01/06/2020
See also: Is VDARE.COM "White Nationalist"?
One of the things we have to deal with on a regular basis — like taking out the trash — is answering attacks on us. This is our answer to the current Wikipedia item about VDARE.com.
Wikipedia has developed from its earlier wildness to a relatively useful general reference on uncontroversial matters. However, on Right-vs-Left issues, and especially on racial issues, its editors, mostly SWPL types, squash all Wrongthinkful facts. See Nicholas Stix’s attempt to correct them here, and John Derbyshire’s struggles with the “Angry Asian Male” who edited his Wikipedia entry here.
In an infamous attack on Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s unimpeachable book The Bell Curve, journalist Charles Lane wrote a piece called “The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve’” [December 1, 1994 — Full Text] in the far-Left New York Review Of Books, which said that the book was “tainted” because investigation of quoted scientists’ pasts showed that some of them were in favor of white people.
Ever since then, “tainted sources” has been something of a joke on the Dissident Right: VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow quipped in 1996 that Michael Lind, a liberal who had reservations about mass immigration, might be attacked by a younger, more vicious journalist with an article called "Michael Lind’s Tainted Sources." And American Renaissance Editor Jared Taylor actually did publish an article called The ‘Tainted’ Sources of The End of Racism, American Renaissance, November 1995, in response to Dinesh D’Souza’s libels against American Renaissance.
I use Wikipedia mostly as source of links to original sources. (We’re big on links to original sources here.) But Wikipedia’s sources on us are seriously “tainted.”
The Wikipedia article on VDARE.com [Current Revision, January 6, 2020, last edited November 15, 2019] says we're associated with white supremacy,[2][3] white nationalism,[4][5][6]" and the Alt Right and that we have been "described as white supremacist.[2]
Those little superscripts go to these notes:
Well, let’s factcheck those.
[2], The Sam Frizell headline is about some other group’s Tweet being displayed in the Cleveland Arena where the RNC was being held — because the tweet included the hashtag #RNCinCLE, which also why our Tweet appeared on the RNC Jumbotron, causing Leftists to swoon — but Frizell does casually refer to us as white supremacist.
Kathleen Arnold’s main entry on VDARE on page 481 of her Encyclopedia does not say we're white supremacist, but the cited page 81 note [3] on Peter Brimelow says that in 2003 the SPLC "labeled" us as a hate site. Of course, the SPLC was employing what we call the "Ransom Note Racism" technique — quotes with no context, pasted together without proper sourcing to so label us.
Holly Folk’s anti-chiropractic book [4] apparently disagrees with Pastor Chuck Baldwin about "The Right to Determine One’s Own Healthcare" in a column of his that we posted in 2010.
Skipping over [5], the Washington Post story, [6], which recounts the story of our Colorado conference being cancelled as result of the post-Charlottesville pogrom against the Alt Right, also doesn’t say that we're white nationalist. It includes statements by Peter and Lydia Brimelow to the effect that we're not, and the usual libels from the SPLC.
When a headline says “Resort cancels 'white nationalist' organization’s first-ever conference” the little quote marks around "white nationalist" mean that someone else is saying it, not the reporter.
Finally, footnote [5], which I saved for last, is the most "tainted source" of all. It’s The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by the late Robert W. Sussman, which I debunked here extensively when it was published five years ago.
In Robert Sussman’s “Tainted Sources” — Playing The Telephone Game Against AMERICAN RENAISSANCE’s Jared Taylor and Robert Sussman’s "Tainted Sources" Continued: Plagiarizing Brian Tashman, I showed that Sussman, who died in 2016 after being hospitalized following a stroke, was guilty both in his book, and the excerpt from it that still appears on Salon.com, of serious, checkable factual errors, and of a degree of plagiarism that would have gotten him in trouble with his university if they cared about Leftists committing plagiarism..
Wikipedia is relying on page 299 of Sussman’s book, which said
"Besides this session, [then Pro-English head Robert] Vandervoort also hosted the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference entitled "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity Is Weakening the American Identity." Peter Brimelow, founder and head of the White nationalist website VDARE, participated in this panel. Brimelow reflected during the panel that after "Obama’s racial-socialist coup," he feared that the United States was doomed to face a "minority occupation government." He called on the Republican Party to focus on becoming the party of white voters by attacking "ethnic lobbies," affirmative action, bilingual education, and "taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens." Earlier in the session, Vandervoort delivered a rambling presentation from Serge Trifkovic (a conservative commentator who was unable to attend the conference). This paper focused on how the "cult of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual victimhood" and "multiculturalist indoctrination" was ruining the West and predicted that "the native Western majorities will melt away." [Emphases added]
That was the piece I dealt with in my Plagiarizing Brian Tashman post. Sussman’s book has appendices, an index, and a lengthy list of sources, but no footnotes.
The first thing is that I found the source Sussman was using, which was Steve King and White Nationalist CPAC Panel Warn that America’s Greatest Threat is its Diversity, rightwingwatch.org, Brian Tashman, February 9, 2012. No reference to this source appears in his book, but I was able to find it by Googling on "rambling" "Trifkovic" and Brimelow. I just didn’t believe Sussman was in the audience to hear it the talk. I knew he must have ripped off some source which called Trifkovic’s speech "rambling."
By the plagiarism standards of St. Louis University, where Sussman was a professor, the done thing in a case like this is to say “What Brian Tashman characterized as a “rambling presentation” from Serge Trifkovic.” (I have no idea if it actually rambled — Tashman may have not been paying attention.) However, the name Tashman doesn’t appear in Sussman’s book when I search for it.
Sussman was stealing, but he was also getting it wrong.
This is yet another example of Sussman playing what I called the "Telephone Game," whereby Leftist True Believers endlessly repeat each other’s smears, improving them in the process.
Thus, Sussman, above, says
"Brimelow reflected during the panel that after “Obama’s racial-socialist coup,” he feared that the United States was doomed to face a “minority occupation government.”" (Emphasis added)
However, Tashman, above, says
In 2009, Brimelow reflected on CPAC after “Obama’s racial-socialist coup” and expressed his fear that the U.S. is doomed to face a “minority occupation government.” (Emphasis added, links in original.)
Brimelow’s actual 2012 speech was, as Tashman, who attended it, wrote, about something completely different: the Public Choice consequences of institutional bilingualism: “Canadian Bilingualism & Multiculturalism as it Relates to America“ — sort of a non-racially inflammatory subject, especially since in Canada, we're talking about "two nations" (French and English) which are basically the same white race.
So all of Wikipedia’s evidence for us being either "white supremacist" or "white nationalist" is either inaccurate or tainted.
You have to suspect that the editors, who skew very far Left, especially on race, are more interested in fighting what they think of as "white nationalism" than in factual accuracy [Wikipedia wars: inside the fight against far-right editors, vandals and sock puppets, by Justin Ward, SPLC, March 12, 2018].
Whatever Wikipedia’s motivation, it lowers whatever credibility Wikipedia had.
Twenty-five years ago, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow wrote that the modern definition of “racist” is
anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal. Or, too often, a libertarian. And, on the immigration issue, even some confused conservatives.
The modern definition of both “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” is the same person, still winning the argument — after calling him racist didn’t work.
At least, that’s the answer you’d get from Wikipedia.
James Fulford is a writer and editor for VDARE.com.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.