Virginia Young Americans for Freedom Breaks with National YAF

In an October 1st, 2009 post Virginia YAF President and Chairman William Zimmerman announced the Virginia State YAF group would be breaking with the National YAF organization. National YAF is based in Washington D.C. and according to Source Watch is affiliated with Young America's Foundation, which is based in Virginia.

Zimmerman post states:

Chairman Announces Organization Transition

FAIRFAX, Va. - During the process of organizational meetings, an overwhelming majority of leaders within the Young Americans for Freedom - Virginia have reached a consensus that our relationship with the Young Americans for Freedom (National) should come to a close. William Zimmerman, Chairman and President, announced recently that "the inability of the National Organization to effectively run the organization, coupled with their continued hindrance of our necessary operations, leaves us no choice but to go our own separate ways." Recent negotiations with the National Organization to reform operational structure have failed. In addition to the various leaders of the Young Americans for Freedom - Virginia, affiliates, alumni, and other observers have come to the conclusion that the national organization is ruthlessly ineffective. "They [National YAF] have missed multiple elections, have made no substantial effort to start new chapters nationally, and lack the ability to perform the essential functions for which they were elected - that is absurd," said Zimmerman.

Speculations of those who wish to be left anonymous suggest other internal problems, including varying levels of corruption, although this has not been confirmed. A high-level official within the Young Americans for Freedom (National) has been pushing for action from the national board of directors to expand and increase operations, especially in this environment when aid to the conservative movement is essential. Chairman Zimmerman also expressed this need for aid to the movement. "I find it hard to believe that an organization which has had such a profound impact on the American Conservative movement can refuse to beef up operations," said Zimmerman when asked about his feelings of the inaction from the Young Americans for Freedom (National). "The National Organization has brought much same to the conservative movement, and they should be ashamed of themselves for allowing a preeminent organization to fail."

Sources say that the Young Americans for Freedom - Virginia is the last permanent state organization in the country, as other well known chapters and state organizations have also failed.

"We will do all that we can to create smooth transition into an independent organization here in Virginia," said William Zimmerman. There will be a transition period between now and December were organization officials will plan, re-configure, and expand.

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Please continue to check this web page for updates during this transitional period.

Hat tip to Mhony1983 for the tip

State News Declares YAF "Defunct"

A recent editorial in the State News regarding protests of Glenn Beck's speech to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce makes mention of YAF in the context of controversial speech on campus.

Although we in no way endorse Beck or his views, we’d like to point out he is not nearly as fanatical or controversial as some of the speakers the now-defunct MSU Young Americans for Freedom hosted in years past. Beck might say many incendiary and untrue things, but his words do not have the potential to incite violence on campus.

While YAF has been quiet as of late, they are not defunct as the newspaper claims. As reported earlier by the Southern Poverty Law Center, YAF still a registered student organization with anti-Muslim Professor Indrek Wichman as the new advisor.

Preston Wiginton Turned Back at Heathrow Airport

Preston Wiginton, a white supremacist organizer behind the Nick Griffin college speeches in 2007, was barred from entry into the United Kingdom by the Home Office.


From the SPLC Hatewatch Blog

Globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton (at right, showing the flag at a 2007 white nationalist rally in Moscow) was barred from entering the United Kingdom last week by Home Office authorities at London’s Heathrow Airport. Wiginton, a U.S. citizen, was trying to enter the U.K. to address the racist throngs at the tenth annual “Red, White and Blue” summer festival put on by the neofascist British National Party, or BNP.

The Home Office stated that it denied entry to Wiginton because it deemed his presence in the U.K. would not have been conducive to the common good. Wiginton has a close relationship with BNP chairman Nick Griffin, as well as ultra-right politicians and white nationalist academics and activists in Russia, the Texas native’s adopted homeland. (Wiginton resides part of the year in a Moscow apartment he sublets from ex-Klan boss David Duke.) Wiginton also brags about friendships with the leaders of violent neo-Nazi skinhead gangs in Russia, and claims that he pumps $50,000 a year of his own money into the global white supremacist movement.

In the U.S. in recent years, Wiginton has appeared at racist skinhead gatherings and co-sponsored lectures with hate groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom.

The Home Office’s barring of Wiginton is the latest indication that U.K. officials are cracking down on right-wing extremists from other countries, including the U.S. Earlier this year, the names of five U.S. citizens appeared on a list of 16 individuals banned from entering the U.K. for reasons of “fostering extremism or hatred.” (Wiginton was not among them, but right-wing radio host Michael Savage was.)

The BNP summer festival, meanwhile, took place Aug. 14-16 in Derbyshire, a county in the East Midlands region of England. The attractions included a carnival midway game in which participants hurled wooden balls at coconuts painted with the face of Sir Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the U.K. Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

Around 1,500 anti-fascist demonstrators rallied outside the festival, chanting “Nazi scum off our streets.” BNP members and supporters taunted the protesters with sieg heil salutes. Nineteen people were arrested following a series of clashes near the front gate.

