American Renaissance magazine
Vol 9, No. 11	November 1998

 

CONTENTS

A Festival for France
‘A Perpetual Witch Trial’
The View From Lyon
Affirmative Action, French Style
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

A Festival for France

The Front National’s gigantic celebration of French Nationalism.

by Jared Taylor

The great fall festival of the Front National (FN) was held just outside Paris over the weekend of Sept. 19 and 20. Known as the “blue white and red festival” (from the colors of the French flag) it was an event of staggering proportions that vividly demonstrated the power and breadth of the French nationalist movement. The 18th annual event of its kind, this year’s festival attracted more than 100,000 FN supporters — including your correspondent. The climax of the weekend was a one-and-a-half hour speech by the party leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, that captivated an audience of some 20,000 and brought it roaring to its feet. Needless to say, this event was inspiring proof of the strength of national sentiment, a resounding demonstration by Frenchmen who are willing to defy one-world, anti-racist propaganda and say, “France is for the French!”

The festival itself is a fascinating combination of political rally, food fair, outdoor market, lecture series, and rock concert that has no parallel in the United States. It is a mostly open-air event that takes place on fair grounds at the edge of Paris. This year, there were over 100 booths, many set up by regional FN organizations, competing with each other to tempt festival-goers with the best regional delicacies. Many people spent hours at the festival and had lunch and dinner on the grounds, so eating and drinking were a constant refreshing backdrop to the event.

The festival also attracts conservative booksellers, sympathetic publications, and traditionalist religious organizations, as well as dealers in Celtic jewelry, historic memorabilia, and recordings of patriotic music. Important FN organizations, such as youth groups, the FN shadow government, and Front National headquarters committees also maintain booths.

The “foreign affairs” booth was manned by representatives of other European nationalist parties. In addition to delegations from the Flemish Bloc in Belgium and the Republican Party from Germany, what the French call the “Anglo-Saxons” were represented by the publication Right NOW! from England, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, based in St. Louis, Missouri. The C of CC is an activist group with close ties to AR, and your correspondent was part of a council delegation that had the pleasure of presenting Jean-Marie Le Pen with a Confederate flag that had flown over the South Carolina state capitol.

The FN makes a special point of appealing to young people. On both days, there were continuous performances by musical groups of the kind the French call “identity rock.” These were bands with names like Vae Victis and In Memoriam, playing hard-driving songs about patriotism and national identity. The Celtic heritage plays a large part in youthful expressions of nationalism — one band was called Dr. Merlin, and there was even a “Celtic rap group” called Basic Celtos.

For the party-goers, Saturday was the high point of the festival, with dancing and drinking until midnight. Away from the bandstand, young people with vocal cords well oiled with drink broke into spontaneous renditions of the French national anthem and other patriotic songs.

For the politically-oriented, the festival offered a series of lectures by some of the biggest names in the FN: Bruno Mégret, Bruno Gollnisch, Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Marie-France Stirbois, and others. These were held in a large tent at the center of the fair grounds, with a seating capacity of three or four hundred. Many speakers drew a full house and packed hundreds more into the aisles. The audience whooped at the sight of the brightest stars and chanted their names; this was a crowd that knew what it liked.

Jean-Marie Le Pen circulated through the fair grounds on both days, greeting activists, tasting regional dishes, and signing copies of his books. Wherever he went he was surrounded by crowds of admirers. With only a little persistence, though, anyone could approach the man and shake his hand, and he rewarded lady well-wishers with French-style kisses on both cheeks. He clearly has the spontaneous warmth and outgoing personality of the natural politician.

The biggest single event of the festival was the “grand discours” on Sunday afternoon. Thousands upon thousands of chairs were laid out before an enormous stage, and the front row seats began to fill, hours ahead of time. Patriotic music poured from enormous loud speakers, building the excitement until Mr. Le Pen himself stepped on-stage to thunderous applause. He then gave a wide-ranging speech that touched on many of the central themes of the movement: immigration, national sovereignty, France’s role in Europe and the world, and populist policies devoted to the welfare of the average Frenchman. Mr. Le Pen is a gifted orator, and kept the huge audience’s full attention the entire time.

Much of what he said would move any patriot. He spoke, for example, of ancestors:

It is the blood of our fathers that flows in our veins — the same blood that flowed to defend France and make it great. Our lives are embedded in this land, which our fathers preserved and improved. It is their language that we speak. When we eat of the products of the land — symbolized by bread and wine — we commune with our fathers by partaking of our nation, both material and spiritual. And when our souls depart this world below, it will be within the maternal soil that our bodies will repose.

Mr. Le Pen concluded his speech with these stirring words:

Because I believe that men are creatures of God, I believe they have a transcendent duty, an immense debt to those who have given them life, and endowed them with the spirit of love, beauty and harmony in one of the most beautiful countries on earth. They have a scared duty to their children to whom they owe, on pain of treason, the preservation of this heritage. And they have a duty to all of humanity and to their own history to testify to the greatness and nobility of their fatherland.“Long live the free nations of a European Europe. Long live the peoples of Europe. Long live the Front National. Long live France!

An Impressive Apparatus

The day after the festival, the FN office that handles foreign relations invited the “Anglo-Saxons” to the headquarters building. It is located just outside Paris, and is impressive testimonial to the seriousness of the French nationalist effort. No fewer than 120 people work full-time in the building, which is equipped with everything from ultra-modern video and audio studios to a press reception room that could hold an AR conference. This is a highly-organized, effective organization run by dedicated people. As the following interviews make clear, FN spokesmen are prepared to tackle fundamental questions that would terrify American politicians.

Indeed, the people of the FN are its most impressive asset. From the charismatic Mr. Le Pen on down, including the very attractive ladies of the press department and the intellectuals and professors who establish policy and hold political office, the organization hums with professionalism.

