that they have a license to lie.

This is exactly what Rachel Maddow and her lawyers did in this case. Of course, this claim has devastating implications for the credibility of her show. As Mike Cernovich commented mordantly: “Maddow’s win is America’s gain. No one can credibly claim that Maddow’s show is real news” [Maddow’s “I’m Not a Real Journalist” Defense Prevails in Court, Cernovich.com, May 25, 2020].

And RedState.com’s Brad Slager wrote:

[I]n a manner OAN has won a victory.

It managed to get Rachael Maddow to declare in court records that she is a fabulist whose reporting does not need to be taken as the least bit accurate. It is not to be taken lightly when a major name in the media universe has gone on the record to declare what she traffics in on the air is fake news.

[A Judge Rules Rachel Maddow is a Fake News Fabulist and Not a Journalist, May 25, 2020].

But of course Maddow’s concession is indeed “taken lightly”—because, outside of the conservative catacomb, this subtle point was barely reported.

Over time, dawning realization that this sort of thing is going on certainly has contributed to the growing public disenchantment with the Main Stream Media. [Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Edges Down to 41% by Megan Brenan, Gallup,  September 26, 2019] But in the short run, MSM arrogance and aggression has become utterly unrestrained.

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In conclusion, I’m going to quote again from the powerful article that Powerline’s John Hinderaker, whom I’ve never met, wrote on our case when it was first reported:

[L]awsuits like this one are an important contribution to freedom. Corrupt institutions like the New York Times and the Southern Poverty Law Center need to be attacked whenever possible, and popular support needs to be mobilized behind the idea that newspapers and partisan organizations should not be given carte blanche to lie with impunity about their political opponents.

[Sue the New York Times? They deserve it, January 10, 2020. Emphasis added].

Of course, I just don’t know if Brimelow vs. New York Times will be the case that breaks through and reverses the Sullivan disaster.

But I do know that someone will eventually prevail. The current regime of unbridled lies is too unstable. People still too often believe what they read and passions get too inflamed.

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This road will be long and hard. But we have no choice.

However, as evidence that the gravity of this situation is finally being recognized even in the most complacent and conventional quarters, I find to my amazement that I can actually now quote from National Review:

Conservatives in general, and Trump supporters in particular, are already being squeezed out of social media…But what if half the country begins to feel — with justice — that the other half is eager to deprive them of their rights, has set them beyond the pale, wants to see them crushed? What then?

Abandoning Liberalism Will Destroy Social Peaceby Stanley Kurtz, June 11, 2020.

“What then?” indeed.