TARGETING CAMPUS HATE: HOW YOUTH FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS GETTING HAMPERED BY…REALITY

When the smoke clears from the ass-whuppin’ across the country that the white supremacist group Youth for Western Civilization is getting, people are really going to start hammering the mainstream right for pushing these bunch of idiots. The Leadership Institute (LI) will especially get that hammer in a big way since in their quest to build right wing activists on college campuses, they are really the ones responsible for pushing this Hitler Youth on everyone. It is as if LI founder Morton Blackwell knows his time on the political stage is done and he wants to give one last push for white supremacists before he goes. It’s not working. YWC is definitely making themselves and everyone around them most unwelcome, and that’s fine with us. Our mission has always been to show what kind of connections the mainstream right has with the lunatic fringe racist right, and this group makes those connections waaaay too apparent. Now let’s stomp them into the ground.

One People’s Project

It didn’t take long for people to realize what the white nationalist student group Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) was up to, even if it didn’t say it themselves. Within months after their coming out event at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they sponsored an event at the University of North Carolina that saw students chasing their Honorary Chairperson, Former Congressman Tom Tancredo off campus. This gave them the most press coverage they had seen, then or now.

Today, although they seemed full of promise for conservative activism, ultimately YWC has been taking on the role of pariah. Even worse, they are steadily becoming an antifa magnet, becoming a particular target on college campuses by other activists who view them as a good example of how pathological today’s mainstream conservatives have become in the age of Obama.

An article on the YWC website took notice of a flyer published by One People’s Project alerting attendees to the Left Forum a leftist conference in New York City’s Pace University, of the possibility of their presence. The flyer featured a photo of conservative propagandist James O’Keefe at a white supremacist forum in 2006 that was sponsored by the Robert A. Taft Club, whose founders also founded Youth for Western Civilization. The flyer also noted that YWC head Kevin DeAnna had asked for activists in the New York City area that weekend, and it was a possibility that those who answer his call may come with concealed cameras like O’Keefe has done to record and possibly doctor footage of attendees to defame them. Ultimately, no video has been produced, although from reading the article YWC was none too pleased about the flyer, suggesting that the O’Keefe photo was supposed to illustrate “his supposed links to some kind of evil group” without noting what group that was.

“We’re not sure if this is supposed to discredit O’Keefe or YWC,” the article read. “Either way, we don’t care — in fact, we display on our website pictures of YWC Providence Chapter leader Tim Dionosopolis (sic) posing with James O’Keefe at a recent event sponsored by the College Republicans.”

The College Republicans at Providence College was led by Tim Dionisopolous, who in his last semester there before graduating spent March and April bringing in dubious speakers to the campus under the auspecies of the College Republicans and not YWC, which is not recognized by the College as a student group and was not going to be after the controversy that brewed when he attempted to bring Tom Tancredo to the campus. When James O’Keefe visited Providence College in March, Dionisopolous attempted to quell any possible opposition to the event by warning that there will be no recording devices allowed when O’Keefe spoke, and security will be on hand to remove those using any electronic devices. “Remember, Providence College is a private school, no one has to be on campus or has a right to this event, its a special privilege,” he wrote in his “ground rules” for the event. In the end no one opposed either that event or the following one with National Review Online’s John Derbyshire, who believes in genetic inferiority of blacks to whites and along with American Renaissance publisher Jared Taylor and black conservative Kevin Martin (who was only announced as a participant after concerns were raised), the other panelist at the 2006 white supremacist forum that James O’Keefe attended.

It was a different story the following month however. That was when anti-racist activists as well as students responded to events at Washington State University and Providence College in Rhode Island that YWC had put together. The first one at Washington State was put together by Phil Tignino, who had, according to reports, listed briefly on his Facebook page the late National Alliance founder and Turner Diaries author William Pierce, listing him as an “inspriation”, and had to deny his association with another white supremacist and convicted child rapist among his friends there who bragged about being involved with protesting at taco stands around Spokane and who was arrested on federal gun charges last month. On April 18, YWC student activists erected a fence on campus as what they said was a protest against illegal immigration, but after the demo was opposed by progressive students on campus, illegal immigrants was not whom they considered the problem. “Make no mistake, these openborder advocates that cantillate the wonders of a world without borders is nothing but a clever hoax,” Tignino wrote. “What they want is territory from the United States. When illegals and their supporters say they are Americans, and when they somberly wave the American flag, don’t fall for it.”

YWC has not had it easy on the WSU campus since its founding there in the Fall. Every move they have made has been met with oppostion from not just activists, but the student body in general. And it isn’t surprising why. In an interview after the fence demo,Tignino made it clear what he stood for. “Obviously us doing activism here isn’t going to change anything, but we do speak for a relatively large amount of people when we say America should have an American culture,” he said. “It shouldn’t have this hodge-podge of different identities and opposite beliefs.”

Meanwhile, the James O’Keefe and John Derbyshire events at Providence College made antifa there take notice, so when Tim Dionisopolous invited white supremacist Dick Spencer, director of the racist National Policy Institute, to the campus for the group’s final event of the semester on April 19, they also took action. Despite the warnings after the O’Keefe event that Providence College was a private instiution, that it was a privilege to participate in a event he put on and could otherwise be removed, they still managed to attend and disrupt the event, first by calling out Spencer, who was suggesting a class-based approach to affirmative action as what he said would be a “boon” to poor whites, and later coming bac
k with a banner reading “Hate Not Welcome In Our City” while chanting “Dick Spencer Go Away!” The protest went on for several minutes before antifa left. Providence College administration did not respond to calls regarding Spencer’s appearence.

YWC is now looking overseas to build. Taylor Rose, a student at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, that participated in the anti-Muslim rally against the Islamic Center near the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11, was slated to participate in an anti-Islamic “March for Freedom” in Cologne, Germany that was sponsored by a coalition of groups called Cities Against Islamization. This is an annual event that has seen violence in the past, and they invited Rose as a representative of the Tea Parties here in the States. Of the approximately 1000 marchers, those that also participated were Jacques Cordonnier from France’s Bloc Identitaire, a party known for its attacks on Jews as well as Muslims, Filip Dewinter from the racist Flemish party Vlaams Belang, who was one of the scheduled speakers at the American Renaissance conference in February that was shut down after outrage from local government and citizens, and Susanne Winter of Austria’s Freedom Party, whose former leader, the late Nazi sympathizer Jorg Haider turned the party into the fascist organization it is known as today. 10,000 police officers were on hand to protect the marchers from those that came out to oppose them.

“I could not help but feel compelled in my speech to declare the necessity for our movements to be in solidarity with one another,” Rose wrote in an article after the event. “Despite the differences between Europe and America on many issues, there are a number of fundamental problems that we all face and it is imperative that we stand together. For generations, the leftists have networked and organized internationally in their so-called ‘popular fronts.’ It is now high time that the defenders of the Western tradition come together, to support one another, to share ideas and in harmony declare to the world that we will not falter nor fail in our attempt for the defense of the Western homeland.

And yet, failure seems to have been the course of this group. Next month YWC hopes to have their first conference in Virginia, but is particularly restrictive primarily to those who are college students, and they neglect to say who is participating in the event. After their event at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference brought out scores of white supremacists to an otherwise mainstream affair, it is understandable why. It is also understandable given the attention they have recently received. It is not known if there are plans from anti-fascist groups to oppose the conference, but even if there isn’t, there are few places that Youth for Western Civilization can go where they will not see an effective opposition – and it only looks like there will be even fewer as time goes on.