Once upon a time in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was an intrepid civil rights organization that exposed racial hate groups like the KKK and the Neo-Nazis. Its name was innocuous enough, in fact, it had an underdog quality to it that through the years has parlayed into hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
However, today, the SPLC has devolved into a radical, anti-Christian, anti-conservative, political action group spinning in a whirlpool of angst. As they do yearly, the SPLC added dozens of mainstream Christian and conservative groups to its “hate map.”
New editions to the SPLC annual hate fest for their defense of Christian marriage being between one man and one woman are the Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. The SPLC has stretched its definition of “hate” to include Christian organizations that uphold biblical teachings like The Remnant, a traditionally cultured Catholic fortnightly.
Hate map alumni include Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, Sen. Rand Paul, and Ben Carson, now HUD Secretary. Fox commentators Laura Ingraham, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Jeanine Pirro are listed as extremists because advocates of limited government and Constitutionalists are always prime candidates for enshrinement.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who grew up Muslim and endured female genital mutilation, is now an “anti-Muslim extremist” and a member of the SPLC hate map because Ali speaks out against such evil. Others include the Ruth Institute that seeks to end the breakdown of the family and believes that biology determines sex and gender and not one’s feelings.
How any of this is justified as “hateful” and belonging alongside the Nation of Islam, Neo-Nazis and the KKK is beyond reproach. Not making the list are Black Lives Matter, ICIS, ANTIFA that have taken credit for opening fire on crowds attending public events. SPLC’s hate map also includes groups that oppose Obamacare and NAFTA.
SPLC’s definition of “hate groups” is much too vague and allows them to smear mainstream organizations and individuals with whom they disagree. You are a hater provided you disagree with their leftist political agenda.
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In an absolutely shocking revelation, a report from Wired Magazine has revealed that a professor at Elon University has devised a so-called “secret weapon”, in support of Antifa, that allows her to keep tabs on at least 400,000 Americans who she believes are members of the alt-right.
The data is then provided to not only the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center but also directly to radical members of the domestic terror group Antifa who in turn presumably use the doxxed information to target said Americans.
The Wired Magazine report details the work of Megan Squire, a 45-year-old professor professor of computer science at Elon who have developed the software for the hard-left with the admitted aim at not only getting right-wing patriots fired from their jobs but also possibly killed, as Antifa has been known in the past to violently assault anyone that they believe to be a member of the alt-right.
Amazingly Wired Magazine makes a women literally giving private details on people she just flat out claims are racist to a domestic terrorist group sound like some sort of hero.
The Wired article first describes an initial list of supposed alt-right Americans who Squire targeted for harassment, intimidation, and possible death.
Once she had a long list of people to investigate, Squire opened a database of her own design—named Whack-a-Mole—which contains, as far as anyone can tell, the most robust trove of information on far-right extremists. When she cross-checked the names, she found that many matched, strengthening her belief in the authenticity of the leak.
By midafternoon, Squire was exchanging messages via Slack with an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a 46-year-old organization that monitors hate groups. Squire often feeds data to the SPLC, whose analysts might use it to provide information to police or to reveal white supremacists to their employers, seeking to get them fired. She also sent several high-profile names from the list to another contact, a left-wing activist who she knew might take more radical action—like posting their identities and photos online, for the public to do with what it would.
Wired then describes Squire’s program that she claims has exposed upwards of 400,000 Americans who she believes are members of the alt-right and should therefore be attacked in a variety of different ways.
Whack-a-Mole, her creation, is a set of programs that monitors some 400,000 accounts of white nationalists on Facebook and other websites and feeds that information into a centralized database.
She insists she is scrupulous to not break the law or violate Facebook’s terms of service. Nor does she conceal her identity, in person or online: “We shouldn’t have to mask up to say Nazis are bad. And I want them to see I don’t fit their stereotypes—I’m not a millennial or a ‘snowflake.’ I’m a peaceful white mom who definitely doesn’t like what they’re saying.”
The piece then makes clear that Squire is DIRECTLY working with a domestic terrorist organization to target said Americans.
Though Squire may be peaceful herself, among her strongest allies are “antifa” activists, the far-left antifascists. She doesn’t consider herself to be antifa and pushes digital activism instead of the group’s black-bloc tactics, in which bandanna-masked activists physically attack white supremacists.
But she is sympathetic to antifa’s goal of silencing racist extremists and is unwilling to condemn their use of violence, describing it as the last resort of a “diversity of tactics.” She’s an intelligence operative of sorts in the battle against far-right extremism, passing along information to those who might put it to real-world use. Who might weaponize it.
At this point one has to wonder, especially considering we already know that there is absolutely not 400,000 racist Americans spreading their views on Facebook, what Squire is using to determine who is and isn’t a member of the alt-right.
