American Renaissance (magazine) - Cancellation of 2010, 2011 Conferences

Cancellation of 2010, 2011 Conferences

In February 2010, following protests to hotel management of several hotels, which Jared Taylor claimed included some death threats, American Renaissance's biennial conference was canceled. Taylor complained that the incident was largely ignored by the media, in sharp contrast, he claimed, with how news outlets would have responded had a civil rights group's conference been shut down.

Immediately after the cancellation of the conference, in a radio interview with the Derek Black Show on WPBR 1340AM in South Florida, Taylor described the forced cancellation as an obstruction of the right to free speech, saying it set a dangerous precedent and paved the way for scenarios in which animal rights activists might shut down a meat packers’ conference or radical environmentalists could shut down a foresters’ meeting through the use of death threats. Taylor also appeared on Russian television, one of the few news outlets that would interview him. In late October 2010 American Renaissance announced that they will hold a conference in Feb. 2011 in an undisclosed location in Charlotte, NC, the first time in over a decade the conference was not held in the Washington, DC area, and the first time it is to be held in an "off" year for the biennial conference. Although Taylor wanted to keep the location a secret until closer to the start of the conference, activists discovered it was at the Airport Sheraton, who promptly kicked the conference out of the hotel. Other hotels in the area began to follow suit, shutting their doors to the conference, and Taylor was eventually forced to cancel the event, holding instead a session in another hotel where the planned speakers and a few spectators gathered to videotape the speeches they were to give.

Lawrence Auster, a traditionalist conservative and self-described racialist, claimed that Taylor's appearance on Stormfront radio was part of a long-standing pattern of Taylor's in "consorting with anti-Semites" and described Taylor's Stormfront appearance as "morally obtuse." John Derbyshire, however, called the conference shutdown an "ominous" and "shameful thing", and asked for open debate and respect for the freedom of speech and association.