This does not, of course, prevent most of the French media from paying the front as little attention as possible and painting it in the blackest colors. The best print coverage of the festival was a 22-inch, page-eight story in the traditionally “conservative” Le Figaro. It described the event recognizably and without hysteria.

Le Monde, the lefty French “newspaper of record,” took the hatchet-job approach of describing the most offensive T-shirt among the 100,000 participants, and of hunting out the most provocative titles on sale in the book stands. As for the festival itself, the paper called it “an angry village of Gauls with a siege mentality and paranoid reflexes” and an “island well outside the ordinarily agreed-upon ethics of democratic debate.” Objective journalism at its finest!

Radio and television stations referred briefly to the festival, some more even-handedly than others, but the event was essentially treated as a minor undertaking of little interest.

And this, of course, is part of why the Front National deserves so much respect. Unlike every leftist tea-party or new anti-traditionalist idea, the front gets no help whatsoever from the mainstream press. It has taken remarkable dedication and discipline for Mr. Le Pen and his lieutenants to build their movement in the face of unremitting hostility not only from the left but from the right.

The Front National is now the clear leader of European nationalists, the model on which patriots across the continent build their movements. It shows just how far men and ideas can go, armed with nothing more than determination and a conviction of the truth. The Front National is a model not only for Europeans but for Americans as well.

ARTICLE

‘A Perpetual Witch Trial’

Bruno Gollnisch explains the political climate in France.

Bruno Gollnisch is one of the most influential members of the Front National. He is a member of the FN political bureau, secretary general of the party, and vice president for foreign affairs. He is currently a member of the European Parliament and a regional councilor for the Rhone-Alpes region. He is also a member of the Paris bar, holds a doctorate in international law, speaks fluent Japanese, and has the rank of capitaine de frégatte in the naval reserve. What follows is his extraordinary reply to a single question in a recorded interview he gave to AR on Sept. 24.

“What explains the constant hostility faced by the Front National?”

The answer is fairly simple, but there are many things, many forces that work together. First of all the Front National is an outsider in the system. Obviously it displeases the left and the extreme left, and it displeases the “conservatives” — who have conserved nothing — because it takes votes away from them. Therefore we are an outsider, a competitor in the hyper-competitive world of politics, so everything goes in an attempt to reduce the audience of the Front National.

Second, the FN is particularly hated by the left because it has done the thing the right should have done and did not do — and this failure is the right’s greatest crime — the front has challenged the moral sovereignty of the left. Until now in France, and broadly speaking in Europe as well — but especially in France since the end of the Second World War — the left and in particular the Communists have laid hands on the entire cultural domain: teaching, research, the media. Now, when I talk about Communists, in 1945 it was in fact the Communist Party, but now it is a little more subtle and goes all the way from the people you call “liberals” in America to outright Trotskyites.

These former Communists have now permitted themselves to become more bourgeois, in the sense that they accept the idea of receiving money, of making profits, and have transformed themselves into bosses — sometimes pitiless bosses — but they have retained the same ideas that are utterly destructive to the traditional ideas we defend.

So everything that is in the area of learning, of art, of culture has been abandoned to the left. Which means that when the right was in power [in France], it did not really exercise power because the left had drawn a set of boundaries outside of which the right was not allowed to stray. Because to step outside those lines meant you were not democratic, you were not republican, you were fascist, etc. And this was strictly observed . . .

The traditional right also had a great admiration for Communism — even though they rejected the crimes of communism. They would say that the victory of Communism was inevitable, so we have to go in that direction. But the Front National has brought all this up for reexamination. The Front National dared to attack the reality of the left, showing that the Communists’ claim of devotion to social justice was nothing more than the enrichment of a caste — a caste that was much more rotten and corrupt than the conservatives had ever been. We have also shown that the left’s vaunted welfare system generally destroyed all economic dynamism. And for this reason we are hated — because we dare to say a certain number of things that are true but have been taboo.

Thirdly, we are detested by a certain number of pressure groups, who do not accept the idea of the nation. Unhappily, I am obliged to say it: There are a certain number of Jewish organizations, which are quite patriotic when it comes to Israel, but for historical and other reasons, do not accept the slightest sign of national sentiment when expressed by others. We do not confuse these organizations with the entire Jewish community. These are the spokesmen, the pressure groups, the most influential elements. They oppose us despite the fact that we practice no anti-Semitism, despite the fact that we have members and even elected representatives who are Jewish. (Of course, they are greatly persecuted within their own communities for their attachment to the Front National.)

As for our struggle against immigration, it has won the hostility of the left — which hoped to use immigrants to make up for its losses in the French working class. The French were turning away from Communist and other labor unions, and the unions wanted to recruit Algerians, Turks, etc. But our efforts have won the hostility also of certain economic classes — the bosses — who saw immigration as a way to get a labor force that was relatively inexpensive. Of course, this was a very short-term view, because when you add up all the costs — social costs, costs to the penal system, welfare (and we have quite an extensive system of welfare) you can see that our immigration policy has been a disastrous policy economically.

As an aside, on the question of immigration, Le Pen was once on a trip to the United States, where he had a debate with some university students. One student objected to our position on immigration, saying that the United States is a great nation that has been built essentially through immigration. Le Pen agreed but told the student he had forgotten something: “In France,” he said, “I am Sitting Bull. I represent the natives.”

But to return to the hostility we face, given that 97 percent of the media in this country are in the hands of the groups I have described, this hostility is pounded into people’s heads with all the power of propaganda. I would say that for children from the very youngest age, they get courses in history that are truncated or falsified, they have obligatory courses in anti-racism. There are even exhibitions on the Second World War that show concentration camps and then end with photographs of Le Pen! That was the case with the Anne Frank exhibition. It’s just incredible.

This ideological weapon of the left is a Pavlovian reflex. They used it against General De Gaulle and they use it against us. When De Gaulle left the government and set up a new party of the right, there were posters put up by the left, in which De Gaulle’s face appeared as a mask and behind the mask was the face of Hitler. Well, that is exactly the same poster the left has used with Le Pen. Le Pen is taking off a mask — the mask of his own face — and behind it you see Hitler.

