American Renaissance (magazine)

For the magazine about renaissance faires, see Renaissance Magazine.

American Renaissance

Editor	Jared Taylor
Publisher	New Century Foundation
First issue	November 1990 (1990-11)
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	amren.com

American Renaissance (AR or AmRen) is an online magazine described as a "race-realist, white advocacy organization".

History

The magazine and foundation were founded by Jared Taylor, and the first issue was published in November 1990. It first had a web presence in 1994, and was published as a monthly print magazine from its inception until January 2012.

American Renaissance hosts periodic conferences on subjects of interest to its readers. The conferences were held biennially from 1994–2008, and since 2011 have been held annually. There have been sixteen American Renaissance conferences since 1994.

Ideology

The American Renaissance website states:

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 some of the most serious challenges the Western World faces in the 21st century.

The problems of race cannot be solved without adequate understanding. Attempts to gloss over the significance of race or even to deny its reality only make problems worse. Progress requires the study of all aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological. This approach is known as race realism.

— "What We Believe"

The magazine and foundation promote the view that differences in educational outcomes and per capita incomes between racial populations can be attributed at least in part to differences in intelligence between races.

Controversy

The online magazine is often described as a white supremacist publication; CNN, The Washington Post, Fortune, Slate, Wikipedia, and the New York Daily News, among others, have reported on the magazine as such.

Southern Poverty Law Center

American Renaissance and the New Century Foundation appear on a list of 115 "white nationalist hate groups" published in the Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

An article in the Intelligence Report by Potok and Heidi Beirich, head of the SPLC's Intelligence Project stated that "American Renaissance has become increasingly important over the years, bringing a measure of intellectualism and seriousness to the typically thug-dominated world of white supremacy. Today, it may be the closest thing the extreme right has to a real think tank. Whether or not it survives, and in what form, genuinely matters."

Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League describes American Renaissance as a "white supremacist journal". The ADL also writes that "Taylor eschews anti-Semitism. Seeing Jews as white, greatly influential and the "conscience of society", Taylor rather seeks to partner with Jews who share his views on race and racial diversity" and "Jews have been speakers and/or participants at all eight American Renaissance conferences" although controversy followed accusations by David Duke, who was not a scheduled presenter, at the 2006 conference. Taylor in response wrote that "There will be no more disgraceful behavior of this kind if people who attend AR conferences bear in mind that Jews have a valuable role in the work of American Renaissance, and are welcome participants and speakers. Anyone who thinks otherwise has the choice of staying home or keeping his views to himself."

Cancellation of 2010 conference

In February 2010, following protests to hotel management of several hotels, which Jared Taylor claimed included some death threats, American Renaissance's biennial conference was canceled. Taylor complained that the incident was largely ignored by the media, in sharp contrast, he claimed, with how news outlets would have responded had a civil rights group's conference been shut down.

Immediately after the cancellation of the conference, in a radio interview with the Derek Black Show on WPBR 1340AM in South Florida, Taylor described the forced cancellation as an obstruction of the right to free speech, saying it set a dangerous precedent and paved the way for scenarios in which animal rights activists might shut down a meat packers’ conference or radical environmentalists could shut down a foresters’ meeting through the use of death threats.

Lawrence Auster, a traditionalist conservative and self-described racialist, claimed that Taylor's appearance on Stormfront radio was part of a long-standing pattern of Taylor's in "consorting with anti-Semites" and described Taylor's Stormfront appearance as "morally obtuse". John Derbyshire, however, called the conference shutdown an "ominous" and "shameful thing", and asked for open debate and respect for the freedom of speech and association.

Alleged DHS memo regarding 2011 Tucson shooting

A document initially claimed to be a leaked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo alleged Jared Lee Loughner, the accused gunman in the 2011 Tucson shooting that wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six bystanders, may have had ties to American Renaissance, which it called an "anti-ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government) and anti-semitic" group. In an interview with Fox News, Jared Taylor denied the organization ever used the term "ZOG" and said Loughner had no connection to them.

DHS officials the following day reported that "the department has not established any such possibility, undercutting what appears to be the primary basis for this claim". Furthermore, no such memo had been issued.

