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It’s a bad time for freedom of speech and assembly. But then, it’s always a bad time for the First Amendment.

The latest victim is VDARE.com, a beloved, allied organization of 25 years. Its founder, Peter Brimelow says it has been “murdered” through “unscrupulous lawfare” by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

Miss James has yet even to charge VDARE with anything.

Other organizations haven’t been destroyed, but, especially since the war in Gaza, they can’t have meetings. The Arab American Foundation was going to hold an “empowerment summit” in Orlando, Florida, but the SeaWorld Hilton says it got threatening phone calls and canceled the “summit” just a few days before it was supposed to start.

The Arabs smell racism.

“DOJ meets with Arab American groups over canceled meeting.”

There was an hour-long discussion with “a DOJ deputy director as well as three lawyers with the DOJ Civil Rights Division and three staffers” to complain that Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton hotels have been canceling contracts because of “safety concerns.”

The “Seize the Moment — Stop Arming Israel” conference scheduled for Houston, had to be scuttled, too, even though it was planned well before the Hamas attack.

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights was Furious: “Hilton Hotel Capitulates to Hate, Cancels Palestinian Voices.”

Its boss, Ahmad Abuznaid bellowed about: “ethnic, racial and religious discrimination” — all three. He said the hotel “sent a strong message that [it stands] on the side of hate and bigotry.”

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas — he’s the one in a suit — understands immigration, but he got this dead wrong.

He tweeted that the hotel was right to “pull the plug” on people he called “Hamas supporters.” “Texas has no room for hate & antisemitism.”

Greg, darling. You’re either in favor of free speech or you’re not. Maybe these guys say rude things about Jews, but if you don’t recognize their right to do that, you’re not fit for any office.

Besides, Jews are getting the same treatment. A group called HaYovel was going to have what it called “The Israel Summit” in Nashville, with a Knesset member, Congresswoman Michele Bachman, and many others.

The Sonesta Hotel canceled, citing worries about safety after a Nashville group called Palestine Hurra “posted an ‘urgent call to action’ for its members to call the hotel and tell them ‘we will not allow genocidal racists to hold a conference in our city.’ ”

Venues cancel all the time. This summer, the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit kicked out Nicholas Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference just before 2,000 attendees were to show up.

In 2016, the National Press Club canceled a meeting that was to include the National Policy Institute’s Richard Spencer, VDARE editor Peter Brimelow, and your servant.

Ironically, the meeting was to be in the press club’s “First Amendment Room.”

In 2014, something called the Conference for Men wasn’t canceled, but a Detroit Doubletree told it that, “because of threats,” it wouldn’t host the meeting unless the conference hired $20,000 worth of private security.

Much to my dismay, I was an early pioneer in being canceled.

The first time was in 2007, in Halifax, Canada, of all places. A black professor named David Divine agreed to debate me on whether diversity is good for Canada.

He chickened out, but gave his own lecture about diversity, without my even being there. Coward. I flew to Halifax and took a room at the Lord Nelson Hotel to give a talk.

This is what happened.

I filed assault charges, but despite great video evidence, detectives said they couldn’t find anyone.

Back to hotels. American Renaissance started holding conferences in 1994. We used to get a few lonely demonstrators, but they were free entertainment — not a threat.

The Hyatt Regency Dulles became our home away from home.

After every conference it would send us a letter telling us how wonderful we are and asking us to come back. “[W]e would like to extend a sincere thank you for allowing us to host your meeting . . . . It was a pleasure to work with you.”

Of course it was. We may be SPLC-certified haters, but we are very nice people.

The Hyatt loved us.

But over the years, it came under increasing pressure.

For the 2006 conference, someone came on the property and shoved lurid leaflets about us under the doors of all the guest rooms. A man called the hotel and said that if the Hyatt ever hosted us again, he and his friends to would park sideways and block access to the parking lot.

Hotels like the quiet life. With profuse apologies, the Hyatt asked us not to come back. We got a new hotel for the 2008 conference, but there was an all-out effort to force the hotel to cancel, including death threats to the hotel manager. Police barricaded the entire perimeter and sent bomb-sniffing dogs through the place.

We had a wonderful conference, but management said it didn’t want any more of our business.

Our 2010 conference was a nail-biter. We contracted with four different hotels, one right after the other. The Dulles Marriot crumpled without a fight.

With the Dulles Westin, we kept the hotel name confidential, but antifa was calling every venue in the area asking if we were a customer, and finally got through.

The Westin canceled, saying it was getting 50 or 60 calls a day, and staff were frightened. We settled for a second-tier hotel out in Manassas, and swore management to secrecy, but the location leaked.

