Ron Unz

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Ron Unz
Unz at a 2013 New America symposium
Born
Ronald Keeva Unz

(1961-09-20) September 20, 1961 (age 62)
Los Angeles, California, US
EducationHarvard University (AB)
University of Cambridge
Stanford University
Occupation(s)Businessman, political activist, writer
Political partyRepublican

Ronald Keeva Unz (

ballot propositions
promoting structured English immersion education as well as campaign finance reform and minimum wage increases.

Unz was publisher of

white supremacism.[5]

Early life and career

Ronald Keeva Unz was born in

North Hollywood.[7][8][1] His mother was an anti-war activist[8] who raised her son as a single mother. Unz has said that his childhood as a fatherless child in a single-parent household which received public assistance, was a source of "embarrassment and discomfort".[8]

He attended

Westinghouse Science Talent Search.[7] He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and ancient history.[6][9] He then took graduate courses in physics at the University of Cambridge and began a Ph.D. at Stanford University before abandoning the program.[8][9]

Unz worked in the banking industry and wrote software for

Moody's.[10]

Political career

Unz made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in the 1994 California gubernatorial election, challenging incumbent Pete Wilson. He ran as a conservative alternative to the more moderate Wilson and was endorsed by the conservative California Republican Assembly.[11] He came in second place to Wilson, receiving 707,431 votes (34.3 percent).[12] Newspapers referred to Unz's candidacy as a Revenge of the Nerds and often quoted his claim of a 214 IQ.[13][11][1][9]

In 1998, Unz sponsored

Massachusetts English Language Education in Public Schools Initiative,[17] which was approved by 61.25% of the voters.[18] He also supported ballot initiatives in other states including Arizona Proposition 203 and Colorado Amendment 31.[19]

In early 1999, Unz introduced a campaign-finance reform ballot initiative known as the California Voters Bill of Rights (Proposition 25).[20] Co-sponsored by California Democrat Tony Miller and endorsed by Senator John McCain,[21] the proposal would have required campaign contributions greater than $1,000 to be declared online within 24 hours, limited individual contributions to $5,000, banned corporate contributions to candidates, and permitted statewide candidates to raise funds only within the 12 months before an election.[22][23] In late 1999 Unz briefly entered the U.S. Senate race to challenge incumbent Dianne Feinstein,[24] declaring his candidacy in October[21] and dropping out by December to focus on fundraising for Proposition 25, which was ultimately defeated in the March 2000 primary election.[25][26]

In 2012 and 2014, Unz worked on a ballot initiative to raise the California minimum wage from $10 to $12, but his campaign failed.[27][28] His proposal was supported by economist James K. Galbraith.[27]

In 2016, Unz organized the "

tuition fees at Harvard to be abolished and for greater transparency in the admissions process.[29][30][31] None of the five candidates were elected to the 30-person board.[32][33]

Unz campaigned on a Republican ticket in California in the 2016 primaries for election to the

US Senate intending to succeed Democrat Barbara Boxer.[34] Having previously supported immigration, he now proposed it "should be sharply reduced, probably by 50% or more."[35] Though not hoping to win the nomination, he put himself forward in an attempt to challenge the then proposed repeal of Proposition 227.[34] He was endorsed by former U.S. Representative Ron Paul.[36] In the final result, he gained 64,698 votes (1.3%).[37]

Writing and publishing

The American Conservative and the "Asian quota" controversy

An investor in The American Conservative, he was its publisher from 2007 to 2013.[38] He also contributed opinion articles on topics such as immigration, the minimum wage, and urban crime.[17] In an email leaked to National Review magazine, editor Daniel McCarthy wrote that Unz was acting as if he were the editor of The American Conservative and threatened to resign if the publication's board did not support him over Unz.[39]

In 2012 Unz published an article in

white supremacist David Duke who said it confirmed Harvard was "now under powerful Jewish influence". The noted antisemite Kevin B. MacDonald said it was similar to his own view that Jews are "at odds with the values of the great majority of non-Jewish White Americans."[41][44]

