FAIR Embraces Racist Founder
Despite John Tantonâs long, documented , Dan Stein, the president of the (FAIR), called the founder of his organization a âRenaissance manâ of wide-ranging âintellectâ in a Washington Post published today.
Itâs hard, of course, for Stein to distance himself from Tanton. After all, Tanton started the organization in 1979 and is still a member of the groupâs board of directors. But since the full extent of Tantonâs racist views have been exposed in recent years, Stein hasnât talked about the founderâs ideas much. But now he is.
Stein told the Post that attacks on Tanton âare out of context and âsimply do not reflect the true character of the man.â But itâs hard to understand how.
Over the decades, Tanton has repeatedly described contemporary immigrants as inferior. He has questioned the âeducabilityâ of Latinos and written that "for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." In a letter to Roy Beck, head of Tanton wondered âwhether the minorities who are going to inherit California ⌠can run an advanced society?â
It doesnât stop there. Tanton has corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and the leading white nationalist thinkers of the era. He introduced key FAIR leaders to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist group set up to encourage "race betterment," at a 1997 meeting at a private club. He wrote a major funder to encourage her to read the work of a radical anti-Semitic professor â to "give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life" â and suggested that the entire FAIR board discuss the professor's theories on the Jews. He idolized a principal architect of the Immigration Act of 1924 (instituting a national origin quota system that dramatically favored whites over people of color and barred Asian immigration), a rabid anti-Semite whose pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was indicted for sedition in 1942.
Based on an investigation of Tantonâs views and those of his organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (ĂŰĚŇ´ŤĂ˝) began listing FAIR as a hate group in 2007. Steinâs defense of Tanton shows one more reason they deserve the label.