Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
White Nationalist
Tanton Memo of the Month – The Promotion of Eugenics
01 year ago
This month’s Tanton Memo of the Month focuses on John Tanton’s eugenics project, Society for the Advancement of Genetics Education (SAGE).
In the mid 1990s, John Tanton, the founder of a host of anti-immigrant organizations, including NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies, decided to develop a platform to educate the public on eugenics without using the term “eugenics.”
Eugenics was used to justify slavery in the U.S. and Nazi Germany’s crimes against Jews, and Tanton recognized that the American public had come to reject pseudo-scientific arguments that certain racial or ethnic groups were inferior to others.
To hide his promotion of eugenics, Tanton decided to use the word “genetics” instead of “eugenics,” and to focus on plant life as a gateway topic to promote his belief in inherent biological IQ differences. These racialized arguments are still popular in many of today’s white nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations.
In a letter to Dr. Robert K. Graham of the Foundation for the Advancement of Man, Tanton said the project would emphasize:
“mankind’s use of eugenic principles on plants and the lower animals as a way to condition the public to the idea of genetic manipulation, and raise the question of its application to the human race. In fact, we report on ways it is currently being done, but under the term genetics rather than eugenics.”
Graham is the founder of the controversial project, “Repository for Germinal Choice,” a sperm bank which gained infamy by trying to only recruit Nobel Prize winners as donors. Only one Noble Prize winner ever admitted to donating his sperm and that was William Shockley, who was outspoken about his belief that American Blacks were of low intelligence. All of Graham’s donors were white.
Tanton’s activism with regard to racial eugenics is based on the disturbing belief that those identified as the most productive “gene pool of the human stock” should be the ones with access to and control over scarce resources.
The same American eugenics movement of the early 20th century that informed Nazi Germany’s practices also advocated against immigration in the 1920s. It is believed that eugenicists helped pass laws that ranked immigrants based on ethnicity – at the time Nordic and Anglo Europeans being the most desirable and Asian immigrants the least. Eugenics movements have found genetic fault with nearly every physical trait and ethnic group outside of the “Nordic race”. These have been considered the “undesirable” immigrant masses over the past 100 years.
Today’s anti-immigrant movement focuses on criminalizing, detaining and deporting primarily non-white immigrants.
While it’s hard to find anything left of SAGE’s website, www.genetics-ed.org, the goals and objectives were clear. The project would start “formally as a membership organization, doubtless with a self-perpetuating board to help guarantee that it stays on course” and would attempt “to reach the young, the well-educated, and the affluent.”
Tanton’s obsession with eugenics shines a light on his motivations for associating with white nationalists and controversial anti-immigrant views.
*The John Tanton letters and memos are a public collection at the Bentley Historical Library.
Anti-immigrant Network Uses Faith to Mask Hateful Agenda
01 year ago
by Jill Garvey
in American Free Press, American Renaissance, Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy, Charles Martel, Conservative Political Action Conference, Council Of Conservative Citizens, Father Patrick Bascio, Immigration, Immigration Policy, James C Russell, John Tanton, Politics, Wayne Lutton, White Nationalist, Willis Carto
Fr. Bascio at Tanton event
The John Tanton Network has debuted its newest spin-off group. This time, instead of targeting environmentalists or progressives, they are trying to win over faithful Americans to their anti-immigrant agenda.
The group is called Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy (CMIP). The public face of the organization includes a priest who, keeping with the Tanton Network’s history, has ties to controversial organizations like American Free Press – founded by notorious holocaust denier Willis Carto, and the white nationalist journal, The Social Contract, founded by John Tanton.
In fact, Social Contract’s bigot-in-chief, Wayne Lutton, personally helped Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy (CMIP) get started at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. this past Friday. In addition to releasing racist publications, Wayne Lutton is also a Board of Director for the Charles Martel Society, an anti-Semitic organization that publishes the Occidental Quarterly. Lutton was also active with the overtly racist magazine American Renaissance and the flagship publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The Council of Conservative Citizens is the reconstituted, segregationist White Citizens’ Councils.
Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy, which is also staffed by James C. Russell, may appear at first glance to be run by a few harmless, Christian academics who just happen to have a lot in common with the Tanton Network. However, CMIP has been strategically orchestrated by Tanton’s anti-immigrant movement to distract the public from some of its decidedly un-Catholic activities.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time James Russell or Father Patrick Bascio have dabbled in hate.
James Russell’s book, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation, I found was cited by several racist online publications, including Vdare.com and The Occidental Quarterly. Coincidentally, one of the only gushing reviews of Father Bascio’s book, On the immortality of Illegal Immigration, came from VDARE.com’s Brenda Walker. VDARE is named for Virginia Dare, allegedly the first white child born in the U.S. Brenda Walker is a prolific anti-immigrant blogger who uses racist and xenophobic outlets to spread her views. Walker was a featured presenter at last year’s “Preserving Western Civilization” conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The annual conference gathers a group of racist academics and anti-immigrant activists who focus on how the “massive influx” of “third-world immigrants” allegedly threatens American and European cultural values, as well as the dangers of Islam, and alleged racial differences in intelligence.