The elements of this propaganda line go like this: The right equals Vichy — although things are much more complicated than that. (In the Vichy government, for example, there was the former General Secretary of the CGT [the Communist trade union], and [Pierre] Laval [premier in the Vichy government and executed for treason in 1945] was a politician who came from the socialists — things were very complicated.) But the right equals Vichy though, as I say, this is not entirely correct.

Next, Vichy equals collaboration, which is not correct either, because no fair-minded Frenchman thinks that Marshal [Henri Philippe] Pétain [head of state of Vichy France, condemned to death in 1945 but sentenced to life in prison] did anything but try to limit the damage done by the military occupation of his country. But Vichy equals collaboration. Collaboration equals Nazism. Nazism equals concentration camps. Concentration camps equals gas chambers, which equals extermination, which equals absolute horror. Therefore, the right equals absolute horror. This is what is constantly pounded into us by totalitarian propaganda.

What makes this all the more worrying is the fact that we live in a country that has all the appearances of liberty. If this constant propaganda were in a country with a single political party and were put out by the country’s only television station, by party journalists in military uniform, no one would take it seriously.

But when this very same propaganda is broadcast by six channels of television, things appear to be different. A press agency may make a mistake but the mistake can be picked up by all the television stations and radio stations and all the newspapers, including the “conservative” papers. The reader or the listener gets all this from media organs that have the reputation (generally false) of having different points of view, and he thinks he is clearly in the presence of objective truth. I would guess that in the United States you have the same causes, which produce the same effects.

I am myself convinced that what we have is a struggle between what I might call the Natural Order — which would have to do with Creation and with eternal values (which always have to be rediscovered) — as opposed to a revolutionary will to power. This will to power is trying to establish a social order not on reality, but on theories entirely established by men. I myself believe in the Creator, but this revolutionary philosophy attempts to found the social order on human will alone, a Promethean will. This generally ends in catastrophe.

We had the French Revolution, which claimed to be founded exclusively on human reason, and it ended in the massacres of the Terror. We have had Marxist revolutions, which claimed to base everything on the class struggle to liberate the proletariat, and this ended in gulags, famines, wars, misery, and death. We also had in a more limited geographic area the National Socialist revolution, in which all was founded on a largely mythical racial purity — though I certainly affirm ethnic facts — but that, too, is not an absolute to which the entire social order must be sacrificed.

And now, in my opinion, now that the Marxist revolution has failed, we have another form of the revolutionary idea, and I see its progress very clearly within the European Parliament, for example — or in the organizations that are part of the United Nations. This is an international revolutionary ideology, like those that went before — like Marxism, in particular — which, for lack of a better term, I would call anti-racism.

Chesterton said the world is full of Christian ideas gone mad. For example, the idea of social justice degenerated into the Marxist revolution. But anti-racism does not derive exclusively from a Christian idea gone mad. After all, anti-racism could be the result of a generous sentiment of people who say, “I find that the unfortunate immigrants who come here because of hunger and misery in their own countries are not welcomed in my country, and I will try to help because of my feelings of generosity and compassion.” That is something we could discuss if that were really what was going on. We could talk about whether there are solutions other than immigration to the problems of the Third World. That could be an acceptable discussion.

But that is not at all what is happening. I see in the European Parliament that immigration is to be forced upon us, that miscegenation is to be forced upon us, and this is part of a messianic will to revolution. There is an ideal of the New Man, who must be neither white nor black. This ideal would be, say, Michael Jackson. Neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, this pitiful jumping jack ends up in dreadful stories of pedophilia.

But this will to suppress differences of race, sex, culture, traditions — this is a revolutionary idea, a messianism. It has its dogmas, its preachers, its witch trials, and its excommunications. And we [the FN] are the objects of a perpetual witch trial.

ARTICLE

The View From Lyon

A professor of history discusses the French immigration problem.

Pierre Vial is a member of the political bureau of the Front National, and is a Regional Councilor for Rhone-Alpes. He is also on the city council of Villeurbanne, the twin city just across the river from Lyon. His family has lived for at least six generations in Lyon, where he is a professor of medieval history.

Prof. Vial has no illusions about the universal brotherhood of man: “When I travel in Europe I feel at home. Europe is my extended family. On the other hand, Asia or Africa have different natures from that of Europe, and nature is something we must respect.”

He traces current doctrines that preach the equivalence of different cultures back to the Enlightenment, but asserts that “life is not theories. We must base our behavior and our understanding on facts. The left bends reality to make it fit its own theories, whereas nationalism is the reverse. We observe the facts and draw theories from them.”

How did France first start granting citizenship to colonial peoples? Prof. Vial explains that during the Second World War, Charles De Gaulle was in a weak and isolated position as the exiled leader of the “Free French.” To establish credibility in the eyes of the British and Americans he needed to give the impression that he had a real movement to lead. He traveled to Brazzaville in the French Congo, and gave a speech in which he claimed to have the entire French empire behind him in the fight against Germany. As Prof. Vial explains:

In order to give the colonial peoples some motive to join him, he made the famous statement that everyone in the French empire was ‘equal.’ He did not say they were all to be citizens; only that they were equal. The left and immigrant groups have since tried to twist his words to suggest that he offered citizenship to everyone in the colonies. But De Gaulle was no universalist. It is clear from records of his private conversations that he had no intention of granting citizenship or permitting mass immigration

Today’s France would no doubt shock the general. Prof. Vial explains:

With the schools and the media bombarding us with propaganda, the French are being made to think that France should become a mixed-race country — one in which intermarriage will turn us all café-au-lait. Children in schools are given assignments like this: ‘Draw a picture of a European, an African, and an Asian and show how similar they are.’ The front is opposed to this kind of folly. All we ask for is common sense — you do not have to be an intellectual to understand what we are saying. And the great majority of the French agree with us in opposing non-white immigration. But even if they know we are right, they have been persuaded that it would be ‘racist’ to vote for the Front National. Of course, it is the people who live in parts of the country touched by high levels of immigration who are most likely to vote for us. People who do not yet know the problem first-hand are the ones who are most susceptible to the propaganda.

