VDARE
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VDARE was an American far-rightTemplate:Refn website promoting opposition to immigration to the United States.<ref name="Thielman 2019">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It is associated with white supremacy,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=Time>Sam Frizell, GOP Shows White Supremacist's Tweet During Trump's Speech . Time, July 21, 2016</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> white nationalism,Template:Refn and the alt-right.<ref name="splcPDI">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Piggott">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia describes VDARE as "one of the most prolific anti-immigration media outlets in the United States" and states that it is "broadly concerned with race issues in the United States".<ref name="Jacobs">Rebecca Nelson Jacobs, "VDARE" in Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (ed. Kathleen R. Arnold, Vol. 1: A-R), pp. 481-82.</ref> Established in 1999, the website's editor is Peter Brimelow, who once stated that "whites built American culture" and that "it is at risk from non-whites who would seek to change it".<ref name="Jacobs" />
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes VDARE as "an anti-immigration hate website" that "regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists, and anti-Semites", including Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor, J. Philippe Rushton, Samuel T. Francis, John Derbyshire<ref name="Thielman 2019" /> and Pat Buchanan.<ref name="SPLCprofile"/> Brimelow acknowledges that VDARE published writings by white nationalists but has said that VDARE is not a "white nationalist Web site".<ref name="BrimelowWhite">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Michael Kunzelman, White nationalists raise millions with tax-exempt charities Template:Webarchive, Associated Press (December 22, 2016): "Brimelow has denied that his website is white nationalist but acknowledged it publishes works by writers who fit that description "in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites."</ref>
In July 2024, it was announced that VDARE would be suspending operations after 25 years of operation. Peter Brimelow also stepped down as president of the VDARE Foundation.<ref name="Gais">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
HistoryEdit
Peter Brimelow, who edits VDARE, is a former editor at the National Review<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and Fortune.<ref name="Jacobs"/> The English-born Brimelow founded the website in 1999 under the auspices of the Center for American Unity, a Virginia-based organization that he also founded<ref name="SPLCprofile">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in 1999.<ref name="splcPDI" /> VDARE was founded as an outgrowth of Brimelow's anti-immigration activism and the publication of his book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster.<ref name="Phillips"/> The website says it is concerned with the "racial and culture identity of America" and "honest consideration of race and ethnicity, the foundations of human grouping, that human differences can be explained and their social consequences understood, whether those differences are philosophical, cultural or biological."<ref name="Coaston">Template:Cite news</ref>
Brimelow was president of the center,<ref name="splcPDI" /> which funded VDARE.com until 2007, when the center announced an intent to focus on litigation.<ref name="SPLCprofile"/> The VDARE Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, was formed by Brimelow to take the place of the center as the website's sponsor.<ref name="SPLCprofile"/> Brimelow's wife, Lydia Brimelow, is VDARE's advancement officer.<ref name="Phillips"/>
The name VDARE and the site's logo, the head of a white doe, refer to Virginia Dare, the first child born to English settlers in the New World in the late 16th century.<ref name="splcPDI" /><ref name=VD>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dare disappeared along with every other member of the Roanoke Colony.<ref name="Jacobs"/> Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia explains that "For Brimelow, Anglo-Saxon Americans and their culture are in danger of disappearing like Virginia Dare; he writes that he considered adding a fictional vignette at the end of his book Alien Nation (1995), in which the last white family flees Los Angeles, which had been overrun by the crime and pollution caused by its non-white residents."<ref name="Jacobs"/>
Brimelow has written on the site that United States immigration policy constitutes "Adolf Hitler's posthumous revenge on America". In a radio interview with Alan Colmes, he said he wished to return to the US immigration policies before 1965, when restrictions to non-whites were lifted, as "the US is a white nation."<ref name="Coaston" />
New York Attorney General investigationEdit
