White Nationalist Group's Meeting Prompts Protest
Jewish Defense Organization Urges Herndon Hotel to Halt 'Neo-Nazi' Conference in February

By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2007; VA03

A militant Jewish group is pressing a Herndon hotel to halt an upcoming conference organized by a white nationalist group based in Northern Virginia.

The Jewish Defense Organization is calling on supporters to push the Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport hotel into canceling a Feb. 22-24 conference for the New Century Foundation and its American Renaissance Magazine. The Jewish group calls the foundation a "neo-Nazi" organization and says that it has worked with white supremacist and former presidential candidate David Duke.

"The reason we want it stopped is these are neo-Nazis. There's no question," said Jeffrey Adler, a spokesman for the Jewish Defense Organization.

David Welliver, the hotel's general manager, did not return calls seeking comment.

The magazine and 13-year-old foundation were created by Jared Taylor, an Oakton resident who calls himself a "race realist" and advocates an end to all immigration and all laws forbidding discrimination.

In a telephone interview last week, Taylor, 56, said that genetics is the overriding reason for differences in intelligence between the races and that this accounts for inferior test scores by blacks compared with whites, and by whites compared with Asians.

He also argued for an end to affirmative action and other efforts to close the "achievement gap" between white and black children, saying these are politically correct but ultimately useless attempts to overcome innate differences between people.

Taylor also disavowed any association with neo-Nazi organizations and decried efforts to close down the conference.

"It seems that if anybody is a Nazi in this group, it's the ones trying to force the other group into silence," Taylor said. "Frankly, I find the behavior of these people truly contemptible."

Taylor said about 250 people are expected to attend the conference. Protesters rallied when the biennial American Renaissance Conference last met, in Herndon in March 2006. Last March, a Canadian university rescinded its invitation for Taylor to speak, saying threats by protesters raised the concern that the university would have to spend a lot of money on extra security.

Adler, the Jewish Defense spokesman, said his organization would call on other Jews to boycott the hotel if the conference goes on. The group's Web site and telephone number also urge callers to protest to hotel management.

"We're a militant self-defense group," Adler said. "The bottom line is, the hotel has to know that there will be big, ugly demonstrations."

He said it was important to combat groups such as New Century Foundation before they reach a wider audience.

"The bottom line is, every time the Nazis get their message out, they receive new people," Adler said.

Adler denied that his group was infringing on the organization's rights to free speech and assembly.

"That's what Hitler said, that some people tried to silence him," Adler said. "The reality is, Hitler started with a handful of followers, and Jews said, 'Let him speak.' The fruits of free speech for Nazis was Auschwitz and 6 million Jews dead. Anti-Semitic words lead to anti-Semitic action."

Both organizations have been labeled by civil rights organizations as extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the New Century Foundation a "hate group" and Taylor a "white supremacist."

The Jewish Defense Organization, a splinter group of the Jewish Defense League, which was formed by Mordechai Levy and is based in New York, has been called an extremist organization by the Anti-Defamation League. Both radical Jewish groups are part of what the ADL and others call the "Kahane Chai" movement, referring to the late Meir Kahane, an American Israeli rabbi who advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel.

Kahane was assassinated in 1990.