According to Prof. Vial, the French policy toward immigrants has been one of conciliation and appeasement. Whatever the foreigners ask for loudly enough, they are likely to get: “It seems that whites want peace at any price, even if it must be the peace that comes with slavery.”

This could change, however, as more and more Frenchmen come face to face with the realities of “multi-racialism.” France does not collect data on the racial composition of its population, so it is impossible to know the percentage of non-whites. However, Prof. Vial has data that he thinks reliable:

I have spoken with a man who works for a government office that studies demographic questions. According to him, the best estimates put the current non-European population — including illegals — at about eight or nine million out of a total population of 60 million. They do not know the rate of increase, but there is no doubt that the last five years have brought an extraordinary rise. Family reunification, which brings in large numbers of young foreigners, has added a great deal to this. My government informant tells me that the feeling within his office is that if the non-European population reaches the 15 million level there could be an explosion.

Part of Prof. Vial’s work involves training young FN activists, and he does not shrink from discussing demographic change. “I tell them that is the fundamental problem, and I have never found anyone who disagreed. In fact they are pleased to find someone who discusses the matter honestly with them.”

In his work with the front, Prof. Vial has grown used to leftist hysteria: “They accuse us of being Nazis, but if voting for the FN means you are a Nazi there are several million Nazis in France. You’d think they would be a little more responsible about how they use language.

“We are often called ‘racist,’ but for the word to have any meaning, it must imply a hierarchy of races, or the domination of one race over another. That is not at all the position of the Front National. But we do recognize differences. This does not mean hierarchy; only that each group has the right to pursue those differences. In fact, I like to borrow an idea from the left. In May, 1968 [during the student uprisings], one of their slogans was ‘Long live the right to differences.’ Somehow, the leftists don’t like that slogan when I use it.”

ARTICLE

Affirmative Action, French Style

by Jared Taylor

The official position of the French government is that race is an irrelevant detail that it does not deign to notice. The government does not even keep statistics on the racial composition of the population, much less of welfare rolls or the prison population. However, official circles are almost as obsessed with race as they are in the United States — and in exactly the same way.

Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP) is the huge, government-controlled company that runs the Paris metro and the commuter rail lines around Paris. In May, it published a slick recruitment brochure for several hundred entry-level service jobs for “youths.” The brochure included three color drawings of the work involved: explaining the route map, assisting elderly passengers, and dealing with louts and fare beaters. In every color original the employee was very clearly a black or an Arab, and the objects of his attentions were just as clearly white.

This was too much for Jean-Yves Le Gallou, who is one of the FN regional councilors for the Paris area, serves on the political bureau, and is a member of the European Parliament. In June, he wrote to the president of RATP, accusing the company of establishing a system of racial preference: “Are we to conclude that these jobs you expect to create with public funds will be exclusively for immigrants to our country? What justifies this system of ‘affirmative action’ at the very moment it is being abandoned in the United States because of its failures and its perverse effects on national cohesion?”

Mr. Le Gallou also wrote to the equivalent of the attorney general of France, suggesting that the brochure is a violation of the Gayssot law that forbids “racist” speech. As he pointed out in a conversation with AR, if the FN published anything that reversed the races it could expect instant prosecution. The brochure and Mr. Le Gallou’s complaint got some press attention, but RATP has not yet been hauled before a judge on a charge of “racism.”

Mr. Le Gallou also made the following observations.

On racial preferences in France:

We practice ‘affirmative action’ in a hypocritical way, by benefiting ‘neighborhoods’ — the so-called underprivileged neighborhoods. This is the politically correct way of referring to neighborhoods with large numbers of immigrants. We also talk about employment preferences for ‘the young,’ for young people from ‘underprivileged neighborhoods.’ What this clearly means is young immigrants. People don’t say, ‘We are going to establish preferential policies for immigrants.’ They say, ‘We are going to establish preferences for young people from underprivileged neighborhoods.’

On freedom of speech:

There is a freedom of expression in the United States that we do not have in France. We live under the constant threat of repression. The Gayssot laws [banning revisionist and ‘racist’ speech] are arbitrary because you do not know in advance what is going to result in an indictment. And depending on which judge you end up with things can turn out very differently. We live in a great state of arbitrariness.“The European Parliament has not yet succeeded in doing this, but it often raises the question of controlling material on the Internet. The idea is that you start by keeping pedophilia and revisionism off the internet. And then, of course, you proceed to the ‘racists,’ and everyone else. Pedophilia, which really is frightful, serves as the fig leaf for censorship efforts of this kind.

On justifications for rigging the electoral system to keep the FN out of the French parliament despite its 15 percent of the national vote (see AR, April, 1998):

The system certainly is a distortion of democracy, but there is a somewhat perverse campaign underway in France to promote the view that there are values higher than democracy. These are the so-called ‘values of the republic.’ Well, that sounds lovely but who defines these values? We actually have the beginnings of a theocratic system, since it is a caste of priests who define these values.

On turning immigration and refugee policies over to the European Union rather than keeping it in individual European countries:

The purpose is to increase the distance between decision-making and the people. The greater the distance, the greater the likelihood that the decision will be politically correct.

On assimilation of foreigners:

The traditional French model of assimilation recognizes only individuals and not communities. I recall traveling in England and people used the word ‘community’ to describe Pakistani and Indian immigrants. We did not use the word in France because we insisted that there were only individual citizens of the nation and not communities. Now we use the word, both as an import from English and in recognition of the facts.“France, which had always operated according to this model of assimilation of individuals now follows the ‘community’ model. You see this in a city like Paris. We now have bloc voting by community — ethnic communities, religious communities, even sexual communities. In electoral terms, Paris is becoming a mosaic of communities — more or less on the American model. It may well be that the assimilationist model is one that can function only when the numbers are small. A few individuals may assimilate, but they are drowned in the mass that do not, especially when the community is being constantly renewed by further immigration.

