{"id":58454,"date":"2012-10-17T08:47:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T08:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=58454"},"modified":"2012-10-22T06:44:06","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T06:44:06","slug":"southern-poverty-law-center-wellspring-of-manufactured-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=58454","title":{"rendered":"Southern Poverty Law Center: Wellspring of Manufactured Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By James Simpson, Organization Trends<\/em> \u2013 Capitol Research Center<\/em> October 2012<\/h2>\n

On August 15, 2012, an angry gay rights activist named Floyd Corkins stormed the Family Research Council\u2019s Washington, D.C. headquarters and began shooting. Corkins shot a brave security guard in the arm, but the guard still managed to wrestle him to the ground before he could kill or injure others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Corkins was carrying 50 bullets and two loaded magazines for his 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol; 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches; and the address of another potential target, the Traditional Values Coalition. Before initiating his shooting spree, Corkins reportedly said, \u201cI don\u2019t like your politics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Reacting to the shooting, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins stated: \u201cCorkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Origins<\/h2>\n

Attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. founded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 1971. It bills itself as \u201ca nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.\u201d People familiar with the SPLC may describe it differently. (For a previous CRC profile of the Center, see \u201cThe Southern Poverty Law Center: A Twisted Definition of \u2018Hate,\u2019\u201d Organization Trends<\/em>, November 2006.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Early on it made a name for itself fighting genuinely extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and breaking down barriers of discrimination in the South. But today it is primarily a leftist attack machine. It devotes most of its sizeable resources to a systematic smear campaign against respected organizations and opinion leaders whose legitimate policy differences put them to the right of the SPLC.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, prior to the shooting, the SPLC identified the Family Research Council as an \u201canti-gay\u201d extremist group, lumped together with groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even liberal Washington Post<\/em> columnist Dana Milbank, who describes the Family Research Council as \u201ca mainstream conservative think tank,\u201d thought the SPLC went too far:<\/span><\/p>\n

I disagree with the Family Research Council\u2019s views on gays and lesbians. But it\u2019s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following a speech at a New York college in 2009, a student asked former Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) about a quotation attributed to him in a textbook. It said, \u201cillegal immigrants were \u2018coming to kill you and kill me and our families.\u2019\u201d Taken aback, Tancredo subsequently called the publisher to learn where the fake quotation had come from. \u201cThe Southern Poverty Law Center,\u201d was the reply.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a familiar pattern. In 2007, SPLC labeled the Federation for American Immigration Reform a \u201cHate Group\u201d as part of an effort to smear opponents of open borders and illegal immigration. In this effort, SPLC had no qualms associating itself with the National Council of La Raza (in Spanish, \u201cthe Race\u201d), one of whose subordinate groups, the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, is notorious for the motto, For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada<\/em> (\u201cFor The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

In a 2010 report detailing SPLC\u2019s efforts, Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than engage in a debate, La Raza and its allies have waged a campaign to have the other side shunned by the press, civil society, and elected officials. It is an effort to destroy the reputations of its targets. It also seeks to intimidate and coerce others into silence. It undermines basic principles of civil society and democratic discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok doesn\u2019t mince words about illegal-immigration opponents: \u201cSometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on \u2026 I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.\u2026\u201d (See http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fnTz2ylJo_8&feature=relmfu.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The SPLC has an improbably named program titled \u201cTeaching Tolerance.\u201d Perhaps Mr. Potok should take the course.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the \u201cHate and Extremism\u201d section of the SPLC website, the group lists 1,274 \u201cPatriot Groups.\u201d This category includes nonviolent conservative organizations like the Oath Keepers, the Constitution Party, Tea Party Patriots, the Tenth Amendment Center, and Joseph Farah\u2019s WorldNetDaily.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to fomenting hatred for groups with which it disagrees, the SPLC is the author of dangerous provocations. For example, in 1996 SPLC hyped a story that black churches were being torched at alarming rates in the South by white racists. As Michael Fumento wrote in the American Spectator<\/em> at the time, this was soon proven to be false.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC wildly exaggerates the number of groups genuinely associated with hate and violence as well. Laird Wilcox, an independent, non-conservative researcher found that of 800-plus \u201chate groups\u201d over half them were either non-existent, existed in name only, or were inactive. (See http:\/\/www.thesocialcontract.com\/artman2\/publish\/tsc_20_3\/tsc_20_3_vinson.shtml.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilcox has his own \u201cextremist\u201d lists. One is called \u201cThe Watchdogs \u2026 organizations who \u2018monitor\u2019 and combat the activities of their ideological opponents,\u201d including many \u201corganizations and individuals who have nothing to do with racism.\u201d SPLC tops the list. (See http:\/\/www.lairdwilcox.com\/tool\/order00-01.html#Left.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A Morally Bankrupt Organization Founded by a Morally Bankrupt Man<\/h2>\n

