is president of IREHR. For almost three decades, he has been a leading authority on white nationalist political and social movements. He is the author of Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2009. more...
Website URL: http://www.irehr.org
On Monday, January 28, 2013, in Topeka, Washburn University’s Center for Kansas Studies asked IREHR president Leonard Zeskind to give a presentation for their main “Kansas Day” commemoration. The following is an excerpt from that speech.
Monday, January 21, is the national holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday anniversary. If he had not been horribly murdered by an assassin in 1968, or struck down in some other fashion, he would be 84 years old. Across the country, in every major city and most medium-sized towns there will be at least some kind of event. In Kansas City, where I am now sitting, multiple events have already happened as I write these words.
Deer hunters look askance at anyone who shows up in the woods with an AR-15 rifle and a 30-shot banana clip. Turkey hunters and duck hunters do not use assault weapons to track their prey. Sensible people who keep a weapon for home protection usually have a shotgun. The M-16 knockoffs that float around the gunners' universe have only one real function: hunting humans. And the re-emerging debate in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut massacre is not about guns, it is about politics and the organizations who dress themselves in the Second Amendment in order to better sell arch-conservative and racist, bigoted notions of American life.
The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) is a national organization with an international outlook examining racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist, and far-right social movements, analyzing their intersection with civil society and social policy, educating the public, and assisting in the protection and extension of human rights through organization and informed mobilization.
