The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Guilt by Association: White House Ditches Aide for Speaking at 2016 Conference

Posted on | August 19, 2018 | 3 Comments

 

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a white nationalist?”

A speechwriter for President Donald Trump who attended a conference frequented by white nationalists has left the White House.
CNN’s KFile reached out to the White House last week about Darren Beattie, a policy aide and speechwriter, who was listed as speaking at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference.
The Mencken Club, which is named for the early 20th century journalist and satirist whose posthumously published diaries revealed racist views, is a small annual conference started in 2008 and regularly attended by well-known white nationalists such as Richard Spencer. The schedule for the 2016 conference listed panels and speeches by white nationalist Peter Brimelow and two writers, John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg, who were both fired in 2012 from the conservative magazine National Review for espousing racist views.
Other speakers from the 2016 conference are regular contributors to the white nationalist website VDare. Jared Taylor, another leading white nationalist, can be heard at the conference in 2016 on Derbyshire’s radio show along with Brimelow.
The White House, which asked CNN to hold off on the story for several days last week declined to say when Beattie left the White House. Beattie’s email address at the White House, which worked until late Friday evening, was no longer active by Saturday.
“Mr. Beattie no longer works at the White House,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN on Friday night. “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
Beattie confirmed to CNN he spoke to the 2016 conference, saying his speech was not objectionable.
“In 2016 I attended the Mencken conference in question and delivered a stand-alone, academic talk titled ‘The Intelligentsia and the Right.’ I said nothing objectionable and stand by my remarks completely,” he told CNN’s KFile in an email on Saturday. “It was the honor of my life to serve in the Trump Administration. I love President Trump, who is a fearless American hero, and continue to support him one hundred percent. I have no further comment.”

In other words, there is no evidence that Beattie endorsed the opinions of anyone else who attended the Mencken Club event. Merely being at the event was considered sufficient cause to fire him. Readers will note that no such principle of second-hand guilt is ever applied to the Left. Many people in Democrat politics have associated with organizations that promote odious ideas and individuals who have committed odious deeds, but the so-called “mainstream” media goes out of its way to defend Democrats against any such claim; e.g., Barack Obama was not disqualified from office for his association with notorious terrorist leader Bill Ayers or the hate-monger Jeremiah Wright. It is only Republicans who must “vet” their schedules to ensure they can never be connected to anyone with an opinion that Andrew Kaczynski would deem offensive.

Here’s the thing: On the issue of immigration, there is no important difference between Peter Brimelow and Michelle Malkin, and on the issue of affirmative action, there is no important difference between Jared Taylor and Ben Shapiro. That is to say, those deemed “white nationalists” by the Left do not fundamentally disagree with mainstream conservatives on major policy issues involving U.S. race relations. The differences are principally a matter of rhetoric, and also one of attitude.

In general, the “white nationalists” are pessimistic about the prospects of improvement through the normal channels of partisan politics, and believe that we are likely headed toward a racial crisis in America that may be more violent than the breakup of Yugoslavia. Twenty years ago, while mainstream conservatives were preoccupied with the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, men like Brimelow, Derbyshire and Taylor were already prophesying some of the effects of racial tensions that led to Trump’s astonishing 2016 election victory. Why, after all, was Obama able to win North Carolina twice, yet Hillary lost the state in 2016? Couldn’t this have something to do with the #BlackLivesMatter riot in Charlotte, N.C., just weeks before Election Day 2016? The demographic and cultural trends of the past 20 years, which Jared Taylor and others were demonized for warning about, have arguably had the effect of making many white people less “color-blind” in their politics. And when we behold the hate-monger Sarah Jeong hired by the New York Times, we can predict that this trend is likely to intensify in the future, so that “white nationalist” views will become even more common.

The reason I put “white nationalist” in quote marks is that it has become a label used to demonize anyone the Left wants to smear. It’s used much like the way “neocon” was used as a smear-label during the post-9/11 years of the Bush administration, or the way “Religious Right” was used to smear conservatives in the 1990s. The Left always does this, although the labels used in their character-assassination campaigns change, as they shift their demonized bogeymen from time to time. If you ever decide to dig in your heels and fight the Cultural Marxists, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll come up with some excuse to smear you.

By the way, this year’s H.L. Mencken Conference is Nov. 2-3. Maybe I’ll ask my friend Paul Gottfried to clear me for media credentials.

Wait — did I just call Paul Gottfried my “friend”? Darn it, I guess I’ll never get that ambassadorship to Vanuatu now . . .



 

Category: Media Bias

Comments

3 Responses to “Guilt by Association: White House Ditches Aide for Speaking at 2016 Conference”

  1. Darren Beattie: Guilty of Intellectualism : The Other McCain
    August 22nd, 2018 @ 3:23 am

    […] I wrote about Darren Beattie, the former Trump speech-writer who got hounded out of his job by CNN because he spoke at a 2016 […]

  2. Paul Gottfried vs. Neocon Mythology : The Other McCain
    August 29th, 2018 @ 10:16 pm

    […] the retired professor who is president of the H.L. Mencken Club. Readers will recall that White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was recently purged for having spoken at the Club’s 2016 gathering, because of his alleged association with […]

  3. Conservatism, Inc. Building on Sand? | nebraskaenergyobserver
    September 1st, 2018 @ 8:57 am

    […] the retired professor who is president of the H.L. Mencken Club. Readers will recall that White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was recently purged for having spoken at the Club’s 2016 gathering, because of his alleged association with “white […]