Posts Tagged ‘towson university’
 
March 21, 2013 7

Extremists Flock to 40th Annual CPAC Conference

Mer­lin Miller, a white suprema­cist affil­i­ated with the Amer­i­can Free­dom Party, attended CPAC 2013.

The 40th annual Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) on March 14–16, 2013 in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. attracted a num­ber of indi­vid­u­als on the extreme right of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Atten­dees at CPAC this year included a white suprema­cist who ran for Pres­i­dent in the 2012 elec­tion, mem­bers of a “white stu­dent union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity, and a reported white suprema­cist who cur­rently runs an anti-immigrant group. A promi­nent mem­ber of the anti-government Oath Keep­ers group pre­sented at the event.

Sher­iff Richard Mack of Ari­zona, an anti-government activist and mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers, pre­sented at this year’s CPAC at a ses­sion titled “How a Con­sti­tu­tional Sher­iff can Pro­tect Your Sec­ond Amend­ment Rights.” The Oath Keep­ers claim they will refuse to carry out cer­tain “orders” that they expect the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to issue, such as putting cit­i­zens in con­cen­tra­tion camps, assist­ing for­eign troops in invad­ing the coun­try and declar­ing mar­tial law. Dur­ing his speech, Mack claimed “the Pres­i­dent has no author­ity in your county” and asserted that “there is no gun con­trol in the Constitution.”

Matthew Heim­bach, a for­mer activist with the now defunct racist group Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (YWC) and the founder of the “white stu­dent union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, attended CPAC with other stu­dents. Heim­bach and another stu­dent, Scott Terry, dis­rupted a panel titled, “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” Terry pro­claimed that “I feel like my peo­ple, my demo­graphic are being sys­tem­at­i­cally dis­en­fran­chised” and asked the speaker, K. Carl Smith of the group Fred­er­ick Dou­glas Repub­li­cans, “Why can’t we be more like Booker T. Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans?” Smith responded by talk­ing about a let­ter writ­ten by Fred­er­ick Dou­glas for­giv­ing his slave mas­ter. Terry inter­rupted Smith, blurt­ing out, “for giv­ing him shel­ter and food and…,” caus­ing a com­mo­tion. A few moments later both Terry and Heim­bach fur­ther dis­rupted pro­ceed­ings by shout­ing that Mar­tin Luther King was a “Marxist.”

Robert Van­der­voort, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the anti-immigrant group Pro­Eng­lish, attended this year’s CPAC. Van­der­voort is report­edly the for­mer head of the white suprema­cist group Chicagoland Friends of Amer­i­can Renais­sance, a local chap­ter of the white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion Amer­i­can Renais­sance. Another extrem­ist in atten­dance was Merlin Miller, a white suprema­cist who ran for Pres­i­dent in the 2012 elec­tion on the Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion (A3P) ticket. A3P, now renamed the Amer­i­can Free­dom Party, is a white suprema­cist polit­i­cal party. Miller attended one ses­sion titled “Iran and the Islamist Threat to Amer­ica and the West: What is — What Should Be — Our Strat­egy.” As reported by ADL, Miller attended an anti-Semitic “Hol­ly­wood­ism” con­fer­ence in Tehran ear­lier in 2013.

Though one of the major themes of the 2013 CPAC was increas­ing inclu­siv­ity in the GOP, extrem­ist ele­ments, though small in num­ber, were still able not only to attend but to par­tic­i­pate at this year’s event.

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October 17, 2012 12

White Supremacist Jared Taylor’s Speech at Texas A&M Is Sponsored by Neo-Nazi

Pre­ston Wiginton

Pre­ston Wig­in­ton, a 48-year-old neo-Nazi and for­mer racist skin­head, is spon­sor­ing a speech by white suprema­cist Jared Tay­lor at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity on Octo­ber 23, 2012.  In an announce­ment about the speech, Tay­lor claims that there are “ongo­ing efforts to dis­place white Tex­ans at the uni­ver­sity” and refers read­ers to a Texas A&M report that dis­cusses racial diversity.

This will be the sec­ond time this month that Tay­lor has been invited to speak at a col­lege cam­pus. In early Octo­ber, he spoke at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land about the “legit­i­macy of white racial con­scious­ness” at the behest of the White Stu­dent Union.

Wig­in­ton is a famil­iar fig­ure at Texas A&M, where he is a for­mer stu­dent. In Jan­u­ary 2012, he held a demon­stra­tion at the cam­pus against Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.

