Submitted by Brian Tashman on May 12, 2011 - 10:59am
Earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference the group Youth for Western Civilization hosted a panel on immigration with Congressman Lou Barletta (R-PA), former Congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Virgil Goode (R-VA), and political activist Bay Buchanan. The panel featured inflammatory and biting anti-immigrant rhetoric, along with warnings about the imminent destruction of America.
The head of YWC's Liberty University chapter proudly took part in an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim conference with Neo-Fascist European groups:
In the march though the streets of Cologne, despite threats, attacks and futile attempts by radical German anarchists, socialists and communists, YWC, Pro-Cologne, Vlaams Belang, the Freedom Party of Austria, Die Republikaner and Bloc Identitaire of France marched in solidarity with other European patriots from Italy and against the Islaminization of Europe and for the support of freedom of speech.
While these groups may be unknown to an American audience, they are far-right Neo-Fascist organizations:
• Die Republikaner, or The Republicans, is a German political party founded by a former Waffen-SS officer Franz Schönhuber that trumpets “right-wing extremism.” According to the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, the party’s “main agitation is directed against foreigners and against what they refer to as the africanization and islamization of German society.”
• The National Democratic Party was founded by former members of the Neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party and uses the “practice of mobilizing skinheads and neo-Nazis.” The party also has close ties to Neo-Nazi groups in America and Europe and Holocaust-deniers. After President Obama’s election, the group said his victory represents “the American alliance of Jews and Negroes,” “a declaration of war,” and an “African tropical disease” under a statement entitled “Africa conquers the White House.”
• Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Interest, is a Belgian separatist party which The Economistsays “holds extreme right wing positions on many political issues.” In fact, it is the immediate successor of Vlaams Blok, which was shut down by authorities for violating the country’s Anti-Racism law.
• The Freedom Party of Austria as founded by Joerg Haider, a group with such a deep anti-Semitic past that when it entered government Austria faced sanctions from the European Union. The Anti-Defamation League found that Haider “has consistently parried accusations of anti-Semitism” has a history of “utilizing Holocaust terminology and legitimizing Nazi policy and activities.”
• Pro-Cologne has been “watched with suspicion by the domestic intelligence agency” for its links to Neo-Nazis, according to Der Spiegel. The party was based on its opposition to the construction of mosques and is staunchly anti-Muslim.
While Rep. Bartetta is an anti-immigrant leader in his own right, should he really be working with a group that is in a coalition with Neo-Fascist political parties?
Submitted by Brian Tashman on February 11, 2011 - 6:23pm
If there is one message to take away from CPAC’s panel on immigration, it’s that White America is in serious jeopardy and may soon succumb to immigration, multiculturalism, and socialism. The panel “Will Immigration Kill the GOP?” featured former congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Virgil Goode (R-VA), Bay Buchanan of Team America PAC, and special guest Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA). The group Youth for Western Civilization sponsored the panel, and its head Kevin DeAnna was also a panelist. Youth for Western Civilization is a far-right group that regularly criticizes affinity groups on college campuses, especially those that represent black, Hispanic, LGBT, Native American, and Muslim students.
Tancredo, a star among anti-immigrant activists, started the event by claiming that he wasn’t bigoted against Latinos and that the majority of Hispanic Americans support him and favor Arizona’s draconian SB-1070 law. “I have a lot of people who have Hispanic last names who support me,” Tancredo told the jam-packed room, “I speak for most Americans.” The former congressman, who in 2010 received just 37% of the vote in his bid for governor of Colorado, claimed that the GOP should embrace his nativist politics because immigration is the “ultimate economic issue,” and even claimed that Hispanics supported him over his Democratic opponent, Governor John Hickenlooper.
Responding to a questioner who believed that Democrats would drop their support of immigration reform if immigrants were stripped of their right to vote, Tancredo said that even immigrants without voting rights still pose a grave danger to the country.
“No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization.
