Oh no! A schism!

Pharyngula 2026-09-04

I hate you both equally, boys

How dreadful that an organization of polite, well-dressed people are experiencing a disruptive division. They’re such thoughtful people!

For a gathering of people devoted to denouncing the inferiority of blacks and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims, the biannual conferences thrown by the New Century Foundation, publisher of the racist newsletter American Renaissance, are decidedly genteel affairs. Men dress in suits and ties, women in formal business attire, and there are no uniformed skinheads or Klansmen to be seen. Large plasma television screens, Starbucks coffee spreads and fancy linens adorn the hotel meeting hall. Epithets have no place here.

The article continues with an anecdote about a speaker, David Duke, saying 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 spirit (you know who he’s talking about!), prompting a member of the audience to rise up and shout, You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!, before walking out. It’s a schism between the people who hate brown people and Muslims, and the people who hate brown people, Muslims, and Jews. They’re all fucking Nazis.

This extraordinary incident marked the beginning of an open rift between those on the radical right who see blacks, Hispanics and Muslims as the primary enemy, and those who say “the Jews” are ultimately behind every evil — a split that has usually stayed just below the surface but now threatens a leading institution of American extremism. While in the past he has managed to bridge this divide mainly by ignoring it, American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor now must finally come to terms with the split. His dilemma boils down to this: Throw out the anti-Semites and try to build a larger movement with electoral possibilities like those increasingly seen in Britain and Germany; or openly join hands with the very energetic neo-Nazis even though that means the loss of any remaining shred of respectability.

I suggest that we throw out the whole deplorable, bigoted mishegoss of American Renaissance. It’s a battle between two giants of racism, David Duke and Jared Taylor, both of them contemptible and repulsive, and we’re supposed to care which one wins the struggle for dominance? Sure, Taylor is less aggressively anti-semitic, but that doesn’t matter in the long run — if the organization is shaped in his image, it will still be white nationalist, and eventually it will be purebred Nazi. There isn’t a meaningful hair of difference between the two.