Peter Brimelow

Peter Brimelow (born 13 October 1947) is a British-born American writer. Prior to founding the webzine VDARE, Brimelow was a writer and editor at Forbes, the Financial Post, and National Review.^[4]

Brimelow founded the Center for American Unity in 1999 and served as its first president but is no longer affiliated with the organization. Brimelow is a paleoconservative.^[5] Until September 2012, he was a columnist for Dow Jones' Marketwatch.^[6]

Life and career

Brimelow was born in 1947 in Warrington, Cheshire, England, the son of Bessie (Knox) and Frank Sanderson Brimelow, a transport executive. Brimelow (and his twin brother) studied at the University of Sussex (BA, 1970) and Stanford University (MBA, 1972.)^[3] Brimelow subsequently immigrated to Canada. After a brief stint as a securities analyst, he settled in Toronto, becoming a business writer and editor at the Financial Post and at Maclean's magazine. From 1978–80, he was an aide to senator Orrin Hatch in Washington D.C..

In 1980, he moved to New York, working mainly for Barron's and Fortune. Brimelow was senior editor of Forbes magazine from 1986 to 2002. He was married to Maggy Laws Brimelow (1953–2004), a Canadian, until her death following an eight-year battle with breast cancer. He and his first wife had two children, a son (Alexander Brimelow) and a daughter (Hannah-Claire Brimelow). He married Lydia Sullivan, a 22-year-old Heritage Foundation intern, in 2007; they had their first child, Felicity Deonne Brimelow, in August 2010. Their second child, Karia Sybil Nancy Brimelow, was born on 13 June 2012. Their third daughter, Victoria Beauregard Brimelow, was born on 6 February 2015.^[7]

In 1986, Brimelow published The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, a book inspired partly by Goldwin Smith's Canada and the Canadian Question, published in 1891. Brimelow's book helped galvanize the founding of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987 and inspired a number of individuals who worked in the government of Stephen Harper.

Brimelow's later books include the national best-seller Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, The Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit from Investment Newsletters, and The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education. Alien Nation deals with immigration policy and the influx of illegal aliens as well as legal immigrants. The Worm in the Apple discusses public education and teachers' unions, considering unions "highly destructive."^[8] Among views in The Worm in the Apple: "to attempt so far-reaching a goal as universal high school education is foolish."^[9] Ilana Mercer^[10] and John O'Sullivan^[11] 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."^[12]

He has appeared as a guest on The Political Cesspool, a "pro-white" talk-radio show. Following the 2008 elections, Brimelow advocated that to win elections, the Republican Party should focus on "white votes".^[13] His website VDARE has been rated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group.^[14][15] Brimelow responded by applying what he considered their loose standards of definition to themselves, saying "VDARE.COM has just been named a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the notorious Treason Group".^[16]

Brimelow appeared on a panel discussing multiculturalism during the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC 2012), 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.^[17]

Criticism

Ed Schultz of The Ed Show (10 February 2012) discussed Brimelow's CPAC appearance and called him a "white nationalist" and "racist." Ed Show guest Mike Papantonio said Peter Brimelow is "the new David Duke" and went on to say that Brimelow is the one who said "Jews are killing America." No documentation was offered for the statement. Guest Goldie Taylor claimed Brimelow represents the same strain of "racialized populism" seen several times in American history and went on further to claim it was now embraced by the Republican Party. Other panelists disassociated themselves from her statements.^[18]

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has called VDARE a hate group,^[19] that was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page", but by 2003 became "a meeting place for many on the radical right". The group also criticized VDARE for publishing articles by white nationalists Jared Taylor and Sam Francis.^[20] It has been called "white nationalist" by the Rocky Mountain News,^[21] a charge denied by Brimelow.^[22]

In response, VDARE has published several articles attacking the SPLC.^[23][24]

Many critics of Brimelow have stated that there is an extreme double standard in that he is himself an immigrant, while being so strongly opposed to immigration.

Writings

• The Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit from Investment Newsletters (1st ed.). New York City: Random House. 1986. ISBN 0-394-54202-9. LCCN 85028153. 
• The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Key Porter Books. 1986. ISBN 1-55013-001-3. LCCN 86228891. 

published as The Patriot Game: Canada and the Canadian Question Revisited. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. 1987. ISBN 0-8179-8681-2. LCCN 87017145. 

• The Enemies of Freedom. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform. 1990. LCCN 92219523. 
• Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (1st ed.). New York, NY: Random House. 1995. ISBN 0-679-43058-X. LCCN 94012478. 

letter to the editor, responding to critics^[25]

• The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 2003. ISBN 0-06-009661-6. LCCN 2002027586. 

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Peter Brimelow

• Official VDARE.com
• Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report on Brimelow
• "VDARE: GOP Should Concentrate on Whites". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center (133). Spring 2009. Retrieved 2012-02-13. 
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Brimelow on Alien Nation, 11 June 1995.