In 1988, a series of memos written by known white nationalist Dr. John Tanton was leaked to the media. In those memos, Tanton wrote on the need for a European majority nation, concerns about the strong fertility of black and brown women, and concerns about immigration and its effects on the United States. Dr. Tanton, who passed away in 2019, was a devoted member of both the U.S. English and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) groups. Tanton retained his ties to anti-immigrant and racist organizations for several years and made his views clear in his supported partnership with groups such as the Pioneer Fund, the Social Contract Press, which Dr. Tanton founded, and of books such as The Camp of the Saints which explores the destruction of Western civilization through the introduction of third world immigrants. This memo, dated October 10, 1986, is described as one of the most explicit of Dr. Tantons memos by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who has labeled groups Tanton is involved in including FAIR as a “hate group” under “hate watch.”
In this memo, Dr. John Tanton posed multiple questions on the political consequences, cultural implications, conservation and demography, jurisprudence, education, race/class relations, economic consequences, retirement, religious consequences, and the Mexican border. Tanton expressed many concerns about a future of apartheid in California, political downfall caused by Latin American immigrants from corrupt countries, whether Hispanics can be educated, and drugs at the Mexican border. Dr. Tanton makes clear his belief of the inferiority of non-white groups. In this memo, many stereotypes are echoed in material dating all the way back to the first invasions in Mexico and across Latin America. The idea of Latinos as lazy, dirty, and uneducated is not new and continues to be perpetuated to this day. By looking at Dr. John Tanton’s memo, we see how this memo reflects attitudes in the larger United States history as well as how present these ideas are in the present day.
Teitelbaum’s phrase, “A region of low-native fertility combined with high immigration of high-fertility people does not make for compatible trend lines!”
Finally, this is all obviously dangerous territory, but the problem is not going to go away. Who can open it up? The question is analogous to Nixon’s opening of China: he could do it, Hubert Humphrey could not have. Similarly, the issues we’re touching on here must be broached by liberals. The conservatives simply cannot do it without tainting the whole subject.
I think the answers to many of these questions depend on how well people assimilate. This, in turn, depends heavily on whether the parent society has made up its mind that assimilation is a good thing (we’re confused on this point now), whether it works at assimilating newcomers (as Canada and Australia do by following them longitudinally), whether the people coming want to assimilate (not all of them do), and, even if all the factors are favorable, whether the numbers are small enough so as not to overwhelm the assimilative process.
Good luck to us all!
Tanton, John. “Witan Memo III.” Southern Poverty Law Center. October 1986. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/witan-memo-iii.