The large sum represents an unprecedented annual haul for an American white nationalist group and suggests that big-money donors of the conservative movement may be moving their riches to more extreme causes in the aftermath of Trump’s rise.
In an era where white nationalists increasingly embrace decentralized online activism, VDARE stands out for its organizational prowess and links to power.
#Hatewatch connected former Trump administration officials Stephen Miller and Julia Hahn to its founder, Peter Brimelow.
Extreme right discourse is *everywhere*.
Celebrity anti-immigrant columnist Ann Coulter contributes to the group’s online publication. Even with visible ties to the mainstream right, VDARE embraces an agenda that cultivates a radical far-right world view in its sympathizers.
VDARE promotes the white genocide & Great Replacement conspiracy theories - very concerningly now gaining traction in Britain - which many view as having inspired far-right terror attacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; El Paso, Texas; & Christchurch, New Zealand, in recent years.
Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler published a post on VDARE’s website titled “Yes, Virginia (Dare), There Is Such A Thing As White Genocide,” less than two months before a neo-Nazi murdered an antiracist demonstrator. VDARE also romanticizes the Capitol Hill insurrection.
“The Dissident Right is an intellectual movement,” Brimelow wrote of the Capitol insurrection. “Our ideas are considered dangerous by [mainstream media] Cultural Marxists, but we’re actually quite few.. (the) movement was the American people.”
VDARE’s recent fundraising prowess coincides with the Republican Party’s embrace of the anti-immigrant, anti-democratic worldview promoted by Steve Bannon & Donald Trump & his followers.
Total donations to the VDARE Foundation surged throughout the Trump era.
DonorsTrust, a right-wing funding vehicle tied to Charles Koch, the Mercer family & other like-minded billionaires - who influence the UK by helping fund publications like Spiked & Tufton St think tanks like the IEA - pumped $1.5 million into VDARE in 2019.
JOIN 👏THE 👏 DOTS.
In February 2020, VDARE paid $1.4 million in cash to purchase a castle in West Virginia, establishing a base that is less than a two-hour commute from Washington, DC.
The purchase provides a small window into how VDARE may be spending their newly acquired wealth.
During the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations in June 2020, VDARE impersonated journalists from VICE Canada & asked antiracist protesters to identify themselves by name & face to their large #racist audience on YouTube.
Facebook & YouTube have since suspended VDARE’s accounts.
The group also stumped for the defense team of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer a jury convicted in April of murdering Floyd.
The big increase in revenue worked out well for Brimelow, whose salary nearly doubled from the year before, making £345,000 in 2019.
DonorsTrust - the “dark-money ATM of the conservative movement” - & other similar funds, donate to many US hate groups every year.
'Donor-advised funds' (DAFs) manage individual charitable accounts for its clients for a fee, who can then shield their identities from the public.
In 2019, DonorsTrust also provided $10,500 to the New Century Foundation, the nonprofit behind Jared Taylor’s white nationalist American Renaissance magazine & website. An associate of Brimelow, he shared a stage with him & Richard Spencer at an “alt-right” event in 2016.
Jared Taylor promotes dehumanizing pseudoscience on his website, including the myth that Black people are predisposed to be less intelligent than other races - something else with support in Britain, & a view that exists within the Govt, & in the past, amplified by Boris Johnson.
One foundation that formally ended its funding of VDARE is the Innovia Foundation. For years, it facilitated a wealthy donor’s contributions to VDARE.
Despite pleas from its CEO, it was only after national press attention that the foundation’s board adopted an anti-hate policy.
Like many extreme far-right figures, Brimelow invests in Bitcoin.
His cryptocurrency donor list included French computer programmer Laurent Bachelier, who donated to open admirers of fascism such as Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer & white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
Anyway, what happens in the US generally happens in the UK shortly afterwards. Brexit, Bannon & Farage mainstreamed far-right rhetoric, & now it is increasingly normalised: it's already *crystal clear* that the fastest growing terrorist threat in Britain comes from the far-right.
Last year it was reported that for the first time, the largest number of Prevent referrals in the UK related to far-right extremism.
Of cases referred on to Channel, 43% were for rightwing & 30% for Islamist radicalisation.
I've written elsewhere about the dangerous rise in right-wing populist nationalism, & the increasingly dangerous & cavalier rhetoric of the Tory Govt, the mainstream press, & publications such as Spiked & the Spectator - as well as Govt links to Viktor Orban & other extremists.
And now, with #GBNews funded by questionable US Libertarians & overseas hedge-funders clearly becoming Britain's Fox News & normalising & mainstreaming further explicitly "anti-woke" (ie intolerant, demonizing & scapegoating rhetoric), I fear for Britain.
Imho, you should too.
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Tommy Robinson claimed his protest drew “three million patriots”. The Met Police reported 110,000.
Prof Milad Haghani, an actual world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes, estimates “about 56,000... However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.”
Unlike shameless liar and multiply-convicted violent far-right coke-snorting thug Tommeh, Prof Haghani is a world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes. He leads geospatial transport planning initiatives, and is an expert in crowd dynamics.
Tommeh is a world-leading grifter.
Compulsive shameless liar Tommy Robinson made the laughable claim that his 'Unite (Divide) The Kingdom' rally was “officially the biggest protest in British history.” 🤥
In reality, as only about 56,000 people attended, it struggled to scrape the top TWENTY. 😂
To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers.
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them.
Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response.
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.
Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.
Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness.
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England.
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.
These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all.
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.
@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.
The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes. theguardian.com/politics/2025/…
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions
The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.
It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.
The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”.
Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.
Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.
These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.
It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.
The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”