Southern Poverty Law Center calls out Taylor Rose

Republican House District 3 candidate Taylor Rose’s past affiliations with controversial and allegedly nationalist or white-supremacist organizations have raised alarms by watchdog groups as election day draws near.

But Rose denies he, or the groups, have any such bias and he’s simply being attacked by left-wing organizations.

One group Rose was affiliated with was Youth for Western Civilization, a now-defunct college organization. Rose served as vice president of the YWC chapter at his Alma mater, Liberty University, a private conservative Christian college founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in an article Oct. 3 called YWC “an overt white nationalist organization with multiple connections to white supremacists” that “often used code words such as ‘cultural identity’ and ‘racial chauvinists’ to disguise its racism, arguing that white people face rampant discrimination at the hands of multiculturalism.”

The law center is a long-time anti hate group.

Rose recently denied the groups are white supremacist.

“I’ve had enough of this Kim Kardashian - style gossip,” Rose told the Hungry Horse News. “These organizations have never been able to prove it. They identified a group that I belonged to as supremacist ... There is no evidence, these charges were made by groups that are obviously left-wing.”

In a YouTube video from 2012, Founder and President of YWC Kevin DeAnna said YWC was a nationwide student organization.

“We organize, educate and train students in Western civilization. We fight radical multiculturalism, illegal immigration and racial preferences on college campuses,” DeAnna said in the interview.

DeAnna also shared the group’s definition of “Western Civilization” in the video.

“A cultural compound of Christian, classical, and then the folk traditions of Europe. We don’t define it as just democracy, rule of law, these universal institutions. We say it’s a specific culture that comes from a specific historical experience.”

Looking to substantiate claims that YWC was in fact as controversial as it has been made out, Hungry Horse News reached out to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“It was very much a white nationalist organization, not white supremacist,” said spokesperson Ryan Lenz.

The nationalist argument is still racist, Lenz explained, in arguing that the U.S. should keep the country white.

“They’re not mutually exclusive; if you want to claim that the country should stay white, it’s because you think white people are better. There are latent hints in nationalism,” Lenz said.

“There’s no doubt about what YWC was,” Lenz added.

Rose said that allegations against him were first brought to light by the anonymous liberal blog, Montana Cowgirl.

“It’s by its own admission a gossip column,” Rose said, “it’s nonsense and it’s slander.”

Rose also authored a book in 2012 titled “Return of the Right: How the Political Right is Taking Back Western Civilization.”

The conservative book espouses the idea that the radical left is trying to create a Utopian world order, in an aggressive attempt to “eliminate western civilization from the face of the earth in the attempt to institute a radical, multicultural, New World Order agenda.”

These attempts have been discredited, the book argues in its introduction, and post-modernists are left with “spiritual and intellectual hopelessness and an intellectual and spiritual vacuum created in the Western world.”

In a chapter titled Return of the Crusader and the Response to Islamism, Rose refers to Islamic peoples as “third worlders with barbaric practices.”

Rose accuses Islamists of “hostile protest against traditional UK institutions” and equates all demonstrators with terrorism, writing “mosques that produce such “activists” (terrorists)... are located inside the UK.”

The book was promoted by the League of the South, which identifies itself as a Southern Nationalist organization. In the group’s Core Beliefs Statement, League of the South says ‘we stand for our own sublime cultural inheritance and seek to separate ourselves from the cultural rot that is American culture.” But the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a recent article on Rose’s affiliations, called League of the South a “neo-Confederate hate group.”

In an interview with the League of the South about the book, Rose discussed the possibility of Right-wingers’ chance to retake the West politically.

“You will first see the right-wing act as a great power of political influence, mainly upon the center-right, by reorienting the ideas of the center-right to reform immigration policy and take a more hard-line anti-Socialist stance. If the center-right fails to reform its positions back to what I call ‘right-wing orthodoxy’ they stand the chance of being ‘punished,’” Rose said in the interview.

In late November 2012, Rose also joined World Net Daily, appearing on the roster as a “staff reporter,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

World Net Daily, according to its mission statement, is an independent news company that seeks to ‘promote freedom and self-government by encouraging personal virtue and good character.”

The newspaper also emphasizes religion, citing “the WND team’s commitment to a Christian worldview.”

But the Anti-Defamation League in December 2012 called the newspaper “a conspiracy-oriented right wing newspaper.”

Rose’s last article to appear on the site is dated May 9, 2013.

Rachel Carroll Rivas, executive Director of the Montana Human Rights Network, noted the gravity of the label of “white supremacist.”

“It’s important to know that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League are very serious. We don’t throw those terms around at anyone that we disagree with. It’s due to his documented affiliations,” Rivas said.

When someone runs for office, it becomes even more important, she claimed.

“One of the things that is the most concerning is that when marginal ideas make their way into the mainstream conversation, it legitimizes hateful beliefs and the organizations that promote them,” Rivas claimed. “When those people are promoted to a position of power, it’s like a stamp of approval. It gives credence and validity to groups like YWC.”

Rivas also claimed that this is not an issue of free speech.

“We’re not talking about free speech. It’s about saying, ‘these are the ideas we want to frame our policy discussions, ideas counter to the foundation of democracy, like equality and the right of everyone to participate,” she claimed.

“Elevating Mr. Rose to a position of power and leadership gives a bad image to the state and to the district. These ideals are something Montana does not condone,” Rivas claimed.

Rose has been vetted by the Flathead Republican Central Committee. He said was endorsed by Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke, as well as a number of senators and representatives.

“Does anyone seriously think they would tolerate a white supremacist in their ranks?” Rose said.

But when the Hungry Horse News contacted Zinke’s campaign, it said it did not endorse Rose.