Funny white people: Unmasking 'The Realist'

I’ll introduce myself properly in the coming days. Right now, I gotta get my blog on with a feisty opening salvo.

Way out on the far-right fringes of the blogosphere, a nameless white man is taking a stand. His goal: to make white supremacy safe for Jews. Talk about a fool’s errand.

Two weeks ago, a fellow known only as “The Realist” launched a website called The Inverted World, devoted to “promoting race realism and white activism.” Before you write him off as a neo-Nazi, looky here: He slapped a big red “X” over a photo of David Duke, and he promised: “We will speak out against him.” The Realist kept his word within days, with an essay titled “The Insanity of David Duke.”

The Inverted World offers a daily list of newslinks to mainstream articles about illegal immigrants, bad Muslims, scary black criminals, victimized white people (“Raped in Oslo”), etc. The Realist solicits comments from readers. But so far, the only topic generating much discussion is The Realist’s own hard line against anti-Semitism.

The Realist bemoans the fact that many white racialists, even educated ones, are “conspiracy theorists whose minds twisted everything they disliked about the present and past into evidence for Jewish evil.” And he will not stand for this!

The first posted comment in response, under the name “Moshe Stein,” gave a cheer: “FINALLY! A website for ALL White people.” Someone named “Alec” also tipped his hat: “I admire what you’re doing. Our movement could go mainstream if we didn’t have a hard-core anti-Semitic entrenchment.” Similar congratulations followed.

Then came dissenting comments like this one: “Jews are not White.” A self-labeled “goy” wrote: “Smells like another false flag operation.” (Meaning, a sinister Jewish trick.)

The Realist took tougher blows from the folks at Stormfront, a white-power forum of long standing. The editor, known as “jack boot,” rejected any communion with “alien races.” “One is either of the Volk or one is not,” he wrote. “This is the first test. Blood and soil.” A Stormfront moderator declared: “Jews aren't White, and they will never be White: period.” A commenter added, “they are our worst enemy.”

Likewise, The Realist is being denounced on Majorityrights.com. To wit: “anyone who thinks that by being nice to jews, jews will stop trying to destroy the european race is delusional and not worth our time.”

The Realist has at least one admirer in Lawrence Auster, a traditionalist conservative blogger (Jewish by birth, Anglican by faith) and anti-immigration pamphleteer. “I think we ought to give our support to any civilized… defender of white Western civilization,” Mr. Auster writes.

Like watching a dog chase its tail, there’s entertainment value in seeing anti-Semitic racists and philo-Semitic racists – and the Jews who hate and love them, respectively – go round and round on the Internet. But this tempest in a nut dish highlights a serious strategy on the part of some well-educated white supremacists. They want to legitimize the racist right. They want a seat at the table of our national conversation. They want to be on TV. They don’t want to be written off as neo-Nazis like David Duke.

Yale alumnus Jared Taylor is an architect of this strategy. With his American Renaissance website, Taylor argues that whites are being driven to extinction by liberalism, multiculturalism and a lack of race pride. But he has stopped short of blaming the Jews. In fact, AR welcomes Jewish supporters. A few regularly post comments on the site (often under pseudonyms like “Jewamongyou” and “White, Jewish, and Proud”). Taylor also hosts a biennial American Renaissance conference, unique in the white-nationalist world for welcoming Jewish speakers, such as Michael Levin, Paul Gottfried and Rabbi Mayer Schiller.

I’ve attended a couple of AR conferences. (Being light-skinned and straight-haired, I didn’t exactly stand out like Miles Davis.) I have even commented on AR’s message boards. As a student of the ideology of race, I’ve been fascinated with Jared Taylor for years, especially with his avoidance of overt anti-Semitism. Jew-hatred is so woven into the intellectual tradition of white racialism, how could Taylor possibly succeed in bringing Jews into his tent? Wouldn’t the gentiles always be distrustful of them? Wouldn’t the Jews always be waiting for anti-Semitism to rear its ugly head?

Sure enough, the shit hit the fan in February, at the sixth American Renaissance conference in suburban Washington. David Duke was there, and he reportedly engaged in a little Jew-baiting from the floor. A Jewish attendee got up and said, “You’re a fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting,” and walked out. Everyone was all a-dither. Jared Taylor was later harshly denounced by Lawrence Auster for associating with the likes of Duke.

All of which brings us back to The Realist. His newly launched website is a spillover of the AR shitstorm. Indeed, I have figured out The Realist’s true identity. He didn’t make it too difficult.

His name is Ian Jobling. For two and a half years, till this past June, he worked for Jared Taylor as American Renaissance’s webmaster. Jobling’s resume is posted online; he’s in search of work as a writer or web designer. For a writing sample, Jobling provides a technical piece titled “How to Format Articles for Publication”. Which is identical to the “Stylesheet” provided by The Realist on his Inverted World site.

According to his resume, Ian Jobling holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and is a cum laude graduate of Amherst. He taught English composition at SUNY Buffalo between 1997 and 2002. His doctoral dissertation was on British Romantic literature.

For the Inverted World site, he hides all this under a bushel basket. Come on, Dr. Jobling, stand tall and proud. In other words, be a mensch.

UPDATE (12/24/06): Within 24 hours of my original post, Ian Jobling took down his personal resume site, because it contained the smoking gun that establishes him as the creator of The Inverted World. (The telltale writing sample is cached here.) I don't get it. Martin Luther King was willing to be locked up in Southern jails for his cause. This chump isn't even willing to fight under his own name.