SPLC\u2019s co-founder, Morris Dees, has been harshly criticized by former SPLC employees, a former business partner, and many liberal critics. They see him as little more than a rank opportunist and the SPLC\u2019s chief purpose as raising money for SPLC coffers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though trained as a lawyer, Dees is best known for his fundraising ability. Raising $25 million for the George McGovern presidential campaign in 1972, his payment was the donor list, the gold mine that boosted SPLC\u2019s funding. A position with Jimmy Carter\u2019s presidential campaign in 1976 added another sterling list. It paid off.<\/span><\/p>\n

With over $238 million in net assets, the SPLC is one of the wealthiest nonprofit organizations in the United States. Despite this massive endowment, the Center devotes almost 20 percent of its $34.5 million operating expenses \u2013 $6.5 million in 2011 \u2013 to fundraising. This includes $1 million for fundraising services and $5.5 million in fundraising staff salaries and administrative expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the group spent only $11 million on its supposed primary mission: \u201cproviding legal services to victims of civil rights injustices and hate crimes.\u201d The Center spent an astounding $12.5 million maintaining, publishing, and promoting its \u201chate\u201d list propaganda, including a program to \u201ceducate\u201d children, according to its 2010 tax return.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC received $36 million in contributions in 2011. Excess contributions and investment income allowed the Center to boost assets by $9.4 million. Its 2010 tax return shows the SPLC realized a net gain of $28.8 million, following a similar net gain in 2009 of almost $30 million\u2014roughly equivalent to its entire operating budget! Why fundraise at all?<\/span><\/p>\n

Each year the SPLC is able to add tens of millions of dollars to its endowment. Despite being a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, supposedly with nothing to hide, some of SPLC\u2019s assets are squirreled away in untraceable Bermuda and Cayman Island accounts. Why?<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC\u2019s leaders are among the highest paid in the nonprofit field. As Chief Trial Counsel, Morris Dees receives $343,676. Richard Cohen, the Center\u2019s president, is paid $339,764.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC boasts many high-dollar donors. The top 10 for recent years are: Picower Foundation ($3,813,112, 1999 \u2013 2008); Cisco Systems Foundation ($1,620,000, 2001 \u2013 2004); Grousbeck Family Foundation ($1,600,000, 2007 \u2013 2011); Grove Foundation ( $875,000, 2001 \u2013 2011); Rice Family Foundation ($535,000 , 1999 \u2013 2010); Rockefeller Philanthropy ($510,000, 2008 \u2013 2010); Unbound Philanthropy ($500,000, 2006 \u2013 2010); Public Welfare Foundation ($500,000, 2008 \u2013 2010); Vanguard Charitable Endowment ($469,120, 2006 \u2013 2011); Rocking Moon Foundation ($350,000, 2006 \u2013 2010); and the Jewish Community Fund ($347,274, 1999 \u2013 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

Space constraints prevent inclusion of the many more foundations and small family funds that regularly contribute $10,000 to $25,000 per year. Do these donors realize they are merely contributing to a quarter-billion-dollar investment fund?<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC\u2019s biggest benefactor, the Picower Foundation, made the most of its money from the Bernie Madoff scam. Founder Jeffry Picower, who was friends with Madoff for 30 years, profited by $5 billion from his \u201cinvestments\u201d with his friend, an amount larger than Madoff personally \u201cearned.\u201d Picower died in 2009, but as ProPublica.org reported December 27, 2010, federal prosecutors and the trustee charged with recovering money for Madoff\u2019s victims took Picower\u2019s estate to court. The estate agreed to a settlement of $7.2 billion to compensate victims of Madoff\u2019s Ponzi scheme. Federal prosecutors apparently thought Picower, an accountant, should have questioned returns on investment that ranged up to 950 percent. The Picower Foundation has closed its doors, but will the SPLC refund any of its ill-gotten gains?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dees\u2019 first business partner was Millard Fuller, who later went on to found Habitat for Humanity. In an article in The Progressive, he described their relationship:<\/span><\/p>\n

