Pro-White Conference 2.0

William Sheldon

February 26, 2010

The disruption of the 2010 American Renaissance Conference in Washington, D.C. and David Duke's 2008 EURO Conference in Memphis are forcing European Americans to question whether we still have the right to assemble.  No longer can we gather peacefully where we please.  These two events demonstrate the fact that hotels will not support our right to assemble.  Even worse, we have also learned that government law enforcement will not protect our right to assemble.  Our First Amendment right to assemble no longer exists, it appears.  How can we organize an explicitly White gathering in this totalitarian climate?

 

On the blogs and email lists I see essentially three strategies:

 

(a) Do not change, keep trying to hold the event in private facilities. Problem is, the current system is rigged against us.  We are sitting ducks for these thugs.

 

(b) Buy up land somewhere and hold an event on private land. Fine for small invitation-only gatherings, but for events larger than a dozen it strikes me as pure fantasy.  Even if it could be arranged, it sounds creepy and isolated.  When people go to conferences they want to be close to restaurants and other amenities.

 

(c) Hold the event in a public venue.  This is the best of the three, because it puts government into the picture as a mediator. However, it does not address how to deal with terrorism from groups like the One People's Project.  It is also vulnerable to government hostility towards the organizers.

 

I would like to offer another scenario.  Before describing it I need to define the various components of an academic conference. 

 

Speakers: Good speakers motivate people to pay a registration fee and travel.

 

Lecture facilities: Conferences provide a place for those attending to gather in one place and listen and ask questions in real time.

 

Comfortable lodging: People attending like to stay in an attractive, comfortable location, close to the lectures.

 

Face to face networking: It is often said that the real activity at conferences is between sessions. Conferences give people who share a profession, academic discipline, or interest an opportunity to meet and talk in person.

 

The standard approach to organizing a conference within our community is for one person or organization to reserve space for attendees to gather and listen to speakers in real-time (components 1 and 2), and also "book" a block of rooms (components 3 and 4 above) in the same hotel for attendees, perhaps at some discounted room rate.  The terrorism (yes, terrorism) against the organizers of the 2010 AmRen Conference in D.C and the 2008 EURO Conference in Memphis demonstrate how pro-White events can be disrupted and even cancelled through intimidation and threats of violence towards the management of the hosting facility.  We can expect that the American Third Position will encounter the exact same problem when they try to stage a conference.

 

 

A New Model is Needed

 

A modernization of our approach to staging a conference through thoughtful application of commodity technology can preserve the essential nature of the conference experience yet make it impenetrable to the kind of tired, predictable harassment we have come to expect.  The vulnerable point in the current model is booking the lecture venue.  This is where our enemies attack.  Our enemies focus on smearing the reputation of the person or people organizing the event, then forcing the hotel management into a "are you with or against the White Supremacists?" decision.  Hotel management caves in to the pressure every time.   

 

The way to make that vulnerability disappear completely is to remove the hotel management from the equation.  Migrate the lecture component to commodity collaboration technology called a "Webinar" (or "webcast").  The model that I am proposing is actually a hybrid: traditional conference hotel gathering (face-to-face networking must be preserved), with an embedded Webinar.  If we eliminate the need for a physical lecture space we can decentralize room reservations, too.  In fact, in the model I propose, the conference organizers have no contact at all with the hotel management.  The hotel management does not even know that a conference is taking place within its walls.

 

Webinars work as follows. Attendees register for the event.  In exchange for registering they are sent a URL (and optionally a unique code) that they paste into their Web browser at a designated time of the event.  A webinar presenter can broadcast to dozens all the way up to thousands depending on the software used (see note below on service options).  Browser-based Webinars are now common in business as an alternative to travel.  

 

 

Hypothetical Example

 

I will now illustrate through a hypothetical example how this could work. Let's call this hybrid conference, EURO 2010.

 

David Duke announces that on Saturday, September 4 (Labor Day weekend), EURO 2010 will take place in Memphis.  Speakers will include Duke; James Edwards of The Political Cesspool radio program; Greg Johnson, editor of The Occidental Quarterly; Bill Johnson, Chairman of the American Third Position; and others.  The conference program starts at 9:00 am and ends at 5:00 pm.  Registration is only $50 because the costs and risk of organizing an event have been radically lowered.  Registrants receive a short list of Memphis area hotels, all clustered within a short distance of each other, where they are encouraged to stay during the conference.  Why more than one hotel?  It’s optional.  More than one hotel makes it even harder to pinpoint an attack on us.  Furthermore, if one hotel has no vacancies, it directs attendees to reserve a room at one of the other options.  The total size of the conference is self-scaling.  Registrants also receive a lapel pin that has printed on it a distinctive but non-controversial symbol. 