The general manager told us someone had called and said, “If you hold this conference I will go in there and shoot all of you.” That was cancelation number three.

At the last minute, we found a Washington, DC hotel with a reputation for hosting hot events and laughing off protests. We told it everything the other hotels had been through: death threats, leafleting, threats of boycott. The Capital Skyline Hotel said it would raise its room rate as compensation, but its attitude was, “Bring it on. We’re tough.”

It wasn’t. An employee told us suppliers were saying they would cut the hotel off. A black high school promised to show up and yell. “Anti-racist” web sites were determined to “shut down” the hotel.

Capitol Skyline folded.

My assistant at the time was a good Southerner. He had fought like a true soldier to make that conference happen. “Taylor,” he said, “This is Appomattox.”

We collected nice cancellation fees, but we refunded everyone’s registration and spent the cancellation money reimbursing people who had bought non-refundable tickets.

I called the FBI about the death threats. I got the cold shoulder — no hour-long meeting with a deputy director.

Still, I issued a press release: “Death Threats End Biennial Conference of Controversial Group.”

I wrote that if fanatics can throttle a non-profit like us, “what is to stop animal rights activists from shutting down a meat-packers’ meeting or environmentalists from shutting down miners or foresters? As a flourish, I quoted Judge Learned Hand: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

Who knows? If, back then, the Jews and the Arabs had come rushing to my rescue on principle, maybe liberty would not be quite as dead in the hears of Americans.

I wouldn’t bother with a press release today, because now, I know they don’t have principles. But remember: This was 2010. No one had ever heard of “cancel culture.” I thought this was newsworthy. And so did National Public Radio and the Associated Press and a lot of other people — until they found out we were “racists.”

The London correspondent of the Wall Street Journal — none of the Yanks — interviewed me about how dissent is muzzled. Television broadcaster Russia Today invited me to its studio to talk about this blatant suppression of free speech.

Everyone else drifted away.

The next year we had a bullet-proof plan. We moved the conference to North Carolina. I explained to the Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel exactly what they were in for.

I sent them news stories about demonstrators, bomb-sniffing dogs, death threats, and the SPLC page on us.

We advertised only the date of the conference and city, so attendees would know where to fly. We had a secret name for our group, and only top management knew it was AmRen. If antifa called the hotel — or if it called corporate, as they did in Virginia v they’d get the brush off. I told Sheraton we would release their name — and only to registrants — just 48 hours before the conference, so the opposition wouldn’t have time to mobilize. The hotel enjoyed the cloak and dagger — and was delighted to fill all its rooms on a slow weekend.

About three weeks before the conference, the Charlotte papers started wondering where the wicked “white supremacists” would turn up.

Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon sent out an order to “all hotels motels and gotels [sic]” in the county warning that they better not be hosting us and, suddenly, we got a one-line cancellation note from the Sheraton saying it was pulling out “in light of recent disclosures as to the nature of your event.” As if we hadn’t told them!

I flew to Charlotte and held a press conference to explain what lying swine the Sheraton people were and to blast an elected official’s blatant interference in a private contract.

But the official historical version is still what the Sheraton said: It canceled, “upon learning of the extremely controversial views of the New Century Foundation.”

I guess I’m simple-minded. Correction: I am simple-minded. I just don’t expect people to lie.

And so, we spent another fat cancellation check reimbursing airfare.

Now you know why, since 2012, we meet every year in a beautiful government-owned lodge at Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee.

It’s the only way we can meet.

Today, private hotels would rather walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business — and write five-figure cancellation checks rather than face the wrath of lefty savages.

In the early years in Tennessee, protesters used to yap and snarl, and the park police kept them on the other side of the parking lot.

In 2017, though, the police let the mob run wild, and Antifa came right up to windows and took pictures.

But every year since then park police have kept the rabble at a very safe distance.

Tennessee doesn’t like paying an estimated $35,000 per conference to keep these losers out, and in 2018, it tried to stick us with the bill! We sued in Federal court — Lord, what a bother that was — to force it not to submit to what is called the “heckler’s veto.”

Judge Aleta Trauger — a Clinton appointee — not only found in our favor, she ordered Tennessee to pay our lawyers’ fees.

So, it’s been a long fight to make it possible for wide-awake white people to experience the joy of face-to-face fellowship in a room with 300 people who all understand. I hope you can join us at our next conference, in November, right after the election.

We have a wonderful line up. The great Anthony Cumia will be a perfect after-dinner speaker.

Martin Sellner is probably the most effective and prominent identitarian in the world.

And, of course, we’ll have the indispensable Sam Dickson, our house genius, Gregory Hood, and other excellent speakers.

You can register on our website. I can promise you an inspiring weekend.