Racist roots of Russell Pearce’s regressive anti-immigrant laws

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Rachel Maddow dares to go where the political media in Arizona fear to tread. Rachel Maddow explains who actually wrote Arizona's "papers please" anti-immigrant law — and surprise, surprise — it wasn't Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa). Per usual, ol' Russell sponsors regressive bills written by right-wing extremist think tanks and organizations. What a tool.

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Excerpt from transcript Monday, April 26th – Rachel Maddow show:

MADDOW: In the meantime, papers, please.

Before this bill was actually signed into law, we told you about the guy who introduced it in the first place. It‘s this guy, Republican State Senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for having sent an email to his supporters that included a white nationalist screed, accusing the media of pushing the view, quote, “a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish, quote, ‘Holocaust‘ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of nonwhite aliens pouring across the borders.” Mr. Pearce sent that around to all of his supporters in which he later apologized for.

Russell Pearce is also famous for having been caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. No, like a real neo-Nazi. Not some sort of metaphorical Godwin‘s law-invoking neo-Nazi guy, but an actual neo-Nazi guy. See, with the swastikas?

Russell Pearce is the guy who introduced this radical immigration bill in Arizona that just became law. But if you want to meet the guy who‘s taking credit for writing the new law, that would be the gentleman named Kris Kobach.

Kris Kobach is a birther. He‘s running for a secretary of state in Kansas right now. His campaign Web site today brags, quote, “Kobach wins one in Arizona.”

The guy that helped Arizona‘s new immigration bill is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That‘s the legal arm of an immigration group that‘s called FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton. Mr. Tanton is still listed as a member of FAIR‘s board of directors.

Just for some insight into where John Tanton and FAIR were coming from seven years after he started FAIR, Mr. Tanton wrote this, quote, “To govern is to populate. Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night or will there be an explosion?” That‘s FAIR, who helped write Arizona‘s anti-immigrant law.

After John Tanton got FAIR off the ground, for nine of the first years of the group‘s existence, the group reportedly received more than $1 million in funding from something called the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as a group formed, quote, “in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition and eugenics movement.”

For the last 70 years, the Pioneer Fund has funded controversial research about race and intelligence, essentially aimed at proving the racial superiority of white people. The group‘s original mandate was to promote the genes of those, quote, “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.”

John Tanton‘s organization, FAIR, which, again, claims credit for writing Arizona‘s new immigrant law, John Tanton‘s FAIR was long bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund—which actually makes sense after you read some more of Mr. Tanton‘s writings. Quote, “I‘ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority and a clear one at that.”

In 1997, John Tanton told the “Detroit Free Press” that America will soon be overrun by illegal immigrants, quote, “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” Defecating is the problem, I guess.

Again, this genius is the guy whose group is behind Arizona‘s new radical immigration law. They take credit for writing it. FAIR is bragging about having, quote, “assisted Senator Russell Pearce in drafting the language” of his Senate bill.

In drafting that language, FAIR may have slipped a little something special in there for themselves. FAIR makes a living off of suing local and state governments over immigration laws. Tucked inside Article VIII of Arizona‘s new law is a provision that if groups like them win their cases, quote, a judge—sorry—a judge may order that the entity, quote, “who brought the action recover court costs and attorney fees”—which could create a nice financial boon for the formerly eugenics movement-funded, advanced the white majority, promote the genetics of white America anti-immigrant group whose attorneys helped write the new law.

Congratulations, Arizona. This thing is going to make you really, really, really famous for a really, really, really long time.

Want to learn more about the tangled web of white supremacy and anti-immigrant organizations? See this article by Leonard Zeskind published in the American Prospect from 2005. The New Nativism (excerpt): 

An emblematic example of how the unsavory pieces of this movement intersect is the career of Wayne Charles Lutton, who holds a doctorate from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. In the early 1980s, he wrote book reviews for National Review, penned articles on AIDS for Christian-right publications, and won recognition as an expert on population and immigration. At the same time, writing as Charles Lutton, he got involved with the Institute for Historical Review, a pseudo-scholarly group of Holocaust-deniers. Lutton wrote for its journal in the 1980s and '90s, mostly about military strategy, and joined the institute's advisory board in 1985. Today Lutton serves as a trustee of the New Century Foundation, the corporate shell holding a think tank known as American Renaissance, an advocate of both scientific racism and white nationalism, and he speaks frequently at its conferences.

Lutton's résumé as a highly educated flat-earther would be of little consequence here except that he also occupies this seat at one of the most significant anti-immigrant think tanks. He edits its journal, The Social Contract, and co-authored The Immigration Invasion, a 190-page paperback written in 1994. Onetime Democratic presidential aspirant Eugene McCarthy, surprisingly, wrote a two-page foreword for the book (“I recommend study of the immigration issue and of this thoughtful book to all Americans.”). The book's circulation has been so widespread — due in large measure to the financial power of Lutton's co-author and boss at the Social Contract Press, John Tanton — that it is now part of the growing movement's wallpaper.