 

Actually, the conference begins on September 3, at a local attraction.  It could be Graceland.  It could be someplace close to the hotels.  EURO 2010 organizers choose a mid-morning walking tour of downtown Memphis, starting at Confederate Park.  No event permit is necessary from the city because the quiet gathering is informal, just a starting place.  (Alternatively, a formal permit could be requested if the organizers and attendees want to stage a public media event.)  

 

There are several benefits to the gathering.  The walking tour gives attendees an opportunity to meet up with old friends and perhaps make arrangements to watch tomorrow's conference events in small groups.  A nice secondary outcome of the gathering is to give people an opportunity to be out in the fresh air with like-minded folks, in a public place that has historical significance.  If the location itself holds special meaning to European Americans, as Confederate Park in Memphis does for some of us, then the event itself adds to the lore of the place.  (For a growing list of other places special to European Americans, review the entries on my blog, ourgazetteer.org.)

 

At 9:00 am Saturday morning attendees turn on their laptop computers and log into the conference Webinar.  Folks without laptops join with others who do have a computer — sharing resources encourages collaboration and friendship building.  Duke starts the conference off with a talk on the First Amendment.  In addition to audio, Duke makes use of the Webinar application's ability to broadcast a video feed from his computer's built-in webcam.  To facilitate two-way interaction, the Webinar software allows participants to send in questions via a chat window.   Q&A is also possible via telephone.   A moderator helps Duke to sort through the questions.  It should be emphasized that Duke could be anywhere giving his talk.  He could be in one of the three conference hotels or he could be across town at a friend's house.  

 

As it turns out, Duke and all but one of the speakers is broadcasting from the same hotel suite.  Some people registered for the conference are not even in Memphis: Moscow, London, Los Angeles — all around the world.  Attendees outside of Memphis miss out on the full experience, although this problem could offset that by getting together with friends and watching in a small regional group.  During his talk, Duke suggests that conference attendees log into Twitter in a separate computer window or on their cell phones and use the hash tag #EURO2010 to post comments and links.  This twitter feed serves as a public conference side channel.  Notice the general shift towards decentralization.  At the end of the talk Duke mentions that he will be eating lunch at the BBQ restaurant across the street if anybody wants to join him.

 

Following two more speakers, the conference pauses for a lunch break.  A generous two hours offers attendees plenty of opportunity to talk over their meals.  An incident breaks out at the BBQ restaurant.  Jeffry Imm appears with a couple of cronies as Duke is about to walk inside.  Imm starts to verbally assault Duke, but something interesting happens.  Two large groups of conference attendees arrive and immediately stand between Imm and Duke.  They repeatedly pepper Imm with insults: "loser", "get a job", "idiot" while inching him towards the curb until Imm backs down and slithers off humiliated.  And every bit of it is recorded on video by a half dozen different people — attendees are strongly encouraged to carry some kind of video recording device.  Within an hour the video is uploaded to YouTube, the link is posted to the conference Twitter feed and several blogs.  Imm swallowed Duke's bait, and the hook.

 

In the afternoon session, one speaker chooses to reduce the size of his video feed in order to make more room for a slide show that accompanies his talk, to emphasize and illustrate the talking points he is trying to convey.  The other speakers stick to the talking head style, including Nick Griffin, who logs in from London.  After the last speaker of the day, attendees disburse into the lobbies of the hotels and make arrangements to meet over dinner and drinks.

 

The continuum from implicit to explicit whiteness is represented in the hotel lobby.  Some participants wear their conference lapel pins; others do not provide a single clue that they are registered for the conference.  Texting between cell phones is used by many to facilitate real-time communication.  Of course there are spies in attendance, but it hardly matters.  They have no easy target to attack.  What the spies see around them in the lobby are hotel guests.  Conference attendees are energized by the cloak and dagger mischief.

 

 

Experiment

 

Keep our enemies off balance.  I can envision variations of the Webinar model; for example, a Webinar could be used as a backup plan, in the event that a traditional lecture venue contract is cancelled.  Or the morning session could be conducted through the Webinar, and right before lunch the location of a large afternoon meeting room is revealed.

 

I recommend running two or more half-day, invitation-only events.  These experiments will help organizers work through the details of operating the Webinar software, try out Twitter, carefully consider how much information to release and when, etc.  Through practice and attention, better microphones, cameras, and lights can be integrated to lend a more professional appearance to the Webinars.  

 

With creativity and commodity technology it is impossible to stop a pro-White conference. 

 

 

Webinar Options  

 

DimDim (http://www.dimdim.com/): $79/month for meetings with up to 1000 attendees.

 

GoToWebinar (http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/webinar/gotowebinar_pricing): $499/month.

 

WebEx (http://WebEx.com): call for price.

 

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/): call for price.

 

 

William Sheldon (euamun@gmail.com) is founder and editor of the ourgazetteer.org project. He authored a two-part article in TOO: “Discovering Implicit White Communities.”