Friday, August 16, 2024

#2801: James Edwards

The Political Cesspool is a Tennessee-based wingnut, neo-Confederate, Christian nationalist and white supremacist (“pro-white”) talkshow that has been polluting airwaves since 2004 (or at least used to do so; it’s been a bit on-and-off and we can’t be bothered to try to tune in). Its sponsors include the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and the Holocaust denialist group the Institute for Historical Review. According to the SPLC, the nexus and founder of the cesspool, James Edwards, has over the years probably done more than anyone else in the US to bring neo-Nazi ideology and Holocaust Denialism to wider audiences.

 

The show describes itself as “pro-White” and “against political centralization”, and promises to give you the “other side of the news” (i.e. the false one). Among its guiding principles, you’ll find commitment e.g. to the following:

 

-       The United States government should be independent of any international organization of governments”.

-       America would not be as prosperous, ruggedly individualistic, and a land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans”.

-       Since family is the foundation of any strong society, we are against feminism, abortion, and primitivism.”

-       We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.” [According to Edwards, “interracial sex is white genocide”.]

-       Secession is a right of all people and individuals. It was successful in 1776 and this show honors those who tried to make it successful in 1865.”

-       We are against homosexuality, vulgarity, loveless sex, and masochism.”

 

The show’s many guests have included more or less a who’s who on the conspiracy theory and white supremacist wingnut circuit, including Jerome Corsi, Minuteman Project leader Jim Gilchrist, Michael Peroutka, Sonny Landham, Jared Taylor (multiple times), British National Party leader Nick Griffin, David Duke, Richard Spencer, Thomas Naylor, Holocaust denier Mark Weber and Pat Buchanan. Edwards has also interviewed Donald Trump jr. for Sam Bushman’s Liberty News Radio (LNR), which syndicates the Political Cesspool.

 

Though Edwards has, at least in recent years, deliberately tried to avoid using racial slurs and inflammatory language – letting his guests do that part – he has asserted that he is “firmly of the belief that race relations were better during Jim Crow, and even better in the antebellum south, than they are now.” Also according to Edwards, white children in the US should seek out those who share “the same values and traditions and heroes”, that “forced integration” is a “march toward totalitarianism” and thatI think Martin Luther King really represents about the lowest common denominator of an American that you could get”; also “crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go”. Indeed, the situation is urgent: “whites are in for the fight of their lives. America is becoming balkanized. We are being robbed of having a future in the very nation our ancestors carved from the wilderness.” Part of the problem, as Edwards sees it, is the fact that liberals and liberalism “don’t respect the authority of scripture,” and he has traced liberalism’s ostensible contempt for the Bible back to the “infamous” 1954 desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Part of the problem is also policies such as no-fault divorce, which “is as much of a liberal initiative as the Civil Rights Movement and radical feminism.”

 

Himself a former unsuccessful candidate for the Tennessee House of Representatives and volunteer for Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was also involved in the creation of the American Party, which advocates white nationalism, in 2010. More recently, Edwards has, predictably, thrown his support in for Donald Trump, and the Trump campaign has responded by giving him full press credentials at a Tennessee Trump rally and generally helping to mainstream his show. During the 2016 campaign cycle, Edwards denounced Hillary Clinton’s campaign because women can’t even be “the ruler of the house under God’s law” (moreoever Clinton is undoubtedly lesbian); he also criticized policies that allowed women to vote. On the other hand, he credited Trump with empowering the “pro-White” movement and called Trump’s presidency an “awakening happening within the spirit of our people” that was beyond his “wildest dreams” when he started his radio program.

 

But his hatred extends not only to Black people; Edwards is also an ardent promoter of anti-semitism: “A lot of their [Jewish people’s] motivation is that they hate Christianity. They hate what we call the WASP establishment […] and they’re using pornography as a subversive tool against us. Jews are by and large dominant in the porn industry. […] You know, connect the dots and look at the names of people controlling our media, and you find out what the common denominator is. […] These Zionist Jews are more interested in subverting the dominant culture, which would be the European culture here in America”.

 

Edwards is also the author of the 2010 book Racism, Schmacism: How Liberals use the ‘R’ Word to Push the Obama Agenda.

 

In addition to Edwards, the show’s co-hosts have included people like

 

-       Keith Alexander, a 2014 and 2018 candidate for the position of Shelby County Assessor.

-       Winston Smith

-       Eddie “Bombardier” Miller, a former Oath Keepers member currently running Blood River Radio, a white genocide and holocaust denialist radioshow where people like Canadian Holocaust denier Monika Schaefer are co-hosts.

-       Austin Farley, the show’s co-founder

 

Diagnosis: Over the years – at least until 2016 – Edwards has probably done more than anyone else in the US to bring neo-Nazi ideology and Holocaust Denialism to wider audiences. And any diagnosis beyond that should be superfluous.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, ol' Jimbo sounds like somebody I wouldn't want to sit next to on the bus.

    ReplyDelete