FREE FOR ALL

The Washington Post
Saturday, January 23, 1999; Page A19

Sticks and Stones

In just one day, Jan. 16, your op-ed columnist Colbert I. King and the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman [Free for All] attacked the Council of Conservative Citizens. Oddly, both seemed to think that calling the council bad names was the same as refuting its positions.

King said nothing about what the group thinks; only that it is "repugnant," "stirs hatred" and is "pro-white, anti-everybody else." When will your columnist learn that to resort to name-calling is the most graceless way of admitting that he has lost the argument?

Foxman was no better. He said the council is linked to the America First Party, the British National Front and the French National Front. Most Americans know nothing about these groups, so how did Foxman try to tar the Council of Conservative Citizens? By insisting that these other organizations are neo-fascist, racist, antisemitic, etc. How marvelously circular. Why bother with guilt by association when you have to explain the guilt of the alleged associates? Why not just say the Council of Conservative Citizens is evil because Foxman says so?

The head of the Anti-Defamation League did quote what he must have thought was the wickedest thing he could find on the council Web site: "When whites are attacked and murdered by non-whites, whites usually don't see these attacks as being what they often truly are -- attacks against all whites." Just substitute "Jews" for "whites," and you have a sentence Foxman might have written himself.

– Jared Taylor

The writer is on the national board of directors of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

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