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The following is a sampling of materials made available at the Oregonians For Immigration Reform meeting of August 24, 2008. What does it say about any organization, that its most sophisticated theoretical material comes from racist and white supremacist authors? Predictably, OFIR vice-president Rick Hickey loudly proclaimed that his organization was “not racist” during the same meeting.
America Extinguished: Mass Immigration and the Disintegration of American Culture – Samuel T. Francis (2002, Americans for Immigration Control, Inc.)
Overview: This is a collection of newspaper columns by Samuel T. Francis dating from 1998 to 2001.
Sample quote: About California, “If European-Americans are no longer the majority in the state, they will no longer be able to define the civilizational framework of the state; and if they no longer define the civilizational framework of the state, other races and people will rush into the vacuum to define it themselves.” (p. 141)
About the author: Samuel T. Francis (1947 – 2005) was a paleoconservative writer and theorist who became deeply involved within the “racial creepiness” [1] of the white supremacist right during the last fifteen years of his life (the period of the writings within this collection). When Jared Taylor began his racist and pro-eugenics American Renaissance journal in 1990, Francis was an early supporter. [2] By 1993, Francis was writing for the Citizens Informer, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The CCC is a white nationalist group whose lineage traces back to the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 60s, and whose self-proclaimed purpose is to “advocat[e] against minorities and racial integration.” [3]
In 1995, Francis received a pay cut from his employers at the right-wing Washington Times, after he wrote a tasteless article attacking the Southern Baptist convention, which had apologized for its past relationship to slavery. Francis was fired from the Times later the same year, after his racist statements to the 1994 American Renaissance conference were made public. [4]
As well as his involvement with the CCC’s Citizen’s Informer (which he edited from 1999 until his death) and American Renaissance, Francis was a frequent contributor to the nativist Middle American News and the VDARE website, as well as an associate editor at the racist and anti-Semitic journal The Occidental Quarterly. [5] By the time of his death, Francis was considered by some as the most important thinker on the radical right.
About the publisher: Americans for Immigration Control, Inc. portrays itself as “the nation's largest grassroots lobby for immigration reform.” Its president, Robert H. Goldsborough, is an anti-Semitic author who used to be aligned with the US Council for World Freedom, the American branch of the World Anti-Communist League (itself linked to Latin American death squads and former Nazis.)
Americans for Immigration Control, Inc. works closely with the American Immigration Control Foundation as well as Americans for Immigration Control, NC. I’ll provide more information on these organizations later during this series.
Immigration and the End of Self-Government – Louis T. March (1999, Representative Government Press)
Overview: In this short volume, the author argues that immigration is part of a “process of spiritual and cultural impoverishment that begets corrupt government” (p. v). March worries that the “constitutional republic” will become a “historical curiosity” (p. xi) unless the country swings towards the far-right on immigration matters.
Sample quote: “The most serious flaws of current immigration policy are its lax enforcement and anti-European bias, which have allowed a peaceful penetration of the U.S. from throughout the world. Most of the incoming peoples have little in common with the host population.” (ps. vii – viii)
About the author: Louis T. March sits on the National Board of Directors for the Carrying Capacity Network [6] alongside fellow racist Virginia Abernethy. Both he and Abernethy have been active within the Council of Conservative Citizens. [7] The author has also written another book, The Great Betrayal: The Elite's War on Middle America, in collaboration with Brent A. Nelson (more about Nelson in the next installment of this series).
About the publisher: Representative Government Press is the publishing wing of the Representative Government Education Foundation, of which March is the president. The press has published several other anti-immigrant titles, including Samuel Francis’ Ethnopolitics: Immigration, Race, and the American Political Future.
Stay tuned for more prejudiced print-matter next time!
NOTES:
[1] http://www. americasfuture. org/doublethink/2007/01/the-castaway/ Although Michael Brendan Dougherty’s article comes from a conservative perspective that is far too forgiving of Francis, this piece still provides a useful overview of Francis’ life and ideas.
[2] http://www. amren. com/mtnews/archives/2005/02/sam_francis.php
[3] See site information here.
[4] Ibid, note 1.
[5] http://www. vdare. com/taylor/080121_intro.htm
[6] http://www. carryingcapacity. org/whatis.html
[7] This connection is documented in Center for New Community, Hostile Takeover: Race, Immigration and the Sierra Club (Special Report, Summer 2004) ps. 4-5 (.pdf available online here.)
