Buchanan, Trancredo Aide Marcus Epstein Pleads Guilty to Racist Hate Crime
Students protest Tancredo during Epstein’s Youth for Western Civilization event at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 2009
Marcus Epstein, the 25-year-old executive director of a pair of Washington, D.C.-based nationalist, anti-immigrant organizations — Pat Buchanan’s American Cause and former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s Team America PAC — pleaded guilty on Friday to a July 2007 random assault on an African-American woman on a Washington sidewalk. Prosecutors in the case had classified it as a hate crime:
Epstein was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the victim, called her [a “nigger”] and struck her in her head. He was briefly detained by the woman’s husband, but was able to escape, only to be arrested minutes later by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the attack. According to the officer’s statement, a friend of Epstein’s informed him that he had been drinking.
In the 22 months since the attack, Epstein has maintained a high profile as one of the up and coming leaders in the nationalist, anti-immigrant movement. He has written for far right wing outlets, including Buchanan’s American Conservative magazine, Human Events, Washington Examiner, Taki’s Magazine and Townhall.com.
He has also been a regular blogger for VDARE, a right-wing extremist site dedicated to Virginia Dare, who — as everyone who took North Carolina history in the seventh grade knows — was the first white child born to British colonials, in 1587, on the Outer Banks. (Tar Heels are likely to see it as a fey homage, since Virginia was the youngest member of the unfortunate “Lost Colony” that mysteriously disappeared before British ships could return with supplies.)
In January, Epstein was instrumental in producing a report for Buchanan’s American Cause that declared that racism and immigrant-bashing were the solution — not a glaring obstacle — to the Republican Party’s eventual return to power. After the group released its report at the National Press Club in Washington, the New York Times responded with a scathing editorial titled, “The Nativists Are Restless.”
Epstein also founded Youth for Western Civilization , which bills itself as “America’s Right Wing Youth Movement.” The group’s logo has an oddly puerile, heavy metal vibe and depicts the shape of a heraldic shield, bisected in black and white, with a man’s forearm clinching a Medieval axe that bears an uncanny resemblance to a Roman fasci.
In April, anti-racist protesters shut down a Youth for Western Civilization event featuring Tancredo at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
