In June 2007, Barletta headlined a rally at Hazleton City Hall held in support of him and his immigration agenda and in opposition to efforts at the time by the Bush administration to pass comprehensive immigration legislation.
One of the speakers and musical performers at the rally was Paul Topete, lead singer of the "patriot rock" band Poker Face. The band's website, which is now defunct, hosted forums that pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.
When the Anti-Defamation League labeled Topete as anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier in 2010, the band released a lengthy statement refuting the charges, but said that "asking questions and seeking answers" about the Holocaust "should not be construed as hate, rather it should be a way of mandating historical accuracy." They also said in the statement that it was "not beyond the scope of reasonable doubt" that Israel was involved in 9/11.
In his speech at the rally, available on YouTube, Barletta said the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 would reward millions for breaking the law, including some who are "murders, rapists, thieves, and terrorists" with legal status.
That same year, Barletta appeared in an "exclusive interview" for Americans for Immigration Control, an organization that believes the "annual tidal wave of over a million immigrants (legal and illegal) is endangering our American way of life," according to its website. The interview was part of a short video documentary titled "America - Rule of Law or Anarchy," which according to the group's description of the film, "highlights the fact that people who break our immigration laws are often disposed to break other laws."
The video, which is no longer available for purchase, was written by John Vinson, a founding member of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group that advocates Southern secession.
Barletta's associations with the more fringe elements of the immigration debate continued when was elected to Congress in 2010.
In 2011, Barletta spoke at an event hosted by The Social Contract, a journal whose editor, Wayne Lutton, argued in a 2010 edition of the journal that "Islam itself is the problem" and called for the end of all Muslim immigration to the US. Lutton spoke repeatedly to the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens and was on the board of the white nationalist New Century Foundation. He was also an editorial adviser to the Occidental Quarterly, an online publication that the Anti-Defamation League has labeled "blatantly" anti-Semitic.
In his speech, Barletta spoke about e-Verify legislation and his actions on immigration as mayor of Hazleton.
That same year, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Barletta appeared on a panel on immigration hosted by the controversial, ultra-conservative student group Youth for Western Civilization, a since-shuttered organization that, according to its website at the time, "focused on the issues of Western history, identity, high culture, and pride as well as opposition to radical multiculturalism, political correctness, racial preferences, mass immigration, and socialism." The group believed that multiculturalism is about "destroying and dispossessing the people and culture of the West, not about an appropriate education about other peoples."
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