On Oct. 2, The Social Contract Press held its 35th Writers’ Workshop, a gathering for bigots to hone their networking and communications skills amid the cacophonous prattling of anti-immigrant and white nationalist panel discussions.
Founded in 1990, The Social Contract Press (TSCP) is a project of John Tanton, the chief architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement and a prominent white nationalist. The press has published a number of inarguably racist books, including Camp of the Saints by French nationalist Jean Raspail, and releases a quarterly journal, The Social Contract. The latter has featured work by such nativists as Garrett Hardin, an ecologist renowned for his harsh population control advocacy, and Marcus Epstein, a young protégé of Pat Buchanan who was arrested in 2007 for a racially motivated karate-chop assault on a black woman.
TSCP throws the pretty-much-yearly Writers’ Workshop for its cohorts in the anti-immigration lobby and its broader base of bigots. It has even gone as far as to invite Jared Taylor, founder and editor of the American Renaissance journal, which is known for its blatantly racist morsels, like this one: “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization – any kind of civilization – disappears.” This year, its guests included:
- Lou Barletta (R-PA-11): a US Representative from Pennsylvania and former mayor of Hazleton, a small city about 75 miles north of Philadelphia. During his tenure as a city official, Barletta worked closely with Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach –author of Arizona’s SB 1070 – to pass anti-immigrant legislation there. Arguing that immigrants create a strain on Hazleton’s already meager economy, the resultant legislation landed the humble city in a legal quagmire that cost it $2.4 million.
- Edwin Rubenstein: a Michigan economist who frequently contributes to the anti-immigrant blog VDARE.com. Oddly identified as an employee of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nativist think-tank founded by John Tanton, Rubenstein is best known for his various collaborations with VDARE’s founder, the white nationalist Peter Brimelow—who has also attended the Writers’ Workshop in the past. Together, these two have penned a virtual lexicon of economically nationalistic arguments, faulting immigration for America’s ills in print both on the VDARE blog and over the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch site.
- Pat Choate: another economic nationalist who sits on the board of directors for the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR is the first anti-immigrant group founded by John Tanton, and has done more than any other organization to halt the ingress of foreign nationals to the United States. To advance its nativist agenda, FAIR has engaged in a number of contentious activities, including its receipt of money from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that has a history of promoting the genetic superiority of white European-Americans.
- D.A. King: founder and president of the Georgia anti-immigrant group Dustin Inman Society (DIS). King is a state contact for FAIR and has a history of racially insensitive remarks, which includes likening a pro-immigrant event to a “Mexican village” and stating that his first act “on a safe return home [from it] was to take a shower.” DIS and King have a history of collaborating with bigots, including associates of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that has called blacks a “retrograde species of humanity,” and members of the neo-confederate League of the South, a group that has referred to slavery as “God ordained” and claimed that “the Negroes are better off today because of it.”
After 35 such events, the unsavory crowd at TSCP’s Writers’ Workshop shouldn’t surprise anyone; it’s just another day-in-the-life of the nativist lobby.