Frank Borzellieri is making a “desperate appeal” to supporters of the academic racist group American Renaissance to back his legal defense fund. Borzellieri was fired last August from his post as principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in the Bronx after his connection to American Renaissance and his racist views were made public by the New York Daily News. His opinions were deemed “incompatible” with Catholic teachings by the Archdiocese of New York.

In 2004, Borzellieri wrote a book, Don’t Take It Personally: Race, Immigration, Crime and Other Heresies, in which he declared “diversity is a weakness” and claimed that rising black and Latino populations in America will lead to a “New Dark Age.” He had spoken at American Renaissance conferences and been published in its newsletter, which argues that blacks and Latinos are inferior to whites.

While serving as principal for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade, Borzellieri reportedly pushed to ban a biography on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., remove an openly gay teacher and gay-rights activist from the classroom at Public School 199 in Sunnyside and bar school employees from making any references to homosexuality. He also introduced a resolution calling for students to be taught that U.S. culture is superior.

Now he’s fighting back. Claiming the newspaper “published the most dishonest and insidious hatchet job on me,” the former principal is looking for American Renaissance readers to financially support a libel suit against the New York Daily News and what he calls “the disgusting left-wing reporter,” Corrine Lestch, who wrote the article.

It’s unclear what Borzellieri can sue for. The paper’s article was headlined “White Supremacist Principal Running Bronx School with Majority Black and Latino Students.” It laid out Borzellieri’s racist views and connections to American Renaissance, which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Borzellieri’s basic grievance seems to be that the reporter left out the fact that he had never had a complaint made against him on “racial grounds.” He also claims the Archdiocese “had already approved of my writings.”

What his letter definitively establishes is that Borzellieri’s views are racist, the point the New York Daily News made. In it, he claims that his lawsuit will “strike back at those who would destroy our careers for speaking the truth about race” and will fight “the bestial forces of political correctness when it comes to race.” He also laments that the late Sam Francis, who was the principal ideologue at the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, was let go in the 1990s from The Washington Times for racist commentary and a provocative speech he gave to American Renaissance.

So, what we have here is someone openly racist writing to racists to ask for money to fund a libel suit against a paper that described his views as what he claims them to be: racist. How absurd.