As The Daily Caller reported, Squire is actually using legitimate wording routinely used by mainstream conservatives throughout social media or, in other words, her system is being used not to simply target terrible racists, but to actually expose American patriots whose only crime is being conservative.
On a recently published post on Squire’s blog, the professor classifies what constitutes a “far-right extremist” by 12 different ideologies. She uses a variety of keywords to identify so-called extremists, including popular terms like “anti-SJW,” “anti-Obama,” “No Sharia Law,” “rebel,” patriot,” and even “kek.”
As Far Left Watch notes, the vague keywords offer no guarantee that most of the 400,000 individuals on her list are “far-right extremists.” Furthermore, even if they were, vigilante action taken by Antifa supporters against any of these people could result in harm to both innocent people marked as targets, or their assailants.
Make no mistake, this is literally a women building a database on patriotic conservative Americans, with some racists throw in, and then providing the details to a group that openly uses violence against Trump supporters or anyone else that they have deemed to be “fascist”.
“The people who are targeted and assaulted by far-left groups like antifa cover a wide political spectrum. Anyone framing this growing conflict as simply “antifascist vs. white supremacist” is uninformed at best and operating with malicious intent at worst. This article by Wired is a continuation of the ongoing media campaign to normalize and popularize political violence from the left,” Far Left Watch continued.
“Right now, it looks like the SPLC has the power to block a well-researched article that questions its credibility.” From Dr. Swain’s facebook page on January 11, 2018
The hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center is at it again, this time going as far as to designate anyone that used the hashtag #Christmas over the holidays as a possible right-wing extremist.
That’s right, according to the SPLC and its “hate tracker”, those that used #MerryChristmas, #ChristmasEve, #Christmas, and #Jesus represented a range of extremists “from ‘conspiratorial fringes of mainstream conservatism to outright white supremacists.”
The hate tracker notes that #Christmas is the second highest trending hashtag it tracked on Christmas Eve, with @whitehouse and @potus being among the four top Twitter handles mentioned with the hashtag.
For #MerryChristmas, the U.S. Marine Corps’ band at @marineband was one of the top mentioned, according to the hate tracker on Christmas Eve. One of the SPLC’s “top image” associated with #MerryChristmas is a photoshopped picture of marines hoisting a Christmas tree, instead of a flag, as depicted in the famous Iwo Jima picture.
The SPLC includes disclaimers, however, such as that the accounts “are not necessarily part of the far-right population of accounts we monitor.” It also claims these “extremists” also participate in many “conversations and topics that are popular among more ‘mainstream’ communities.”
So there you have it. In the sick minds of the liberals who run the SPLC, U.S. Marines celebrating Christmas could be a sign of white supremacist.
In the past the SPLC has done everything in its power to label legitimate Americans as racists while soliciting donations from scared liberals who truly believe that there is a right-wing extremist around every corner.
From listing alternative news outlets as anti-government groups to now apparently attacking the very idea of saying Merry Christmas, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the perfect example of liberal insanity on steroids.
Christine Brim speaking at the American Freedom Alliance Conference: “Crushing Free Speech – How the Left Silences Dissent and How We Can Fight Back”.
Christine Brim has worked in project management, risk assessment, business continuity planning, market research and media production for high-tech start-ups, U.S. government clients and Fortune 500 companies, especially in the IT and aerospace industries. She has published in the areas of policy, communications and logistics. She received her MBA from George Mason University and is certified in knowledge engineering. Previously she served at the Center for Security Policy as a vice president and chief operating officer. She is president of the Center for Policy Communications.
If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please make a donation to support our work. You can donate HERE.
“I paid a professional price when the group attacked me in 2009. Now I wear its mud as a badge of honor.”
By Carol M. Swain, Sept. 11, 2017
Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee about threats posed by domestic extremist groups. The hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, has been postponed because of Hurricane Irma. As a black conservative who has been smeared by the SPLC, I recommend against reinviting Mr. Cohen.
When Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. started the SPLC in 1971, it was needed and it had noble goals. In recent years, however, it has become a tool of the radical left. Domestically, it uses its influence to paint with a broad brush that smears immigration restrictionists, orthodox Christian churches and pro-family organizations as “hate groups.”
What landed me in the SPLC’s crosshairs was a Sept. 10, 2009, Huffington Post blog entry titled “Mission Creep and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Misguided Focus.” I pointed out the SPLC’s silence about video footage released after the 2008 elections showing members of the New Black Panther Party, decked out in full paramilitary regalia, patrolling a polling precinct in Philadelphia where they were clearly intimidating white voters.