Not to be out done, Goode maintained that immigration in general “will not only kill the GOP but will kill the United States of America.” He went on to say that Democratic politicians support undocumented immigration only in order to introduce “socialized medicine” and gain future voters. The Virginia firebrand maintained that the majority of Americans favor his fervently anti-immigrant views, and wanted every state to emulate Arizona’s SB-1070. He asked, “Who could really be against doing away with birthright citizenship?”
Both Tancredo and Goode agreed that U.S. citizens are now being treated unfairly as undocumented immigrants reap all the benefits of American society.
Tancredo claimed that undocumented immigrants “get better health care in detention centers than some of my constituents,” and Goode argued that “today, being a citizen means you’re second class.”
Later, Bay Buchanan said that Tancredo and his dogmatic Nativism represent a model increasingly followed by Republican politicians, including Sen. John McCain, once an advocate of reform, who she said became a “Tancredo disciple when he ran for reelection.” Buchanan also pointed to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s reelection to demonstrate that anti-immigrant politics can lead to Republican success at the polls, and said that every state should have a governor like Brewer.
DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization gave a much darker outlook on the success of the Republican Party, and the country as a whole. He said that the “system is stacked against” the anti-immigrant movement, maintaining that an alliance of corporate and Republican elites is preventing the party from moving farther to the right on the issue of immigration. He warned of the rising tide of multiculturalism, especially among young people. “The Left gets power from multiculturalism,” DeAnna said, and “when you lose the culture you lose the policy too.”
He also argued that the GOP is “dead” in California because of the rising population of Latinos, and said that the Democratic Party and their allies in organized labor want further immigration to strengthen their electoral clout.
Rep. Lou Barletta was the final speaker before questions, and he discussed how he saved the city of Hazleton as mayor by cracking down on employers and landlords who do business with undocumented immigrants. “I stood up for the rule of law,” Barletta said, even though his anti-immigrant ordinance was declared unconstitutional. The congressman has a long history of partnering with Nativist groups, and he asked the audience to support him as he pledged to take his case to the Supreme Court.
But while many panelists like Tancredo and Buchanan began their speeches by saying that they were absolutely not bigoted or racist in any way, participants at the event asked many racially-tinged questions.
A questioner asked Goode how to “control immigration from the Islamic and Arab world,” and said that unless that happens there could be “more Keith Ellisons.” Ellison is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota who converted to Islam as an adult, and is not an immigrant, but Goode did write a letter to his constituents saying, “The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”
Another questioner discussed how astounded he was that “in the northeast, majority-Caucasian communities” tend to back “support ‘amnesty,’” or at least pro-reform politicians. He asked the panelists how he could turn more “Caucasian communities” against amnesty, and Buchanan assured him that even voters in Massachusetts oppose reform efforts like the DREAM Act.
One member of the audience wondered if Congress could “defund the National Council of La Raza,” a Latino civil rights group, which he said was “just like the Ku Klux Klan.” Goode appeared to agree, and demanded that Congress end the organization’s funding. Asking if “it’s possible that [American] society devolves into South Africa,” one questioner discussed the declining population rate of “European Americans” and floated the idea of ethnic groups living separately. While he directed the question towards Barletta, the congressman ignored the question.
Evidently, while the panel’s speakers see unrepentant Nativism and immigrant-bashing as the way for the GOP’s electoral success, it mainly appealed to the CPAC attendees who feared the demise of White America and the emergence of a more diverse population. All four panelists agreed that unless the Republican Party embraces their hard line anti-immigrant stance, the GOP will become inextricably weakened and the country will dissolve into multicultural dystopia.
Although the panelists all said that it wasn’t about race, it’s easy to see why many audience members thought it was.
Submitted by Miranda Blue on November 11, 2010 - 2:53pm
Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our sixth candidate profile is on Lou Barletta, America’s anti-immigrant mayor:
Those disappointed to see anti-immigrant zealot Tom Tancredo off the national political stage will find a similar one-issue firebrand in Pennsylvania congressman-elect Lou Barletta.
