Conservatives know that, with enough money, you can buy your way into almost any debate. Rich right-wingers have been pouring millions of dollars into think tanks for decades and propping up money-losing periodicals and websites that could never thrive (or possible even survive) on their own. And it works.
Here’s one somewhat unexpected recipient of several million dollars worth of donations: VDare, a website and organization that uses what reach it has to push extremist ideas — like so-called “White genocide” — into the mainstream.
Well, it seems that that the Southern Poverty Law Center recently got hold of VDare’s 2019 tax records and made the startling discovery that donors handed over some $4.3 million over the course of that year, with some $345,000 going directly to Peter Brimelow, VDare’s head honcho.
The group also spent $1.4 million on a castle — yes, a literal castle — in West Virginia, only a couple of hours from Washington DC.
As the SPLC’s Alex Kotch and Michael Edison Hayden noted in a post on VDare’s extraordinary money haul,
The large sum represents an unprecedented annual haul for an American white nationalist group and suggests that big-money donors of the conservative movement may be moving their riches to more extreme causes in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s rise.
VDare has cultivated friendships with a number of infamous right-wing influencers, from former White House aide Stephen Miller to Ann Coulter to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who (the SPLC repors) “retweeted a VDARE post blaming non-white workers for a COVID-19 outbreak last year.”
Kotch and Haven go on to warn that
Even with such visible ties to the mainstream right, VDARE embraces an agenda that directly or indirectly cultivates a radical far-right world view in its sympathizers. Brimelow’s group published apologia about both a terrorist’s manifesto in 2019 and the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on its third anniversary. The group promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory, which many view as having inspired far-right terror attacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; El Paso, Texas; and Christchurch, New Zealand, in recent years. Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler published a post on VDARE’s website titled “Yes, Virginia (Dare), There Is Such A Thing As White Genocide,” less than two months before a neo-Nazi murdered antiracist demonstrator Heather Heyer at his event. VDARE has also written in romantic terms about the insurrection waged on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Naturally the combative Brimelow has responded to the SPLC post with a mixture of bluster and braggadocio, dismissing Hayden as a “communist” and a “thug.”
While he acknowledged that “[w]e did have a good year in 2019” Brimelow implied that it came from small donors, while “the “big-money donors of the conservative movement” are too chicken to give to the patriotic immigration cause.” I’m not buying it.
If there are any big-money donors of the left reading this now, might I suggest you send a few million bucks my way by clicking the link below? I promise I won’t buy a castle with it. Well, maybe a castle for the cats.
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I wonder how much money the Russians, and perhaps the Chinese, are funneling into right wing groups in the US. We know the National Front in France has received loans from Russian banks, at least one of which has Kremlin connections.
That $1.4 million castle was actually a fixer-upper. The moat had to be completely restocked with alligators, which do not come cheap. As for heating, it boasted only one drafty fireplace in the great hall. And the mold in the dungeon had been growing there for centuries. Won’t someone spare a thought for the hapless fascists who now own a castle with many, many years of deferred maintenance.
So as UKnian Mammotheers will know, we now have our very own foxnews-alike called GBNews, better referred to as Gammon Broadcasting or (my personal preference) GBeebies, bankrolled to the tune of £60 million (about $83 million, for those of us who convert to and from USD) and fronted by a handful of pros – extremely experienced and highly-paid, well-known media pros who just happen to be raving right (all the usual bollocks – climate change denial, anti-vax/anti-lockdown, testerically anti-immigrant, anti-unions, ‘oh-that’s-not-paedophilia-that’s-ephebophilia’ etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam). They first started broadcasting last weekend (and have apparently had an amusing series of technical fuck-ups you really wouldn’t expect with that much money behind them). Their entire raison d’être is pushing the UK’s Overton Window rightwards. The nicest thing so far is that some advertisers have already withdrawn their advertising, but we’ll see how that goes …
Anyway, I just thought I’d mention a couple of independent left-wing online UKnian news and political analysis sites, on the off-chance any might be of interest and mainly because I’m sure you will know of more of these than I do 🙂 (all of these run on a shoestring, held together with lots of tiny donations from large numbers of individuals and no big backers afaik):
the one I watch myself is Novara Media, which livestreams three times a week – very good coverage of the pandemic (scientific, poliltial and economic, with well qualified expert guests to do the more specialised explaining) and some great analysis (Ash Sarkar is particularly good), but others I’ve only heard of/glanced at include Doubledown News (George Monbiot is on some of their output, so good environmental coverage), The Canary and Evolve Politics.
Of course GBeebies touts itself as ‘neutral’ and ‘impartial’ and does not acknowledge that it is solidly very right-wing (these others just openly note that they have a left-wing viewpoint).
David, I am arranging transfer of my billion-dollar fortune directly to your cats’ bank accounts. I trust you to manage it responsibly for them.
(Being silly because I don’t have the spoons to deal with these fascist fuckwits right now.)
That would be a lot of cat biscuits, Bookworm. Might be better to put the money in a trust account so they couldn’t get their little paws on it and spend it all at once.
Bought a castle? Well, we certainly know where on the social scale they see themselves at. 😛
@Bookworm: David’s cats are just gonna blow it on ‘nip. Lizzie’s correct, set up a trust fund for them. Possibly run by a dog?
@opposablethumbs
What I love is how they claim to be counter to the ‘liberal bias’ of the BBC… Which, ironic. The right leaning regular folk trust the BBC more than us lefties – which is a result of their inane attempts to include fringe views that belong nowhere near a debate for ‘balance’ or even glossing over egregious lies entirely like some of the more outrageous Brexit campaign ones to avoid accusations.
That and the rampant transphobia…
Worries me that my stepfather has been glued to that channel since it started.
“Dissident right”, lol, as if they have ever been anything more than conformist lemmings.
@GSS
That dog would blow it all on pizza and rawhides within a week. Maybe a capybara.
I was trying to remember where I’d heard of VDARE before, then I remembered: it’s Steve Sailer’s outfit, creator of the ‘Human Biodiversity Discussion Group’, of which Steven Pinker was a member during the 1990s.
@M_L: Yes. A capybara would be very chill about it, and not into excesses. Plus s/he would get along with the cats and any humans, birds, etc.
I don’t know much about graphic design, but the white lettering over a yellow design is hard to read. And shouldn’t the background be redder? To emphasize the communist menace of the SPLC and all? 😛
@Citerior Motive – I’m guessing that’s code for the “races are different and white people are smarter” kind of BS? And they think “biodiversity” makes it sound scientific?? Biodiversity my ass. (Actually, more biodiversity in people’s intestines. Lots of exciting microfauna there!)