Why it is hard for nationalist parties to attract good people:

People seek honor, after all. And honors accrue to people who are in the system rather than to those who are outside. Compared to the other countries with which we have contact, France is the only one in Europe where a nationalist party can attract the elite from the universities and government service. This is one of the distinctive aspects of the French situation.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Know Him by His Friends

President William Clinton is finding out who his friends are: non-whites and homosexuals. In September, he was welcomed like a conquering hero when he addressed the annual dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus. Representative Maxine Waters of California also got a standing ovation when she said, “We support Bill Clinton at this critical moment in his career. It is because African Americans are uniquely qualified to know unfairness when we see it.” The President, in perhaps unconscious self-congratulation, thanked blacks for “understanding the true meaning of repentance and atonement.” Later that evening, Mr. Clinton was joined by Vice President Al Gore, whose arrival was delayed because he had been addressing a dinner of some 2,000 homosexual activists — another group that has been unwavering in its loyalty. At both dinners, the Vice President said that he and Mr. Clinton had run “one of the most successful administrations in history,” in part, because they had appointed so many blacks and homosexuals.

Blacks return the President’s affections. A recent poll asked Americans if they trusted William Clinton to keep his word “as President.” Eighty-six percent of blacks said yes, while only 46 percent of whites did. In Congress, the support is just as lopsided. Although the house voted by an overwhelming 363-63 margin to make the Starr Report public, 29 of the 35 members of the black caucus voted against releasing the report. (Nancy Benac, AP, Clinton Thanks Blacks for Support, Sept. 19, 1998. William Buckley, Opinion Polls Divided Along Racial Lines, Conservative Chronicle, Sept. 16, 1998, p. 18.)

Four days after his love feast with the black caucus, Mr. Clinton got two extended standing ovations when he addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual dinner. Representative Xavier Becerra of California, chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, urged the assembled raza to welcome the President “como familia” — like family. “We converge tonight as one voice . . . like the voice of one proud family,” he said. The President smiled happily when someone yelled Viva Clinton! and, as usual, Vice President Al Gore tagged along to express his admiration for things Hispanic. (AP, Hispanics Continue Clinton Support, Sept. 23, 1998.)

But perhaps most gratifying to our President was the unconditional endorsement of the man who, though not a voter in US elections, is widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest moral authorities (see below).

Gold for Mandela

On September 23, President Clinton awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to South African President Nelson Mandela. A crowd of American politicians greeted Mr. Mandela with cheers and standing ovations in a ceremony in the Capitol rotunda. “No medal, no award, no fortune, nothing we could give him could possibly compare to the gifts he has given to us and to the world,” said the President. “The only gift that is true recompense is to continue his mission and to live by the power of his profound and wonderful example,” he added.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was just as effusive. With tears in his eyes, he urged Americans to follow Mr. Mandela’s example of humility, sacrifice and kindness in the face of enmity. He also called Mr. Mandela “the leading example in the world today of the spirit of Washington.” George Washington, who was awarded the medal in 1776, was the first of 117 recipients.

After the ceremony, Mr. Mandela praised the President’s efforts to improve race relations and to bring non-whites into the government. “That alone is a very good indication raising the possibility that in due course we may have a black president [in the United States],” he said. (Donna Abu-Nasr, Mandela Gets Congressional Medal, AP, Sept. 23, 1998.)

The day before he received the award, Mr. Mandela publicly expressed unconditional backing for William Clinton. “He has my full support in everything [!] that he does,” he said, adding, “[I]n my view there is no [prior] president who has identified himself with the aspirations of blacks inside this country and in Africa.” That night Mr. Mandela and his wife Graca slept at the White House. (Donna Abu-Nasr, Mandela Offers Support for Clinton, AP, Sept. 22, 1998.)

Tragedy in Africa

Many Africans believe that sex with a young virgin can cure everything from money problems to AIDS to a bad harvest — and the sex need not be consensual. This belief has lead to an epidemic of child rape. “It is hard to find a virgin of 16 nowadays, so men are turning to babies under 10,” says Mamelato Leopeng, an AIDS worker from South Africa.

Because one in four adult males are infected with HIV in some parts of Africa, they are infecting large numbers of young girls. In Zambia, the rate of HIV infection among teenage girls is five to seven times the rate for boys — largely the result of forcible sex with older men. Although a great many rapes in Africa go unreported, in Zimbabwe the number reported increased 30 percent in the last five years. In 1997, more than half of the victims were children, many younger than five. Some young girls are raped by their own fathers or relatives. Many women now report that they are afraid to leave their daughters alone with any man, no matter how close a relative.

One Zimbabwe rapist who called himself “King AIDS” was recently sentenced to life in prison for knowingly infecting an eight-year-old. “We even have cases of children still in [diapers] being raped,” says Jacqueline Pratt, acting chief magistrate of the criminal courts in Harare, the capital city.

Zorodzai Machekanyanga, who heads an AIDS group for women in Zimbabwe, says the problem is rooted in African culture. “The girl child has no value in African society; she is a thing to be used to make men’s lives better.” Women are also thought to be the source of sexually transmitted diseases. In Shona, the majority language in Zimbabwe, AIDS and syphilis are literally called “women’s diseases.”

Although child rape has come under increasing scrutiny because it has become a conduit for AIDS, it is an old practice in Africa. Witch doctors have traditionally prescribed sex with a virgin as a powerful cure for a variety of diseases and personal problems. (Dean Murphy, Africa’s Silent Shame, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1998, p. A1.)

