Aggregated News

Austin, TX

"Austin Skyline and Lady Bird Lake" by Katie Haugland Bowen 
is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A high-end hotel in the liberal Texan enclave of Austin is playing host to a conference whose theme is boosting global birth rates, but which will in fact feature racist and eugenicist internet personalities and far-right media figures.

The Natal conference – whose website warns that “by the end of the century, nearly every country on earth will have a shrinking population, and economic systems dependent on reliable growth will collapse” – is scheduled to be held on 1 December at the Line Hotel.

Natal’s website claims the conference has “has no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren”, but the Guardian can reveal its organizer Kevin Dolan has been promoting the event on the far-right podcast circuit, and has explicitly linked the conference’s “pro-natalist” orientation to eugenics.

Dolan was at one time a social media influencer connected to the far-right Mormon “Deznat” or “Deseret nationalist” subculture and has himself...