#2329: Jared Taylor

Jared Taylor is the pseudo-intellectual founder of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance and probably one of the leaders of the alt-right – indeed, he has been called the “Intellectual Godfather” of the movement (or “the cultivated, cosmopolitan face of white supremacy [; h]e is the guy who is providing the intellectual heft, in effect, to modern-day Klansmen”), descriptions that shouldn’t come across as flattering to ordinary, reasonable people. Taylor’s primary policy goals are apparently 1) a return to “pre-1965” standards for allowing immigrants into the country to ensure that “European people” and their descendants are a larger percentage of the population, 2) to give more power to white power organizations, and 3) for explicit white supremacy to return to being one of the dominant ideologies in the US. Achieving these goals means raising “consciousness” among white people, such as making them see that “blacks and whites are different[; w]hen blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization – any kind of civilization –  disappears”. This is accordingly what he and his magazine have set out to do. (Unusually for people with his political allegiances, Taylor consistently rejects anti-Semitism, which has put him at odds with other alt-righters and white supremacists, such as David Duke.) His Twitter account was permanently suspended in December 2017.

Taylor has “strenuously rejected” being labelled “racist”, maintaining rather that he is instead a “racialist who believes in race-realism,” which is a difference only perceptible to, well, racialists. He has also said that he is not a white supremacist, describing himself as a “white advocate”. He is also a promoter of the white genocide conspiracy theory, and has hosted the Suidlanders on his AmRen podcast to discuss the topic.

Taylor’s influence is sufficiently wide-ranging to make its mark also in contexts that should make some people embarrassed, such as the Trump administration (Taylor is a firm supporter, of course). Jesse Lee Peterson is also sympathetic to Taylor’s ideas.

Diagnosis: It scares us a bit that we are finding these people so boring that we cannot be bothered to give them the detailed entries they deserve, but they really manage to be bother boring and truly scary at the same time.

Hat-tip: SPLcenter