It was Tanton who founded the anti-immigration movement's most powerful institution, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). A retired ophthalmologist once active on environmental issues, his interest in immigration was marked in the beginning by an explicitly racial argument. “To govern is to populate,” Tanton wrote in 1986. “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Between 1982 and 1994, it received more than $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. A little-known foundation created in 1937, the Pioneer Fund likes to benignly describe its origins in “the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.” In the late 1930s, though, it frankly admired Hitler. Today, it still bankrolls groups such as the aforementioned American Renaissance and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) in Virginia. As fair has attempted to develop a more mainstream persona, it has dropped the Pioneer Fund as a funding source. FAIR's executive director, Dan Stein, has repeatedly denied that any racial animus motivates its activities. But the federation has kept Tanton on its corporate board of directors.

In addition, FAIR's political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, routinely receives significant contributions from Tanton and his wife. FAIR's PAC has contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for and against candidates since 1999. In 2000, it spent more than $30,000 against Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, an Arab American, who lost that general election. Not surprisingly, it has also given Representative Tancredo $15,000 over the years, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Buried in those documents is a disclosure that the PAC had Peter Gemma on its payroll doing clerical work. Gemma is a denizen of Holocaust-denial meetings and other hardcore anti-Semitic venues, according to Devin Burghart, the author of numerous reports on anti-immigrant groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago. Gemma apparently did not make any of the money decisions at FAIR's PAC, but his presence is another indicator of the shark-infested waters that politicians like Tancredo swim in.

While FAIR has the biggest footprint on Capitol Hill, the AICF possesses the largest list of donors among the think tanks that provide literature and ideas to local groups. It has also received $180,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund. But its main source of funds is an immense donor base: more than 400,000 names of contributors who give $5 or more, according to documents provided by the Center for New Community. The donor list legally belongs to American Immigration Control Foundation NC, one of three corporations that make up this particular mini-empire.

Notably, the AICF is heavily interlaced with the Council of Conservative Citizens. The lineal descendant of the '60s-era white Citizens Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens revived itself in the '90s with campaigns for the Confederate flag and against immigration. It stays away from explicit anti-Semitism and describes itself as a “white separatist” group rather than “white nationalist.” This distinction is without a difference — particularly given the arguments its leadership have made for a genetically determined notion of American nationalism. Trent Lott was forced to disassociate himself from the council once his ties to the group became public.

The Council of Conservative Citizens is heavily linked with several anti-immigrant groups, including the AICF. One AICF board member, Brent Nelson, also sits as director of the council's foundation. President of the AICF's board from 1993–95, the now-deceased Sam Francis edited the council's tabloid until this year and otherwise served as its commanding philosopher-general. And the aforementioned Wayne Lutton, editor of Social Contract and occupant of Holocaust-denial circles, serves on the Council of Conservative Citizens' editorial advisory board.

Although not cut from a single party-line cookie cutter, each of these personalities connects other anti-immigrant groups to the Council of Conservative Citizens. And on significant occasions these links extend into the electoral process and policy making. Consider Arizona's Proposition 200 and Virginia Abernethy.

Dr. Virginia Deane Abernethy, a retired professor from Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine and author of several books on population and environment, sits on the board of two organizations with immigration concerns. She is yet another highly educated professional serving on the Council of Conservative Citizens editorial advisory board and a frequent featured speaker at the council's meetings.

Proposition 200 requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote or when signing up for state welfare benefits. It passed with 56 percent of the vote in the Arizona Legislature. More tightly written than California's Proposition 187, the Arizona referendum has survived court challenges to date and is likely to inspire similar statewide initiatives. Brought to the ballot by an organization known as Protect Arizona Now, campaign-finance report forms show that it received in-kind contributions totaling $600,000 from the Federation for American Immigration Reform — which essentially underwrote the petition's signature-gathering process. But when the Protect Arizona Now committee selected a chair for its national advisory board, it did not pick someone from FAIR. Instead, it chose Abernethy, according to the Center for New Community, which issued a special report on her selection. “With charges of racism already swirling around I-200 … [Protect Arizona Now] has taken the surprising step of choosing a leading figure in the white supremacist movement,” the center wrote.

When questioned about her views, Abernethy told The Arizona Republic that she was a “white separatist,” a term used by white nationalists when they want to avoid the ugly implications of the supremacist label. She added, “We're saying that each ethnic group is often happier with its own kind.” What did Protect Arizona Now's founder say when asked by the paper? That Abernethy is “considered the grande dame of the anti-immigration movement.”

In response to the controversy, FAIR issued a press release that read, “FAIR, and everyone fair represents, categorically denies and repudiates Abernethy's repulsive separatist views.” The repudiation did not extend to FAIR's own cooperation with white nationalists, however, which goes far beyond acceptance of Pioneer Fund monies.