»  Radio Derb — Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was a snippet from Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2 played on the organ at Derby cathedral, and this is your combatively genial host John Derbyshire with some comments on the passing scene.

The format this week is somewhat different, the first two segments dominant.

I can already hear the grumbling. "Hey, Derb, you're supposed to be a conservative. Why do you go messing up your format like this?"

To make a point, that's why. The particular point I want to make is the sinister wickedness of state lawfare against private individuals and associations.

Sure, that point has been made often, including by me. It can't be made often enough, though. Even with an enlightened administration in Washington, D.C. those individuals and those associations still face massed legions of left-wing and corrupt judges and state officials striving to extinguish our liberties. Fight! Fight!

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02 — VDARE fights on.     I'm sure you know that this podcast used to be hosted by VDARE.com, along with numerous written articles and reviews I posted there. That happy state of affairs ended last July.

VDARE.com was the internet voice of the VDARE Foundation, set up in 1999 by Peter Brimelow to promote patriotic immigration reform as sketched out in his 1995 best-seller Alien Nation. That book's subtitle was, "Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster."

Common sense was a keynote of VDARE.com. We said aloud what everyone knows to be the case: politely and soberly, backed up with good data when necessary.

To be sure, common sense is a slippery concept, sometimes scoffed at by the wise. The philosopher Bertrand Russell is often quoted as having said, quote: "Common sense is the metaphysics of savages," end quote. In point of fact that's not quite what he said. But hey, that's the kind of thing for intelligent discussion of which we go to websites like VDARE.com.

Well, that's where we go if the powers of the State allow us to. The judicial powers of New York State, an army of left-wing activist state judges headed up by anti-white, anti-American, ferociously anti-Trump state Attorney General Letitia Lardbutt, have decided that citizens should no longer be allowed to go to VDARE.com for commentary on immigration and other social issues.

Since they were unable to find any instances where the VDARE Foundation or any of its employees had broken a law, they proceeded by lawfare, with endless subpoenas for paperwork and — as you will shortly hear — grueling KGB-style interrogations of VDARE associates or ex-associates.

To defend themselves the VDARE Foundation had to hire lawyers, which is of course expensive. After a couple of years it had got so expensive, VDARE had to cut back on their activities; hence the de-platforming of VDARE.com last July.

Yet still the assaults come, and still the lawyers have to be paid. If at last they can't be paid the left-dominated New York courts will probably give Ms. Lardbutt a summary judgement. That will let her seize VDARE's assets: the domain name, the archives, perhaps even the Castle in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where VDARE holds events. Our state Attorney General, a single lady with net worth "about $2.7 million," is never loth to acquire out-of-state properties.

(Speaking of events at the castle, I have heard that VDARE would dearly like for there to be a conference there in the fall; but of course it depends on the Foundation being able to raise sufficient funds.)

I'm not myself much of a fund-raiser. However, last week Lydia Brimelow, Peter's wife and President of the VDARE Foundation — a job she somehow manages to do while raising three beautiful young daughters — Lydia posted a fund-raiser at X which I strongly commend to your attention.

Lydia's fund-raiser is quite long, but what it lacks in brevity it more than makes up for in eloquence and sincerity. I urge you please to listen or read all the way through, then respond appropriately to Lydia's closing appeal.

I thank you on behalf of common sense, whatever Bertrand Russell said about it.

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03 — Lydia's appeal.

[Clip:  I'm Lydia Brimelow, President of the VDARE Foundation. There are moments rare and piercing when I recognize that what VDARE is going through is not just lawfare. It's actually spiritual warfare.

For three years we have fought against New York's witch-hunt against VDARE. For three years we've shielded the names of our writers and donors from Letitia James's inquisition. And now, now we're in the valley of the shadow.

Letitia James does not pursue us because of some legal technicality. She pursues us because she hates what we represent: the unbroken thread of American identity and the sacred right of a people to defend themselves as a nation.

For three years we have walked through this shadow — not as victims, but as witnesses: witnesses to how far this notorious persecutor of Donald Trump is willing to go to silence the truth, how eagerly she sacrifices justice at the altar of ideology.

