| URL | VDARE.com |
|---|---|
| Owner | VDARE Foundation |
VDARE.com, or VDARE, is a website that advocates reduced immigration, especially illegal immigration, into the United States. Former Forbes editor Peter Brimelow supports the site through his VDARE Foundation, also known as Lexington Research Institute Limited.[1] The viewpoints on the site range from immigration reduction to anti-immigration to discussions of race.
The name VDARE and the site's symbol, the head of a white doe, refer to Virginia Dare, the first child born to English immigrants in the New World.[2] Soon after her birth she disappeared with the rest of an early English settlement, and legend says she transformed into a white doe.
VDARE has been designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).[3]
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Sam Francis was also a regular contributor until his death in 2005.
Notable VDARE guest contributors include: Virginia Abernethy, George J. Borjas,[4] Paul Gottfried, Kevin Michael Grace, Kevin B. MacDonald, Rob Sanchez, J. Philippe Rushton, Jared Taylor, John Derbyshire, Paul Belien, R. J. Stove, and Ilana Mercer.
VDARE also carries the syndicated columns of Pat Buchanan,[5] Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, and Michelle Malkin. Peter Brimelow immigrated to the United States from Canada in the late 1970s; he had left his homeland of the United Kingdom shortly after receiving an MBA from Stanford University in 1972. While he is a paleoconservative, he claims "many of the neoconservative leaders as personal friends" and immigration reform allies.[6] According to the VDARE website, Brimelow is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Some critics of VDARE say that it publishes pseudoscientific, racist and/or racialist material. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) called VDARE a hate group,[7] that was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page," but by 2003 became "a meeting place for many on the radical right." The group also criticized VDARE for publishing articles by white nationalists Jared Taylor and Sam Francis.[8] It has been called "white nationalist" by the Rocky Mountain News,[9] a charge denied by Brimelow.[10]
In response, VDARE has published several articles attacking the SPLC.[11][12] In 2006, in "Heidi Does Long Beach: The SPLC vs. Academic Freedom," Prof. Kevin B. MacDonald discussed the SPLC's so far unsuccessful campaign to try to get him fired from California State University, Long Beach.[13]
VDARE claims neutrality on all issues save immigration reduction. VDARE columnist James Fulford says allegations of racism and hate are unavoidable since "the majority of Americans are white, and the majority of immigrants are non-white."[11] Fulford lists others who he says have been accused of being racist by liberal organizations and argues that the group's tactics hurt their own cause more than they are hurting genuine racism. Also, Brimelow argued in his 1996 book Alien Nation, the term 'racist' is a political "smear" (p. 10). He states "the only rational definition of racism" is "committing and stubbornly persisting in error about people, regardless of evidence."
VDARE contributors respond to "racism" charges by noting that the site carries authors from various ethnic backgrounds, including Filipina-American (Malkin), Cuban (George Borjas), one Native American (David A. Yeagley), Jewish/Asian-American (Marcus Epstein), and Japanese-American (Lance T. Izumi).[14]
Steve Sailer argued on VDARE following Hurricane Katrina that the lower average IQ of African-Americans found in intelligence research correlates with "poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups resulting in the need for stricter moral guidance from society." He said that looting after the 1995 Kobe earthquake was minimal because "when you get down to it, Japanese aren't blacks."[15]
John Podhoretz called Sailer's comments racist.[16] Sailer responded that his accusers admitted a correlation between low IQ and poor judgment by supporting the Supreme Court's 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision "that, in effect, banned the death penalty for killers with IQs under 70."[17] John Derbyshire defended Sailer, citing large variance in incarceration rates by race and birth rates for unmarried women by race.[18]
According to Peter Brimelow, Sailer's original article has been emailed out by readers (through the link to "email [this article] to a friend") at among the highest volumes seen by VDARE's articles.[19] Sailer also responded to John Podhoretz in "Podhoretz, Junior vs. Steve Sailer",[20] by quoting from a 1963 Commentary essay by Podhoretz's father, Norman, "My Negro Problem—and Ours",[21] in which Norman Podhoretz made statements on black violence in character with Sailer's.