Barletta rose to national prominence as the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a small working class city that in 2006 enacted some of the most draconian anti-immigrant measures in the country. Hazleton’s law put tough penalties on individuals and businesses who knowingly or unknowingly did business with undocumented immigrants—it revoked for five years the business license of any business caught employing an undocumented immigrant, and slapped landlords renting to undocumented immigrants with a $1,000-a-day fine. The law also declared English the official language of Hazleton, and prohibited city officials from translating documents without permission.
When the law passed, Barletta told the Washington Post, “I will get rid of the illegal people. It's this simple: They must leave." On the day the city passed the measure, Barletta wore a bulletproof vest to illustrate his concern over crimes he said were being committed by undocumented immigrants. Statistics, however, showed that undocumented immigrants were hardly responsible for a crime wave in Hazelton: the city’s data showed that of 8,575 felonies committed in the city between 2000 and 2007, 20 had been linked to undocumented immigrants. Later, forced to admit that he had no proof of an illegal immigrant-caused crime wave, or proof that illegal immigrants were crowding Hazleton’s schools and hospitals, or even any idea how many illegal immigrants were in Hazelton, Barletta responded, “The people in my city don’t need numbers.”
After the law took effect, businesses catering to Latino residents that had revitalized Hazleton’s downtown area saw a sharp drop in business, and Latino residents reported increased hostility from white residents.
A federal judge struck down Barletta’s law in 2007, writing, "The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community." An appeals court this year upheld the ruling.
Although Barletta claimed to be defending “the legal taxpayer of any race,” he admitted that he found inspiration for the law from the website of self-described “proud nationalist” Jim Turner, who pushed a similar measure in San Bernardino, California to prevent the state from becoming, as he put it, a “Third World Cesspool.”
As copy-cat laws started to pop up in towns around the country, Barletta became a hero to anti-immigrant and nativist groups. When he ran for Congress in 2008, Barletta’s campaign received $10,920 from the Minuteman PAC, the political spending arm of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a vigilante border-patrol group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “nativist extremist.” It was the largest donation the Minuteman PAC made to a candidate that year.
In 2009, Barletta drew fire for speaking at a conference hosted by The American Cause, a group that had earlier that year released a report urging the Republican Party to not “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” and instead to put anti-immigrant policies at the forefront of the party’s strategy. The report was authored by several anti-immigrant advocates, many who had clear records of dabbling in white supremacy. The executive director of the group, and main author of the report, had even been charged with a hate crime against an African American woman. The immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice described the 2009 conference as “a forum for white nationalists to forge ties with ‘mainstream’ media commentators and conservative leaders.”
Although Barletta frames most of his politics through the lens of illegal immigration, he has also embraced Tea Party talking points on social issues, the environment, and the scope of government. In a candidates’ debate, he said his first action as a member of Congress would be to vote to repeal health care reform. He says the Affordable Care Act brought about “nationalized health care” and said it would put “life-affecting health decisions in the hands of bureaucrats,” and echoed the false claim raised by many in the Tea Party that health care reform “will take $500 billion out of Medicare." He told a forum in Pocono, "We're afraid of our government. We're afraid of what our government is going to do” and claimed on his campaign website that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are “spending our country into servitude.”
In terms of government spending, Barletta took particular issue with the comparatively miniscule $1.1 million that was spent to send members of Congress and their staffers to last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen. He claims to be a climate change skeptic, saying, “You know there's arguments on both sides. I'm not convinced that there's scientific evidence that proves that. I believe there's some that can also argue the opposite.”
When Obama created a panel to distribute recovery funds from BP’s $20 billion escrow account after the Gulf oil spill, Barletta said, “It’s exactly what the people of the Gulf don’t need – more bureaucracy.”
Barletta’s record as mayor of Hazleton doesn’t speak well, however, for his future as a fiscal problem solver: his budget for Hazleton last year hikes taxes and fees, and called for laying off government workers—including a number of police officers. As Barletta leaves office, Hazleton has the highest rate of unemployment in Pennsylvania. Despite raising taxes as Mayor of Hazleton, Barletta has signed Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge to never raise taxes in Washington.
