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:

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