Joyce Mucci, FAIR’s Southern Field Representative
As the southern field representative for the anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Joyce Mucci coordinates activities in a total of 18 states. One of those activities is lobbying training, and one of those states is Texas.
And so tonight, September 24, Mucci has been asked to host such a training for NE Tarrant Tea Party in Southlake, TX, at the Grace Community Church (location listed as tentative). According to the group’s website Mucci spoke to them “Back in June,” adding, “At the end of her talk she metioned that she does lobbying training, and we all jumped on that!”
Considering Mucci’s role at the two events and their temporal proximity, Mucci very well might be tapping NE Tarrant Tea Party to serve either formally or informally as a “state contact group” for FAIR, which coordinates with around 70 such groups nationally in official, reciprocal capacities. This provides us with yet another example of a grassroots group of some Conservative variety soliciting the long-established, well-organized nativist movement for its expertise, guidance, and access to its network of vast political and financial connections.
Mucci herself serves as head of one such state contact group. On FAIR’s website Mucci is listed as the point-contact for the Mid America Immigration Reform Coalition out of Kansas City, Missouri. She has worked for FAIR since 2007, and like many of her co-workers and colleagues within the John Tanton Network of anti-immigrant groups, Mucci has written for the white nationalist website VDARE.com.
VDARE is edited by Peter Brimelow, a long-time “intellectual” within that movement. Just as a sampling of VDARE’s wares, after the mass-murders at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Brimelow virtually excused the neo-Nazi shooter by querying rhetorically, “What are Sikhs doing in Wisconsin anyway?” Brimelow couldn’t even be bothered to get the name of the town right, calling it “Oak Grove.” In a fundraising drive (still underway at time of writing) that sees VDARE bounce to a simple splash page, Brimelow encourages us to:
“Forget the Hispanic Hype [sic]-the untold story of this campaign is that Romney is doing poorly among whites-the group known, until the 1965 Immigration Act, as ‘Americans’.”
Similarly, Dan Stein, FAIR’s current president who has worked for the group in some capacity of leadership since 1982, once bemoaned the 1965 Act as “a great way to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance and hubris,” further illustrating it as “a form of revengism [sic].”
VDARE recently called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration; similarly, The Social Contract, the white nationalist journal founded by FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, in which numerous FAIR employees and associates have published, called for such a moratorium back in 2010.
These are all sentiments Mucci would most likely echo, as in her VDARE piece she writes in passionate defense of the anti-immigrant Proposition 200 in Arizona. In a compact collection of keystrokes, Mucci challenges Tamor Jacoby’s criticisms of Proposition 200 by simultaneously denigrating LGBT folks and immigrants:
“Jacoby frets over whether Arizona might be perceived as ‘off-puttingly xenophobic’ if Proposition 200 passes.
I can assure her that her fears are misplaced. In my own state of Missouri, we determined last month that marriage between a man and woman is the only arrangement our state will recognize. Has our decision caused us to be perceived as ‘off-puttingly homophobic’?
Maybe. But, frankly, we don’t care.” [All emphasis is Mucci’s own.]
Sadly for Mucci, FAIR, and VDARE, millions and millions of Americans do care about the human and civil rights of all individuals. Which is why special attention must be paid whenever grassroots group seek out the expertise of established anti-immigrant flagships like FAIR.
Certianly not everyone involved with the larger, often politically slippery Tea Party movement can be labeled a bigot-to do so would be irresponsible. That in mind, focus must brought to bear when certain individuals and their local or state groups latch onto activists working at the national level who have proven track records of bigotry-Mucci’s VDARE piece quoted above was published on October 5, 2004. As mentioned, and even with such publications “out there for all to see,” FAIR still hired Mucci 3 years later.
At any level of reciprocity, such collaborations should never be ignored.