Morris and I, from the first day of our partnership, shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money. We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich. During the eight years we worked together, we never wavered in that resolve. (See http:\/\/www.secondclassjustice.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Egerton-Poverty-Palace-July-1988.pdf.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of Dees\u2019s most virulent critics are on the Left. Nation<\/em> magazine\u2019s Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing article in 2009, \u201cKing of the Hate Business.\u201d Recent Republican electoral losses, Cockburn wrote, were<\/span><\/p>\n

horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion there\u2019s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other. What is the arch-salesman of hate mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. (See http:\/\/www.creators.com\/opinion\/alexander-cockburn\/king-of-the-hate-business.html.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s published a similarly critical analysis of the SPLC titled, \u201cThe Church of Morris Dees\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the SPLC spends most of its time\u2014and money\u2014on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. \u201cHe\u2019s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,\u201d renowned anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer (not Dees\u2019s business partner, ed.) says of Dees, his former associate, \u201cthough I don\u2019t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s also published a letter from Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, to the University of Alabama, declining an invitation to a \u201cMorris Dees Justice Award\u201d presentation. Bright called Dees \u201ca con man and fraud,\u201d and added:<\/span><\/p>\n

The positive contributions Dees has made to justice\u2014most undertaken based upon calculations as to their publicity and fundraising potential\u2014are far overshadowed by what Harper\u2019s described as his \u201cflagrantly misleading\u201d solicitations for money. He has raised millions upon millions of dollars with various schemes, never mentioning that he does not need the money because he has $175 million and two \u201cpoverty palace\u201d buildings in Montgomery. He has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people\u2014some of moderate or low incomes\u2014who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million operation. He has spent most of what they have sent him to raise still more millions, pay high salaries, and promote himself. (See http:\/\/www.thesocialcontract.com\/answering_our_critics\/art2000nov.html.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fairfax<\/em> (Virginia) Journal<\/em> counseled federal employees to forego contributions to the SPLC in the Combined Federal Campaign:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 give your hard-earned dollars to a real charity, not a bunch of slick, parasitic hucksters who live high on the hog by raising money on behalf of needy people who never see a dime of it. (MDJonline.com, Sept. 30, 2011.)<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC\u2019s first president was Julian Bond, a socialist who has supported and participated in socialist, communist, and other radical leftist organizations and activities his entire life. As a rising star in the Left he received the early endorsement and support of the Communist Party USA, and he assisted, endorsed, and campaigned for radical causes and politicians, according to DiscoverTheNetworks.org.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1960s Bond was elected to the Georgia legislature three times, but each time the legislature refused to seat him because of his agitation against the Vietnam War. Bond called on the communist lawyer Leonard Boudin to represent him. Boudin\u2019s other clients included the government of Fidel Castro, Soviet agent of influence Paul Robeson, and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Boudin\u2019s daughter, Kathie, was a Weather Underground terrorist, who served 25 years for her participation in the 1981 Brinks robbery that left two policemen and one Brinks guard dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with radical activists such as Ella Baker, Bond co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. SNCC was later led by black separatists Stokeley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, who openly advocated guerrilla warfare in U.S. cities. In 1967 Bond served as co-chair of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP), described by the late Sen. James Eastland as a group \u201cworking hand-in-glove with the Communist Party\u201d to foment \u201crevolution in the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bond\u2019s most significant contact as co-chair of the NCNP was fellow NCNP member Herbert Marcuse. A Marxist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, Marcuse ultimately took up residence in a number of American universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California, San Diego, where he mentored the black communist, Angela Davis. Bond and Marcuse helped found the radical journal In These Times<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bond visited Castro\u2019s Cuba in 1959 and was\u00a0\u201cenchanted by the revolution.\u201d Following a repeat visit in 2006 he said that it \u201csimply reinforced my admiration for the Cuban people and the society they are building.\u201d (See http:\/\/www.medicc.org\/cubahealthreports\/chr-article.php?&a=1027.) Bond remains on SPLC\u2019s board to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPLC\u2019s board of directors also includes James Rucker, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005 with self-described communist Van Jones. Before that, Rucker was grassroots organizing director at the Soros-funded activist group MoveOn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another board member, Patricia Clark, spent time as National Criminal Justice Representative of the American Friends Service Committee. This nominally Quaker organization was created by socialist Quakers in 1917 and began colluding with Communists in the 1920s, when it worked with Soviet agents Jessica Smith, Harold Ware, and John Abt. (See http:\/\/keywiki.org\/index.php\/American_Friends_Service_Committee.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabrielle Lyon, an SPLC research fellow, has spoken glowingly of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers is famous for his Weather Underground years and has yet to be tried, along with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, for the murder of San Francisco police Sgt. Brian McDonnell in 1970. Larry Grathwohl, the only FBI informant to ever successfully penetrate the Weathermen, has testified under oath that Ayers told him of their complicity in the bombing that killed McDonnell. This case is still open. (See http:\/\/www.usasurvival.org\/docs\/Grathwohl_names_Dohrn.pdf.)<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, an editorial written by SPLC\u2019s Mark Potok was published in the Communist Party USA newspaper, People\u2019s World<\/em>. Potok claimed the editorial was free for publication anywhere, and he didn\u2019t control where it appeared. When the Daily Caller news website asked Potok last year if he objected to the Communist Party newspaper printing his piece, he refused comment. Potok did say, however, that the SPLC uses an organization called OtherWords<\/em> to place SPLC\u2019s op-eds in other journals. OtherWords<\/em> is a nonprofit editorial service of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), one of the most influential far-left organizations in the United States. (IPS was profiled in the February 2011 Foundation Watch<\/em>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