For three years we have fought not just for ourselves but for our pseudonymous writers who trusted us with their identities, and our anonymous donors who supported our cause when it was dangerous to do so.

Letitia James doesn't want VDARE's money. She wants VDARE's submission. She wants our silence. But most of all, and worst of all, she wants names. She wants the names of our writers; not for the sake of transparency but because she knows that a truth spoken anonymously still shakes the world. A truth attached to a name can be punished.

She wants our donors' names; not for accountability but because she knows that courage is contagious unless she makes frightening examples of those who inspire it. At VDARE we've paid dearly for refusing to submit — over a million dollars in legal fees that could have been used to educate, to build, and to inspire. Years of our lives have been lost towards compliance, not creation, and we've been burdened with the knowledge that no matter what legal hoops we manage to jump through, she'll just build new ones.

She won't even let us leave. VDARE Foundation was incorporated in New York in 1999 — before anybody thought about lawfare, before anybody had even heard of Letitia James — and we are not allowed to leave without permission. It turns out New York is like Hotel California: You can check in, but checking out is impossible.

Peter and I have even been forced to hire personal lawyers: not because we've done anything wrong, but because — according to New York — even our attempts to house our young family can be treated as a conspiracy.

Let me be clear: Your donations go to fund VDARE's writers and VDARE's mission. What Peter and I have to face personally is our cross to bear; but it does go to show how far Letitia James is willing to go. Which is: all the way to our kitchen table.

If VDARE can't continue to pay lawyers to defend our writers and donors, Letitia James could move to put VDARE in a receivership. What that would mean is that a court-appointed Receiver, or possibly Letitia James herself, would then completely control VDARE, the website, the domain, and all of our archives and records, including attorney-client privilege materials. It would mean that all the donors' names and all of the writers' names would be completely exposed. Unless you can help now, we may no longer be able to protect them.

And yet, I do not despair. In January my husband Peter Brimelow, who was the editor of VDARE.com, took me to President Trump's Inauguration. We went to cheer ourselves up. And we needed cheering up after watching VDARE.com get destroyed in 2024. Peter and I watched the swearing-in from the auditorium at the Heritage Foundation. It was a nostalgic return for us because that's where I was an intern when we first met twenty years ago.

We particularly loved seeing the J6 pardon. Peter and I did not attend the January 6th protests but VDARE did run the earliest debunking of the moral panic that ensued against those who did. The January 6th pardons were not political acts, they were a reckoning with truth, and for a moment I saw the scales of justice trembling toward balance.

And then the knife. A couple of days after those January 6th pardons Letitia James hauled in a former VDARE Foundation board member — a man who resigned in 2020 — and interrogated him in a windowless room in New York for five and a half hours, under oath. He was illegally ordered not to discuss it with us. No transcript, no recourse, just the slow and grinding pressure of the State.

Let me emphasize here: VDARE has not been charged with anything, let alone convicted. This is how they break you: not with a single blow but with a thousand cuts.

But here's what she doesn't understand. We're not fighting against her, we're fighting for the historic American nation. In our fight we have witnessed miracles. When twenty-one million people saw my story on Tucker Carlson it wasn't just exposure. It was samizdat for the digital age. When lawyers and paralegals then appeared exactly when we needed them, saving us half a million dollars, they weren't just volunteers, they were angels in disguise.

These are visible examples of the material difference that can be made when supporters like you choose to stand with VDARE. VDARE stands at a threshold. If we fall through, then Letitia James will erase us from history — not just VDARE but the very idea that patriots can resist and win. If we stand firm Letitia James will have to face her limits.

The regime's weakness is not in its cruelty, it is in its dependence on our fear. Every donation, every forwarded email, is another brick pulled out of their foundation of lies. The rumors we hear of coming justice, of a reckoning for the lawfare machine, could soon become a reality. They haven't really coalesced in a way that I can confidently mention them now, but it is interesting to note that before Donald Trump's election there were no friendly rumors at all.

We have three immediate legal needs.

• Number One:  Overturn New York State's one-thousand-dollar-a-day fine. This was imposed on us in a naked act of tyranny over a dispute with VDARE's compliance. It's not over anything that has to do with our management of the VDARE Foundation. The lawyers call it "a process crime," meaning it wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this investigation that Letitia James has thrown at us. We are appealing this fine.