Not Intermarrying

A paper recently released by the Population Association of America reports that there is less inter-racial marriage than most people think. Authors Michael Tyler and Gillian Stevens have found that blacks and whites, especially, are hardly more likely to marry each other now than they were 30 years ago.

The report’s approach was to tally the number of women of each race whose husbands are of the same race. For whites, the figure is over 98 percent and for blacks it is 97.6 percent. About 80 percent of the husbands of Hispanic women are Hispanic, and the same-race figure for Asians is about 76 percent. In all, fewer than three percent of American marriages are interracial. Despite pro-miscegenation propaganda, the authors see little likelihood that black-white marriages will rise sharply any time soon. (I, Thee, We, Them, Economist, June 20, 1998, p. 31.)

Read the Social Contract

The summer, 1998 issue of The Social Contract is devoted to the subject of “Europhobia,” which guest editor John Vinson (of the American Immigration Control Foundation) defines as “hostility directed toward European-descended Americans.” It is an excellent review of the anti-white attitudes that dominate American culture. The 77-page issue includes articles by Jared Taylor, Samuel Francis, Patrick Buchanan, and Brent Nelson. AR contributors James Lubinskas and Joseph Fallon have also written for the issue, and it includes an excellent review of The Real American Dilemma by another AR contributor, Michael Masters. To order the issue please call the Social Contact Press at (800) 352-4843.

Under Several Gods

Third-World immigration is making America less Christian. At more than five million, there are now twice as many Muslims as Episcopalians, and they outnumber the estimated 3.3 million Jews who go to synagogue. About 40 percent of the Muslims are American-born blacks, while the rest are recent immigrants. One fourth are from India or Pakistan, and about 12 percent are from Arab countries. In the last 20 years the number of Buddhists has shot up from 75,000 to 910,000. Most are Asians, but Buddhism is the most popular non-Christian religion for white converts.

Roman Catholics are, by far, the largest single church, with 60 million members, but 35 percent are Hispanic. The largest Protestant denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention with 15.6 million members. It is still growing, mainly because of Asian immigrant converts; 20 percent of Southern Baptists are now non-white. Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians are declining in numbers.

Princeton University professor Robert Wurthnow notes that the numbers have a political edge: “These changes make it less appropriate to impose one tradition on another in a public space. Debates about school prayer or the posting of the Ten Commandments have to take into account diversity.”

Should Have Abstained

The following is an article from the Orange County Register, which we reproduce in toto.

A colonel in the Ivory Coast army was killed by gunfire as he tested a ‘magic belt’ that supposedly possessed powers to protect him from bullets, the official daily Fraternité-Matin reported Wednesday. It said Pascal Ghah, 49, died near the town of Aboisso after being hit by a bullet fired from his own service pistol by a 20-year-old son of the belt’s maker.

The newspaper quoted Ghah’s cousin, Andre Gondo, who made the belt, as insisting that its protective powers were real, provided one abstained from sex while wearing it.

An army spokesman said Gondo had been arrested but that his son was on the run.

(Colonel Fatally Shot Testing ‘Magic’ Belt, Orange County Register, Aug. 27, 1998.)

Rapid Transformation

The immigration invasion is not confined to big cities or the Southwest. Small, rural towns are being transformed too. Attracted by jobs in the carpet, meatpacking and poultry industries, Mexican immigrants have flooded previously white communities.

Siler City, North Carolina, was four percent Hispanic in 1990. Today it is 40 percent Hispanic. Hispanics have risen from five percent of the town of Lexington, Nebraska in 1990 to 45 percent in 1998. Other towns such as Dodge City, Kansas and Dalton, Georgia, have seen similar transformations. So many Mexicans have arrived that Siler City resident Terry Hogan says, “I don’t see how there’s anybody left in Mexico, really.”

Along with the usual demands for bilingual education, and “cultural sensitivity” that runs one way, the newcomers change the environment of these once-homogeneous towns. Spanish competes with English, mariachi music blares from cars, and well-intentioned whites are charged with racism and stereotyping.

Whites have received an unexpected education in Mexican culture. For example, in Lexington, Nebraska, parents discovered piles of used toilet paper in school bathrooms. This is a Mexican custom — Mexican sewers are so bad that people put used paper in a box on the floor rather than clog the pipes by flushing it. Rogers, Arkansas, discovered that Mexican parents in Los Angeles were sending their gang-member children to the country, in the hope of getting them out of gang life. The people of Rogers have not enjoyed their role as decontaminants.

Whites have taken to carrying pepper spray when they go out, and others have fled their hometowns in disgust. (Ben Stocking and Edwin Garcia, An Influx Of Latinos, San Jose Mercury News, August 17, 1998, p. 1A.)

Supporting Their Own

The First Weekend Club is a Los Angeles-based group of blacks established to support black films. The organization — which is building chapters nationwide — mobilizes members to support black films in their crucial first weekend of release. The club calls out the troops whenever a film is produced, directed, or even shot by a black. It urges each member to recruit 10 friends to go see the movie during the first week. Movies made by whites may get the nod if they star blacks. The group has supported “Soul Food,” “Amistad,” “Hoodlum,” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” (Lori Rotenberk, Ticket Power, Chicago Sun-Times, August 20, 1998, p. 39.)

Good-bye 4th, Hello El Grito

In September, the Los Angeles City Council voted to more than quadruple to $63,000 the budget to celebrate Mexico’s independence day. What Mexicans call “El Grito” thus gets three times as much city money as American Independence Day. Adolfo Nodal, manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, explained why he turned down requests for more funding for July 4th celebrations. “A lot of it (July 4) is just put up the flag and rah, rah, rah, and fireworks, which is not cultural activity as far as we’re concerned.” He explained that El Grito includes art, storytelling, singing and dancing.