King of Sophistry<\/h2>\n

Radical leftists are extremely adept at the use of language and propaganda. They have to be. An ideology that has brought more hardship, misery, and death over the last century than all the wars of history combined always needs image makeovers. The Soviet Union\u2019s first leader, Vladimir Lenin, explained, \u201cWe can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The entire leftist movement has adopted this technique. Thus, any person who opposes illegal immigration becomes a \u201cxenophobe.\u201d Any person who cites the devastating adverse impacts of \u201canti-poverty\u201d programs is \u201cselfish\u201d or worse. Any person who opposes affirmative action is a \u201cracist.\u201d Anyone who opposes ever-increasing taxes must be \u201cgreedy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Straw man arguments, misinformation, and other forms of sophistry, coupled with vitriolic smears of opponents can easily intimidate average citizens, who haven\u2019t the time or inclination to look deeper and are naturally anxious about being tarred with the same brush. With sufficient media promotion, this fraudulent narrative becomes accepted as the \u201ctruth,\u201d even chic. Most people want to be seen as siding with the \u201cgood guys.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics are isolated and polarized, and despite the Left\u2019s phony characterization of a deep-pocketed Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the Left\u2019s critics are usually independent voices of little or no means, not necessarily even conservative, with scant resources to defend themselves against defamation campaigns and frivolous lawsuits, which are favored tactics of the well-heeled SPLC and other leftist groups. Far-left agitator Neal Rauhauser even admitted as much when he advocated for a policy of \u201clawfare\u201d against political opponents:<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re dealing with people who have likely had no interaction with the court system beyond a traffic ticket; the potential for a pro se litigant to force them into expensive, long distance, lengthy, discovery laden litigation doesn\u2019t seem to cross their minds. The reality of travel, or frightful expenses, or summary judgments needs to be made real. We probably need to make a very visible example of at least one of them before the rest understand. (See http:\/\/communities.washingtontimes.com\/neighborhood\/middle-class-guy\/2012\/jun\/28\/who-neal-rauhauser\/.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Cultural Marxism and Hate Crimes<\/h2>\n

This kind of sophistry also has roots in the teachings of Julian Bond\u2019s friend and leftist icon Herbert Marcuse. He was an influential member of the Marxist Institute for Social Research that was founded in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1923 and modeled after Moscow\u2019s Marx-Engels Institute. It came to be known simply as \u201cthe Frankfurt School.\u201d Marcuse and other scholars affiliated with the Institute reestablished it in the U.S. following their exodus from Germany, and developed philosophical studies specifically dedicated to subverting American culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marcuse was often called the Father of the New Left, and he helped pioneer the ideas of political correctness and hate crimes. In a 1965 tract called \u201cRepressive Tolerance,\u201d Marcuse declared:<\/span><\/p>\n

This essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

As he explained, the way to fix the \u201crepressive tolerance\u201d that Americans suffer because of the First Amendment is to suppress all voices except those from the Left:<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.\u2026 Not \u2018equal\u2019 but more representation of the Left would be equalization of the prevailing inequality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today you can see this tactic in operation every day when left-wing professors, journalists, and politicians ridicule, misrepresent, ignore, or threaten anyone they disagree with. The Southern Poverty Law Center assists in this effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even more ominously, but in line with Marcuse\u2019s call to arms, the SPLC is a consultant to both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, and the latter has labeled conservatives potential \u201cdomestic terrorists.\u201d The SPLC has not been identifying enemies of America. It has been identifying enemies of the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the people and groups on the SPLC\u2019s hate lists genuinely do express hatred and bigotry, like Louis Farrakhan\u2019s Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party, the KKK, Nazi parties, and the like. But mixed in are many well known, widely respected individuals and groups who have taken principled positions on matters of national importance. Their only sin is their outspoken opposition to the Left\u2019s radical designs.<\/span><\/p>\n

By cataloging the statements and writings of individuals and groups with whom they disagree, the SPLC is also creating a paper trail to use if and when hate crimes laws are strengthened sufficiently to provide pretexts for lawsuits or other legal action. This is a not-so-subtle threat. That sort of attack has begun to happen in Canada, Britain, and Sweden.<\/span><\/p>\n

The SPLC\u2019s interaction with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI carries another threat. By deliberately mischaracterizing conservatives and tea partiers as \u201cextremists,\u201d the SPLC implies they have a potential for violence and thus offers a justification for the government to keep tabs on these potential \u201cdomestic terrorists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Left, on the other hand, has a firmly established record of militancy, violence, and treasonous, unscrupulous and disgusting anti-social behavior. Occupy Wall Street, for example, is an anti-social, violent movement of the extreme Left. The Black Bloc is a violent organization of the extreme Left, and the FBI recently conducted raids on suspected Black Bloc members.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why have we heard nothing about it from the SPLC? Are these genuine domestic terrorists on the group\u2019s \u201cHate Map\u201d? No, nor is Adbusters<\/em>, an \u201canti-consumerist\u201d magazine that hatched Occupy Wall Street and that has expressed support for the Black Bloc. (For more on the organization behind the magazine, the Adbusters Media Foundation, see the profile in Foundation Watch<\/em>, January 2012.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What about the blatantly terrorist Jumaat al-Fuqra and its 35 U.S.-based terrorist training camps? Crickets from the SPLC. (See http:\/\/www.jihadwatch.org\/2012\/01\/35-jamaat-al-fuqra-terror-training-camps-still-operating-in-the-us.html.) The same is true for the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why are none of these groups listed in the SPLC\u2019s \u201cIntelligence\u201d files? What about the Communist Party? What about union thugs like AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, implicated in murder, or United Steelworkers\u2019 president Leo Gerard, who exhorted Occupy Wall Street to \u201cmore militancy?\u201d All prone to violence, and they proudly say so!<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite a mountainous record of violence from left-wing individuals and groups, there have never been any left-wing groups identified on the SPLC\u2019s \u201chate groups\u201d list.<\/span><\/p>\n

Come to think of it, why isn\u2019t the SPLC listed?<\/span><\/p>\n

After a bombing attempt on May Day this year by five Occupy Cleveland activists was thwarted, a reporter for National Review<\/em> asked the SPLC if it planned to put Occupy Wall Street on its \u201chate group\u201d list? SPLC\u2019s stunning answer: \u201cWe\u2019re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a wealthy, well-connected, organized attack machine of the extreme political Left. It shares strategies, goals, and tactics with other similar organizations and colludes with them in campaigns of defamation, disinformation and legal threats to silence and\/or criminalize political opponents.<\/span><\/p>\n

The SPLC has unjustifiably secured itself a position of influence within our government and society. Its very presence threatens our freedoms and First Amendment rights. It abuses our system of justice, while hiding behind a Constitution for which it has little respect.<\/span><\/p>\n

James Simpson is an economist, businessman, and freelance writer. His writings have been published in Accuracy in Media, American Thinker, Big Government, Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, FrontPage Magazine, and elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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