Although several news organizations covered the story, the SPLC ignored the incident. At the time, the law center was spending an inordinate amount of time attacking then-CNN host Lou Dobbs for his relentless focus on illegal immigration. It demanded that CNN fire the anchor. After CNN and Mr. Dobbs parted ways, the SPLC took credit for getting him off the air. I ended my post with a one-liner that raised the ire of the organization and had a devastating effect on my life. I wrote: “Rather than monitoring hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.”
The SPLC’s retaliation was vicious and effective. On Oct. 17, 2009, my photo appeared on the front page of my local newspaper, the Tennessean, with the headline “ Carol Swain is an apologist for white supremacists.” That was a quote from Mark Potok, at the time the SPLC’s national spokesman. The context for Mr. Potok’s attack was a review I gave for a film titled “A Conversation About Race.” I endorsed it for classroom use because it offered a perspective on race rarely encountered on university campuses. Mr. Potok argued that the filmmaker was a bigot. I felt then and now that the perspective needed to be heard.
[snip]
Some of those vilified by the SPLC have been subjected to even worse treatment. The Family Research Council and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise have been violently attacked by individuals inspired by the propaganda the SPLC regularly dishes out—which is often accepted without criticism and passed on by media, law-enforcement agencies and universities.
The SPLC should not be dignified with invitations to provide congressional testimony about domestic extremism as long as it continues to advance a transparently partisan agenda—one Mr. Potok has publicly acknowledged is designed to “destroy” groups it opposes.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center is attempting to change your reality into the reality that they want you to believe in.” (Isaiah 5:20)
Finally. The Washington Times reports a conservative Christian media group has slapped the Southern Poverty Law Center with a defamation lawsuit after being listed alongside neo-Nazis and white supremacists on its “hate map.”
James Kennedy Ministries filed a lawsuit this week in federal court in Alabama alleging that the SPLC “illegally trafficked in false and misleading descriptions of the services” offered by the ministry, subjecting it to “disgrace, ridicule, odium, and contempt in the estimation of the public.”
“These false and illegal characterizations have a chilling effect on the free exercise of religion and on religious free speech for all people of faith,” said president and CEO Frank Wright in a Wednesday statement.
For the record, The Southern Poverty Law Center has The Sons of Liberty on their site listed in “General Hate.” We are consulting with our attorneys at this time to consider taking the same action or adjoining ourselves to this lawsuit.
First and foremost America, I am not here in anyway attempting to change the Laws (The Mosiac Institution-Common Law -Constitutional Republic, Article 4, Section 4 of the United States Constitution) nor am I attempting to change your values. I am here to enforce and to reaffirm your laws and your values. In doing so, this requires an expose on un-American groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center who are attempting to use the law against the law (Psalm 94:20) while aiding and abetting enemies both without and within which is defined as treason.
Second, the Southern Poverty Law Center is simply pointing at the groups and ministries that are effective in pulling off the mask of the SPLC (Revelation 12:17; John 15:22).
They are even going so far as to push a hate agenda against the police which only exhibits there hatred for American Law (2 Thessalonians 2:8-10).
“Destroying America will be the culmination of my life’s work.”
The SPLC has already incriminated themselves, like that of George Soros, time and time again with statements such as this.
“Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” —Mark Potok, director of intelligence at Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yet, for some reason or another, the media keeps pushing the narrative that these are the people to listen to when it comes to pointing out the haters while a new poll recently came out that 94% of Americans do not believe the media.
The lying media, along with anti-American groups such as Southern Poverty Law Center (Founder Morris Dees defended the KKK concerning their crimes against people of color), are simply attempting to indoctrinate Americans to believe that the law-abiding citizen is the hater when in fact the opposite is true!
Remember that all crime is motivated by hate, which means those who are hating are the ones that are violating laws (1 John 3:4). And how does one know if someone is hating? Look to the Laws of our Republic.
“For by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Crime against God’s moral Law Exodus 20) (Romans 3:20).
Also remember, that law is there to liberate those who obey the law (John 8:36; 2 Corinthians 3:17).
“The end of the law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” —John Locke
For example, on The Southern Poverty Law Center’s website they have on their hate list those who are “Anti-LGBT.”
Yet, in all 50 States of our union, our laws condemn sodomy. Which, of course, is found in Scripture with over 30 different references.
The SPLC is attempting to advocate what American law clearly condemns.
Furthermore, SPLC’s site is set as a “hit list” for those who believe their propaganda.
Remember twenty-eight year old Floyd Lee Corkins II, the man who attempted to murder members of the Family Research Council in Washington, D. C. back in August of 2012? He pleaded guilty to three out of ten charges, including committing an act of terrorism. He didn’t plead guilty to a “hate crime.”
However, according to an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation following the shooting, Corkins wanted to kill as many people as possible, then smear their faces with Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, and kill the guard. He had also taken substantial steps in the preceding week to carry out other crimes. His use of the sandwiches was to “make a statement against the people who work in that building … and with their stance against gay rights and Chick-fil-A.”
