Youth For Western Civilization

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The group, Youth for Western Civilization, is a spin-off of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists; both spin-offs of Young Americans for Freedom, and all connected to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  In fact, YFC is financed by the Institute through their Campus Leadership Program. The financing must be substantial, since when they made their debut at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they were actually one of the major donors of that year’s event.

YWC was created to perform stunts that the seemingly more respectable Republican youth groups might shy away from.  Or as they say at the institute:  "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans ..."  (1)

For instance, they  held a muffin sale at several campuses, where the price of the muffin was determined by your race.  Whites paid $2.00, Asians: $1.50, Latinos: $1.00, Black/ African American: $0.75, Native American: $0.25 and Illegal Immigrants FREE.  Obviously this an attempt to incite, as whites are penalized just for being white and illegal immigrants get a free ride, while everyone else is subsidized. 

However, many of the actions of WYC are more dangerous, as they go after what they call "liberal" professors.  One who had been targeted by the group, was being harassed to the point where he emailed a friend stating that he had a gun and knew how to use it.  YFC hacked into his email account, took the message to the public and the professor was fired.  He shouldn't have said what he did and the university was right to let him go, but these are the kinds of activities that the group engages in.

Retired university professor Michael Yates says he's glad to no longer be in academia.  "At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs."  Others are not so lucky.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

When the South Park cartoon depicted the prophet Muhammad as a bear, or at least as someone dressed up in a bear costume, the show's producers began to receive death threats.  This prompted Seattle artist Molly Norris, to establish an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, in protest of censorship.

The Muslim religion does not allow depictions of the prophet, anymore than Christians would tolerate Jesus drawn in a disparaging fashion, or Jews, Abraham.  It's blasphemy.

To Youth for Western Civilization, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up a bit trouble, so they promoted the artistic endeavour on several U.S. campuses.  It was petty and mean, but that's what defines them.

The Marcus Epstein Affair

Thomas Tancredo is a former Republican congressman and now the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization.  In his younger days, he was a member of Young Americans for Freedom, and was rewarded with a job in the Reagan administration.  Tancredo ran for President in 2008, under the new Constitution Party banner, on an anti-immigration platform.  An outspoken critic of immigration and multiculturalism, he has earned a reputation as a bigot. 

Marcus Epstein is the executive director of Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, an immigration panel at CPAC, financed by YWC, discussing the imminent demise of the white race.  “No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization. (2)  Stephen Harper, in a 2003 speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, claimed that "multiculturalism" was "a weak nation strategy", and to ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, he called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

Epstein also runs Pat and Bay Buchanan's The American Cause, another group established to end non-white immigration.  Says Buchanan:  "The central objection to the present flood of illegals is they are not English-speaking white people from Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean." (4)

Founder of the National Citizens Coalition, where Harper has been a member for more than three decades and once acted as its President, Colin Brown, when asked why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified, but letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens, but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

All those involved in the conservative movement, on both sides of the border, sing from the same hymnal.

Back to Epstein. 

Not exactly white himself, but Korean-American, he writes for Human Events, The American Conservative, The Washington Examiner, the anti-Semitic Taki's Mag, and racist/anti-immigrant site VDARE.  He also claims that he is not a racist, and yet according to the Washington Independant:

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.” ... He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine. He’s under a restraining order to stay away from the couple involved, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund. (5)

A Circle of Hate

According to the Anti-Defamation league, YWC has many ties with White Supremacists. 

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) may have standing in the mainstream conservative world but from its inception, white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced the group.  In April 2011, YWC received direct help from white supremacist Jared Taylor,who runs the racist magazine American Renaissance. Taylor and YWC joined forces that month to create a fund-raising packet that Taylor mailed to his supporters on YWC's behalf. Taylor is a strong supporter of YWC because of his own racist convictions. He introduced race as a crucial issue in his fund-raising letter for YWC by writing, "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society—language, religion, class, ideology—it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the western world faces in the 21^st century." (6)

ADL is also concerned with YWC's founder, Kevin DeAnna, who Taylor says  "knows how important our cultural identity is" and "has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren."

DeAnna is also linked to Richard Spencer, who runs a site called Alternative Right.  Spencer writes articles for Taylor's American Renaissance and The Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic and racist publication, and is the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank. Spencer once remarked, "I'm very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side." (6)

The H.L. Mencken Club for Mice

H. L. Menken (1880-1956) was an American author best known for his satirical essays on the famous Scopes Trials (evolution), which he referred to as the "monkey trials".  Though not really a racist, he was an elitists, who scorned a democratic system that allowed lesser men to rule their superiors.  He was also critical of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The H. L. Mencken Club came into existence in 2008, and according to their website is "an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right."  The Club hosts an annual conference that attracts speakers and guests from around the world, including paleoconservative Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan of The American Cause, YWC's Kevin DeAnna and his friend Richard Spencer.

If these people represent intellectuals and academics of the Right, then the Right is in serious trouble.

Peter Brimelow has a Canadian connection through the Reform Party, now called the Conservative Party of Canada.  He is an author and former right-wing journalist for Conrad Black's Financial Post and William Buckley's National Review.  In his book The Patriot Game, he attacks Quebec, bilingualism, the Canadian flag and the Canadian national anthem, which he sees as pandering to Quebec.

According to a college friend, after Stephen Harper read the Patriot Game, he became so enthused that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (7)  I've read the book and in many ways, it formed the basis for much of Harper's and the Reform Party's philosophy.

Brimelow was an acquaintance of Canada's Paul Fromm, who founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World countries.  Fromm was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at a Reform Party assembly, in exchanging for getting Peter Brimelow to speak.

Brimelow, along with other speakers at the H.L. Menken conference, Paul E. Gottfried and Steve Sailer, operate V-Dare, an anti-immigration, pro-white hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Centre covered the inaugural event in 2008, where much of the talk was about "how the GOP could regain power by more fervently courting the white vote."

[Said Brimelow]  “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.”  Look at Alabama ... with whites only comprising 65 percent of the electorate, they’re in worse shape than American whites generally. Yet McCain easily won that state, in large part because of support from 88 percent of white voters  ...  It seems like an implicit thing that everybody in the South understands how things are and they all vote Republican."

Brimelow even suggested that McCain should have said that Obama was the affirmative action candidate. “It would have been so easy. All he had to do is get up and say it.”

Fortunately, I think McCain had a bit more class.

Most of these groups who use terms like "Western", really mean "White".  When you trace their funding, they all dip from the same pool, promote each others think tanks, and organizations, and deliver the same message.

This was the message that the Reform Party presented and it did not disappear when they bought out the rights to the Tories.  It's still there under the surface.  The media just no longer covers it.

Sources:

1. My Right-Wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

2. CPAC Immigration Panel: Readying the Fight to Save the GOP and White America, By Brian Tashman, Right-Wing Watch, February 11, 2011

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, p. 19-24

4. Into the Mainstream, By Chip Berlet, Southern Poverty Law Centre

5. Tancredo, Buchanan Bruised by Racist ‘Karate Chop’, By David Weigel, The Washington Independant, June 2, 2009

6. Youth for Western Civilization:  Ties with White Supremacists, Anti-Defamation League, May 23, 2011 

7. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3