In the past, Wig­in­ton has brought other con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures to the cam­pus. In fall 2007, he spon­sored an appear­ance at Texas A&M by Nick Grif­fin, who was then the head of the ultra-right British National Party (BNP), a party that attracted many neo-Nazis.  Grif­fin spoke on the spread of Islam in Europe in a speech titled, “Islam, Ter­ror and West­ern Civilization.”

Ear­lier that year, Wig­in­ton also had the idea to bring Tay­lor to cam­pus to speak about diver­sity issues at the school. Wig­in­ton claimed he had attended a diver­sity sym­po­sium set up to address racial ten­sion at Texas A&M and he then chal­lenged the Asso­ciate Provost of Diver­sity at Texas A&M to debate Tay­lor. The cam­pus paper The Bat­tal­ion reported that Wig­in­ton held a 2-by-4 foot sign to pro­mote the debate, which did not take place.

Wig­in­ton is also vir­u­lently anti-immigrant. In Novem­ber 2005, he orga­nized and funded a lec­ture tour for anti-immigration activist Frosty Wooldridge. The tour cov­ered five Texas uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Texas A&M. The pur­pose of Wooldridge’s tour was to gather sig­na­tures on a peti­tion against Texas House Bill 1403, which gave chil­dren of undoc­u­mented immi­grants in-state col­lege tuition rates if they had grad­u­ated from a Texas high school and lived in the state for three years.

In addi­tion to liv­ing in Texas, Wig­in­ton has spent a lot of time in Rus­sia. In 2007, he addressed thou­sands of Russ­ian nation­al­ists at the Russ­ian March, which pro­moted Russ­ian nation­al­ism and attacked non-white immi­gra­tion. The par­tic­i­pants gave Nazi salutes at the march and shouted, “White power.”  Shortly after this event Wig­in­ton forged ties with Alexan­der Belov, an anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant nation­al­ist in Rus­sia.  In addi­tion, that year Wig­in­ton spoke at an annual memo­r­ial rally in Swe­den in honor of a 17-year-old neo-Nazi who was killed by non-Swedes in 2000.

Wig­in­ton was also active in racist skin­head cir­cles. In 2005, he attended a racist skin­head Ham­mer­fest in Drake­town, Geor­gia, and won the “World’s Strongest Skin­head Competition.”

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September 5, 2012 402

Former Youth for Western Civilization Leader Promotes White Student Union at Towson

Matthew Heim­bach

Matthew Heim­bach, the for­mer stu­dent leader of the now-defunct chap­ter of Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (YWC) at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, wants to estab­lish a white stu­dent union at the school.

In a Sep­tem­ber 2 let­ter to Towson’s cam­pus news­pa­per, The Tow­erlight, at the start of the school year, Heim­bach claimed that “a White Stu­dent Union would rep­re­sent the unique cul­tural her­itage, folk cus­toms and strong Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions that define white civilization.”

At the end of his let­ter, Heim­bach claimed that the iden­tity of white “folk” has been “tram­pled and attacked for gen­er­a­tions” and that it was time for white stu­dents to “stand up for our rights.”

He then focused on two issues that have become ardent causes for the white suprema­cist move­ment in the United States: alleged geno­cide against whites in South Africa, and alleged anti-white assaults and dis­crim­i­na­tion in the United States.

Heim­bach ended his let­ter with a para­phrase of the “14 words,” the ral­ly­ing cry of white suprema­cists world­wide: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.” Instead, Heim­bach, wrote another 14-word phrase, “We must pro­tect the secu­rity of Euro­peans and a future for the next generation.”

Heim­bach has become more openly white suprema­cist in his views since YWC was dis­banded at Tow­son in March 2012.  At that time, YWC received neg­a­tive media pub­lic­ity when mem­bers of the group chalked “white pride” around the cam­pus. Soon after­wards, the group’s stu­dent advi­sor resigned and YWC lost its stand­ing as an offi­cial stu­dent organization.

In July 2012, Heim­bach attended the national con­fer­ence of the white suprema­cist Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens. A year ear­lier, Heim­bach also attended a con­fer­ence of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group that wants to pre­serve the South’s “Anglo-Celtic culture.”

In many ways, Heim­bach was the model YWC mem­ber. He founded the YWC chap­ter at Tow­son in Sep­tem­ber 2011 and couched his lan­guage in non-racial terms to gain accep­tance from fel­low stu­dents. This was a strat­egy pro­moted by the national YWC when it began orga­niz­ing stu­dent chap­ters at var­i­ous universities.

YWC has been rel­a­tively inac­tive as a national orga­ni­za­tion since its founder Kevin DeAnna stepped down as pres­i­dent of the group in Feb­ru­ary 2012.

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