Jews, neo-Nazis on same page?
New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published article over the weekend depicting goings-on at recent conference sponsored by white supremacy magazine, which was attended by representatives of neo-Nazi organizations from all over the U.S., as well as by group of extreme right-wing Jews. Magazine editor: As far as I’m concerned, a white Jew is white
The New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published an article over the weekend depicting the on goings at the American Renaissance Conference in Virginian last February.
The conference, which is sponsored by a magazine dedicated to the purity of the race, was attended by representatives of neo-Nazi organizations from all over the U.S., as well as by a group of extreme right-wing Jews.
According to the Forward, the events passed without major incident until former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke approached the microphone on the floor during the question-and-answer session for French writer Guillaume Faye.
‘Our own people come first’
After congratulating Faye for stirring remarks that "touched my genes," Duke asked if there weren't an even more insidious threat to the West than Islam.
"There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and our spirit," the Forward quoted Duke as saying.
"Tell us, tell us," came a call from the back of the room.
"I'm not going to say it," Duke said to rising laughter.
But Michael Hart, a squat, balding Jewish astrophysicist from Maryland, was not amused. He rose from his seat, strode toward Duke, spit out a curse — "You f...ing Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting" — and exited.
The Forward report noted that only a few minutes earlier Hart, a mainstay of American Renaissance conferences, had been trying to reassure Herschel Elias, a first-time attendee from suburban Philadelphia, that he should not let his observation that the meeting was "infiltrated by Nazis and Holocaust deniers" ruin his impression of American Renaissance.
"The speakers aren't Nazis," Hart assured him. "Jared isn't a Nazi."
Jared is Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance magazine. He founded the publication 1990, and since 1994 he had sponsored the biennial conference that bears its name. A former liberal, Taylor is glib, gracious and genial, capable of putting his white nationalism in the most benign and commonsense terms.
"We mean well to all people," he said in his address at this year's conference, "but our own people come first."
‘Jews must be part of the movement’
The conference has attracted ever larger crowds, with this year's event drawing about 300 people — all white (no more than 5 percent Jewish) and most of them male. The attendees are united by a common belief in black intellectual inferiority, opposition to non-white immigration and ardor for maintaining America's white majority. By the end of this seventh biennial conference, however, the delicate state of his coalition seemed apparent.
Hart, who spoke at the 1996 conference about his plan for a racial partition of the United States, said that Taylor now had to face the fact that he must purge the Nazis or lose the Jews. "He can't expect Jews to come if there are Nazis here,'' Hart said.
"Ultimately, for all the things I care about to happen, Jews must be part of the movement," Taylor said in an interview. The reason, he added, is that Jews have influence and are widely seen as "the conscience of our society."
For example, Taylor said, without Jewish support it will be nearly impossible to restrict immigration. Besides, the conference organizer said, as far as he is concerned, a white Jew is white.
Four of the 10 speakers were Jewish at the first conference in 1994 in Atlanta, including New York writer Lawrence Auster and City College philosophy professor Michael Levin. The after-dinner speaker that year was Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a teacher at Yeshiva University High School for Boys who believes in racial separatism. Schiller brought a cadre of yeshiva students with him. Kosher dinners were provided.
At the 2000 conference in Herndon, Robert Weissberg — a political scientist who then worked at the University of Illinois — delivered a speech titled "Jews and Blacks: Everything the Goyim Want To Know but Were Afraid To Ask."
His thesis was that although Jews and blacks loathe one another, Jews remain frightened of the white right.
