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How did white nationalism take over Republican politics and the conservative movement? And why did nativism—the demand to "send them back"—become its most powerful expression? Here's one part of that complex story, involving both the conservative and mainstream media. THREAD. 1/
This is a tweet from Peter Brimelow, editor of leading white nationalist site VDARE, invoking Robert E. Lee to memorialize John Tanton, the recently-deceased godfather of the modern anti-immigrant movement. He played a huge role in making xenophobia central to US politics. 2/ 
In 90s, Brimelow was senior editor at The National Review where he wrote a '92 cover story decrying “so-called Hispanics” as a “strange anti-nation inside the U.S.” In '95, Random House published his racist book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster 3/
Brimelow argued: “It is simply common sense that Americans have a legitimate interest in their country’s racial balance. It is common sense that they have a right to insist that their government stop shifting it. Indeed...they have a right to insist that it be shifted back.” 4/
Talk radio/Fox News *and* MSM boosted nativism. NYT praised Brimelow for addressing “strong racial element in current immigration...head on, unapologetically.” The Atlantic praised him for the "courage to step forward as an apologist for the received Euro-American culture.” 5/
Tanton and Brimelow were close. Brimelow's politics inspired Tanton as he created and grew a massive and powerful nativist network that today encompasses every single major anti-immigrant group in the country: FAIR, CIS, NumbersUSA, and US English. 6/
The Tanton network has provided critical support to most every major nativist victory over the past few decades: CA's Prop 187 in '94, AZ's SB 1070 in '10, the defeat of reform bills they labeled "amnesty" under Bush & Obama—and now their advice influences Trump's White House. 7/
Tanton dedicated two entire issues of his journal, The Social Contract, exclusively to material from Brimelow's white nationalist VDARE. Brimelow also influenced Ann Coulter, who credits his 1992 National Review cover story for sparking her interest in immigration. 8/
Coulter's 2015 book ¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn America into a Third-World Hellhole was published just weeks before Trump announced his candidacy. The book obsessively charges that Latinos are rapists. Trump tweeted that the book was a “great read.” 9/
When Trump announced his campaign, he infamously declared that Mexican migrants are "rapists." Coulter took credit. "Where do you think all that spicy stuff about Mexican rape culture came from?" she tweeted. "@realDonaldTrump got an advance copy." 10/
Tanton's death is an opportunity to reexamine the long war against "illegal immigrants" waged by Clinton, Bush & Obama, nurtured by VDARE, National Review, NYT and Atlantic. This is just one thread. I tell the whole story in my forthcoming Verso book All-American Nativism. 11/
Politicians have spent decades "sending them back" and, along with the media, convincing the public that "they" posed a fiscal, economic, criminal, terrorist and demographic threat. We can't send nativism back to anywhere: it's home grown and must be destroyed here in the USA 12/
Now I need to stop tweeting and finish edits on my final chapter. 13/
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