A return to Secession Week has been delayed yet again. Leonard Zeskind and the NAACP released a report today on the Tea Party, implicit Whiteness, and White Nationalism which are the core focus of this website and demands a quick response.)

Birmingham, AL

The NAACP released a big report today on “Tea Party Nationalism” written by none other than Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: A History of the White Nationalist Movement, which I reviewed at the end of last year. I had noticed that Zeskind had been unusually quiet in recent months. Now we have our explanation.

Having read this “study” which the NAACP is touting in the mainstream media as “proof” of Tea Party racism, I can’t help but laugh. Read carefully, this ridiculous “report” completely exonerates the Tea Party from any such claim. Leonard Zeskind himself certainly knows this, but has created a piece of leftwing agitprop based on a patchwork of unrepresentative samples designed to fit a preconceived conclusion.

The only charges of merit in “Tea Party Nationalism” are the following:

1.) A few White Nationalists have participated in Tea Party events like the Tax Day Tea Party in DC. As American citizens, they have every right to do so, and if they do nothing to draw attention to themselves, they go unnoticed by the organizers.

2.) Some White Nationalist literature has been distributed at random Tea Parties: flyers, business cards, contact information. There is nothing remarkable about this.

3.) There are some “connections” between White Nationalists and Tea Party members. By that I only mean that some of these people know each other on Facebook or in real life. The same is true of White Nationalists and Ron Paul acolytes and lots of other people on the Right who are friends in spite of their political differences.

4.) Some White Nationalists desire to push the Tea Party toward a more explicit form of racial consciousness. There have been discussions about this on Stormfront. I’ve been one of the loudest champions of this in the White Nationalist movement.

5.) There is a low level implicit White racial consciousness on display in the Tea Party, namely, among the Birthers who are involved in the movement who think Obama is a Kenyan socialist, but also among Whites who (justifiably) believe that Barack Obama and the Democrats want to redistribute their wealth to non-White minorities.

6.) Tea Party members are older Whites and have more racially conservative views than the White population at large.

7.) Some anonymous racist comments have been left on Tea Party blogs and websites. Just like every other blog on the internet.

8.) The Tea Party is not exclusively concerned with fiscal issues. Tea Party candidates like Mike Lee, Joe Miller, and Ken Buck take a hard line on immigration. In Arizona, the Tea Party has gotten involved in the immigration debate, and their presence has shifted the political mainstream to the Right on immigration and other important social issues.

9.) It is conceivable that the implicit White Nationalism in the Tea Party could be activated and made explicit in the right political conditions.

10.) The Tea Party has been “good for the White Nationalists” in the sense that it will change the composition of the Senate on immigration, has delegitimized Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, has eroded the legitimacy of the federal government, and has opened up huge cracks in the wall of media imposed “respectability” that have prevented White Nationalists from successfully organizing for the past four decades.

The general scaremongering conclusion of this “study” is pure undisguised bullshit propaganda. I can say this with a high degree of confidence as an “insider” and one of the loudest advocates in the White Nationalist movement championing the cause of “infiltrating” the Tea Party.

The fact is, White Nationalist influence on the Tea Party is the ideological equivalent of a mosquito sucking blood on the ass of a bull. The vast majority of White Nationalists are not interested in mainstream politics. The few who do have some involvement with the Tea Party, and the fewer still who are effective in their evangelism, couldn’t even fill half the empty seats in an Applebee’s restaurant.

In June, I attended the 2010 CofCC National Conference where Roan Garcia-Quintana was a speaker. Less than 200 people were present. In August, there were over 200,000 people at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall. So even in the wildest imagination of leftwing conspiracy theorists, it is still ludicrous to argue that the CofCC is some kind of invisible hand guiding the Tea Party in a pro-White direction.

Leonard Zeskind is so desperate to tar the Tea Party with the “racism” brush that he is citing anonymous comments on Tea Party blogs and Billy Roper of White Revolution passing out at a few political fliers for his write-in campaign in Arkansas. Those who actually know the parties involved, as we do, and as Zeskind does, are not under any illusions that Roper or White Nationalists have much influence over the Tea Party movement.

When you boil away all the rhetorical flam in this report and get to the facts of matter, it “reveals” nothing more than some unremarkable parallels between the Far Right and Far Left. There have always been communist and socialist groups participating in liberal rallies and handing out their literature at mainstream events. Undoubtedly, there were communists on the ground at the “One Nation” rally sponsored by the NAACP, but you won’t see them condemning the “extremists” in their ranks.

Leonard Zeskind could have used his reputation as an authority on the White Nationalist movement to bury the claim that the Tea Party is “permeated” by racism. Instead, he clearly chose to tailor this “investigative report” around his political beliefs, which are shared by the NAACP, and which has made a small fortune browbeating Whites with spurious charges of racial discrimination against minorities.

Final Thoughts

It sure would be nice if White Nationalists were all Machiavellian secret agents, infiltrating the Tea Party like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, skillfully advancing a “racist agenda” into the mainstream. Naturally, that would involve tailoring our message to the experience of our audience, watering down our rhetoric to make it more palatable, something which White Nationalists have shown little inclination in doing.

Then our friend Leonard Zeskind would really have something to write about. Now he is only crying wolf to “we the sheeple” and doing favors for his anti-White friends.