One non-Hispanic councilman, Hal Bernson, did go so far as to say: “I think it’s kind of strange, but we have a lot of people of that heritage. It kind of reflects the population ratio today.” Sheryl Wenthur, a local regent for the Daughters of the American Revolution, put in a bid for equal time for America: “It’s OK to recognize other people’s national holidays, but America should get at least equal attention [from the city].” (Patrick McGreevy, Mexican Holiday Budget Triple That Spent for July 4, LA Daily News, September 16, 1998.)

The Usual

In a column on the Senate race between Illinois Republican Peter Fitzgerald and incumbent Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun, George Will predicted that the country’s first and only black woman senator will lose. He says she could be brought down by an accumulation of scandals: She spent an inheritance that was supposed to go to her mother, and reportedly spent $281,000 in campaign contributions on clothes, cars, travel, and jewelry. She is also accused of bank fraud, bribery and other crimes while she was the Cook County, Illinois, recorder of deeds.

How did the senator respond? “I think because he couldn’t say ‘nigger’ he used the word ‘corrupt,’” she said, although Mr. Will did not use the word corrupt in his column. “George Will can just take off his hood and go back to wherever he came from.”

She later sent Mr. Will an apology, saying, “I know you have a consistent record of opposition to racial prejudice.” Those were just the words to satisfy Mr. Will. He wrote back: “Apology accepted. Go Sammy [Sosa]!” (George Will, Moseley-Braun May Find Defeat, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 7, 1998, p. 19. Scott Fornek, Moseley-Braun Writes Apology, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 9, 1998, p. 24.)

Return to Common Sense

A Washington state priest has issued a call for a return to ethnic parishes. He says unwritten church policy requires that Hispanic immigrants be integrated into existing Catholic parishes, but that “cultural and racial gaps widen rather than shrink as naive hopes for ‘bridge building’ become strained beyond repair.” The result, he says, is that “the parish limps into the future with the [white] old-timers and the [Hispanic] newcomers going their separate and unequal ways, though the pretense of a single parish is maintained.”

He believes the church should recognize that, at least in the short term, differences are irreconcilable:

The pastoral wisdom of the church has recognized that communities of the faithful brought together by common cultures, nationalities, or languages may best be served by parishes of their own rather than by integration into pre-existing, geographically based parishes . . . The concept of the ethnic parish served the American church extremely well for over a hundred years; there is no ecclesial reason why it couldn’t be taken out of our pastoral closet once again.

(Kevin Codd, Bring Back the Ethnic Parish, Commonweal, Sept. 11, 1998, p. 23.)

English is Racist

The House of Representatives has voted 221-189 to put limits on how Congress spends its $300 million annual budget for bilingual education. According to the new rules, no student could get more than three years of such education, which would be designed to teach immigrants English as quickly as possible. “English is the language of this nation and its mastery is the key to success,” explained Frank Riggs, R-Calif., chief sponsor of the bill.

Hispanic congressmen said the law insults the Spanish language, which they said is the language of hemispheric trade and the native tongue of America’s fastest-growing minority. Rep. Matthew G. Martinez, D-Calif., went a little further and called the bill “the height of racism and prejudice.” (Robert Greene, House OKs Bilingual Education Limit, AP, Sept. 11, 1998.)

Biter Bit

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is the British government’s busy-body group set up in 1976 to fight “racism.” Its chairman, Sir Herman Ouseley, decided that previous campaigns had failed to reduce white prejudice, so he decided to use shock tactics. He put up “obviously racist” billboards all over the country to see what would happen. One, claiming to promote the “TDX-5 rape alarm,” showed a white woman sitting on a bus anxiously eyeing a young black man. The ad line read, “Because it’s a jungle out there.” Another billboard, ostensibly for athletic shoes, showed a black about to dunk a basketball. Next to him was a picture of an orangutan in the same pose, reaching for a branch. The caption was “Born to be agile.”

The idea behind these weird ads was that the CRE would follow them with another set of posters that included smaller versions of the originals, along with questions in big letters: “What was worse? This advert or your failure to complain?” Presumably, Britons were to be shamed right out of their “racism.”

The CRE has not had a chance to put up the second set of ads. The police of Avon and Somerset have threatened to prosecute the CRE under the Race Relations Act — the very law that established the CRE, and forbids “racism.” In some areas, the original ads were ordered covered with white paper.

The CRE stands by its campaign. It says there were only 82 complaints about the posters, adding that thousands of Britons saw them and did nothing — proof that the campaign is badly needed. (Neil Tweedie, Shock Posters Send Police on the Trail of Race Commission, Electronic Telegraph, Sept. 22, 1998.)

Wonders Never Cease

Private organizations have, for some years, run “employment testing” programs designed to sniff out “racism.” They send two presumably equal candidates for the same job — one black, the other white. If the white candidate gets a job offer and the black doesn’t, they turn the results over to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for possible legal action. “Testing” is often called the most objective way to hunt for “racism,” and a 1994 court decision permits the use of tester testimony in discrimination cases. The EEOC does not yet do regular testing on its own, but it has launched a pilot project to monitor hiring in Chicago and Washington, DC.

Testing has an obvious flaw: black “testers” have a vested interest in proving job discrimination. How earnestly or realistically do they really try to get these jobs — jobs they do not intend to take, and for which the testing organization may have provided fake credentials?

Now, the testers themselves are trying to cash in. Two black women who posed as job-seekers in 1995 for something called the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, have sued for damages because they were not offered jobs by the companies they were trying to trick. Fortunately, the Federal District Court in Chicago has dismissed their absurd claims. Judge Suzanne B. Conlon wrote that it is unreasonable to “allege an ‘injury’ of not receiving an offer for a job they neither wanted nor intended to accept.” (Business Wire, Federal Court Strikes Down EEOC’s Employment Testers Project, Sept. 22, 1998.)

