Peter Brimelow

Peter Brimelow
Born	(1947-10-13) October 13, 1947 Warrington, Lancashire, England
Residence	Litchfield, Connecticut
Nationality	English
Citizenship	Naturalized U.S. citizen
Education	University of Sussex, BA (with honors), 1970 Stanford University, M.B.A., 1972
Occupation	Financial journalist, author
Employer	1972–73 investment analyst, Richardson Securities of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 1973–76 assistant editor, Financial Post, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1976–78 business editor and columnist, Maclean's, Toronto, 1978–80 columnist and contributing editor, Financial Post, Ontario, Canada 1980–81, 1988–90 economic counsel to Senator Orrin G. Hatch, U.S. Senate Staff, Washington, DC 1981–83 associate editor, Fortune, New York 1980–82 columnist, associate editor, Toronto Sun, Toronto 1984–86 contributing editor, Fortune, New York, NY 1983–84 associate editor, Fortune, New York, NY 1984–86 columnist and contributing editor, Chief Executive (magazine), New York, NY 1984–86 contributing editor, Influence, Toronto 1986–90 Times, London, England 1986–2002 senior editor, Forbes, New York, NY 1993–98 senior editor, National Review, New York, NY 1999– editor, VDARE.com 1999– president, Center for American Unity (nonprofit organization), Warrenton, VA c. 2002 senior fellow, Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco
Spouse(s)	Margaret Alice Laws (b. 1953, d. 2004), m. 1980-2004 (her death) Lydia E. Sullivan (b. 1984), m. 2007-present
Awards	Fulbright Fellowship, United States Department of State, 1970 Commonwealth Universities scholar, 1970 National Business Writing Award, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto Press Club, 1976 National Business Writing Citations, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto Press Club, 1977, 1978 Gerald Loeb Award, Anderson School at the University of California at Los Angeles, 1990
Notes

Peter Brimelow (born October 13, 1947) is a British-born American writer. Prior to founding the webzine VDARE, Brimelow was a writer and editor at Forbes, the Financial Post, and National Review.

Brimelow founded the Center for American Unity in 1999 and served as its first president but is no longer affiliated with the organization. Brimelow is a paleoconservative. Until September 2012, he was a columnist for Dow Jones' Marketwatch.

Life and career

Brimelow was born in 1947 in Warrington, Lancashire, England (now part of the county of Cheshire), the son of Bessie (Knox) and Frank Sanderson Brimelow, a transport executive. Brimelow (and his twin brother) studied at the University of Sussex (BA, 1970) and Stanford University (MBA, 1972.) Brimelow subsequently immigrated to Canada. After a brief stint as a securities analyst, he settled in Toronto, becoming a business writer and editor at the Financial Post and at Maclean's magazine. From 1978–80, he was an aide to senator Orrin Hatch in Washington D.C..

In 1980, he moved to New York, working mainly for Barron's and Fortune. Brimelow was senior editor of Forbes magazine from 1986 to 2002. He was married to Maggy Laws Brimelow (1953–2004), a Canadian, until her death following an eight-year battle with breast cancer. He and his first wife had two children, a son (Alexander Brimelow) and a daughter (Hannah-Claire Brimelow). He married Lydia Sullivan, a 22-year-old Heritage Foundation intern, in 2007; they had their first child, Felicity Deonne Brimelow, in August 2010. Their second child, Karia Sybil Nancy Brimelow, was born on June 13, 2012. Their third daughter, Victoria Beauregard Brimelow, was born on February 6, 2015.

In 1986, Brimelow published The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, a book inspired partly by Goldwin Smith's Canada and the Canadian Question, published in 1891. Brimelow's book helped galvanize the founding of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987 and inspired a number of individuals who now work in the government of Stephen Harper.

Brimelow's later books include the national best-seller Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, The Wall Street Gurus: How You Can Profit from Investment Newsletters, and The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education. Alien Nation deals with immigration policy and criticizes the recent influx of illegal aliens as well as legal immigrants. The book argues that immigration before the Immigration Act of 1924 was fundamentally different from post-1965 immigration, as the earlier immigrant population had more in common with natives to begin with as well as being under greater pressure to assimilate.

The Worm in the Apple discusses public education and teachers' unions, considering unions "highly destructive." Among views in The Worm in the Apple: "to attempt so far-reaching a goal as universal high school education is foolish." Ilana Mercer and John O'Sullivan praised the book. For the Hoover Institution journal Education Next, public policy consultant George Mitchell wrote: "Brimelow...demonstrates how collective bargaining for teachers has produced labor agreements that stifle innovation and risk taking. He makes it clear that the dramatic rise in influence enjoyed by the teacher unions has coincided with stagnant and unacceptable levels of student performance." However, in the same journal article, education consultant Julia E. Koppich took a more critical angle, calling the book "an anti-public school polemic."

He has appeared as a guest on The Political Cesspool, a pro-white talk-radio show. Following the 2008 elections, Brimelow advocated that to win elections, the Republican Party should focus on "white votes". Brimelow appeared on a panel discussing multiculturalism during the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC 2012), and gave a talk titled "Canadian Bilingualism & Multiculturalism as it Relates to America"In the face of condemnation from MSNBC and PFTAW, Al Cardenas of the American Conservative Union denied knowing him or his reputation.

Criticism

In January 2004, Brimelow's website VDARE was named by the left-wing pressure group Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group. According to Brimelow this classification was initially based on a speech he gave in November 2003 arguing for an immigration moratorium. He responded by applying what he considered their loose standards of definition to themselves, saying "VDARE.COM has just been named a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the notorious Treason Group". VDARE also responded by published an article arguing that it is impossible to avoid being called racist, regardless of one's political views, so the charge should not be taken seriously.

The SPLC has also criticized VDARE for publishing articles by white identity advocates Jared Taylor and Sam Francis. It has been called "white nationalist" by the Rocky Mountain News, a charge denied by Brimelow.

Notably, the influential online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is today known for its increasingly left-wing and often far-left administrative bias, has criticized Brimelow for his claims that whites built American culture.

Writings

published as

letter to the editor, responding to critics

External links

• Articles at VDARE.com
• Southern Poverty Law Center's file on Brimelow
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Brimelow on Alien Nation, June 11, 1995.