His Statement of Offense also read, “He committed the shooting for political reasons. He had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center Website.”
“Consistent with his statement to the FBI,” the Statement of Offense continued, “a subsequent search of Corkins’ family computer revealed that on the afternoon of Sunday, August 12, Corkins used the computer to visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, as well as the websites for the FRC and the second organization on his handwritten list.”
Corkins acknowledged as part of his plea agreement that he had taken a number of steps to plan the shooting. He bought the pistol the week before and practiced firing it. He also visited the headquarters of the Family Research Council, and he purchased the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches the day before the shooting. The plea agreement said Corkins was filmed picking out the gun by a French television crew doing a piece on the ease with which firearms can be purchased in the United States.
Corkins also acknowledged that he considered making a bomb but didn’t have the patience to do it. In his pants pocket, police found a handwritten list of groups that also oppose gay marriage. Lawyers did not include the list of organizations in the plea agreement.
Corkins pleaded guilty to three charges: interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, assault with intent to kill while armed and act of terrorism while armed, a charge based on the shooting being intended to intimidate anyone who is associated with or supports the Family Research Council and other organizations that oppose gay marriage. (This has never been in the history of the world).
SPLC’s hate list map also calls out “Anti-Muslim”!
Apparently, they forgot what the media has been pushing on the American people for the last 16 years now concerning September 11, 2001. Who was flying those planes?
And since the ill-advised and ignorant like to make repeated reference to Wikipedia, let me point the finger to them when they actually blurt out the truth in their confusion.
If Americans would simply look to the law, it will clearly expose the organizations like the SPLC for what they are and what it is that they are attempting to establish.
Treason: Article 3, Section 3 of the US Constitution
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
What Americans are dealing with today is what I have been warning about for 22 years now while diverting Americans from the sowing fields (Luke 7:35).
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” -Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin
How about 12 years of indoctrination!
This organization, along with many others (Snopes, Facebook, Google, Amazon etc…) and the establishment media, is working hand in glove to win over public opinion to change law to policy which works against “We the people!” (Isaiah 5:20)
“Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government, practically just so much.” –Abraham Lincoln
Nothing could be further from the truth, we are a constitutional Republic, ruled by law and not of men.
John Adams, the second President of the United States, said that we are a “Government of Laws, and not of men.”
Furthermore,
“No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God. –Willam Blackstone (The Torah)
Many Christian organizations are fearful for their safety after CNN published a bogus “hate map” concocted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Here are all the active hate groups where you live,” CNN’s headline declared.
The list included among others American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel and Pacific Justice Institute.
American Family Association blasted the CNN story calling it a “sham news article that could easily incite violence and place AFA employees and supporters in harm’s way.”
Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver demanded an immediate retraction – calling CNN’s report “false, defamatory and dangerous.”
“Liberty Counsel is not a hate group,” he said. “The false ‘hate’ label is very damaging to our reputation and is a safety risk to our staff. Liberty Counsel is a Christian ministry, and hates no one.”
Conservatives and Christians have good reason to be worried.
In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins opened fire inside Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C. A security guard was shot and wounded.
The domestic terrorist told police he wanted to kill as many employees as possible to intimidate opponents of same-sex marriage. Corkins brought along Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he intended to smear on the faces of dead staffers.
So what does this have to do with CNN’s story?
Corkins told authorities that he picked his target using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s so-called “hate map.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins appeared on my nationally syndicated radio show Thursday to condemn CNN for using material from an organization that is “an attack dog of the Left.”
“They are not a neutral arbiter that is calling balls and strikes. They are on the field – playing. They are pushing an agenda and anyone who opposes them – they slap a label on them,” Perkins told me.
“They (SPLC) are inciting violence and it needs to stop,” he added.
Liberty Counsel pointed out that had CNN done due diligence they would have discovered that the SPLC hate map has been widely discredited.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation removed the SPLC as a resource in 2014 – during the Obama Administration.
And Liberty Counsel reports that in 2016 the Justice Department reprimanded SPLC’s lawyers for repeating “hate” misinformation.
Shortly after I called out CNN on my nationally syndicated radio show, they issued an editor’s note:
“The headline on this story has been changed to more closely align with the content of the piece, which clearly indicates that the data on hate groups is from the Southern Poverty Law Center. This story has also been updated to provide direct links to the full list from the SPLC as opposed to publishing the entire list here.”
That’s not good enough.
CNN must retract the entire story and publicly vow to never again use Southern Poverty Law Center’s inflammatory propaganda.
The cold hard reality is that CNN is responsible for placing a target on the backs of well-respected conservative groups and Christian ministries.
We can only pray there’s not another Floyd Corkins lurking in the shadows – and reading CNN’s bogus report.
