Monday, September 20, 2010

Setting the Boundaries

New York Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey's Republican opponent this fall is ... well, how to put this gently ... openly racist.
Longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Nita Lowey's Republican challenger this fall is a Christian conservative author and activist whose writings have frowned on inter-racial marriage and movies like "Save the Last Dance," touted the benefits of studies linking race to IQ and said parents need to teach their kids "appropriate ethnic boundaries" for marriage and socializing.

Jim Russell, who's challenging Lowey in a repeat after trying to take her on in 2008, made the statements in an essay called "The Western Contribution to World History," which was published in a 2001 - 2002 edition of the Occidental Quarterly, and had also been featured on infamous former politician and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's website. It's since been taken down from there.

But it's still available in the back issues of the Occidental Quarterly, a far-right magazine that the civil rights-focused Southern Poverty Law Center dubbed a "racist" publication whose "editors and advisory board members have constituted a 'Who's Who' of the radical right, and its regular publication of extremists' articles has made it a favorite among academic racists in America."

In the essay, Russell also praised T.S. Eliot and psychology professor Kevin MacDonald for looking to limit the proliferation of Jews. MacDonald, who's served on the advisory board of the Occidental Quarterly, has been criticized as an anti-Semite who's pushed the theory that Jews are essentially practicing group-think to outperform non-Jews. He also praises a book, "Camp of the Saints," that the SPLC has said is "revered by American white supremacists."

Some of the block quotes provided in the piece are real doozies.

1 comment:

N. Friedman said...

In this case, David, you have correctly called someone a racist.