Samuel Todd Francis (April 29, 1947 – February 15, 2005) was an American writer and academic. He was a columnist and editor for the conservative Washington Times until he was dismissed in 1995 after making racist remarks at the American Renaissance conference a year prior. Francis would later become a "dominant force" on the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Francis was the chief editor of the council's newsletter, Citizens Informer, until his death in 2005. The white supremacist Jared Taylor called Francis "the premier philosopher of white racial consciousness of our time". The political scientist and writer George Michael, an expert on extremism, identified Francis as one of "the far right's higher-caliber intellectuals." The SPLC described Francis as an important white nationalist writer known for his "ubiquitous presence of his columns in racist forums and his influence over the general direction of right-wing extremism" in the United States. The journalist Leonard Zeskind called Francis the "philosopher king" of the radical right, writing that, "By any measure, Francis's white nationalism was as subtle as an eight-pound hammer pounding on a twelve inch I beam." The political analyst Chip Berlet described Francis as an ultraconservative ideologue akin to Pat Buchanan, whom Francis advised. The anarcho-capitalist political theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe called Francis "one of the leading theoreticians and strategists of the Buchananite movement."
Early life Francis was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He received a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and a master's degree in 1971 and doctorate in 1979 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Career
The Washington Times Francis was a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and an aide to the U.S. senator John P. East before joining the editorial staff of The Washington Times in 1986. Five years later, he became a columnist for the newspaper, and his column became syndicated. In addition to his journalistic career, Francis was an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Auburn, Alabama. In June 1995, editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden "had cut back on Francis' column" after The Washington Times ran his essay criticizing the Southern Baptist Convention for its approval of a resolution that apologized for slavery. In the piece, Francis asserted that, "The contrition of the Southern Baptists for slavery and racism is a bit more than a politically fashionable gesture intended to massage race relations" and that "Neither slavery nor racism as an institution is a sin." In September 1995, Pruden fired Francis from The Washington Times after the conservative journalist Dinesh D'Souza, in a column in The Washington Post, described Francis's appearance at the 1994 American Renaissance conference: "A lively controversialist, Francis began with some largely valid complaints about how the Southern heritage is demonized in mainstream culture. He went on, however, to attack the liberal principles of humanism and universalism for facilitating 'the war against the white race.' At one point he described country music megastar Garth Brooks as 'repulsive' because 'he has that stupid universalist song (We Shall Be Free), in which we all intermarry.' His fellow whites, he insisted, must 'reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites… The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.'" After D'Souza's column was published, Pruden "decided he did not want the Times associated with such views after looking into other Francis writings, in which he advocated the possible deportation of legal immigrants and forced birth control for welfare mothers." Francis said soon after the firing that "I believe there are racial differences, there are natural differences between the races. I don't believe that one race is better than another. There's reasonably solid evidence for IQ differences, personality and behavior differences. I understand those things have been taken to justify segregation and white supremacy. That is not my intent."
Later career After being fired from The Washington Times, Francis continued to write a column, which was syndicated through Creators Syndicate at least as early as January 2000. Francis became a "dominant force" on the Council of Conservative Citizens. Francis was the chief editor of the council's quarterly newsletter, Citizens Informer, until his death in 2005. Francis wrote the council's Statement of Principles, which "called for America to be a Christian nation" and "oppose[d] all efforts to mix the races of mankind." In his writings, Francis advocated for a moratorium on all immigration, plus an indefinite suspension of all immigration from non-European and non-Western people. Francis was also an editor of The Occidental Quarterly, a white nationalist journal edited by Kevin Lamb and sponsored by William Regnery II. He served as a contributor and editor of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's quarterly, Modern Age. After his dismissal from The Washington Times and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Francis continued to write a syndicated column for VDARE and Chronicles magazine, and spoke at meetings of American Renaissance and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He attended the American Friends of the British National Party's meeting on April 22, 2000, where he heard and met Nick Griffin, then the leader of the fascist British National Party and a future member of the European Parliament. His articles also appeared in Middle American News. Francis' last published work was an article penned for the 2005 IHS Press anti-war anthology, Neo-Conned!. Francis died on February 15, 2005, at Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland, following an unsuccessful surgery to treat an aortic aneurysm. He was 57. Francis was buried at the foot of Lookout Mountain.
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