In February 2020, the VDARE Foundation purchased the Samuel Taylor Suit Cottage (also known as the Berkeley Castle or Berkeley Springs Castle), a Medieval-style castle located on a hill above Berkeley Springs, in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, for $1.4 million.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> New York Attorney General (NYAG) Letitia James alleged that VDARE had violated New York law by misusing non-profit resources while residing on the castle grounds since March 2020.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In March 2024, a New York state judge found the VDARE Foundation in civil contempt for failing to turn over evidence related to the investigation. The organization is required to pay a $250-per-day fine until it complies with a subpoena issued by the NYAG in 2022.<ref name=":0" /> In July, it was announced that VDARE would be suspending operations, with Brimelow resigning as president of the VDARE Foundation. A spokesperson for the attorney general's office said that the website's closure would not affect their investigation.<ref name="Gais" />
Hate speech and white nationalismEdit
Designation as a hate websiteEdit
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist groups in the United States, wrote that VDARE was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page" but had become "a meeting place for many on the radical right" by 2003.<ref name="splcPDI" /> The SPLC describes VDARE as "an anti-immigration hate website" which "regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites".<ref name="splcPDI" /> The SPLC cited examples such as a column concerning immigration from Mexico that warned of a "Mexican invasion" where "high teenage birthrates, poverty, ignorance and disease will be what remains", and an essay complaining how the U.S. government encourages "the garbage of Africa" to come to the United States.<ref name="splcPDI" />
The SPLC has described VDARE's contributor list as "a Rolodex of the most prominent pseudo-intellectual racists and anti-Semites. They include people such as Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald.<ref name="splcPDI" /> Taylor (who Brimelow acknowledges is a "white nationalist")<ref name="SPLCprofile" /> once wrote that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization, while MacDonald is a retired professor who wrote a trilogy claiming that Jews are genetically driven to undermine the Christian societies they live in. Another former contributor, Sam Francis, was the editor of a newspaper published by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group.<ref name="splcPDI" /> Francis died in 2005.<ref name="SPLCprofile" />
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) similarly concludes that "VDARE posts, promotes, and archives the work of racists, anti-immigrant figures, and anti-Semites".<ref>Brenda Walker and Dan Amato Inject Anti-Immigrant Fervor into the Blogosphere Template:Webarchive, Anti-Defamation League (2012).</ref><ref>Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream Template:Webarchive, Anti-Defamation League (2008), p. 11: "VDare, a Web site that publishes racist, anti-Semitic, and antiimmigrant articles."</ref>
Attempted domain name delistingEdit
In June 2020, the domain registrar Network Solutions announced plans to terminate the account for VDARE. An attorney for Network Solutions cited a policy prohibiting customers using its domains from "display[ing] bigotry, racism, discrimination, or hatred in any manner whatsoever", and stated that VDARE had until June 26 to transfer its domain name to a different registrar before it would be deleted.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> An update to its WHOIS data was made on June 26, 2020.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:As of, the domain exists under a different registrar.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Social media presence and bansEdit
In August 2019, VDARE's YouTube channel was banned. The ban was later reversed.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The channel was permanently banned in August 2020 for violating YouTube's policies against hate speech.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In November 2019, The Guardian identified VDARE as one of several white nationalist websites which had remained active on Facebook, contrary to Facebook's stated intention to ban such material.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In May 2020, VDARE and the similar website The Unz Review were banned by Facebook. According to Facebook, the sites formed a network of "coordinated inauthentic behavior" intended to influence the 2020 election via fake accounts.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>
As of October 2023, VDARE operates a verified Twitter account.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
White nationalist writingsEdit
VDARE is regarded as a white nationalist website.<ref name="white nationalism" /> David Weigel wrote in 2010 that the site "is best known for publishing work by white nationalists while maintaining that it is not a white nationalist site".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Brimelow "denies that the organization itself is white nationalist, but he admits that VDARE.com provides a forum for a variety of viewpoints, including white nationalism".<ref name="Jacobs"/><ref name="BrimelowWhite"/> Of individuals like Taylor, Brimelow has written they "aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists. They do not advocate violence. They are rational and civil." As immigration from the developing world increases, he believes "this type of interest-group 'white nationalism' will inexorably increase."<ref name="SPLCprofile" /> Brimelow has participated on panels multiple times with Taylor and Richard Spencer on the aims of the alt-right.<ref name="Coaston" />