Capitalizing on resentment of Muslim immigrants, the BNP made significant political gains in local elections this year. And in June, two of its members were elected to serve in the European Parliament.

MSU-YAF New Advisor Indrek Wichman at YAF- NIck Griffin Event

MSU-YAF's new faculty adviser Indrek Wichman was at MSU-YAF's Nick Griffin event.

Wichman, pictured left, from MSU Mechanical Engineering website

MSU-YAF Gets Anti-Muslim Professor for New Faculty Advisor

From the SPLC's Hatewatch
Student Hate Group in Michigan Gets New Faculty Adviser

Michigan State University (MSU) mechanical engineering professor Indrek Wichman made international headlines in February 2006, when, using his faculty E-mail account, he sent a blistering E-mail to the university’s Muslim Student Association, calling on Muslim students to either accept Western cultural standards or return to their “ancestral lands.”

“I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems … [i]f you do not like the values of the West — see the 1st Amendment — you are free to leave,” Wichman wrote. “I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option.”

Although Provost Kim Wilcox formally admonished Wichman, the anti-Muslim professor remained on the MSU faculty. Now, he’s apparently taken on a new role in the MSU campus community: faculty adviser for the MSU chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF, an extreme-right student organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated MSU-YAF a hate group for its hosting of white supremacist lecturers and repeated bigoted statements against Muslims and Latinos, among other groups.

According to the MSU Department of Student Life guide for the upcoming academic year, Wichman has replaced William Allen, a professor of political philosophy, as MSU-YAF’s faculty adviser.

Wichman’s association with MSU-YAF dates back at least to February 2008, when he was scheduled to give a lecture on “How Muslims Suppress Free Speech” at an MSU-YAF event that was booked at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich. That lecture was canceled after Holocaust Memorial Center administrators learned of MSU-YAF’s background, including that MSU-YAF had previously sponsored a lecture on the MSU campus by Nick Griffin, a Holocaust denier who heads the racist British National Party.

Spartan Spectator Blog Revived

After shutting down in November the Spartan Spectator has been revived.

In a post dated January 22nd "Freedom Fighter" announced the renewal of the blog

We plan to use this space as a forum for the dissemination of interesting and important information regarding the state of our planet. We believe that Western Civilization is taking a slow and meandering path towards extinction, and that it is worth saving.

We believe that the virtues of Western Civilization can only be preserved through peoples of European heritage.

The Spartan Spectator, while not officially claiming to be the blog of YAF, still contains many of the YAF elements from before. It links to articles by Kyle Bristow in the Global Politician, as well as using the first three posts to highlight YAF bringing Jennifer Gratz, Walid Shoebat, and Nick Griffin to MSU.

MSU-YAF Announces End of Spartan Spectator

Kyle Bristow, the former Chair of MSU-YAF, announced that in the next few days he will be taking down the Spartan Spectator, the former blog of MSU-YAF. The blog was a continuation of The Spartan Spectator, a newspaper published by Jason Van Dyke .

This comes a few days after Bristow announced that MSU-YAF had decided to no longer have the Spartan Spectator be the official blog of MSU-YAF

Since I graduate from Michigan State University (an alleged institution of higher learning), the MSU-YAF officers and I decided that the Spartan Spectator will no longer be the official blog of MSU-YAF. Our options were: 1.) Keep the blog as the official MSU-YAF blog or 2.) Keep the blog, but make it not officially affiliated with the student organization. Since I am the one who posts the most on the blog, and since I graduate from this communist infested hellhole very soon, we decided that it would make more sense to have the blog's purpose slightly changed.

Those affiliated with MSU-YAF who have been able to post on the blog will continue to have the ability to do so.

That announcement came days after YAF Watch reported that Bristow had updated the blog to include an Othala Rune, a racist symbol taken from ancient Norse culture.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has written about the announcement.

Kyle Bristow, der Führer of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group, announced last Saturday that he planned to take the organization’s notoriously bigoted and mean-spirited blog, The Spartan Spectator, permanently offline “in a few days time.”

“I have decided that I will not blog anymore after I graduate from the communist-infested hellhole of Michigan State University,” stated Bristow, a senior international relations major. “I am moving on to bigger and better things, and I unfortunately will not have the time to continue blogging about the decline of Western civilization.”

As of this morning, the Spartan Spectator remained online.

Bristow’s announcement came just six days after YAF-Watch, a blog that tracks the activities (“antics” might be a better word) of MSU-YAF, reported that Bristow had updated the blog’s homepage banner with a red-white-and-blue Othala rune (right), a popular symbol with neo-Nazis, racist skinheads and practitioners of Wotanism, a racist variant of the neo-pagan Odinist religion.

The Spartan Specator’s most recent “poll” offered readers the option of selecting “Untermenschen” as the word that “best describes leftists.” Literally translated as “under man,” Untermenschen is a term from Nazi ideology used to describe Jews, Gypsies and any other persons who didn’t meet Hitler’s standards of Aryan purity.

In Bristow’s latest survey of the Spartan Spectator faithful, Untermenschen beat out “stupid,” “evil” and “degenerate” with 54 percent of the vote.