Comparatively longtime presidential adviser Stephen Miller has a now well-documented affinity for brazen white nationalism outlined through means like the recent publication of info about troves of his email communications by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In those emails, he — among other things — admonished a then-Breitbart staffer to check out an article in American Renaissance, whose publisher has asserted that “when blacks are left to their own devices… civilization disappears.” The Daily Beast’s Mark Potok has now outlined how Miller’s presence in the White House further constitutes the successful infiltration of D.C. by a secretive racist network whose member organizations were led by the same man, well-documented racist John Tanton.
The publication explains:
‘Miller’s views are loathsome. But Miller is both a promoter and, to some extent, a product of a much wider racist network aimed at preventing non-white immigration into the United States… the larger world of the racist Tanton network… constitutes a grave threat to rational and humane immigration policies that will continue long after Miller is gone.’
Before his recent death, Tanton led organizations like the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which often produces harshly anti-immigrant skewed “studies” about immigration and has been cited by the president. Personally, Miller spoke at a CIS awards ceremony in 2015 where he “praised staffers extravagantly,” and as recently as January 2018, he spoke to the organization yet again, this time via phone conference. In the intervening period, he used misleading figures from the organization as support for steps like Trump’s infamous Muslim ban.
Tanton’s personal white nationalism is not hidden, and he co-founded organizations like CIS, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Numbers USA, all of whose anti-immigration goals are similar — and who still operate and enjoy growing acceptance among conservatives. Nevertheless, at one point, Tanton wrote:
‘Demography is destiny. We decline to bequeath to our children minority status in their own land.’
To be clear — the land of the United States was stolen from Native Americans, but that’s a different story.
Tanton’s personal goals include the apparent re-institution of an early 1920s quota system for immigration, which discriminated against possible immigrants to the U.S. solely on the basis of their background. Although Tanton “idolized the architect of the 1924 law, John Trevor Sr.,” that man “warned of ‘diabolical Jewish control’ and distributed pro-Nazi propaganda.” Nevertheless, Tanton was a supporter. The Daily Beast explains:
“To Tanton, as he wrote to a FAIR board member, Trevor’s work should serve as ‘a guidepost to what we must follow again this time.'”
And the Trump administration has served as an incubation chamber for all of this thanks to the presence of racism purveyors like Stephen Miller.
Although at present, lots of attention remains focused on Trump’s quid pro quo scheme targeting Ukraine, he has still defined his time in office by his antagonism towards immigrant communities anyway. At present, the Trump administration is pursuing taking over private land from Americans along the southern border to put up the president’s long-sought wall. In addition, the president’s team keeps trying to dial back asylum protections when and where they can.