• Number Two:  We have appealed our First Amendment case in the federal court. If this appeal is unsuccessful then we can take it to the U.S. Supreme Court where truth still has a chance.


• Number Three:  We want to file ethics complaints against Letitia James. It's time to expose her lies to the courts. Letitia James's habitual violation of ethical norms is an open scandal. A year ago Representative Elise Stefanik filed a 64-page complaint against Letitia James's persecution of Donald Trump. We can match that. Letitia James as an officer of the court is not supposed to lie to judges, but she has lied to judges about VDARE, repeatedly. Ethical violations are a very serious matter. Notoriously Trump allies John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani are facing disbarment for supposed ethical violations while they were defending Donald Trump. But what Letitia James has done to VDARE is far more serious.

Before we can see any of these victories, though, we have to survive. Survival isn't passive. It's what our writers do when they post pseudonymously. It's what our donors do when they give their money despite the risk. And it's what I do every morning when I come into the office and face subpoena instead of building the American institution that I love.

The heat we feel now is a fire that they hope will consume us. Stand with us: not in the ashes but at the forge. See what strength we can temper. Please give generously. Every dollar shields our writers and donors from ruin. You can give online at www.GiveSendGo.com/VDARE or you can give offline by mailing your donation to VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield, CT 06759. All donations are fully tax-deductible and every dollar counts.

Also please share this message. Every forwarded email is a torch passed. VDARE can't afford our email marketing services any more. We can't send out mass emails. If you could share this with your friends, share it on social media, forward an email, mention it to somebody, call in to a podcast, write a blog, …

We rely on you, our supporters, and the true grass roots to alert the world to the fact that while immigration patriotism — VDARE's true cause — may be winning the battle, VDARE itself has been left bleeding on the field.

And above all, pray without ceasing. This is a spiritual battle as much as a legal one and we must ask God to intervene here, where the losses are so concrete and the victories are still precarious.

The castle still stands and VDARE still lives. The hour is now. Thank you.]

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04 — Tariffs, uh.     The news headliners this past few days have been all about tariffs. Where does Radio Derb stand on this?

Uh, nowhere very firmly. I don't know much about Economics and am not ashamed to admit it. In fact I have argued previously in this podcast that Economics is a pseudoscience, not to be taken very seriously.

That opinion goes back to the early 1960s when I was just starting to form political opinions. Britain's Prime Minister was a chap named Alec Douglas-Home, a sort of languid aristocratic character out of P.G. Wodehouse. He had once famously confessed that he tried to make sense of economic documents by doodling with matchsticks.

British voters, feeling that the head of their government ought to have some deeper understanding of Economics than that, in 1964 booted out the matchsticks man and replaced him with Harold Wilson. Wilson didn't just know Economics, he'd taught it at Oxford University. Just the man to get the country back on the rails, right? Well, to quote myself from that previous piece, quote:

I wouldn't say Wilson's government was an economic disaster, but no-one thought it was an economic triumph. "Lackluster" pretty well describes it, with the devaluation of the pound sterling against the dollar in 1967 as a low point.

End quote.

So don't come to me for sage words about Economics. I understand of course that governments have to raise revenue somehow, for pensions and armies and such. Tariffs, it seems to me, are a perfectly sensible way to raise it. Where income taxes are concerned, I'm inclined (especially at this time of year) to agree with the character in one of Robert A. Heinlein's books who opines that, quote from memory: "Taxation is theft; income taxes are Grand Larceny." End quote.

I have of course been following the commentary. My impression is that the pro-Trumpers have the better of the argument. I'll admit, though, that that impression is colored by plain pro-Trump prejudice. The contrast with Sleepy Joe — you know: Sleepy, Lying, Corrupt Joe — is simply staggering.

With Trump we have a guy who's actually been engaged with the mercantile world for decades: evaluating counterparties, deal-making, winning, losing, keeping your feet while riding the ice-floes of commerce. I guess he could be wrong; but when I listen to the opposition, I know for certain that their wrongness prospects are way higher.

