Peter Brimelow is a British-born American columnist, journalist, magazine editor, and writer. He is the founder of the website VDARE, an anti-immigration site associated with white supremacy, white nationalism, and the alt-right. He believes that "whites built American culture" and that "it is at risk from non-whites who would seek to change it". Brimelow was previously a writer and editor at National Review, and columnist for Dow Jones' MarketWatch. Brimelow founded the Center for American Unity in 1999 and served as its first president. He describes himself as a paleoconservative. Brimelow has also been described as a leader within the alt-right movement.
After a brief period as a securities analyst, he settled in Toronto, becoming a business writer and editor at the Financial Post and Maclean's magazine. From 1978 to 1980, he was an aide to USSenator Orrin Hatch. In 1980, Brimelow moved to New York and worked for Barron's and Fortune. He was the senior editor of Forbes magazine from 1986 to 2002.
Views and publications
Brimelow opposes both illegal and legal immigration, and has referred to Spanish speaking immigrants as "completely dysfunctional". He said California used to be a "paradise" but was "rapidly turning into Hispanic slum". Brimelow has been described as a white nationalist and a white supremacist. In 2020, Brimelow sued The New York Times for labeling him a "white nationalist". The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Brimelow's website VDARE as a hate group, that was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page", but by 2003 became "a meeting place for many on the radical right". The SPLC also criticized VDARE for publishing articles by white nationalistsJared Taylor and Sam Francis. It has been called "white nationalist" by the Rocky Mountain News. It has also been described as white supremacist. VDARE has also been described by the Anti-Defamation League as a racist anti-immigrant group. Brimelow has appeared as a guest on The Political Cesspool, a "pro-white" talk-radio show. Following the 2008 United States elections, he advocated that to win, the Republican Party should focus on "white votes". Brimelow appeared on a panel discussing multiculturalism during the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference, and gave a talk titled "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity." In the face of condemnation from MSNBC and PFTAW, Al Cardenas of the American Conservative Union denied knowing him or his reputation.
''Alien Nation''
Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster criticizes US immigration policy after 1965. A review in Foreign Affairs acknowledged that the book raised a number of persuasive objections to contemporary American immigration policies, but criticized Brimelow for "defining American identity in racial as opposed to cultural terms", and for the "extreme character" of his proposals. The SPLC described it as an "infamous anti-immigrant book", and pointed to Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian's positive review of the book as evidence his organization had close ties to white nationalists.
''The Worm in the Apple''
The Worm in the Apple discusses public education and teachers' unions, considering unions as "highly destructive". Among views in The Worm in the Apple: "to attempt so far-reaching a goal as universal high school education is foolish." and John O'Sullivan praised the book. For the Hoover Institution journal Education Next, public policy consultant George Mitchell wrote: "Brimelow... demonstrates how collective bargaining for teachers has produced labor agreements that stifle innovation and risk taking. He makes it clear that the dramatic rise in influence enjoyed by the teacher unions has coincided with stagnant and unacceptable levels of student performance." However, in the same journal article, education consultant Julia E. Koppich took a more critical angle: "Brimelow uses a variety of linguistic devices to drive home his points. But his over-the-top language soon grates on the nerves... His argument is not that teacher unions are destroying American education, but that they labor long and hard to preserve the status quo... But this book contains so little about education-virtually nothing about classrooms, schools, or districts-even that point gets lost." Koppich called the book "an anti-public school polemic".
''The Patriot Game''
In 1986, Brimelow published The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, a book partly based on Goldwin Smith's Canada and the Canadian Question, published in 1891. The book consists of Brimelow's self-described attempt to "provide a general theory of Canada", the country in which he had lived and worked for several years in the 1970s. In it, he consciously echoes the comments of Goldwin Smith and argues that modern Canada is largely a farce, an unnatural country, without a clear guiding purpose or reason for existence. Brimelow's book helped starting the Reform Party of Canada in 1987 and motivated supporters of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