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people .
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control."
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
A coalition of conservative groups whose advocacy has been labeled “hate” by the leftist media-darling Southern Poverty Law Center are launching a counteroffensive Monday, accusing it of fueling hate, killing free speech and even encouraging terrorist-style attacks on those it doesn’t agree with.
The effort, which includes a video and planned Monday tweetstorm, takes aim at SPLC’s so-called “hate map” which identifies groups it says promotes hate and extremism. It includes groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but also conservative nonprofits that promote traditional marriage, enforcement of immigration laws, and other policies it doesn’t agree with.
The campaign, revealed to Secrets, is being led by the Washington-based Family Research Council, the social conservative policy giant whose entrance guard was shot in 2012 by a man inspired by SPLC’s hate map that listed FRC as an anti-gay “hate” group.
“Despite SPLC’s baggage — which also includes connections to two liberal gunmen – they continue to be cited as a credible source by mainstream media and others. With SPLC in the spotlight, we must expose this organization for what it really is – a left wing smear group who has become exactly what they set out to fight, spreading hate and putting targets on people’s backs,” said a note to supporters from FRC, which also noted the support for the SPLC of the gunman who shot up a GOP congressional baseball practice, seriously injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.
The effort follows a big win by the groups this month in getting the influential group GuideStar, which rates charities for contributors, to stop including SPLC hate “flags” in their reviews.
Over three dozen conservative representatives wrote in a letter to GuideStar, “The ‘hate group’ list is nothing more than a political weapon targeting people it deems to be its political enemies.” Among the signers: Eagle Forum, FRC, National Organization for Marriage, former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, Heritage Foundation, Immigration Reform Law Institute, and Judicial Watch.
The FRC memo directed supports to a video on the effort and listed several suggested tweets to use and a hashtag for the effort, #SPLCexposed:
“Tune in on July 16th for D. James Kennedy Ministries’ special exposing the SPLC (full show available online here beginning July 14th), then join us on July 17th for a social media campaign using the hashtag #SPLCexposed on Twitter and Facebook,” it said.
If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work. You can donate HERE.
For most of the past 30 years, violent extremism has been most closely associated with the far-right in America. The media, the government, and watchdog groups like the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation league have railed against the far-right for a generation, and used scaremongering to convince the masses that conservative rhetoric was becoming more violent, and that right-wing groups pose a serious and growing threat to our society.
Of course, they often neglected to mention that the far-left has a long history of violence, especially when you consider the wave of domestic terror attacks that occurred throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. Perhaps these institutions should have been paying more attention to the Left, because while they were screaming about right-wing groups all these years, far-left radical groups like BAMN and ANTIFA have been riding under the radar.
However, “extremism experts” are finally starting to take note.Vice News recently interviewed Brian Levin, a former member of the NYPD who studies domestic extremism. He started focusing his efforts on the Left when he attended a public KKK rally last year to study the group, but found himself protecting one of the Klansman from a violent member of ANTIFA. “At that point,” he revealed “I said we have something coalescing on the hard left.”
The evidence is so far largely anecdotal. Levin says that since December 2015, he’s documented nearly two-dozen episodes in California where political events turned violent because of agitation on both sides, something he says he hardly ever saw before.
Now, there are violent clashes on college campuses involving groups like Antifa, the anti-fascist group, taking on the alt-right; and aggressive anti-Trump rallies attended by members of the Redneck Revolt, a new pro-minority, anti-supremacist group that encourages its members to train with rifles.
Online, hard leftists increasingly discuss politics in dire terms, and rationalize violence as a necessity - even the true inheritor of traditional progressive activism. (Or, in the case of the “Punch a Nazi” meme, a fun game.)
And Levin isn’t alone. Other watchdog groups that typically focused their attention on the Right, are now taking a second look at far-left radicals.
“I think we’re in a time when we can’t ignore the extremism from the Left,” said Oren Segal, the director of the Center on Extremism, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League.
Over the past few months, the ADL, which hosts regular seminars on homegrown extremism for law enforcement officials, has begun warning of the rising threat posed by far-left groups, most recently at a seminar just this past Sunday.
“When we have anti-fascist counterprotests - not that they are the same as white supremacists - that can ratchet up the violence at these events, and it means we can see people who are violent on their own be attracted to that,” Segal said. “I hate to say it, but it feels inevitable.”
The fact that Vice, a very liberal media outlet, is wincing at the sight of violence among liberals, is very telling. The fact that these organizations are taking a look at the Left speaks volumes. Liberals can’t ignore or encourage this behavior any longer, because even the groups that are typically hyperventilating about conservatives, are beginning to admit that there’s a problem on the Left.
