Bannon’s War Room celebrates the mainstreaming of extremist immigration group FAIR

Steve Bannon: FAIR used to be for “only the kooks” but is now considered “main battery”

Written by Gideon Taaffe

Published

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, has long relied on mainstream credibility to spread its anti-immigrant messaging. Now, the right-wing podcast War Room: Pandemic is taking a victory lap as mainstream outlets continue to use it as a source on immigration.

FAIR pushes anti-immigrant policies, seeking to greatly reduce overall immigration. Its founder John Tanton was a eugenicist and white supremacist who, prior to his death, founded a network of anti-immigrant groups with the aim of carrying out his stated desire for America to remain a majority-white population.

Despite this extremist background, SPLC points out, “the group attempts to appear moderate, even though its record is extreme, particularly on racial issues. This strategy has paid off: In August 2009, FAIR President Dan Stein boasted that FAIR leaders had testified before Congress about 100 times.” 

This strategy has also worked on media, with mainstream outlets repeatedly citing FAIR and another SPLC-designated hate group founded by Tanton, the Center for Immigration Studies, in their reporting on immigration. The New York Times recently cited CIS uncritically in an article on deportations, The Hill and Politico used FAIR and CIS employees to discuss the Ukrainian refugee crisis last spring, and other major papers and newswires have repeatedly used the groups in reporting on immigration.

On Thursday, former Trump adviser and podcaster Steve Bannon and radio host John Fredericks — a far-right, Virginia-based radio host who has repeatedly pushed election misinformation — praised the group’s media acceptance on the September 22 episode of Bannon’s War Room podcast:

From the September 22, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

STEVE BANNON: John Fredericks, you’ve been at the forefront of this. And it’s so brilliant that we have FAIR, which for so many years, quite frankly, was considered like a stepchild of something that was like, you know, only the kooks went over to. Now it's main battery as you come back, this is one of the driving focuses. And I gotta give a hat tip to Gov. DeSantis for putting it up into the Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., media’s face. John Fredericks. 

JOHN FREDERICKS: Well things change, Steve, and FAIR is now — I mean, this is the ticket you want to be to.