Michelle Malkin appeared on the YouTube channel of prominent white nationalist content creator Vincent James on Tuesday, where she applauded young alt-right supporters for having “come to the epiphanies that for me took a long time in the making.”
It appears that Malkin, after becoming a pariah among mainstream conservatives, has decided to lean into her support among the far-right.
Writers and members of the mainstream GOP began distancing themselves from Malkin after she explicitly endorsed anti-Semitic and white nationalist YouTube political personality Nicholas Fuentes in a speech at UCLA in November. Subsequently, Young America’s Foundation cut ties with Malkin. Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe chided Malkin for affiliating with racists “because [Malkin] sees them as the most potent allies available to back a militantly xenophobic agenda.” Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in the New York Post that Malkin “thinks these haters are allies in a crusade to halt all non-European immigration (ironic, since Malkin’s parents were Filipino immigrants).”
There is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists.
Our full statement below: pic.twitter.com/b5EB7P53v3
— YAF (@yaf) November 17, 2019
Malkin said she met Vincent James, who also goes by the pseudonyms of Vincent Foxx and Vincent James O’Connor, at the UCLA event, adding that it was “excellent to make that connection.” James is a far-right YouTube political entertainer who often pushes white nationalist and conspiratorial content and was spotted perusing the perimeter of the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference with Fuentes.
During her 42-minute interview with James, Malkin said her recent embrace of the self-described “groyper” alt-right made sense to her because it was in line with the type of politics she had been trying to engage in for the last 25 years.
“I feel like there’s a good synergy and partnership here because that’s the work that I’ve been trying to do for 25 plus years. It’s been frustrating because so many people don’t care. And so, when I see a glimpse, a glimmer of a spark of energy and hope and optimism, yeah, hell yeah, I’m going to run to that,” Malkin said. “That’s what I did.”
Earlier in the interview, James had vouched for Malkin to the “groyper” crowd, which recently co-opted Trump’s “America First” slogan to brand its latest efforts.
“I can’t stress this enough. Michelle Malkin supports America First. Michelle Malkin tells the truth. Michelle Malkin is standing up against the conservative establishment,” James said.
In one portion of the duo’s conversation, James asked Malkin to stop him when one of the following policy proposals sounded white nationalist: an immigration moratorium for at least 10 years, prosecuting employers who hire undocumented immigrants, banning welfare for undocumented immigrants, and requiring high school students visit a third-world country “so that they see how great they have it here.”
Malkin did not stop him.
Malkin alleged that conservatives know and believe that demographic changes in the United States could negatively affect them, but says they don’t talk about it publicly for monetary reasons. (Malkin does not seem to consider the possibility that conservatives could try appealing to immigrants instead.) Malkin also praised “America First” activists who hung a banner over a bridge in Virginia that featured a design scheme remarkably similar to the one used by American Identity Movement, the rebranded white nationalist group Identity Evropa.
During his interview with Malkin, James scrolled through her Twitter profile and revealed that he is the operator of “The Red Elephants Fan Account” on Twitter. James has been banned from Twitter before, and banned users often pose as fan accounts to gain access back onto the platform.
James has appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast and was filmed in 2017 asking members of Rise Above Movement, a violent white supremacist group, to recite the white supremacist slogan “14 Words” on camera. Members of that white supremacist group have since faced federal charges for engaging in violence at the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The same year, James blamed Jews for social media bans, saying that the people responsible for fact-checking articles on Facebook were “very similar in DNA to [Facebook COO] Sheryl Sandberg,” who is Jewish. James once kept a Holocaust denier on his payroll who later ran the failed Senate campaign of neo-Nazi Patrick Little.
As Right Wing Watch reported in 2018, James “uses his platform to host prominent white nationalist speakers and sympathizers, bolster such white nationalist organizations as Identity Evropa, stoke racist fears about immigrants, advance “race war” narratives, and speak to aggrieved white people at-large.” Last year, James dedicated one video to arguing that the Trump administration should not hire black people and especially not black women.
James denies having ever advocated for anti-immigrant, white nationalist, or anti-Semitic ideas, claiming such accusations are a tactic of communists.