Sacrificed to the Gods

Earlier this year, members of the Nigerian Ijaw tribe sacrificed 30 people from the enemy Urhobo tribe to an Ijaw goddess. A group of Urhobo tribespeople were on their way to a funeral, when they were abducted by Ijaws. They were marched to a shrine in an Ijaw village and forced to strip naked. After a chief priest performed a religious ritual, the Ijaws sacrificed the Urhobos to one of their goddesses. According to a witness, eleven men, ten women, and nine children were killed. Tribal violence has been common in this area close to the delta of the Niger river. (Jacques Pinto, Thirty Killed in Nigeria in ‘Sacrifice’ to God, Electronic Telegraph, March 20, 1998.)

Useful Idiots

White liberals in the “new” South Africa are finding they are not appreciated by their black former comrades. Professor John Dugard was one of South Africa’s most prominent intellectuals. He is a world authority on international law and was an architect of the “progressive” post-apartheid constitution. He recently left South Africa after he was passed over for a judicial post, apparently because he is white. He now imparts liberalism to students at Leiden University in Holland.

Mandi Smallhorne was a member of “Black Sash,” which was a group of white women who crusaded against apartheid. She recently wrote in a Johannesburg newspaper that “in the old South Africa a significant number of people of darker hues accepted and welcomed me because of my anti-apartheid views. In the new South Africa I am treated with contempt and hatred, for no other reason than that I have white skin.” Referring to Bishop Desmond Tutu’s description of South Africa as a “rainbow nation” she says, “What kind of rainbow is it where every colour is acceptable as long as it is black?”

The stress of living under black rule is taking its toll on South Africa’s whites. A poll last month shows 74 percent of those with skilled jobs are thinking of leaving. (David Beresford, No Room in the Rainbow for Liberals, The Guardian News Service, September 17, 1998.)

Conferences AR editor Jared Taylor will speak at two conferences in November. The Council of Conservative Citizens will hold its national conference in Jackson, Mississippi, on November 6 & 7. Other speakers include Samuel Francis and Mississippi governor Kirk Fordice. The CCC is the most effective pro-majority activist group in America. Please call Gordon Baum at (314) 291-8474 for details. The American Nationalist Union is holding a conference in Cleveland, Ohio on November 13 and 14. Besides Mr. Taylor, Thomas Chittum and Samuel Francis will be speakers. The ANU endorses an end to affirmative action, a moratorium on immigration, and self-determination for all people. Please call Don Wassall at (724) 443-7300 for information.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Congratulations on a successful conference. I was glad to read that the media took some notice and that the “anti-racist” demonstration was a fizzle. However, I was sorry to note that unlike your two previous gatherings, none of your speakers was a religious figure. I do not believe America’s racial problems can be solved without a proper understanding of the role of religion in society. I hope you will remedy this omission at your next conference.

Jorge Pascal, Madrid, Spain

Sir — In the October issue, Glayde Whitney reports on an astonishing study conducted by Harvard Medical School, which concludes that the problems of blacks are not caused by white “racism,” and that to insist on this mistaken explanation is nothing short of “dangerous.” Alas, I see no mention whatsoever of this important study in the media, not even in the “conservative” press. It is a sad day when not even Harvard can break out of the liberal media hammer lock.

Greg Helton, Charlottesville, Va.

Sir — I am glad to see Glayde Whitney back in the magazine — hadn’t seen his column for a while. The science may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I can’t get enough of it.

Lawrence Cooper, Lebanon, N.H.

Sir — I was shocked to read your October “Letter from Silicon Valley.” Immigration opponents like to focus on how blacks and perhaps lower-income whites are hurt by unskilled immigration, but I had no idea that virtually an entire industry — and a crucial one — had fallen into the hands of Asians. Surely the anonymous author is not alone; surely there are enough displaced white engineers to make a stink! And surely, even liberal California newspapers must realize something is wrong if you have to be able to speak Chinese to get along with your co-workers!

I almost dread to open up AR. Just when I think I have seen the worst, you print something I could never have imagined.

Catherine Harper, Grass Valley, Cal.

Sir — In the October issue you wrote about a white man killed by a mob of blacks in Alton, Illinois. As you point out, State’s Attorney William Haine refused to press hate crime charges, but you did not elaborate on his reasons. He says that he has already charged the perps with murder and that hate crimes carry a lesser penalty. He. says he does not want to move the focus of the investigation away from the central fact of murder. “Murder by definition is a hate crime,” he says, so there is no need to concentrate on the racial angle. Whaaat? Just imagine trying to sell that to the NAACP if a mob of whites had murdered a black.

Carl Pederson, Rock Island, Ill.

Sir — Ray Batz’ superb article about women and blacks in the San Francisco Fire Department reminds me of a problem we have been having with our police officers. For the last year or so, the single most common reason for recruits to fail police training is that they wash out of the shooting course. Oddly, it is only black women who can’t learn how to shoot. Every one of the last ten people to fail the test was a black woman.

What’s going on here? According to the papers, the women say the gun is too big and their hands are too small. Or that they are afraid of the gun. But somehow white women don’t have these problems. Everybody is puzzled.

In my view, though, women should not be police officers at all, and teaching them to shoot is a mixed blessing. Studies have shown that women officers are more likely than men to pull a gun in a threatening situation — and use it. This is not surprising; they are smaller and weaker and less able to control a situation without resorting to firearms. The more lady cops there are, the more people are going to get shot. On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad thing . . . Assuming lady cops can hit the bad guys they are aiming at and not someone else.

Dan Shorter, New Orleans, La.

Sir — This is transcribed from the television program, “This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts,” which aired on September 27,1998:

“William Kristol: Mark McGwire deserves the home run title. He’ll get it. Sammy Sosa is a nice guy, and nice guys finish second.

“Sam Donaldson (to Cokie Roberts): And you?

“Cokie Roberts: I’m for Sammy Sosa, because as my husband has pointed out to me, the most common name in baseball today is Martinez, and I think Sammy Sosa represents the future of baseball and the future of America.”

Paul Kirchner, Hamden, Conn.