Last week, Frank Gaffney, an influential player in Republican politics despite his long record of promoting conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim sentiment, caused a stir when he invited well known white nationalist Jared Taylor onto his radio program to discuss efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Europe and the U.S.

After the Southern Poverty Law Center, followed by Media Matters and Right Wing Watch, pointed out that Gaffney had lavished praise on a white nationalist activist, Gaffney wrote that he had simply wanted to discuss “a recent article” by Taylor and was “unfamiliar with Mr. Taylor’s views on other matters and did not discuss or endorse them.” He said that if he had known Taylor’s full history, he would not have invited him on the program, and then pulled the interview with Taylor from his website.

Now Taylor is fighting back, writing an open letter to Gaffney accusing him of caving to “lefty” organizations when “there has been no criticism of you from any conservative source.” He reminds Gaffney that “you were aware of some of my views, and found them insightful.”

Taylor notes that the article that Gaffney “admired” was very clear about his “basic views on race.” Indeed, Taylor’s article, “Is This the Death of Europe?,” begins with a quote from “The Camp of Saints,” a book that the SPLC notes “is revered by American white supremacists”; in the first paragraph, he warns that “a million wretched, brown-skinned people” wanting to “feed on the wealthy white West” will eventually ensure that “Europe is snuffed out”; and so on from there.

From Taylor’s open letter to Gaffney: