THE FASCIST AGENDA OF IMMIGRATION REACTIONARIES (FAIR)

Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), just might have had the worst night of his life on April 29, and that might be due to the fact that despite the fact that we’re supposed to have this all encompassing liberal media fixated on making conservatives look like racists, it was only when he appeared on the Rachel Maddow show that he actually had to address the connections FAIR has or had with white supremacists like the people at the Council of Conservative Citizens or American Renaissance. FAIR is the largest and most influential anti-immigration group, and they have been the biggest door that white supremacists trying to get into the mainstream have been allowed to go through. With the recent events in Arizona, people have been more than adamant that this particular door needs to be shut. For those who still don’t get it, we have a few articles, one from a longtime antifa that details the history of FAIR and the people and other organizations around them, and another from Imagine2050, who blasted Dan Stein for the string of lies he spurted out as Rachel Maddow took him to town (the video is also here).

Flint Jones, Infoshop

Rachel Maddow drew the connection between Arizona’s recent anti-immigrant legislation and the Immigration Reform Law Institute and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR). I’d like to explain a bit more about FAIR and their racist ties. This is largely based on a letter I wrote back in 2002.

Years ago I went to a meeting held by the union (Washtech/CWA) on off-shoring and H1B Visa (guestworker program). I ran my mouth alot at that meeting and picked some fights; and I’ve been generally trying to counter some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric around the periphery of the union (not union-members; the union has abut 300 members, but an email list of interested folks is 15,000 subscribers–techies). Anyway, at this meeting a guy from FAIR (Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform) showed up.

I argued with him at the meeting; and we ended up on the subway together; and we argued some more. Somewhere over the course of the conversation, I said, “You sound like the American Patrol” (a notorious anti-immigrant vigilante group in the southwest). His reply, “The American Patrol are misunderstood”… so then Mr. FAIR went from the “crazy right-winger” category to the “suit&tie fascist” category in Flint’s brain. In one 17-month period in 1999 and 2000, at least 30 incidents of vigilante violence were reported in a single section of the Arizona-Mexico border. One of the American Patrol’s big projects was an unmanned surveillance drone.

Later on this Washtech+periphery email list someone posted a report from FAIR. So I decided to research these creeps. FAIR was one of the leading forces behidn California’s infamous Proposition 187. FAIR is one of a dozen organizations founded by John Tanton. They vary in the extremes of their policy, but all are essentially either anti-immigrant think tanks, or anti-immigrant activist groups. All their funding comes largely from less than a dozen sources (mostly individuals). Groups like US English, American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF), Center for Immigration Reform, US Inc, NumbersUSA, the 21st Century Fund, Population-Environment Balance, and the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and even the American Patrol (Voice of Citizens Together). They are all tied together by a few people. US English and FAIR shared board members like Arnold Swarzenegger and Linda Chavez (who almost ended up as Secretary of Labor for the U.S., until it was revealed that she had an undocumented worker as her housekeeper that she irregularly paid).

Chavez (and many other prominent Republicans, including congressmen) eventually quit from FAIR’s board when Tanton made several comments in a leaked memo that many thought was both racist and anti-catholic.

Tanton’s also owns a publishing company The Social Contract Press. Which is the sole U.S. publisher for the book, Camp of Saints–‘a lurid, racist novel written by Jean Raspail that depicts an invasion of the white, Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.’

Some of FAIR’s (and these other Tanton groups) money comes from the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife; founderof the Heritage Foundation. FAIR also has ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and American Renaissance. American Renaissance is the white supremacist academic conference held in Virginia until it was recently shutdown by anti-fascists. Glen Spencer, from American Patrol, also spoke at that AmRen conference. Also at past AmRens: Mark Weber, a principal of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review; White power web maven, former Klansman and ex-con Don Black; Gordon Lee Baum, “chief executive officer” of the CCC; and several members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

FAIR representatives went to Cullman, Ala., for a CCC-organized protest against a swelling local population of Mexican workers. The CCC also has a relationship with former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Some of the groups that endorsed Ashcroft for Attorney General: American Council For Immigration Reform, English First, and Council of Conservative Citizens. Ashcroft also did an interview Southern Partisan (a neo-confederate journal). Other Republicans with ties to the CCC: former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and Georgia Rep. Bob Barr. Someone else involved with the CCC? White Supremacist David Duke.

Cordia Strom, who was once FAIR’s legal director, became a staffer for the House Immigration Subcommittee in 1996. Strom became counsel to the director and coordinator of congressional affairs for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Anyway, one of FAIR’s major sources of funding is the Pioneer Fund, which also funds a number of anti-immigration and eugenisist studies. Pioneer Fund has been at many of the epic-center for race-based academic scandals. FAIR is pretty much the only “activist” group that the Pioneer Fund gives money, the rest of their money goes to providing grants that give academic justification to racism. Pioneer Fund also provided the money to found American Renaissance’s parent foundation.

