WHITE SUPREMACIST'S SPEECH at ASU ATTRACTS GROYPERS & PEDOPHILE, OUTNUMBERED by PROTESTORS

70-year-old Jared Taylor is a longtime white supremcaist propagandist. His magazine-turned-website American Renaissance has been publishing his and similar racists’ screeds for decades. Taylor hosts an annual conference (also very originally called American Renaissance) where “racist intellectuals rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists,” as the Southern Poverty Law Center describes.

On Friday September 2 in the Neeb Hall on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University (ASU), Taylor was invited for a lecture titled “If We Do Nothing: A Defense of White Identity Politics.” Unsurprisingly, Taylor was invited by a student club with ties to the white nationalist America First/“groyper” movement and a long history of racist controversy at the school.

JARED TAYLOR: GROOMING THE NEXT GENERATION OF NEO-NAZIS

Younger generations of white supremacists affectionately refer to him as “Uncle Taylor,” and he’s been described as the “godfather of the alt-right” for his close relationship to Richard Spencer and other 21st century American neo-Nazis.

“The ideal I would put forward is the creation of a white ethnostate on the North American continent,” Spencer said during his 2013 speech at Taylor’s American Renaissance conference. In the same speech, Spencer would call for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” Four years later Spencer organized the deadly Unite the Right neo-Nazi rally, where anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.

Besides the so-called “alt-right,” Taylor was also an early supporter of the antisemitic, white Chistian nationalist America First/”groyper” movement, led Nicholas Fuentes. In 2018, then-20-year-old Fuentes was a guest speaker at American Renaissance alongside former Klan lawyer Sam Dickson, South African “race war” propagandist Simon Roche, and Swedish white nationalist manosphere Youtuber Marcus Follin aka “The Golden One.” In 2022, Taylor attended Fuentes’ own yearly white nationalist meetup, America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC). In his speech, Fuentes flattered Taylor as an honored guest:

“This is a special one for me because, you know, when I got my start years ago, this is one of the first people I met. He was very influential to me and helped shape my views. A personal hero. And of course I spoke at his conference – one of the first ones that I spoke at.”

A week later, Taylor would praise AFPAC III as “the most impressive large-scale dissident meeting I’ve ever been to.” The conference, where Fuentes praised Hitler and Putin, was also attended by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), former Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio while Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-AZ), and then-lieutenant governor Janice McGeachin (R-ID) addressed the audience over video.

COLLEGE REPUBLICANS UNITED: GROYPERS ON CAMPUS

At his most recent speech at ASU, Taylor once again shows his habit of grooming the next generation of American neo-Nazis and affiliating with the “groypers.”

As LCRW previously reported, College Republicans United (CRU; pronounced “crew”) was founded in 2018 by Richard “Rick” Thomas, who was quickly outed by his fellow club members for being an antisemitic, eugenics-praising, neo-Nazi. ASU-CRU’s co-founder and early chairman, Kevin Decuyper, was also exposed for his anti-Black and extremist views:

“What’s with the [n-slur] in your profile picture,” a man named Austin Wilcox asked under a photo of Decuyper and Black conservative commentator Candace Owens.

“I work in state politics and co-founded a right wing organization that’s already called Nazis/alt-right regularly so it helps me a lot to be camoflaged [sic] and low key on my public profile because it helps to have the support of the right wing community who thankfully don’t know my more extreme views,” responded Decuyper.

Decuyper was ousted entirely from ASU-CRU, but Thomas has continued to remain involved with the student club and appears on the Arizona Corporate Commissions registry page for Republicans United LLC.

ASU-CRU currently lists Avery Nelson as their lead, with former precinct committeeman Ren Ramsey (LD-22) serving as the state chairman for the Arizona Republicans United which covers ASU, University of Arizona, and Yavapai Community College. Former police officer and ASU Criminal Justice professor Charles Loftus is ASU-CRU’s permanent faculty advisor.

Despite the change of leadership, ASU-CRU has continued their relationship with influential white supremacists. Over the years, they’ve invited several affiliated with the “groyper” movement to campus, including Vincent James Foxx and Tim Gionet aka Baked Alaska. At the time of their invites, Gionet was already a known neo-Nazi, as a speaker at Unite the Right and Foxx was already dishing out propaganda for neo-Nazi street fighting gang Rise Above Movement. Showing the student organization’s loyalty to the movement, the blue “America First” flag of groyper loyalists is displayed on their booth and podium for club events and speeches.

