How Long Will Media Use SPLC’s Garbage Hate List To Smear People?

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Like other mainstream publications, Roll Call regularly stoops to citing the thoroughly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center as a credible source for labeling “hate” groups. One recent such article was titled “Among the ‘Jewish groups’ Trump cites, one with neo-Nazi ties.” The author had worked for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and this was clearly part of Democrats’ effort to cover Pelosi and derail criticisms of Ilhan Omar for anti-Semitism.

I work with both of the “hate” groups named in the article, the Center for Security Policy and ACT for America. SPLC’s characterization of them is fraudulent, like most of what it does. It is thus little surprise to anyone who knows anything that SPLC recently jettisoned founder Morris Dees over accusations of racism and sexual assault.

Despite years of takedowns of SPLC’s business model from both sides of the aisle, major media companies such as Amazon, PayPal, Twitter, the Washington Post, Facebook, Google, The New York Times, and more cite them and use their determinations for business decisions such as Amazon’s nonprofit donations program. When will this ever end? How many lawsuits and lies will it take?

The SPLC’s Hate Group Definitions Are Garbage

ACT does not now, nor did it ever have, ties to any “neo-Nazi.” Both ACT and the Center are long-established organizations whose leaders and scholars seek to inform and warn America about the subversive goals of Islamic radical groups in the United States, not everyday Muslims. Everyday Muslims are often as much the victims as others.

Most of the prominent Islamic organizations in the United States are either Muslim Brotherhood (MB) fronts or tied to the Deobandi movement of South Asia (which also has ties to MB). Both are aggressive, subversive organizations that engage in terrorism throughout the world.

In the United States they generally use subversion as a more effective strategy, and have insinuated their allies and agendas into the U.S. government, media, Hollywood, public schools and universities. This is helping encourage the recent rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

They also engage in terrorism. The 2015 San Bernardino, California attack that killed 14 and wounded 22 was carried out by followers of Deobandi. Terrorists of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attack and murder Israeli Jews and even Arabs on an almost daily basis in the West Bank, and—note to border wall opponents—in Israel proper before Israel built its wall.

Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose U.S. front is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Why doesn’t SPLC mention CAIR?

CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, and only avoided trouble because the Obama Justice Department under Eric Holder discontinued prosecutions of organizations named in the case. CAIR is also a subversive wrecking bar against the U.S. Constitution, conducting nonstop lawfare against America. CAIR’s Chicago branch—one of 27 in the United States—brags a tally of more than 5,200 lawsuits against U.S. governments.

Smearing People Is Big Business

Many of the “hate” groups on SPLC’s list are simply those it disagrees with politically. Rather than engage in legitimate debate, the SPLC seeks to destroy its political enemies with defamatory smear tactics. The Russian Communist Vladimir Lenin advocated this strategy, saying, “We must write in a language that inspires hate, revulsion and scorn among the working class toward those who disagree with us.”

Frankfurt School Communist Herbert Marcuse developed that idea into what came to be known as “partisan tolerance”: tolerance only of leftist ideas, individuals, and groups, and a wholesale effort to discredit and silence opponents. Marcuse and other Communists worked closely for years with SPLC co-founder Julian Bond.

The SPLC regularly consorts with Communist organizations. In his pamphlet, “Rules for Radicals,” Saul Alinsky advocated the tactic of accusing opponents of hate, but SPLC was the first to institutionalize it. It has since spread far and wide, in media, universities, Hollywood, and in mindless chants of leftist protesters. Apparently now it reaches even into the editorial staff of Roll Call.

The SPLC never criticizes even the vilest leftist groups. For example, Antifa, which uses violence and increasingly expresses vitriolic, obscenity-laced hate and anti-Semitism, earns no criticism or “hate” designation from SPLC. Instead, the SPLC defends groups like Antifa against the big, bad Proud Boys!

When Occupy Wall Street Black Bloc activists attempted to bomb a bridge in Ohio and blow up the GOP convention in 2012, SPLC was asked why Black Bloc was not listed among its “hate” groups. “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left” was the lame response.

The oldest Muslim Brotherhood front is the Muslim Students Association. It is responsible (along with the left) for the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses. It never gets a mention by the SPLC.

There are countless other examples. The SPLC has singled out and destroyed numerous individuals and organizations using these smear tactics. It is a form of political terrorism.

SPLC’s Targets Have Begun to Fight Back

SPLC lost a $3.5 million lawsuit last year against Maajid Nawaz, a moderate Muslim the SPLC labeled an “extremist,” because he spoke out against Islamic extremism and terrorism. You literally can’t make this stuff up.

Now about 60 organizations have either sued or are considered suing the SPLC for its fraudulent smears. It’s about time. Thousands more could join in. It should be stripped of its 501(c)3 “nonpartisan” tax-exempt status and sued into penury. A dedicated prosecutor could easily make a claim that they are a continuing criminal enterprise and seize their assets under racketeering statutes.

The SPLC shows its extreme partisanship every day. Even liberals like Dana Milbank, Alexander Cockburn, and Stephen Bright have labeled the SPLC a fraud. It spends more than 20 percent of its income on fundraising and has amassed almost half a billion dollars in assets, some of which is squirreled away in overseas accounts.

Less than half of its revenues last year were needed to cover expenses, while its overtly socialist executives earn very capitalist salaries, and live like kings. Must be nice to be such conscience-free hypocrites.

Media Act as Megaphones for SPLC Smears

The Roll Call article cast both ACT and the Center as “hawks” on national defense, as if that were somehow further evidence of bigotry or some other evil. That is idiotic, but “hawks” isn’t even applicable.

The Center for Security Policy staff, for example, includes former CIA officers, military and law enforcement specialists, and other national defense experts. These people take positions based on a careful evaluation of each situation, not some knee jerk “hawk” response to everything. The only knee-jerk reactions seem to be coming from the pages of Roll Call and other mainstream outlets that continue to give the SPLC credibility, like Facebook and The New York Times.

It is tragic that large outlets like these have joined the ranks of leftist smear merchants who have reduced political discourse in the United States to little more than infantile name-calling. The SPLC is one of the nastiest hate groups on the planet. It deliberately provokes division and anger in America on a daily basis to advance its extreme left agenda and rake in millions in donations.

Roll Call, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Google and all the others need to drop the SPLC as a consultant on “hate” groups, but since they are all of the same stripe, they probably won’t.

James Simpson is an economist, author and investigative journalist. His latest book is "The Red Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America." Follow Jim on Twitter and Facebook.

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