A bit of history of interest to wobblies and syndicalists… the Pioneer Fund was a setup in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a white supremacist textile factory capitalist who was in opposition to to Eastern and Southern Europeans migrating to the U.S. Why did Draper set this up? In 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized the Draper Company at Hopedale after a four month strike. Since that time, Draper was desperately trying to use science to prove that others were genetically inferior so that he could return to the “old order”. Further that his anti-immigrant ideas were because immigrants might be more open to subversive activities or to be communists. This entire twisted web of anti-immigrant propaganda, anti-immigrant lobbying in congress, the funding of academic racism in the U.S….all things that have lead to 20,000 imprisoned immigrant “detainees”, 148,000 people deported between September 11th 2001 and September of 2002, plans to deport 400,000 more, and the recent anti-immigrant law in Arizona — the money trail goes back to one white-supremacist capitalist who was bitter that he lost a strike to immigrant Wobblies.

Dan Stein’s Pants are on Fire

Imagine 2050

Dan Stein, President of FAIR, went on The Rachel Maddow Show last night and lied.

Dan Stein told Maddow, “We’ve certainly never had anything to do with Virginia Abernethy. I don’t know where you got the idea that we worked closely with her. We never have.”

Here is the truth: Virginia Abernethy, a self-described white separatist, was a national advisory board member for Protect Arizona Now (PAN) in 2004, the same year that FAIR financially supported the organization with hundreds of thousands of dollars to pass an anti-immigrant referendum (even back then FAIR was screwing with AZ’s immigration laws). When the connection was exposed by the Center for New Community in a special report, FAIR denounced Abernethy’s racist views. Which is weird because the guys at FAIR (John Tanton especially) had known Virginia for at least 10 years already.

In 1985 John Tanton founded another organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), as a project directly under the control of FAIR. Virginia Abernethy took part in a CIS- sponsored discussion all the way back in 1994 with current FAIR board member Frank Morris and current FAIR national board advisors Richard Lamm, Donald Collins, and Lawrence Harrison.

Abernethy’s writing has been published and featured extensively by John Tanton’s The Social Contract, a white nationalist quarterly journal. FAIR founder John Tanton works closely with Wayne Lutton to edit The Social Contract. Lutton is a Board of Director for the Charles Martel Society, an anti-Semitic organization that publishes the Occidental Quarterly. Wayne Lutton is also no stranger to Virginia – at a 2004 Council of Conservative Citizens conference they sat on a panel together called “The Immigration Invasion”. Both Abernethy and Lutton were also members of the Citizen’s Informer advisory board, CofCC’s newspaper.

Two of FAIR’s former staffers have also been associated with the Council of Conservative Citizens, the reconstituted, segregationist White Citizens’ Councils. FAIR’s former western field representative, Rick Oltman, is also listed as a member of CofCC. This is the same Rick Oltman who was, as uncovered by Maddow on FAIR’s website, described in 2004 as “working with activists in Arizona to help raise funds and public awareness for the Protect Arizona Now initiative.”

When Rachel Maddow pointed out Rick Oltman’s employment with FAIR and his membership with CofCC (even producing a picture of Oltman at a CofCC event) and asked if these facts were true, Stein replied, “No, you’re not stating any facts that are accurate.”

Back in 2004 Oltman was still working for FAIR in Arizona when he was awarded the Person of the Year Award by American Patrol (another anti-immigrant group). This honor was bestowed upon him for his work with FAIR to pass Proposition 200; a highly controversial anti-immigrant law. On American Patrol’s website Oltman states in an interview that “Dan” sent him $250,000 to finish the campaign.

During the Maddow interview, Stein went on to say, “We never gave that organization dime,” in reference to PAN. “…even if we were going to give them a dime, we wouldn’t have given them a dime with Virginia Abernethy associated with it.” Too bad for Stein The Rachel Maddow Show fact-checked his lies and exposed them immediately after the program.

Maddow stuck to her research even as Dan Stein dishonestly attempted to discredit her. It’s too bad there aren’t more journalists out there who are willing to do the background work necessary to ferret out politically extreme groups like FAIR.

Yesterday, the New York Times made the poor decision to publish an op-ed column by Kris Kobach, a long-time employee of FAIR’s legal arm, Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) and one of the individuals who helped craft Arizona’s new anti-immigrant bill. Kris Kobach has a reputation for using communities in conflict, like Arizona’s, to give his organization mainstream legitimacy in the immigration debate, regardless of the cost to residents. While Arizona plunges deeper into what will surely be a costly fight, Kris Kobach is reaping a fat paycheck and a boost to his public profile.

It’s not a question of why the NYT’s editorial board would feature a conservative voice in defense of the much-criticized law, but why it would feature a voice proven to be tied up with racist organizations. Would it allow a neo-nazi to write a column on anti-Semitism?

It doesn’t provide better perspective, just a platform for further abuse.

But the New York Times, as with many other mainstream news outlets, can’t say they weren’t warned. Civil rights groups have been sounding the alarm about FAIR and its cadre of anti-immigrant affiliates for many years now. It’s time they start listening.