“They sound like Nazis to me, trying to shut down this conference,” said Taylor. “We are exchanging views, that’s what democracy is about.”
A conference planned for February of 2008 at the Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport hotel in Herndon is drawing attention as a New York-based Jewish organization is demanding that the hotel cancel it. The group claims the conference will entertain anti-Semitic and anti-minority lectures and comments.
“We don’t believe that Nazis have the right to speak,” said Jess Adler, a spokesman for the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO). “We don’t let them speak, we don’t let them grow,” said Adler. His group, numbering around 4,000 in the U.S., is calling on people to call the Crowne Plaza to get the conference cancelled.
American Renaissance, an Oakton-based magazine in its 19th year of publication, is the conference organizer.
Jared Taylor, the magazine’s editor, said JDO is wrong in its assertions about the conference. “They are grievously uninformed,” said Taylor. He said he has never heard of JDO and said American Renaissance focuses on examining racial issues. “The focus is to investigate problems of race and immigration, not just in America, but worldwide,” he said.
The repeating series of riots in France are an example of problems the publication, and its conferences, examines, said Taylor. He said the people announced to speak at the conference come from international academia. “They are all very well informed people,” said Taylor. “In fact, two of our speakers are Jews.”