Barletta opposes marriage equality, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, and abortion rights. He has also embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about government-run “death panels” and the imminent risk of human cloning, stating on his website, “I will oppose the efforts of some to increase or expand the protection or establishment of legal euthanasia, abortion, and human cloning. As Congress begins to tackle the issues of Medicare and health care reform, I will never support a program that results in rationing of life-saving procedures to those covered under those programs.”
In his predictably hostile response to the planned Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, he advanced the popular right-wing pseudo-historical theory of Muslim “victory mosques.”
While Barletta, it seems, will be a reliable vote for the Republican Party’s far-right wing, he’s already emerging as a leader on anti-immigrant zealotry. Two days after the election, he went on Fox News to accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of attempting to buy Hispanic votes by introducing the DREAM Act. Watch:
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on May 14, 2008 - 2:45pm
No surprise here: "Eagle Forum PAC supports the outspoken Hazleton mayor in his 11th Congressional District race against incumbent Democrat Paul Kanjorski. 'I am happy to endorse Lou Barletta,' said Eagle Forum founder and president, Phyllis Schlafly. 'Lou's championing of the illegal immigration issue has been truly inspiring. His fight to protect his community from the crime and overcrowding caused by illegal aliens highlights the need for stronger enforcement of our immigration laws.'"
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on July 27, 2007 - 10:29am
As the judge wrote: "The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community."
Submitted by Anonymous on March 16, 2007 - 11:20am
Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta made national headlines last year when he pushed through an ordinance cracking down on undocumented immigrants, not only setting penalties for employers who hire them but also fining landlords who rent to them $1,000 per day. “Illegal immigrants are destroying the city,” declared the self-styled “small town defender,” who also signed an English-only measure. “I don't want them here, period.” As this blog pointed out, this was a sudden transformation for Barletta, who just months before had cited “the region’s new ethnic and cultural diversity” as cause for Hazleton’s unprecedented economic boom and “urban rejuvenation.” As Barletta testified before Congress and appeared on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs,” while cutting robocalls for Sen. Rick Santorum’s failed reelection campaign, his ordinance and copy-cat measures in other small cities began to tearapartcommunities.
How did Barletta come to decide on this dramatic course of action? Well, he poked around the Internet and found the website of Save Our State, run by Jim Turner, a “proud nationalist” who unsuccessfully pushed the measures in San Bernadino, California in order to ward off the threat from inferior cultures who would turn ours into a “Third World cesspool.”
This governance technique of finding model legislation by lurking on nativist Internet forums was one interesting fact revealed Wednesday during Barletta’s testimony in a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinances. Far more damning was Barletta’s inability to support his rhetoric accusing undocumented immigrants of “destroying the city”:
During five hours on the witness stand, Mr. Barletta said Hazleton is being ruined by violent crime, crowded schools and a clogged emergency room at the city's private hospital. He attributed many of the problems to what he called "illegal aliens," even though he admitted he had no idea how many such immigrants are in his city.
Lawyer Witold Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, got the mayor to concede that he could not name a single instance where illegal immigrants had received service from Hazleton's fire department or health offic[e]. Mr. Barletta also was forced to admit he had no proof that illegal immigrants were the source of schools so crowded that numerous classes have to be taught in trailers. …
Mr. Barletta said crimes committed by illegal immigrants led to the controversial ordinances. … Mr. Walczak, though, said Hazleton's own statistics show that illegal immigrants have committed only a handful of serious crimes. Of the 8,575 felonies in the city since 2000, about 20 were linked to illegal immigrants, Mr. Walczak said.
“When you have violent crimes committed, it takes away and chews at our quality of life. I don’t need numbers. These people,” he said, motioning to the opposing attorney, who have criticized his lack of statistics, “need numbers. The people in my city don’t need numbers.”