When ASU-CRU announced they were hosting Taylor on campus there was an immediate reaction from community and student groups. Eventbrite quickly removed the lecture from their website citing a violation of their Terms of Service (ASU-CRU’s tickets for Foxx’s speech were also previously removed for similar reasons). CRU switched the Taylor event to an Arizona-based ticket company called BAMM Tickets before finally moving reservations to their own club website.

Activists with Phoenix Anarchist Federation organized to “flood the phones,” and encouraged people to contact ASU President Michael Crow to deny Taylor a platform on campus. Over two dozen student groups signed a joint letter to ASU requesting the school bar Taylor’s event from campus and stop recognizing ASU-CRU as a student organization:

“We, the ASU community, are disgusted by Jared Taylor's views and believe they have no place at Arizona State University. We strongly condemn College Republicans United for inviting Jared Taylor to our campus, and condemn your decision to sanction this event, in the strongest possible terms. ASU prides itself on its large number of students from diverse cultures and backgrounds, ‘measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed.’ With Jared Taylor, College Republicans United, and white supremacy allowed on campus, ASU cannot live up to its charter for its students to succeed due to the intimidation of and exclusion of non-white people present in their rhetoric,” the joint letter read.

\ \ Students have repeatedly criticized ASU-CRU’s conduct and for continually putting student’s safety at risk by hosting white supremacists. CRU had their group investigated for possible violation of student code of conduct in the past, but a spokesperson for ASU confirmed to LCRW they are currently a recognized club at the college.

ASU College Republicans didn’t sign onto the joint letter, but called out CRU for “making bedfellows with racists” and issued their own statement. ASU College Republican president Isaac Humrich told local NPR station KJZZ they didn’t believe Taylor should be barred from campus but agreed with the condemnation of Taylor:

“He is a racist and a bigot and there is no reason to give that man a platform even if that man has a right to the platform,” Humrich said.

However, ASU College Republicans tried to claim ASU-CRU has no ties with the mainstream Arizona Republican Party, which is a lie. Sen. Wendy Rogers, Rep. Mark Finchem, Rep. Paul Gosar, and Rep. Andy Biggs have all associated with the groyper student group, as well as AZ GOP candidates Tom Horne, Suzanne Sharer and Blake Masters.

ASU President Crow didn’t get back to LCRW’s questions about the school hosting Jared Taylor, but he gave a standard response to others who reached out, saying:

“The presence of a speaker invited by a student organization to speak on one of our campuses does not in any way imply university endorsement of that speaker or his or her view.”

Crow also cited the public university being “subject to the protections and requirements of the First Amendment.” But under Crow’s tenure, ASU faced legal threats for trying to force Muslim academic lecturer Hatem Bazian sign an anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions pledge. And, unlike the heavy protections provided to Taylor, the school also did little to calm the uproar over a planned lecture on masturbation and sexuality. In 2018, the student-organized Valentine’s Day event, Go F<3CK Yourself, canceled after receiving endless attention from the far-right.

“EAT SHIT, JARED TAYLOR”

With the Jared Taylor event remaining on campus, the Phoenix Anarchist Federation re-organized and called for a protest outside the Neeb Hall.

“Despite both student and communty outcry ASU is still hosting white supremacist Jared Taylor. It is up to us as a community to oppose these fascists,” their flier read.

Some groups discouraged protesting the event but on Friday night, an hour before Taylor’s lecture, about 100 people began to line up outside the Neeb Hall to protest the white supremacist speaker. A protester handed out pamphlets to Taylor’s attendees called “The Fiction of Whiteness.” Homemade signs called out college for hosting Taylor:

“NO WHITE SUPREMACISTS ON ASU,” read one.

“ASU, YOUR SILENCE IS DEAFENING! NO WHITE SUPREMACY ON CAMPUS,” said another.

Police and campus security roamed the area, while the entrance was safely gated off by layers of metal fencing. A group of men guarding the entrance gate dressed in Harley Davidson, “Let’s Go Brandon,” and pro-Russian invasion “Z” shirts. The group of suspicious men claimed they “didn’t even know” who was speaking but stuck around all night to mock protesters and patrol the entrance. At one point, a fight between the wannabe-cops and protesters almost broke out, but quickly deescalated. Tomas Moraes, a southern California-based videographer for the Proud Boys and other hate groups, also wandered around the protesters.

https://twitter.com/az_rww/status/1565896225710166016

Attendees to “If We Do Nothing: A Defense of White Identity Politics” slowly trickled in. ASU-CRU unnecessarily moved their event from the Memorial Union to the larger Neeb Hall which is one of the largest lecture halls on the Tempe campus, seating up to 438 people. Taylor hardly pulled an audience, with only about 30 guests made up of CRU members, Taylor fanboys, and a few low-level influencers within the Nick Fuentes/”groyper” ecosystem.