In 2009, Father Bascio’s book was sold on Amazon.com under the publisher American Free Press – the same publisher that persistently peddled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories post 9/11. Now it is sold as a revised edition under a different publisher. But the first few pages are filled with praise from a veritable all-star list of Tanton Network players. Otis Graham, an old friend of John Tanton and a board member for both organizations founded by Tanton, FAIR and Center for Immigration Studies, calls Bascio’s book “invaluable”. Leah Durant, the head of another Tanton front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform, says Bascio makes a “compelling case”. The book lists Vernon Briggs as a Cornell University professor, but conveniently omits that he is a board member with Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and The Social Contract. Maybe that’s because the book’s other admirers include CIS fellow James R. Edwards, board chairman Peter Nunez, and former director David Simcox.
John Tanton, the founder of FAIR, has financially supported platforms to debate pseudo-scientific research (racial eugenics) purporting to show that African Americans and Latinos are mentally inferior to whites because of their genetic makeup. While the false science of racial eugenics lost respectability after the crimes of Nazi Europe in the 1940s, Tanton still clings to these beliefs. In The Case for Passive Eugenics, Tanton does not overtly distance himself from Adolf Hitler’s application of eugenics to “cleanse” the German population. He writes instead that “Hitler’s reign in Nazi Germany did little to advance the discussion of eugenics among sensitive persons.”
Then of course, there is long-time FAIR representative Rosanna Pulido who is well-known for her anti-catholic diatribes. As we reported in January, Pulido stated at a public forum in October 2007, “The Catholic Church is not Catholicism. It has nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible.”
Of the Catholic Church and immigration she stated at the same forum, “What better way to fill your pews and fill your offering coffers than with inviting in and giving sanctuary to illegal aliens.”
In March 2009, Pulido harshly criticized Chicago’s Cardinal George for his appeal for humanity on behalf of immigrants. She told ABC news, “Cardinal George is responsible for every illegal immigrant who dies while crossing the border coming over here because he is luring them.”
It is clear that CMIP is merely John Tanton and Co.’s latest puppet show. America’s Catholic communities have proven time and again that they reject anti-immigrant bigotry. Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy does not speak for America’s faithful.
Dept. Homeland Security Welcomes Neo-Nazi, Deports Immigrant Students
01 year ago
Janet Napolitano, the head of The Department of Homeland Security should stop the harassment of immigrant workers and students and focus on real threats. Searchlight Magazine, an anti-racist European monthly, has alerted civil rights organizations in the United States to the arrival of Nick Griffin. Griffin is the leader of the British National Party (BNP), a racial extremist political organization based in the United Kingdom.
Griffin, scheduled to speak at the now canceled white nationalist American Renaissance conference, will be appearing February 18 at Michigan State University. The student group sponsoring the event, Sons of Liberty, also states in its media release that Griffin “is expected to make an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C.”
Despite the public overhaul of the BNP over the last decade, Griffin has been clear that his public distancing from overt racism and bigotry is nothing more than a façade, telling a group of U.S. neo-Nazis in 2001 that “My politics have not changed”.
Griffin became an organizer for the National Front, a neo-Nazi organization, in 1978 and in the 1980s traveled to Libya as a guest of Muammar al-Gaddafi in order to seek funding for the organization. In the 80’s Griffin hired Roberto Fiore. Fiore was convicted in 1985 for being a member of an Italian far right terror organization that was involved in a train bombing that killed eighty- five people.
According to the website Stop the BNP, several leaders and members of the British National Party have been convicted of assaulting a police officer, hate violence, armed robbery, gang rape, and illegal weapons possession. Tony Lecomber, the BNP’s Group Development Officer, was sentenced to three years under the Explosives Act. Lecomber was sentenced to another three years in prison on the charge of “unlawful wounding” which occurred during an attack on a Jewish school teacher.”
Unsurprisingly, Griffin, no stranger to racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, was himself convicted in 1998 for inciting racial hatred. A recent comment posted by “BNP Security” to the white nationalist website American Renaissance alarmingly asks volunteers to simply just show up as “security” for Griffin’s talk. With this history one has to wonder why The Department of Homeland Security is allowing Griffin into the country. Perhaps it is too busy deporting America’s brightest and smartest.
A new documentary called Papers: the Movie tells the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. One of these students, Monica, should be worrying about which college she’ll attend and preparing to add to our nation’s brain trust, but instead she faces deportation thanks to the mixed up priorities of Homeland Security.
If you think it’s time for the Department of Homeland Security to get its priorities straight call Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security at (202) 226-2616 and let him know. For other members of the Committee on Homeland Security click here.
Janet Napolitano should listen to the American public. A recent poll shows that the majority of Texas residents oppose deportation of undocumented immigrants. Allowing neo-Nazi’s with Griffin’s history into the country while terrorizing young students like Monica only make a mockery of the Department of Homeland Security.
I suspect that Lady Liberty would be laughing at the irony. If she wasn’t so busy crying.