“I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them…” Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center
Last Wednesday yours truly published a research report on the Southern Poverty Law Center at Capital Research Center. I urge you to read it. The SPLC is an organization you need to become familiar with. It personifies the hate, dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Left. It is a hate factory that has institutionalized the Left’s favorite tactic, Alinsky rule #12:
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
The Left has always had a problem: how to defend and promote an indefensible agenda, dedicated to covertly undermining and ultimately destroying our society as the essential prerequisite to implementing Socialism. Amongst themselves they are completely honest about this goal. As David Horowitz has explained, “The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.”
But in an ordered society, they must present a facade of legitimacy. They accomplish this with a misuse of language – subtly changing definitions of widely understood and accepted terms – and intimidation. They are good at both.
I had a run in with these despicable people last year, following publication of the AIM report: CASA de Maryland: the Illegals’ ACORN. The editor of their “Hatewatch” blog sent me an e-mail, asking if my writing and the positions I took on issues interfered with the temporary job I then held as media consultant to a group of county commissioners.
This is a consummate example of what the Left does. Instead of bothering to defend their extremist positions on issues – many of which are issues only because the Left has made them so – they use every method at their disposal to delegitimize those they see as a threat. In this case, it required challenging my right to free speech and writing a nasty blog post. A typical quote:
When he isn’t bashing environmental protection initiatives, Simpson is bashing immigrants and LGBT people. He is the author of a recent report published by the far-right website Accuracy in Media in which he attacks an immigrant-advocacy organization called Casa de Maryland. The author describes the group as “a case study in the corrosive effects of political corruption” and argues that illegal immigrants are, with Casa’s implicit or overt assistance, evading the law and winning access to government services and privileges to which they are not entitled.
The SPLC author called Agenda 21 an “environmental protection” initiative, when anyone who has actually studied the documents – I have – immediately recognizes it as a rationalization for socializing every aspect of our lives. Not merely redistributing income, which it calls for with a “global tax,” but redistributing populations within borders, across borders and even across continents. Sound familiar? Welcome to the open borders crowd and George Soros’ “Open Society.”
An article I wrote detailing Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings’ advocacy for homosexual pedophilia in the classroom was lambasted as “gay bashing.” Do the Leftists believe homosexual pedophilia, indeed any pedophilia, is okay? Should we really be teaching it to grade schoolers? I have never heard a straight answer from them. But this is all “gay bashing” according to the SPLC. Are all gays pedophiles then? That is what they seem to imply. My gay friends would object to this as strenuously as I have. Who is doing the bashing here?
On illegal immigration, most of these people will not even entertain the indisputable fact that illegals are costing us billions per year while blatantly corrupting the rule of law as we watch. I did not argue that “illegal immigrants are, with Casa’s implicit or overt assistance, evading the law and winning access to government services and privileges to which they are not entitled;” I proved it. But it needs no proof. Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see this happening.
In Maryland it is particularly deleterious, with the shamelessly corrupt, climber-in-chief, Governor Martin O’Malley, and a host of other corrupt state and local officials flagrantly violating the law in their official capacities, in order to pander to illegals. But for the Left in general, and SPLC in particular, to oppose illegal immigration is to oppose all immigration, because they use the terms interchangeably.
As for Accuracy in Media, AIM has a reputation for accuracy the mass media should envy, but because facts usually collide inconveniently with the media’s narrative, they mischaracterize AIM’s reporting as “far-right.” Sound familiar? It should. You “tea baggers” are all “far-right” extremists – yes, you too grandma – and potential “domestic terrorists,” according to the trembling boots at the SPLC.
So what they did here was to first fraudulently smear me as someone “bashing” gays and “immigrants,” then having established that as a reflection of my “extremism,” went on to imply that I was making my employers look bad – and by extension questioned my right to hold the job. These are all implicit threats, in case you don’t see it.
I was hired at least in part because of my writing on these issues. One of my Agenda 21 articles highlighted the commissioners’ unprecedented and principled stand on Agenda 21 and their path-finding efforts to fight it. This article went viral and publicized their efforts nationwide. As a direct result, many political subdivisions across the U.S. followed their example and began fighting Agenda 21.
The U.N.s primary vehicle for imposing Agenda 21 on local communities is the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI.) National awareness of this malevolent organization has now resulted in a 15 percent decline of their membership! About 85 local governments followed the commissioners’ example and revoked their memberships. State governments are now beginning to enact laws against Agenda 21. This is a demonstration of just how effective we tea partiers can be when we understand the stakes!
I have never told this story publicly before and only do so now because it is such a consummate example of the unscrupulous manner in which the SPLC conducts itself. They mischaracterized me, my positions and my motives, while implicitly threatened my right to the job because of those positions.
And I am small potatoes. They do much worse to others.
We need to recognize that the SPLC does not merely represent an organized example of leftist lunacy. It is a dangerous organization, whose goal is to isolate its enemies and make them politically radioactive. They achieve this through calculated, disingenuous and hate-filled propaganda.
The SPLC has become a consultant to both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. These federal law enforcement organizations and others take SPLC’s “Hate List” and other similar products seriously. This incentivizes law enforcement and creates an automatic institutional bias against the SPLC’s foes; people with genuine concerns and legitimate gripes suddenly become societal pariahs.
Rather than focus on real enemies and threats within our midst, law enforcement agencies are directed to focus on principled, upstanding, patriotic and courageous citizens. Meanwhile, the left, demonstrably violent, demonstrably subversive and destructive, gets a free pass. Do you see the destructive cultural inversion and threat to national security this creates?
Jumaat al-Fuqra and its 35 U.S.-based terrorist training camps isn’t on any SPLC list. The many dangerous leftwing organizations in the U.S. are not on any SPLC list. The Communist Party isn’t. Occupy Wall Street isn’t, neither is the violent Occupy Black Bloc.
Why not?
On May Day this year a bombing attempt by five Occupy Cleveland activists was thwarted. Afterward, a reporter for National Review asked the SPLC if it planned to put Occupy Wall Street on its “hate group” list? SPLC’s stunning answer: “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.”
In addition to misleading law enforcement, the SPLC is creating a paper trail of manufactured evidence to use against their enemies in court at some future time, should “hate crimes” laws get the teeth they have in other countries. There, any criticism of favored groups, no matter how legitimate, can wind you up in court.
Such is SPLC’s true mission. My favorite illustration is a quote from SPLC’s “Director of Intelligence” Mark Potok. Speaking to an organization of like-minded individuals, he said:
Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…
I must interject here that that is the SPL’s charter, but not according to Potok. He continues:
I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.…
The SPLC has an improbably named program titled “Teaching Tolerance.” Perhaps Mr. Potok should take the course.
The SPLC, a “non-profit” organization, has a one-quarter billion dollar endowment, and socks away millions every year in donations and investment returns, much of which is kept in offshore banks. Why?
The SPLC is an institutionalized, heavily funded, genuine hate group that focuses not on other hate groups, but on groups it hates. SPLC has gained an unwarranted legitimacy in law enforcement circles.
My report explains how the SPLC came to be, explains the origins of its strategy (hint: think Vladimir Lenin), and how it accomplishes its goals. At the very least, a new Republican administration and Congress needs to get these people out of the law enforcement consultancy business, and launch investigations into their sleazy dealings. Read it and pass around.
James Simpson is a freelance journalist, businessman and former White House budget analyst.. His writings have also been published on Right Side News, Big Government, Big Peace, Emerging Corruption, American Thinker, Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, FrontPage Magazine, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth & Consequences.