The audience featured Kai Schwemmer, Dalton Clodfelter, and Tyler Russell—three Fuentes loyalists who all stream on his CozyTV platform. Schwemmer is a young white nationalist influencer who navigates his time with more mainstream youth conservatives movements like Turning Point USA and explicit “groyper” events like AFPAC III and 76Fest, which has been described as “Hitler Youth without the Hitler.”

Russell was previously building his audience by directly mimicking Fuentes’ mannerism and rhetoric for a Canadian audience on his Canada First show (a direct rip of America First) but recently moved to the United States. While still living in Canada, Russell was profiled by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network for his affiliation to the America First/”groyper” movement, admiration of Benito Mussolini and Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Peralta, and maintaining a Discord server where his followers regularly praise fascists like Oswald Mosley, Hilter, and modern mass murderers like Dylann Roof and Anders Breivik. Both Schwemmer and Russell were also recent speakers at ASU, holding an event with CRU only two days earlier.

California white supremacist and former House candidate Nick Taurus and (mostly) disgraced Arizona representative David Stringer were also in attendance for Taylor’s lecture. In 2019, local media uncovered Stringer’s 1983 criminal sex abuse charges in Baltimore, including possession of child sexual abuse material and repeatedly raping two underage Black boys. Stringer took a plea deal and eventually relocated to Arizona where he spewed white supremacist rhetoric in legislature until his resignation. More recently, Stringer was working on the 2022 campaign for Republican candidate for Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne.

On his own site, Prescott eNews, Stringer bragged about his attendance and wrote heavy praise for Taylor’s lecture. Prescott eNews frequently reposts articles from American Renaissance.

Students addressed the crowd to express their anger at ASU for making the campus an unsafe environment for minority students. “Eat shit Jared Taylor,” and “We want fascist scum to go, here’s our free speech, Michael Crow,” chants filled the air. In the near-empty Neeb Hall, echoes of the crowd could be heard.

Inside, Taylor gave his usual speech on “race realism,” his polite term for preaching long-discredited, pseudoscientific anti-Black racism and eugenics. He discussed the white supremcaist “Great Replacement” conspiracy, praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and ranted about brain and skull sizes.

“If you gave a child of two a basket full of skulls of Australian Aboriginals and East Asians, he could sort them as easily as cucumbers as zucchinis,” Taylor said.

ASU-CRU and Taylor pretended they would welcome objectors and debate inside but the lecture showed otherwise. Several students with reservations to the public event were denied entry and CRU tried to keep journalists away. A group of student journalists hid their credentials to get inside, while another journalist was told by CRU they’d have to pay $100 to enter. One duo was seemingly denied for their appearance and later Tyler Russell would confirm the two were purposefully barred entry:

“Sorry, there was a no [f-slur] policy,” said Russell on his Telegram.

When LCRW reached for comment about CRU banning students and journalists from their so-called “free speech,” event, a spokesperson for ASU defended the move:

“Student organizations hosting events may set guidelines as to who may attend events, particularly if there are concerns about possible disruptions, as was the case here. CRU did email those expressing interest in attending to let them know that they reserved the right to deny entry to anyone,” an ASU spokesperson responded.

Carefully crafting their audience wasn’t enough to keep all of Taylor’s critics out. During the Q&A portion of his lecture, Taylor was confronted for his bigoted views multiple times. His cowardice was on full display as he completely avoided an anti-CRU conservative for questioning Taylor’s acceptance of antisemitism within his fanbase. When asked how a white ethnostate would work in a diverse state like Arizona, he diverted the conversation to talk about immigration policy and anyone who spoke too long was rushed along by Taylor.

One person questioned how Taylor grapples with his Christian faith and his racist ideology, citing Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“Okay. First of all, Gallatians, you can read that passage several ways. Maybe that in God, there is no man, no woman, no jew, no Gentile, but for humans, those things are exceedingly important. That is an implicit recognition. Those divisions are not to be ignored. God may not notice those things, but we sure do because they’re important,” Taylor responded.

The lecture ended early and the small crowd of Taylor fans walked out together. From beyond the metal barriers, they shouted “America First,” and more homophobic slurs before being moved along by campus security.

“Fuck you, nazi scum! Fuck you, fascists,” the protesters yelled.

Taylor never approached the protesters and was carefully escorted by a group of campus police. ASU-CRU founder Thomas and pedophile David Stringer were the last to leave, quickly walking by the crowd. One protester yelled out:

“Fuck off to L.L. Bean, you nazi motherfuckers!”