Former Congressman Tom Tancredo to Speak at White Supremacist Conference

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) is scheduled to speak at the national conference of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), according to a recent newsletter distributed by the group. The conference is scheduled to take place July 6-7, 2012, in Nashville, Tennessee. Tancredo's topic will be "Multiculturalism - the Death of America."

If this announcement is correct, Tancredo, who is known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric and attacks on multiculturalism, has shown his true colors by agreeing to appear before a group that promotes racism and white separatism. The CofCC traces its roots directly to the racist, anti-integrationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. The group exploits hot-button issues such as immigration and black-on-white crime to inflame fears about minorities and the destruction of white culture in America. 

Among the scheduled speakers at the CofCC conference are Don Black who runs Stormfront, the largest and most popular white supremacist Internet forum; Derek Black, Don Black's son, who runs a radio show with his father on Stormfront, and James Edwards, whose radio show, The Political Cesspool, regularly features racists and anti-Semites. 

In the last few years, Tancredo has become increasingly strident in his view that the influx of both legal and undocumented immigrants is destroying American culture. At the Conservative Political Conference (CPAC) in February 2011, at a panel titled, “Will Immigration Kill the GOP?” Tancredo alleged that the “cult of multiculturalism” had hurt the United States and the rest of the world, particularly Western Europe. He asserted that multiculturalism was “the dagger point into the heart of western civilization.”

The CPAC panel was sponsored by Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), a far-right student group, which made Tancredo its honorary chairman. YWC has also decried multiculturalism for "destroying and dispossessing the people and culture of the West.” The term “Western civilization” has become a euphemism in far-right and racist circles to signify white European culture. During a February 2009 lecture at American University that YWC organized, Tancredo suggested that "throughout history, people who are not white Anglo-Saxon have become American by adopting a white Anglo-Saxon culture."

Online Racism and Anti-Semitism in the Aftermath of Trayvon Martin Shooting

The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, has led to a flurry of racist and anti-Semitic remarks from extremists trying to exploit the incident to further their own hateful views. The remarks have been directed at both the victim and the shooter.

White supremacists are furious that Zimmerman, whose mother is reportedly Latino, is being described as a white man by the mainstream media.

An example of a Stormfront

In an article posted to the white supremacist Counsel of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) Web site, the author asserted, “Each time you see a ‘mainstream’ news outlet rant about the Zimmerman/Martin case...ask yourself why the media is called Zimmerman a white man instead of a Latino. Ask yourself if you think the story is really news or is it agitation/propaganda designed to advance a political agenda.”

Similarly, posters to the white supremacist Internet forum Stormfront, expressed both racist and anti-Semitic views. For example, “Thule Seeker” asserted, “[Zimmerman] can do us another favor by getting his jew-bean ass thrown in prison. Everyone always blames Whites for being racist but now the shoe is on the other foot. It will be nice for jews, beans and/or jewbeans to see one of their own go to prison for the very thing that us Whites are always accused of.”

Another Stormfront member, using the name “Richard Nixon,” wrote: “The anti-white Jew media will still try to spin this in an anti-white angle. And, of course, Blacks will find an excuse to riot, loot, a [sic] wreak overall havoc.”

On yet another white supremacist forum, Vanguard News Network, “Craig Cobb” wrote, “Ha ha the lying media calls a possible jew spic mix a 'white' just like the annual DOJ UNiform Crime Report files do! Probably in about 10 more years George Zimmerman will be as White in America as it gets--like our elite version of an Icelandic pale blue eyed platinum blonde.”

Some white supremacists, while describing Zimmerman in racist terms, lauded him for killing a black teen. On Stormfront, “Thin White Duke” argued, “Zimmerman should be praised as much as any mestizo in America should. Putting white nationalism aside for a moment, this man removed a violent person from a neighborhood voluntarily. If only we had more whites patrolling our neighborhoods and keeping the negroes in check like this mestizo did.”

Another Stormfront member, “Reference,” asserted, “Let's don't get bogged down in Zimmerman's ethnicity. Zim put down negritude while his neighbor ran into the house, locked the doors and called 911 - a completely useless neighbor IMO.”