John Tanton

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John Tanton is a retired ophthalmologist, who has long been involved in natural resources conservation. He is past editor and current publisher of The Social Contract. He says that this interest led him to concern about the effects, on the environment, of uncontrolled population growth, and he has become involved in groups concerned with immigration into the United States. Some groups, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), say he goes well beyond ecology and into restrictive immigration, nativism and even white nationalism. [1] SPLC, however, is not without criticism for its own political activities. [2]

Conservation

He was national President of Zero Population Growth from 1975 to 1977 and was Chairman of its Immigration Study Committee (1973-1975); Chairman of the Sierra Club National Population Committee (1971-1975).

In the foreword to the biography of Tanton and his wife Mary Lou, former Colorado governor Richard Lamm observes, "the Tantons, years before other environmentalists, saw a nations demographic future has changed from a unalterable given to an alterable variable — from something we blindly inherit, to something we determine. [3]

SPLC said his conversion came in 1975, after he read a novel, The Camp of the Saints, written in Frenchman Jean Raspail and describing an invasion of the white, Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees. "Their [Third World] 'huddled masses' cast longing eyes on the apparent riches of the industrial west," Tanton wrote in 1975. "The developed countries lie directly in the path of a great storm."[1]

Organizations

While the SPLC says he has formed a number of organizations, some of which they designate (+) hate groups:[1]

  • American Immigration Control Foundation AICF, 1983, funded
  • American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together 1992, funded
  • California Coalition for Immigration Reform CCIR, 1994, funded
  • Californians for Population Stabilization 1996, funded (founded separately in 1986)
  • Center for Immigration Studies CIS, 1985, founded and funded
  • Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR, 1979, founded and funded
  • NumbersUSA; 1996, founded and funded
  • Population-Environment Balance; 1973, joined board in 1980
  • Pro English; 1994, founded and funded
  • ProjectUSA; 1999, funded
  • The Social Contract Press 1990, founded and funded
  • U.S. English; 1983, founded and funded; seeks to make English the official language of the United States; headed 1987-1988 by Linda Chavez who resigned over prejudice against Hispanics and Catholics, although she still supports the basic policy
  • U.S. Inc.; 1982, founded and funded

SPLC describes his key efforts as involving three complementary organizations:[4]

Positions

The Anti-Defamation League said that in 1997, he told the Detroit Free Press that if the borders are not secured, America will be overrun by people “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” They described The Social Contract as " an anti-immigration journal whose Website links to a number of extremist sites, including VDare, a Website that publishes racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant articles. In fact, the Spring 2008 issue of The Social Contract is devoted entirely to reprinting material that originally appeared on VDare. An article in the Spring 2007 issue of the journal lauds Sam Francis, a deceased white supremacist, as a “formidable and articulate champion.”

The Social Contract also links to American Border Patrol, an anti-Hispanic border vigilante group whose leader, Glenn Spencer, claimed that the Mexican government is “sponsoring the invasion of the United States with hostile intent,” and the Minutemen (anti-immigrant), a loose network of local chapters around the country, whose primary goal is to keep undocumented immigrants from Mexico out of the United States. [5]

References