Rather than expound any further on a subject I don't know well, I'll hand you off to the man himself. Here he was in a TV interview earlier this week.

[Clip:  People took advantage of our country and they ripped us off for a very … for decades. I've been thinking about this for decades.

I've been … If you ever saw me on television, I was young like these guys. And, er … Those were the good old days, I'll tell you, Roger. But I was like these guys — young. And I was talking about it. Nothing, nothing changed and nothing was done about it.

Then I did it; in my first term I did it, and did it well. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China — and others — and I started the process.

But then we had a fix-up from the COVID mess, caused by China. We had a fix-up from that and we did a good job doing it. And when we handed back the reins after a rigged election, and when we handed back the reins, the stock market was higher than it was before COVID coming in.

So, y'know, we did a great job. But we didn't have time to do the big things, which we're doing now. And it's like the patient is sick, you have to do surgery. The patient is very, very sick. And, er, Joe Biden handed us over a country that was in very serious trouble, economically and in every other way. They let China run away with things; they let other countries run away with things.

And maybe worst of all in a certain way is what they did at the border. We had people pouring into our country by the millions …]

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05 — Miscellany.     And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.

Imprimis:  I don't normally have anything to say about religion, but in last week's podcast there was a segment about atheism.

If you yourself, listener or reader, are an atheist, I hope you found that segment interesting. One who did sent me a link to an event I hadn't known about: American Atheists 2025 National Convention. The prospectus promises, quote:

[O]ne of the most diverse line-ups of speakers of any atheist, freethought, or secular convention, including politicians, poets, international secular activists, and many more.

End quote.

The event takes place in Minneapolis. The dates are April 17th to 20th; so if you haven't signed up yet, better get on it. Godspeed!

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Item:  Thursday the House of Representatives passed a bill, the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, to require that states obtain proof of citizenship in person from people who are registering to vote. The vote was 220-208, just four Democrats voting aye.

Coming up to our nation's 250th birthday and we still don't require proof of citizenship for voters? That's incredible: like not having any checks on blind people getting pilot's licenses.

And the Act is not yet law. It still has to be voted on by the Senate. It's not clear how that will go. There's a 60-vote threshold for it to pass, but Republicans only have a 53-47 majority.

Democrats are passionately opposed to the Act, and we all know why. Their opposition is fortified by the fact that the Act doesn't just stop illegal aliens from voting, it also requires states to remove them from existing voter rolls and allows American citizens to sue election officials that don't follow the proof-of-citizenship requirements. Voter suppression! Fascist! Nazi Nazi Nazi!

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Item:  My personal favorite headline of the week is from Discover magazine, headline: Tipsy Fruit Flies Are More Successful in Mating Than Their Sober Counterparts.

From the text of the story, quote:

Alcohol makes male fruit flies of the species Drosophila melanogaster sexier by stimulating the production of sex pheromones. As a result, male flies are more successful at mating after consuming certain amounts of alcohol.

End quote.

Isn't Nature wonderful?

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06 — Signoff.     That's all I have, listeners and readers. Thank you as always for your time and attention, and please do whatever you can, if only by reposting, to help VDARE in the fight against Letitia Lardbutt.

For signoff music, a novelty song from 1953. I gave this song a passing mention in my column in the April issue of Chronicles magazine. I thought Radio Derb listeners, many of whom I am sure subscribe to Chronicles, might like to hear it.

The song comes with some historical background. The Middle Ages, as everyone knows, began on Saturday, September 4th, A.D. 476, when Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, handed in his lunch pail to Odoacer the Goth. The Middle Ages ended on Tuesday, May 29th, A.D. 1453 — "Terrible Tuesday" — when Turkish Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople and killed Constantine XI, last ruler of the Eastern Empire.

That's a pretty good innings for a historical epoch — nearly 977 years — so let's hear it for the Middle Ages.

Look at that latter date, though: A.D. 1453. The year nineteen fifty-three was exactly five hundred years on from that, the semi-millennial. If that wasn't a cue for a novelty song, I don't know what could have been. So here were the Four Lads singing "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

There will be more from Radio Derb next week.

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