Mainstream conservatives like to pretend that right-wing extremists have been permanently relegated to the fringes of society and have no role in their contributions to the public discourse. Whether this is self-delusion or mendacity is hard to say.

Indeed, right-wing extremists are steadily gaining greater roles in that discourse because of their gradual acceptance into the conservative mainstream. Certainly, since the 2004 election, we’ve seen more signs that this is the case.

The most recent example came during Martin Luther King Day. Dennis Roddy in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently exposed the “liberal media” treatment afforded to noted white supremacist Jared Taylor as a “conservative” spokesman on a number of MLK Day broadcasts:

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day last week, when much of the nation took a holiday, “race-relations expert” Jared Taylor was hard at work. He began at 6:45 a.m. with an interview with a Columbus radio station. At 7:05 he was on the air in Orlando. An hour later his voice greeted morning commuters in Huntingdon, W.Va.

At 10:10 a.m., he was introduced no fewer than four times as “race relations expert Jared Taylor” on Fred Honsberger’s call-in show on the Pittsburgh Cable News Channel. Four hours later, he was back on the air with Honsberger on KDKA radio, where he repeated the message he’d been thumping all day: Martin Luther King Jr. was a philanderer, a plagiarist and a drinker who left a legacy of division and resentment, and was unworthy of a national holiday.

What Taylor did not say, and what Honsberger didn’t seem to know until I picked up the phone and called in myself, was that Jared Taylor believes black people are genetically predisposed to lower IQs that whites, are sexually promiscuous because of hyperactive sex drives. Race-relations expert Jared Taylor keeps company with a collection of racists, racial “separatists” and far-right extremists.

Roddy goes on to detail Taylor’s extensive role as an “academic racist,” a man who specializes in putting a “respectable” veneer on a panoply of white-supremacist ideas. More insidious is the way this incident indicates the increasing boldness of organized bigots to spread their message of hate into the mainstream, mainly by gaining acceptance within the conservative movement:

What Taylor represents and how he got himself on no fewer than a half-dozen radio and television stations in large markets to denounce Martin Luther King illustrates the new tactics of white supremacy. Employing the dispassionate language of sociological and genetic studies, and under the veneer of academic inquiry, an assortment of highly educated people now push the theory that everything from unwed motherhood in Atlanta to economic collapse in Gambia can be explained by the genetic code imprinted on the races.

With a magazine that sounds as if it might be found on a coffee table in Mt. Lebanon, a degree from Yale, and fluency in three languages, Taylor easily found takers when his assistants blasted e-mails to scores of radio stations offering a Martin Luther King Day guest.

This is not the first time Taylor has gotten the kid-glove treatment from the mainstream media. Twice, he’s appeared on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country — first in December 2003 and again in January 2004 — with no explanation to the audience that Taylor heads up an organization designated by both the SPLC and the ADL as a “hate group.”

And while the media is busy coddling right-wing extremists, so are ostensibly mainstream Republican politicians. The most recent case of this emerged yesterday when it was reported that a handful of Republican Mississippi lawmakers are planning to give speeches before meetings of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. What was especially revealing about this was the shifting rationales provided by the would-be speakers:

State Rep. John Moore, R-Brandon, said that he’s scheduled to speak at the CCC gathering on Thursday. He said he’ll talk about issues to be considered during the current legislative session.

Moore said he didn’t know anything about the group’s position on race.

“If I find out for certain they are a racist organization, I am going to confront them,” he said.

“You hear that the NAACP is racist, but that wouldn’t keep me from talking to them,” Moore added.

He said he had never looked at the CCC’s Web site, but he sat with an AP reporter and scrolled through it. After looking at the question-and-answer section on race, Moore said: “I didn’t get any indication from this that they were racist.”

Moore looked at other parts of the Web site, including an announcement that Hinson is running for alderman in Pearl.

The announcement says: “Pearl is a pretty conservative city, but as the white flight keeps moving towards Rankin County and Pearl from neighboring Jackson black flight seems to be following. Hinson knows that conservatism must remain strong in Pearl or Pearl will become a little Jackson. Pearl is 85% White and just across the Pearl River from Jackson which is 79% Black. Pearl has had 1 homocide in 2004 and Jackson 49.”

Moore shook his head.

“I’d just confront them straight up and ask them if they’re a racist organization,” Moore said. “I’m not going to associate with any organization which chooses racism, period.”

When Hinson was asked why he used the race statistics in his announcement, he said: “It’s just a matter of fact.”

Hinson said minorities can talk about white people, but when whites talk about minorities, “their freedom of speech is zipped, closed.”

These tunes are straight out of the old Dixiecrat songbook, and we’ve been hearing them for years. “We don’t hate blacks,” David Duke used to claim, “we just love white people.”

Right. And it’s Democrats, not Republicans, who are the real racists.