The Unz Archive

Unz also compiled the Unz Archive (UNZ.org), a searchable online collection of periodicals, books, and video, that by 2012 held around 25,000 issues of over 120 publications, including The American Mercury, The Literary Digest, Inquiry, Collier's, Marxism Today, New Politics, and various pulp fiction and romance magazines.[48][49][50] Nick Gillespie of Reason called it "one of the Web's great archive projects".[49]

The Unz Review

In November 2013, Unz launched the website The Unz Review for which he serves as editor-in-chief and publisher.[41]

The Unz Review describes itself as presenting "controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media."

white nationalist publication.[4] In 2016, a research fellow at the ADL said "I haven't seen Ron Unz write anything anti-Semitic himself, but he really gives a platform to anti-Semites."[44]

In 2017, The Unz Review received public attention when former

CIA operative Valerie Plame was criticized after tweeting an article by a columnist, counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi, titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" published in the webzine.[53][54]

Relation to anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, homosexuality research, etc.

The ADL and others criticized Unz for a $600,000 grant for research in evolutionary biology to Gregory Cochran, a professor who argued that homosexuality may be caused by a "gay germ."[44] Ralph Nader, while running with Unz for Harvard board of overseers called him "a very nuanced guy. He should not be stereotyped as a lot of the world of identity politics does."[31]

The Unz Foundation, of which he is president, has donated to individuals and organizations which are alleged by the ADL to have published or expressed opinions that are antisemitic or

white nationalist" website, but has said "they write interesting things".[56][5][57]

Since their 2014 article, the ADL commented in October 2018 that Unz "has embraced hardcore anti-Semitism", "denied the Holocaust", and "endorsed the claim that Jews consume the blood of non-Jews", referring to blood libel.[3] In July 2018, in articles for The Unz Review, he wrote about the claims in the Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's The International Jew. Ford's work, a series of antisemitic pamphlets published in the 1920s, appeared to Unz to be "quite plausible and factually-oriented, even sometimes overly cautious in their presentation."[3] He partly accepted the standard consensus on the Protocols but believes they were assembled by "someone who was generally familiar with the secretive machinations of elite international Jews against the existing governments... who drafted the document to outline his view of their strategic plans."[3]

In August 2018, Unz made use of Holocaust denial arguments and wrote, "I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so."[3] That same year, The Unz Review published material written by Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett,[58][38][59][60] while Unz himself defended David Irving, who lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt. Unz also implied that Mossad was involved in the murders of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.[38] Writing about the 2001 September 11 attacks in a September 2018 article for his Review, Unz stated: "the vast weight of the evidence clearly points in a single direction, implicating Israel and its Mossad intelligence service, with the case being overwhelmingly strong in motive, means, and opportunity.”[61]

Collection of essays

In 2016, Unz self-published The Myth of American Meritocracy and Other Essays, a hardcover collection of most of his writings, including nearly all of his print articles.[57]

References

  1. ^ a b c Hornblower, Margot (June 8, 1998). "The Man Behind Prop. 227". CNN. Archived from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2018. In 1988 he formed a financial-software firm, Wall Street Analytics, which made him wealthy
  2. ^ a b "Indiana U says it can't fire prof who made 'racist, sexist and homophobic' remarks". CBC Radio. November 25, 2019. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e "California Entrepreneur Ron Unz Launches a Series of Rhetorical Attacks on Jews". Anti-Defamation League. October 4, 2018. Archived from the original on June 12, 2019. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  4. ^ a b Gais, Hannah (January 19, 2021). "Meet the White Nationalist Organizer Who Spewed Hate Against Lawmakers". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
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  6. ^ a b Willis, Doug (May 1, 1994). "Ron Unz - Science prodigy turns into candidate". The Press-Enterprise. Riverside, CA. Associated Press. p. A16 – via NewsBank.
  7. ^ a b Foster, Douglas (November 24, 1999). "Being Ron Unz". LA Weekly. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
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  10. ^ "Moody's Corporation Acquires Wall Street Analytics". MWSA News. Moody's Corporation. December 18, 2006. Archived from the original on October 28, 2007. Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  11. ^ a b Wallace, Amy (May 8, 1994). "Unlikely Path Led to Wilson Foe's Far-Right Challenge – Politics: A computer 'genius' with a passion for Greek philosophy, Ron Unz has set out to jolt the GOP". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  12. California Secretary of State. Archived from the original
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  13. ^ Reeves, Phil (May 17, 1994). "'Nerds' seek revenge in Californian poll: Apathy marks the run up to the contest for governor". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 9, 2015. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  14. California Ballot Proposition 227
  15. ^ "Notes by Steve Krashen on the Unz Attack". February 9, 1998. Archived from the original on March 20, 2006.
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  21. ^ a b York, Anthony (October 5, 1999). "Feinstein gets a challenger". Salon.com. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
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  23. ^ Purdum, Todd S. (March 25, 1999). "California Republican Tries Altering Campaign Finance". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  24. ^ "Millionaire GOP-er backs wage boost". Politico. Associated Press. January 11, 2014. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  25. ^ Gledhill, Lynda (December 1, 1999). "Unz Bows Out of U.S. Senate Race". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. A3 – via NewsBank.
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  27. ^ a b Patterson, Robert. "The Missing Plank of the GOP Platform". The Natural Family. Archived from the original on June 16, 2018. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  28. ^ Abramsky, Sasha (April 8, 2014). "What If the Minimum Wage Were $15 an Hour?". The Nation. Archived from the original on May 29, 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2018.
  29. ^ Saul, Stephanie (January 14, 2016). "How Some Would Level the Playing Field: Free Harvard Degrees". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  30. ^ Adamczyk, Alicia (January 15, 2016). "Group Says Harvard Tuition Should Be Free for All Students". Money. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020.
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  32. ^ DeCosta-Klipa, Nik (May 23, 2016). "Ralph Nader fails in bid to be elected to Harvard board". Boston.com. Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  33. ^ Gerstein, Josh (May 23, 2016). "Nader bid for Harvard board comes up short". Politico. Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  34. ^ a b Wildermuth, John (April 17, 2016). "Ron Unz's U.S. Senate race raises concerns of splintered GOP vote". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  35. ^ Krikorian, Mark (May 27, 2016). "Ron Unz, Immigration Convert". National Review. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  36. ^ Cadelago, Christopher. "Ron Paul endorses Ron Unz for California's U.S. Senate seat". The Sacramento Bee. Archived from the original on September 7, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  37. ^ "California Primary Results, June 7". The New York Times. September 29, 2016. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  38. ^ a b c Sixsmith, Ben (September 15, 2018). "The curious case of Ron Unz". The Spectator. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019. In June, Unz published an essay saluting the 'remarkable' historiography of David Irving. In his legal fight against the historian Deborah Lipstadt, Unz wrote, Irving's work was analyzed 'line-by-line, footnote-by-footnote' by historians who 'came up empty'. Readers of expert witness Richard J. Evans's report on Irving's scholarship will know this to be false. Unz followed this essay with an approving appraisal of the National Socialists' treatment of France that never once mentioned their millions of murders in Central and Eastern Europe, long articles implicating Mossad in the killings of John and Robert Kennedy and a series of analyses of Jewish history which concluded that Judaism entails 'the enslavement or execution of all non-Jews', that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is 'a classic of political thought', that the Holocaust almost certainly did not take place in a recognizable form and that anti-Semitism has in general been well-founded.
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  47. ^ "UP CLOSE: What's next for affirmative action?". Yale Daily News. September 22, 2014. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
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Further reading

External links

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