And that problem has wider implications. As leftist rhetoric and actions become more violent, and as the police in urban areas fail to rein in leftist counter-protesters time and time again, it won’t be long before right-wing protesters begin to retaliate. You can’t expect anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, to keep taking it on the nose indefinitely, without fighting back. When that retaliation becomes commonplace, the results will be unbelievably ugly.
Under different circumstances, Alabama civil rights lawyer Morris S. Dees and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray might have been colleagues, even pals. Instead, Murray found himself in a near-riot at Middlebury College after accepting a speaking invitation from Republican students at the Vermont school. Students and faculty galvanized by Dees’ political organization barred Murray from speaking. They shouted him down, chanted their own manifesto, and pulled fire alarms to prevent him from being heard.
When Murray and Middlebury professor Allison Stanger tried to leave the building, they were followed by protesters who accosted them physically. The professor was grabbed by the hair and her neck twisted—she was fitted with a neck brace at a hospital—and their car rocked in a way that alarmed local authorities.
It was another victory for opponents of free speech, and if that seems like an incongruous scalp for a civil rights lawyer to wear, well, our politics are pretty odd these days.
Charles Murray is a political scientist with a doctorate degree from M.I.T. The American Enterprise Institute is a Washington-based think tank devoted to “defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.” Its scholars believe these goals can be attained by promoting democracy and strengthening the free enterprise system in the U.S. and around the globe.
(snip)
In recent years, you can find yourself on the SPLC’s “hate map” if you haven’t gotten fully aboard on gay marriage — or the Democratic Party’s immigration views. In other words, the Dees’ group classifies individuals and organizations as purveyors of “hate” for holding the same view on marriage espoused by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton until mid-2012.
Such labeling has consequences, which became clear in August 2012 when a gay rights activist named Floyd Lee Corkins entered the lobby of the Family Research Council armed with a 9mm handgun and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. The gun was for killing as many Christians as he could, although he only managed to wound a guard. The sandwiches? He was going to rub them in the faces of his murder victims. Corkins had heard that a Chick-fil-A executive express opposition to gay marriage. Why the Family Research Council? He told police that the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled it “a hate group.”
This episode prompted the FBI to drop the SPLC as a resource for hate crime cases. It prompted no such soul searching in academia. Before Charles Murray’s abortive visit to Vermont, several hundred Middlebury alums signed a letter opposing his visit. They and the numerous professors and students who protested all cited the SPLC as their sole source for various slanders against Murray: He’s a racist; he favors eugenics; he’s a “white supremacist.”
Murry’s original sin is “The Bell Curve,” a book Murray co-authored more than two decades ago postulating a correlation between poverty and IQ. But it never advocated “eugenics.” Nor is he anti-gay: He’s argued in favor of gay marriage to Republican groups.
The “white supremacist” stuff is especially offensive: Murray, whose first wife was Asian, has mixed-race children.
No matter. The professors who admitted to Professor Stanger that they’d never read a word Murray had written led their students in the chants that drowned out whatever he planned to say at Middlebury.
While the anti-intellectual nature of this juvenile stunt is appalling, what’s worse is that college professors and students at an elite, expensive American college would outsource their thinking to an outfit like the SPLC. One of the professors’ talking points was that his “Bell Curve” research hadn’t been “peer reviewed.” That’s comical when one considers the shoddy nature of the SPLC’s dossiers. As liberal writer Ken Silverstein has noted, “the Law Center is essentially a fraud.”
The most scathing assessments of Dees and his group have always come from the left. Stephen B. Bright, a Yale law professor and president of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, calls Dees a “shyster” and a “con man.” Bright’s primary complaint is that Dees does precious little litigation on behalf of poor people with the amount of money it pulls in. SPLC’s alarmist fundraising scams, shoddy collection of information, and longstanding practice of character assassination has been on the record for years—along with its “F” rating from the respected nonprofit watchdog group Charity Watch.
As long as it is reliably hyper-partisan—and the SPLC criticizes Republicans, not Democrats—the tenured twits in America’s faculty lounges can live with all that, I guess. That’s a disturbing enough thought. But what’s the mainstream media’s excuse? How can we continue to cite it as a source and then even pretend that we are non-partisan?
The American Enterprise Institute today is led by Arthur Brooks, whose passion is attacking poverty. He has interesting ideas about how it can be done, and a willing cohort of idealistic millennials on college campuses who might want to sign on. But with Dees’ disciples shouting and pulling fire alarms and roughing up visiting speakers—and with college professors who brag that they don’t expose themselves to another side of the argument—how will they even hear about it?
If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitutionagainst all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work. You can donate HERE.
Why not redouble efforts to focus on more devasatating and self-inflicted threats?
