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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Some MPs who have been in parliament for many years NEVER appear on any of the @BBC's "flagship" politics shows - but Reform's privately educated shit-stirring 'anti-elite' former Tory Sarah Pochin - an MP for FIVE WEEKS - gets her own special introduction on #PoliticsLive.
Politicians using dangerously irresponsible anti-Muslim rhetoric know their comments are normalising Islamophobia and endanger British Muslim women. Islamophobic incidents rose by 375% in the week after Boris Johnson called veiled Muslim women “letterboxes” in 2018.
#PolitcsLive
Britain prides itself in NOT being the sort of country that tells women how to dress. States that do dictate women’s clothing (eg Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia) are vilified as misogynistic & ultra-controlling: the antithesis of the enlightened, liberal west. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"Foreigners" DO NOT claim £1BILLION/month in benefits.
This disgusting anti-migrant dogwhistle by shameless liar and former Head of Policy Exchange, Neil O'Brien MP, is just one of several recent dispicable divisive Telegraph front page lies.
WTAF @IpsoNews? @HoCStandards?
The claims that the UK spends £1bn/month "on UC benefits for overseas nationals" (O'Brien) and "Foreigners claim £1bn a month in benefits" (Telegraph) are revealed to be lies in the article: the£1bn relates to "Benefits claims by HOUSEHOLDS with AT LEAST ONE FOREIGN NATIONAL."
The Telegraph claims that (unnamed) "experts suggested the increase reflected a SURGE in the number of asylum seekers being granted refugee status and in net migration."
To evaluate/make sense of this sensational unsourced claim, additional context is needed (but not provided).
Chase Herro, co-founder of Trump’s main crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, on crypto:
“You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it.”
Despite crypto being bullshit, & memecoins being consciously bullshit, many – especially angry young gullible men – still invest: 42% of men & 17% of women aged 18-29 have invested in, traded or used crypto (2024 Pew Research), compared to only 11% of men & 5% of women over 50.
“It’s no accident that memecoins are such a phenomenon among young people who have grown immensely frustrated with a financial system that, I think it’s fair to say, has failed them” - Sander Lutz, the first crypto-focused White House correspondent.
🧵In January, Farage said Musk was justified in calling Starmer complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs: “In 2008 Keir Starmer had just been appointed as DPP & there was a case brought before them of alleged mass rape of young girls that did not lead to a prosecution.”
The allegation that Starmer was complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs is often repeated. But how true is it?
Two Facebook posts, originally appearing in April/May 2020, claimed Starmer told police when he was working for the CPS not to pursue cases against Muslim men accused of rape due to fears it would stir up anti-Islamic sentiment.
In 2022 the posts and allegations saw a resurgence online with hundreds of new shares. They said: “From 2004 onwards the director of public prosecutions told the police not to prosecute Muslim rape gangs to prevent ‘Islamophobia’.
Decades of research shows that parroting or appeasing the far-right simply legitimises their framing, and further normalises illiberal exclusionary discourse and politics.
Starmer's speech is more evidence that the far-right has been mainstreamed.
Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist who focuses on political extremism and populism in Europe and the US, is, imho, one of the most important voices on the Left today.
Allow me to briefly summarise some of his work.
In a 2023 lecture, Mudde emphasizes the importance of precise terminology in discussing the far-right, distinguishing between extreme right (anti-democracy) and radical right (accepts elections but rejects liberal democratic principles like minority rights and rule of law).
He argues we're in a "fourth wave" of postwar far-right politics, characterized by the mainstreaming & normalization of the far-right - what Linguist Prof Ruth Wodak in a related concept refers to as the 'shameless normalization of far-right discourse'.