by Jesse Sanes
Earlier this summer Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) founder John Tanton’s name strangely disappeared from its board of directors amid the controversy surrounding the exposing of his ties to the broader white nationalist movement.
However, not eleven weeks after John Tanton’s dismissal from his own organization, he reappeared on the organization‘s website, now listed on its board of advisers. His reappearance confirmed FAIR’s inability to separate themselves from Tanton and the white nationalist politics that he and others have imbued the organization with for decades. Yet as John Tanton’s name sits on the list of FAIR‘s board of advisers, it sits along side another name that firmly plants FAIR’s roots in the camp of hard-line nativist groups.
That name is Frosty Wooldridge, who recently has been busy regurgitating some tired anti-immigrant talking points.
Frosty’s writing usually tends to revolve around race based fear-mongering and US population statistics that are presented alongside random statements about economic collapse and ecological apocalypse. But, very recently he opened a vein of rhetoric that’s particularly infected, even for him.
In a blog post titled “Immigration‘s Onslaught: Endless Refugees,” Frosty aims his cross-hairs at society’s most vulnerable and disenfranchised, reaming the poor and people of color—most specifically, the “boatloads” of earthquake victims in Haiti:
“If you haven’t noticed, the tiny island of Haiti houses 9 million starving, homeless, illiterate and destitute people. They have cut down 98 percent of their trees. Take a hint of their future from the Eastern Island metaphor.”
This is an ill-metaphor he then clumsily points at the African-American Muslim communities of America, using Haiti’s disasters as a que to unroll a nativist prophecy of sorts:
“As I walked the streets where Ben Franklin strolled, I felt like I was walking in another country dominated by Burka-wearing Muslim women along with a majority of third world immigrants. Philadelphia is no longer a city inhabited with Americans. It’s a mishmash of immigrants.”
Frosty also goes on to advocate for abstaining from aiding the victims of the recent famine in the Horn of Africa:
“For every one of those cute little starving children that you see on the TV screen, if we feed them, each will sire another 20 just like himself.”
So, why would FAIR be eager or even willing to be associated with such wild ignorance, such xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric? Whose interests at FAIR are being served by publicly allying the organization with this “environmentalist?”
The answer, clearly, is that FAIR has chosen its stance: one of racial prejudice, xenophobia, and extremist politics.
This is a stance that many Americans are proud to deny floor space to, yet such groups are willing to fight for places in legitimate political forums. That in mind, bigoted groups like FAIR, the Tanton Network in whole, and other groups who are affiliated with the Tanton Network – the likes of Council of Conservative Citizens, VDARE, and others – are marginalized voices in this country for good reason. And we must never forget those reasons.
These groups and their followers don’t stand for democracy. They stand to maintain America’s current socio-racial majority and little else.