“Don’t Take Your Eyes Off the Issue of Our Time – Gun Control,” The Advocate, self-identifying as a “the world’s leading gay news source” urges. Springboarding off the massacre at the “gun-free” Pulse nightclub by a bigoted Islamist (who some reports have identified as a club patron who had hookup sex with men, and whose former wife claimed the FBI tried to bury that information), authors Igor Volsky and Mark Glaze unintentionally do gun owner rights supporters a service. That’s because by taking off the mask, they show the “common sense gun safety laws” they demand resemble nothing so much as the state monopoly of violence needed to rule with an iron fist.
Understanding who the authors are helps in understanding how their article advances their agenda. Both are homosexual activists and “progressive” gun-grabbers. Volsky is “Deputy Director for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former LGBT Editor for ThinkProgress.” Glaze is former executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown, a senior adviser to GunsDown, and interestingly, the son of a licensed gun dealer.
“LGBTQ people must fight for their safety against the epidemic of gun violence, just as hard as they have fought for equality,” they insist, citing a Southern Poverty Law Center anecdotal “report” on alleged harassment that says nothing about guns, but instead quotes from a handful of unsubstantiated and subjective accounts to smear Donald Trump supporters as intimidating haters.
“Already at least seven transgender people have been killed this year — six of whom were killed with a firearm, according to media reports,” Volsky and Glaze continue. “This puts 2017 on a pace to exceed 2016, when at least 27 transgender people were killed. And just like in previous years, the violence has fallen disproportionately on trans women of color.”
Unexamined beyond the listing of names are issues of high-risk associations or that anti-“LGBTQ” hatred has not been proven as a motivating factor.
And instances of killers being “prohibited persons” also means total ban “gun control” edicts were already being violated. That doesn’t matter to Volsky and Glaze.
“Legally obtained or not, whether by ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys,’ guns are the problem,” they insist. “If we’re serious about saving lives, we need to build a bolder, broader movement that finally tackles the problem at its core. We need to go after guns themselves.”
Actually, if they were serious about saving lives, they’d be out there warning that the greatest threat to health and life among the various sexual practitioners they claim to care about is behavioral and self-inflicted.
“Donald Trump won’t stand in the way. Congress won’t stand in the way,” Volksy and Glaze promise, casting blame everywhere but on choices and actions. “We can. And together, we must.”
What they plan on doing to the rest of us “standing in the way” is left unsaid, but chances are they’re expecting armed men who took an oath to support the Constitution to carry out their disarmament fantasies for them.
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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work. You can donate HERE.
Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report entitled The Year in Hate and Extremism. It missed more than half the story.
“The number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States has nearly tripled since 2015,” summarized the Washington Post, “due in part to radical Islamic attacks and the incendiary rhetoric of last year’s presidential campaign.”
Mark Potok, the Center’s senior fellow, was quoted declaring that, “2016 was an unprecedented year for hate.”
Oddly, with violence and intimidation rampant against conservative speakers on college campuses and protests against Trump increasingly turning violent, none of those insurrectionist anti-capitalist groups — the Antifa or By Any Means Necessary — were mentioned in the SPLC report.
Well, it’s surprising if you didn’t already know that, while the Southern Poverty Law Center gained notoriety by winning lawsuits against the violent Ku Klux Klan and tracking the Klan, Nazis, and racist “hate groups,” it is nonetheless completely uninterested in hate and violence . . . when committed by folks on the left side of the political spectrum.
“We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left,” was the response SPLC gave to National Review’s Charles Cooke, when he inquired about the SPLC looking at the Cuyahoga 5, arrested in 2012 for attempting to blow up a downtown bridge in Cleveland. All five men arrested were part of Occupy Cleveland (a fact that ABC News also decided didn’t matter enough to mention).
But, hey, the tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups shouldn’t be ignored, should it?
Of course not . . . if SPLC could be believed.
Writing at Reason.com last year, Jesse Walker points out that when groups splinter, they get weaker, not stronger. Yet, for SPLC purposes there are more groups to hype.
In fact, SPLC’s hate-hype machine is so lucrative that the group now boasts an incredible $250 million in the bank, in addition to raising $40 million per year.
Walker also detailed how the SPLC exaggerates the problem by counting every affiliate group as a separate hate group, writing that last year’s “list of anti-government groups, for example, includes 44 chapters of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, 24 chapters of the John Birch Society, a separate listing for ‘the John Birch Society Shop,’ and the paleolibertarian website LewRockwell.com.”
Surprised that groups such as Eagle Forum receive listing as “hate groups”? Wonder how a website such as LewRockwell.com — featuring a variety of opinion pieces — can possibly be a “hate group”?
They have plenty of company. Any religious organization (or newsletter) holding that homosexuality is a sin or that heterosexual parents are better for children may be listed as a “hate group.” Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which don’t favor open borders and amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally, are “hate groups.”
