American Renaissance

Founded by Jared Taylor in 1990, the New Century Foundation is a self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites — although in hifalutin language that avoids open racial slurs and attempts to portray itself as serious scholarship. It is best known for its American Renaissance magazine and website, which regularly feature proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists. The foundation also sponsors American Renaissance conferences every other year where racist "intellectuals" rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

In Its Own Words

"In fact, blacks and Hispanics are, compared to whites, far more likely to be poor, illiterate, on welfare, or in jail; they are far more likely to have illegitimate children, be addicted to drugs, or have AIDS. By no definition of international competitiveness can the presence of these populations be anything but a disadvantage." 
— "‘Who Speaks for Us?' (A Word of Introduction to Our Readers)," American Renaissance, 1990

"There is a difference between blacks and whites — analogous to the difference in intelligence — in psychopathic personality considered as a personality trait. ... For psychopathic personality, the mean and distribution are higher among blacks. The effect of this is that there are more black psychopaths and more psychopathic behavior among blacks."
— Richard Lynn, American Renaissance, 2002

"Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears."
— Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, 2005

Background

The New Century Foundation is headed by Jared Taylor, who also edits American Renaissance, which presents itself as a forum for open-minded thinkers not afraid to take on the racial taboos of the time without stooping to racial epithets and the like. But, regardless of its calm tone and academic look and feel, the magazine openly peddles white nationalism and Taylor supports the idea of America as "a self-consciously European, majority-white nation" which he argues was "the original conception of [the U.S.], and one that was almost universally accepted until the 1960s." In 2002, for instance, American Renaissance published an article by race scientist Richard Lynn (see Pioneer Fund) under the title "Race and the Psychopathic Personality" that argued that blacks "are more psychopathic than whites" and suffer from a "personality disorder" characterized by a poverty of feeling, lack of shame, pathological lying and so on. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the magazine ratcheted up its customary attacks on black people, particularly in an error-ridden essay by Taylor that said the hurricane "was an excuse [for blacks] to loot, rob, rape and kill." American Renaissance, based at Taylor's home in Oakton, Va., also publishes frequent articles on the discredited field of eugenics, which promotes selective breeding to improve human genetic stock. 

The foundation's website, featuring stories on black crime and the like, had risen by 2008 to one of the top 20,000 in the world after a makeover that added a daily feature posting news articles of interest to racists. In recent years, Taylor has added several budding young racist intellectuals to his staff, including Ian Jobling the website editor and E-list moderator until 2006 who now heads his own racist group, Inverted World, and Stephen Webster, assistant editor of American Renaissance. New Century Foundation also publishes other works on race, including Taylor's 1992 book, Paved With Good Intentions, which argued that because sterilizing welfare mothers would not be publicly accepted, authorities should instead insert into such women "five-year implantable contraceptives."

Since 1994, the New Century Foundation has also played host to American Renaissance conferences, suit-and-tie affairs that attract a broad spectrum of participants from the racist right, including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members, Holocaust deniers and eugenicists. The conferences even have an international presence. In 2002, for instance, speakers included Nick Griffin, leader of the neofascist British National Party, and Bruno Gollnisch, who was then second in command of Jean Marie Le Pen's immigrant-bashing National Front in France.

One issue that has proven problematic for Taylor and his foundation has been anti-Semitism. Taylor, unlike many on the radical right, is known for his lack of anti-Semitism and for including racist Jews in his events. He told MSNBC-TV interviewer Phil Donahue in 2003 that Jews "are fine by me" and "look white to me." At one point, he even banned discussion of the so-called "Jewish question" from American Renaissance venues, and, by 1997, he had kicked Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis off his E-mail list. Despite these efforts, Taylor also has continued to allow people like Don Black, the former Klan leader who runs the neo-Nazi Stormfront.org web forum, and Jamie Kelso, a Stormfront moderator, to attend his biannual American Renaissance Conferences. The problem for Taylor is that many of the most active participants at the American Renaissance Conferences and the most committed members of the American radical right are openly and passionately anti-Semitic. To ban them would devastate Taylor's efforts to make his journal and conferences flagship institutions of American radical right.

Despite Taylor's best efforts to keep the internal peace, this long-smoldering issue finally burst into the open when David Duke, the former Klan leader and author of Jewish Supremacism, grabbed the microphone at the 2006 American Renaissance Conference and went on a thinly veiled anti-Semitic rant about "a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and spirit." In response, Michael Hart, a Jewish astrophysicist and long-time conference attendee, leaped from his seat and declared, "You f------ Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting." What ensued was a testy back and forth in which Duke supporters, including Black and Kelso, jeered Hart's comments and others, who backed Hart, denounced Duke. This incident set off a months-long battle of words, with each side declaring that the other was undermining the broader efforts of the movement.  

"These are the makings of a major schism," wrote Shawn Mercer, co-founder and moderator of American Renaissance's AR List, an E-mail group, just after the conference. "If American Renaissance ultimately fails as a result of this donnybrook at the convention, it will be a sad, possibly fatal turn of events for the future of whites." In 2006, Taylor issued what was seen as a weak-kneed statement by his Jewish supporters condemning anti-Semitism but stating clearly that all would be welcome at his conferences regardless of their views and so long as they maintained the proper decorum. That was not enough for many of Taylor's supporters and collaborators, one of whom, Ian Jobling, left to start his own group, Inverted World, which is racist but not anti-Semitic. 

Regardless of the dispute, the 2008 American Renaissance conference was well attended, missing from its audience ranks only some former Jewish supporters such as Michael Hart.

In 2012, Jobling contacted the SPLC saying he had renounced his racist views. Jobling told the SPLC he had come to see white nationalism as an ideology that leads to genocide.

In 2013, American Renaissance discontinued the publication of its eponymous hardcopy newsletter, deciding to go entirely electronic. The group also moved to a yearly conference from its former biannual format. The 2013 conference, held in Tennessee, was particularly extreme. A topic that kept coming up was the need for the establishment of a white homeland.

Matthew Heimbach, a racist who attended the event, wanted to know how to move forward in creating a white’s only homeland. “Where do we create our ethno state?” Heimbach asked Paul Ramsey, one of the speakers that day who is RamZPaul online. Ramsey’s answer: “We need to Balkanize and create our own homeland. We have a right to exist.” He suggested the Southwest for Latinos and the Southeast for African Americans.

Taylor also took up the white homeland message. He opened his speech saying, “We want a homeland where we are a majority. We almost had one in the United States of America.” Taylor worries that by 2060, whites will only make up thirty percent of the population and Latinos will be the majority (The U.S. Census Bureau predicts whites will become a minority in the 2040s and no ethnic or racial group will be the majority). “Our government is permitting a neighboring country [meaning Mexico] to invade our country. We have a government of traitors,” Taylor raged. He lamented, “White people who express a desire for a homeland are labeled as haters.”

Richard Spencer of the white nationalist National Policy Institute also plugged for a white homeland. Spencer argued for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” a process he did not explain, that would clear parts of North America for Caucasians and suggested that the new state welcome white refugees from Europe. Spencer advocated a “sort of white Zionism” that would infuse whites with the dream of such a homeland just as Zionism helped spur the creation of Israel. “It is perfectly feasible for a white state to be established on the North American continent. Action is the easy part,” Spencer opined, adding, “I have a dream.”