Major David Denlinger, commander of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center acknowledged that the document came from his agency, but contained errors. He said that he has no reason to believe that Loughner had any direct connection with or was being directed by American Renaissance.

Cancellation of 2020 Conference

On 17 March 2020 Jared Taylor announced the cancellation of the 2020 conference due to the coronavirus pandemic. As he explained, "models for the progress of the disease predict many infections and hospitalizations during that period." Further, although there was not yet any ban on large meetings, there might be in the near future, and in any case many people would be expected to stay home.

Deplatforming

On 18 August 2017, American Renaissance staff announced that the organization had been cut off by the payment processing service PayPal and the email marketing service MailChimp. American Renaissance believes this to be part of a crackdown in response to the Unite the Right rally the previous weekend, although the group had no involvement with the event.

On December 18, 2017, both Taylor's personal account and the account for American Renaissance were suspended by Twitter. In response to an appeal, Twitter confirmed the ban and accused them of being "affiliated with a violent extremist group." At the time, his personal account had 41,000 followers, while the two accounts together had approximately 70,000.

American Renaissance responded by suing the company on 14 March 2018 on three grounds. They alleged that Twitter violated freedom of expression provisions in the California State Constitution and the Unruh Civil Rights Act by effectively barring Mr. Taylor and American Renaissance from the public square based on their political views. The plaintiffs further alleged that Twitter violated California's Unfair Competition Law, based on the charge that Twitter falsely presented itself as a platform which respected free speech, while in reality it reserved the right to ban anyone for any reason. The first two grounds were dismissed by the judge, Howard E. Kahn, who ordered the case to proceed based on the false advertising claim. However, Twitter along with several other social media companies including Google, Reddit, and Facebook petitioned the California Court of Appeal, claiming that to even face this litigation would cause them irreparable damage by setting a precedent for further litigation. The higher court issued a ruling demanding that Judge Kahn reverse his decision, which he did in his final ruling on March 8, 2019.

Taylor explained that on the advice of his lawyers, he avoided appealing this decision. He argued that the appeals would be submitted to the same panel of judges who had told Kahn to reverse his decision, so that considering this along with his own status as an alleged "white supremacist" in a climate of public hysteria around "racism," there was little hope of success. Also, although the current decision does not set a legal precedent, a failed appeal to the higher court would do so, and would thus cut off opportunities for free speech claims against social media companies in the future.

In February 2019 four American Renaissance titles written or edited by Taylor were removed from Amazon listings, along with 17 titles from Counter-Currents including The White Nationalist Manifesto. American Renaissance was informed that their titles' "subject matter" was "in violation of our content guidelines," but was given no further information on the reasoning for the move. Counter-Currents was given similar notifications. Both Johnson and American Renaissance consider the move to be political censorship.

On 29 June 2020 the YouTube channels for American Renaissance's podcasts and videos were removed from YouTube. American Renaissance reported 135,000 video subscribers and 20,000 podcast subscribers at the time of the banning. Channels belonging to dissident commentators Richard B. Spencer, David Duke, and Stefan Molyneux were removed at the same time. Forbes described the move as part of a crackdown by social media companies on "misinformation" and "hate speech" in response to pressure in connection with demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, calling all four banned individuals "white supremacists."

Notable contributors and speakers

• James Allsup
• Lawrence Auster
• Gordon Lee Baum
• Frank Borzellieri
• Peter Brimelow
• Pat Buchanan
• Patrick Casey
• Adrian Davies
• John Derbyshire
• Frank Ellis
• Samuel T. Francis
• Andrew Fraser
• Bruno Gollnisch
• Paul Gottfried
• Nick Griffin
• Michael H. Hart
• Robert Henderson
• Greg Johnson
• Jean-Yves Le Gallou
• Michael Levin
• Richard Lynn
• Gavin McInnes
• Ilana Mercer
• Ashley Mote
• Glenn Spencer
• Richard B. Spencer
• Paul Ray Ramsey
• Fred Reed
• Dan Roodt
• J. Philippe Rushton
• Jared Taylor
• Derek Turner
• Robert Weissberg
• David Yeagley

See also

• Paleoconservatism

Further reading

• Commentary on terms like "white supremacist"
• Official website