MEDIA SABOTEURS TAKE ON YOUTH FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION

We’re guessing folks at the University of North Carolina is salting the Earth so that groups like Youth for Western Civilization are not allowed to grow there anymore. School is back in session, and returning students were greeted with a “special anti-racist” issue of their campus paper. This comes after students there chased Tom Tancredo off their campus and later the campus chapter of YWC, who brought Tancredo there, was shut down. You can pretty much chalk up the University of North Carolina as a major FAIL for YWC, and YWC a major FAIL for anyone who thought they could get away with this in 2009. Look, the teabagging parties and temper tantrums at town hall meetings are the best they can do. Anything else beyond that is us getting very, very lazy.

Early this morning, thousands of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that their campus newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, had printed a “special anti-racist issue” for the first day of fall classes. The front page carried articles about how the national co-founder of a local student group, Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), plead guilty to a hate crime earlier this year, as well as several articles covering the successful protests against YWC last year and the consequent resignation of that group’s adviser.

On the back, students found an opinion page with editorials commenting on the lessons to be learned from a recent anti-racist victory in Houston, a timeline of resistance to YWC, anarchist critiques of liberal discourse around race, “free speech” and “diversity,” and an extensive list of radical resources in the nearby area. Strangely enough, these articles also criticized the role of the Daily Tar Heel and campus administration in perpetuating their “impoverished discourse” on tolerance and the marketplace of ideas. Something was amiss.

Of course, being the lapdog of the administration and the bastion of liberal “tolerance” towards white supremacy, the Daily Tar Heel would never have printed such things on its own. And so, in the long tradition of expropriating the channels of media production, radicals took it upon themselves to assist the Daily Tar Heel in printing the news they refuse to print.

Much earlier in the morning, a large crew of friends and comrades had broken up into small teams and wrapped approximately 3,000 copies of the DTH with their own paper. This action was particularly designed to force YWC’s connections with white supremacist movements out into the open. It also serves as payback to a newspaper that refused to print one single supportive comment about the widely participatory direct actions that occurred against YWC earlier this year, while at the same time running friendly human interest pieces on two of the group’s officers. 

Fortunately, the actions and propaganda last spring worked anyway: YWC’s faculty adviser, without whom they cannot be an official student group and cannot bring speakers to campus, quit his role over the summer, citing “extreme left-wing” protests and the “inflammatory nature” of the organization.

As of this morning, YWC has been unable to find a new adviser, though news recently came in that a retired psychology professor named Elliot Cramer has offerred to fill the role. If Cramer does agree to provide faculty support, he would be explicitly endorsing an organization that is now undeniably connected to the white power movement. Any updates about Cramer that would be helpful will be provided, particularly information that will help anti-racists from out of state to show their support and solidarity for this struggle that is being waged in Chapel Hill, NC.

To see a full pdf. of the “special anti-racist issue,” click
here.