White Student Unions: White Nationalist Minor League?
Youth for Western Civilization morphs into “White Student Unions” supported by the “Traditionalist Youth Network.” These groups have the usual suspects in their background and for source material : Council of Conservative Citizens, David Duke and Stormfront, American Renaissance, Taki, etc. etc. Also noteworthy: the white nationalist American Third Position (aka A3P) has now morphed into the “American Freedom Party”. It never changes, once White Nationalist groups are identified and their phylogeny becomes public knowledge they change their name to keep the press confused.
Matthew Heimbach created quite a stir at Towson University in Baltimore when he created his “White Student Union” last year and proceeded to launch night patrols to keep students safe from black-on-white crime.
Now, such organizations are sprouting on more campuses. This week, we got news that a White Student Union (WSU) had been formed at George State University in downtown Atlanta. Its mission is to “unite white students to advocate for their interests and the interests of white people, while celebrating heritage, culture, promoting a sense of ‘white identity,’ and working in unison with other campus organizations to tackle issues that affect us all.”
Until yesterday, the WSU’s website linked to the Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN), which it referred to as a “sister organization.” The white nationalist TYN, which was started earlier this year with Heimbach’s help, appears to be serving as an informal umbrella for white student unions.
The Georgia State student newspaper, The Signal, noted yesterday that when the WSU’s founder, Patrick Sharp, an 18-year-old student from Birmingham, Ala., was confronted with some of the images on the TYN site, he denied that his group is racist and said that he invited black students to participate. Soon thereafter, the link and reference to TYN as a sister organization had been erased from the group’s website. The TYN, meanwhile, still lists the Georgia State WSU as a chapter.
Given the TYN’s links to white nationalism and the very public history of the White Student Union at Towson, it seems disingenuous for Sharp to claim that black students are welcome in his White Student Union.
Sharp may not be open about his white nationalism, but he has left Internet footprints that certainly point in that direction. Earlier this year, for example, he posted at the white nationalist American Renaissance site. The post highlighted a book about 1960s civil rights activities in Birmingham, Ala., by “Paul Kersey,” who blogs at Stuff Black People Don’t Like and at the white nationalist site VDARE. “Seeing as how this is my city,” Sharp wrote, “I’ll have to check this out.”
The Atlanta-based blog Biscuette did its own digging into Sharp and his WSU. In a post yesterday, “le biscuette” noted that on Sharp’s Facebook page his “likes” included the TYN, a “White History Month” page (a sponsor of an upcoming motorcycle ride against a mythical “white genocide”) and Verum Justica, an anti-Islamic group that models itself after ancient Christian crusaders. He also responded to a post by TYN regarding the formation of the WSU. The profile was unavailable yesterday but was back up today. Nevertheless, it appears Sharp has made most of it private, as the more inflammatory “likes” that Biscuette pointed out are no longer visible, nor are most of his posts.
Heimbach is not so coy about his white nationalism. He recently posted a piece on the TYN site titled “I Hate Freedom,” which said: “Non-whites do not have the rights or freedom to move into white nations. This is our home and our kith and kin.” Further, “Those who promote miscegenation, usury, or any other forms of racial suicide should be sent to re-education centers, not tolerated.”
On its website, the Towson WSU links unabashedly to white nationalist websites and to groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens, the descendant of the White Citizens Councils formed in the Deep South to oppose desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. The neo-Confederate League of the South is also listed on the Towson WSU site; the League calls for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by whites. American Renaissance is another link; the group’s founder, Jared Taylor, has claimed that, “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization - any kind of civilization - disappears.”
In May, Heimbach announced that the Towson WSU would merge with the TYN.
Heimbach’s co-administrator at the Traditionalist Youth Network is Matt Parrott, former head of an Indiana chapter of the crudely racist CCC and founder of Lighthouse Literature, a white nationalist online bookstore that closed in July 2012 after about 18 months in business.