A conservative publication that was once home to an infamously racist columnist is now calling for a “war” against white nationalism in the wake of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.
The National Review on Monday published a column by David French, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, in which he said that white-nationalist terrorists were just as big of a problem for America as jihadist terrorists.
“It’s time to declare war on white-nationalist terrorism. It’s time to be as wide awake about the dangers of online racist radicalization as we are about online jihadist inspiration. And it’s time to reject the public language and rhetoric that excites and inspires racist radicals,” French wrote.
“Just as we demanded from our Muslim allies a legal and cultural response to the hate in their midst, we should demand a legal and cultural response to the terrorists from our own land.”
In 2012, The National Review fired longtime columnist John Derbyshire after he published a racist article in another magazine. But critics of The National Review noted that Derbyshire had not been hiding his racist views prior to that.
“I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going,” Derbyshire said in 2003.