(snip)
The recent headline in National Review best sums up the SPLC worldview: “Everyone Who Disagrees with the SPLC Is Hitler.”
It’s time the mainstream media got a clue and covered the SPLC accordingly. “Many news organizations, from wire services to TV networks, covered the new [SPLC] figures uncritically,” a Foreign Policy piece argued, adding that “their research needs to be weighed more carefully by media outlets that cover their pronouncements.”
This country needs an anti-hate group that isn’t itself a hate group.
What does any of this have to do with Oath Keepers? If you listen to SPLC, DT Analytics, Democrat DHS apparatchiks and The Intercept, they’re practically inseparable. If you actually cherish the truth, not a thing, and membership there would disqualify from membership here. [Library of Congress Public Domain/CC-0]
“The FBI has quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement,” VICE News, Al Jazeera America, and New York Times contributor and all-around social justice warrior Alice Speri “reports” in The Intercept.
Self-described as “dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism,” The Intercept gives Speri a platform to demonstrate exactly how provincial and insulated from her “flyover country” subject matter an Italian-born Bronx resident can be. Still, that’s no excuse for sloppy, one-sided agitprop masked as “real reporting,” although why she should be any different from her peers in the “mainstream” is a fair question to ask.
Eager to advance a meme developed and honed in the Obama administration, that the greatest threat to U.S. domestic tranquility originates from evil “conservatives,” Speri continues the successful practice of conflating Constitutionalists with “white supremacists” and haters, and nowhere is that more demonstrably disprovable than in her all-too-familiar smear job on Oath Keepers.
A primary source for raising the “extremism” flag? A 2009 report from Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security, specifically identifying those opposed to illegal immigration and “disgruntled military veterans” as groups meriting special scrutiny over domestic terror concerns. That would be the same DHS that relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center in a subsequent “intelligence assessment” exercise in politically-inspired conflation.
“Mark Potok’s armed DHS sock puppet parrots SPLC lines — again,” friend and colleague, the late Mike Vanderboegh observed at the time, dismissing the report with the jaded candor of someone who has seen the con before. “It looks to me like all these high-paid tax feeders did was regurgitate Potok’s latest lies…”
While admitting that Napolitano subsequently backed off the 2009 report due to flak, that tradition appears to be continuing unabated at The Intercept. Not only did Speri rely on SPLC as a primary go-to source, but also parroted without challenge the report’s lead researcher, Daryl Johnson (now head of DT Analytics, a consulting firm pinning its fortunes on continued demand for the SPLC narrative:
Johnson singled out the Oath Keepers and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association for their anti-government attitudes and efforts to recruit active as well as retired law enforcement officers. “That’s the biggest issue and it’s greater now than it’s ever been, in my opinion.”
Oh, really?
“Anti-government”? This is a group that at its core exists to encourage current and retired military, police and first responders to keep their oath to “support and defend the Constitution [and] bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” and that restricts membership in its Bylaws with this requirement:
No person who advocates, or has been or is a member, or associated with, any organization, formal or informal, that advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States or the violation of the Constitution thereof, shall be entitled to be a member or associate member.
And as for being in any way affiliated with “white supremacists,” again, one need only check the Bylaws:
No person who advocates, or has been or is a member, or associated with, any organization, formal or informal, that advocates discrimination, violence, or hatred toward any person based upon their race, nationality, creed, or color, shall be entitled to be a member or associate member.
Go ahead, search inside. Some might classify this fixation on demonizing those who honor their oath to the Constitution as an obsession, and wonder why.
Perhaps with Hillary Clinton’s loss in November, DT Analytics is in desperate search of a public/private partnership from which to feed (especially if Johnson’s YouTube viewership is any indication of interest). Presumably, sales aren’t exactly brisk for his “Right-Wing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorist Threat is Being Ignored” (with a Foreword, unsurprisingly, by SPLC’s Mark Potok!), but at least Amazon’s “Look inside” function gives us a chance to see just how badly they want to include Oath Keepers in that threat, and how accurate what he’s saying about them is.
For instance, right there in Chapter One, page 4, we’re told:
“On April 11, 2009, the day on which the DHS assessment was leaked, the Oath Keepers had not yet announced their existence publicly.”
If the head of DT Analytics totally blows the basics like this, what else can’t we trust, and what should that say to anyone thinking about retaining his consultancy “services”? And if Oath Keepers actually were a threat, what does it say about so many of us knowing about them while our “Homeland Security professionals” remained blisssfuly oblivious, awaiting SPLC agenda instructions?
And what does it say of the journalistic standards of The Intercept, parroting that agenda while the truth about Oath Keepers lay a couple minutes of internet checking and a bias and presumption-free introductory phone call away? Assuming truth was ever the objective…?
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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work. You can donate HERE.
