New RNC official is “big admirer” of white nationalist group that attacks Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Muslim people

Right-wing pundit Ed Martin hosted VDare leader Peter Brimelow on his show to oppose speaking Spanish in the U.S.

Ed Martin and the RNC

Citation Molly Butler / Media Matters

Right-wing commentator Ed Martin, who was recently appointed to a senior position for the Republican National Convention, has complained about Spanish speakers in the United States and said he is a “big admirer” of leading white nationalist group VDare. 

VDare has posted content claiming that “one problem with these Hispanic immigrants is their disgusting behavior”; “America does not need ANY immigrants from Africa”; the United States needs to “rethink Martin Luther King Day”; “Miscegenation has risks”; antifa and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 might be part of a “Jewish coup”; and the country should “EXPEL Muslims.” 

Martin is a podcaster, author, and frequent guest on right-wing media programs. He briefly worked as a pro-Trump pundit on CNN from 2017 to 2018 but was fired after he repeatedly embarrassed the network, including attacking his colleagues as “Black racists.” Martin, who was on a 2020 Trump campaign advisory board, was also a notable figure after the 2020 presidential election when he helped organize “Stop the Steal” rallies and later defended accused participants in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He has also pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, repeatedly using the movement’s slogan “WWG1WGA,” short for “Where we go one, we go all.” 

The RNC announced Martin’s appointment as deputy policy director of the Republican National Convention’s Committee on the Platform on May 15, with RNC Chairman Michael Whatley praising Martin and other selections as “brilliant” and having “sound judgement and principled vision.” Martin joins Russ Vought, a key Project 2025 figure who has pushed for Christian nationalism and “ideological purity tests” for civil servants, on the committee. 

Martin is a fan of VDare, a white nationalist organization that repeatedly attacks Black and Latino people. VDare has also featured antisemitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric and criticized “miscegenation,” writing that “flawed character is disproportionately associated with mixed black-white race people.” (In 2016, the Republican National Convention featured a social media post from VDare on its scrolling ticker.)

Here are various headlines from VDare’s website: 

VDare’s site has had tags that include: “Immigrant Mass Murder,” “Anti-White Hate Crimes,” “White Guy Loses His Job,” “Birthright Citizenship Reform,” “Minority Occupation Government,” “Disgruntled Minority Massacre,” “Death Of White America,” “Black Serial Killers,” “War On Whites,” “Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump,” and “Immigrants And Disease.”

Numerous media outlets have accurately described VDare as having white nationalist views, including The New York Times (which called it “a hub of the new, more online-oriented white nationalist movement”), The Washington Post (“a frequent platform for white nationalists espousing anti-Semitic and anti-immigration rhetoric”), CNN (“a prominent white nationalist website”), and The Associated Press (“a leading promoter of white nationalist and anti-immigration views”). Even the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post has called VDare a “white nationalist site.” 

In 2021, Martin appeared on The VDare Book Club Podcast, where he discussed a book by his former boss Phyllis Schlafly. He began the interview with host James Kirkpatrick (an alias of white nationalist Kevin DeAnna) by stating: “It's great to be with you. Big admirer of you all and what you're doing in VDare. And so I'm excited to be together.” 

Martin also repeatedly hosted VDare leader and white nationalist Peter Brimelow on his now-defunct radio program The Ed Martin Movement. During an episode that aired on November 29, 2018, Martin praised Brimelow as “a guy worth listening to” and told him, “I'm always glad to give you a voice, you’re always welcome here.” (In addition to leading VDare, Brimelow has, among other things, pushed an effort to “rethink Martin Luther King Day,” “arguing that MLK was a deeply flawed figure and an inappropriate role model for American whites.”) 

The segment featured Brimelow and Martin complaining that the Spanish language doesn’t belong in the country. 

Martin began by asking why people aren’t required to speak English and complaining that “everywhere you go now, everything seems to be in both English and Spanish.” He added: “If you actually believe in the argument that people are — that are coming here, that the immigrants that come legally — that part of the way you become an American, a part of the nation, is you learn the customs, you learn the way of life in lots of ways. And one of them is the language. Is there nobody that’s — are there any leaders that are pushing the English-only, that issue?”

Brimelow stated, in part, that in the United States “obviously you have foreign language colonies springing up. There is no longer a true nation. It’s becoming an empire.” 

Martin also co-wrote a 2016 book in which he suggested that the United States should accept immigrants only from European countries and that immigration from “Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East” “tears apart our nation’s heritage and social fabric.” His book included a citation to VDare in its section about “Anchor babies on welfare."