The Southern Poverty Law Center Institution of Weaponized Hate
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Spring 2018 The Social Contract The Southern Poverty Law Center Institution of weaponized hate JAMES SIMPSON ince the election of Donald Trump as 45th “racists,” “xenophobes,” “Islamophobes,” “white nation- president of the United States, the leftist under- alists,” and “haters.” The SPLC can claim responsibility Sground has surfaced in an unprecedented, full- more than any other group for popularizing the “hate” throated effort to neutralize his historic victory. This narrative, now ubiquitous in the popular press. underground includes violent communist, socialist, The SPLC claims to target “right-wing militias,” and anarchist street thugs from groups like Refuse “white supremacists,” and other varieties of “far-right Fascism (the Revolutionary Communist Party),1 Antifa extremists.” It publishes a “Hatewatch” list and an (anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists)2 and Black Lives annual “Year in Hate” publication. Its website includes Matter (socialists).3 But it also includes many Democrat a “Hate Map” showing where all these supposed “hate” politicians, judges, and bureaucrats at all levels of groups are located. government, for example judges essentially governing But most of the SPLC’s targets are not hateful from the bench with unconstitutional restraint orders, or even extreme. Last spring, as GOP members of elected officials erecting sanctuary policies in direct Congress practiced for a baseball game in Alexandria, defiance of the federal government, and media willing Virginia, extreme leftist Democrat James Hodgkinson to give them all rhetorical cover. attempted to gun them down. Rep. Steve Scalise almost Running interference are groups like the American died of his injuries and is still recovering. Hodgkinson, Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty like so many radical leftists, was filled with irrational Law Center (SPLC), who have joined the Council on hate toward Republicans based on the provocations of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in an unholy alli- the SPLC and other extreme left smear shops like Media ance to attack and silence the Left’s critics. This war on Matters and MoveOn.org.5 speech has been going on for a long time, but over the The Family Research Council (FRC) is a main- past 17 months has reached a fever pitch. While we see stream conservative Christian organization. The SPLC’s Islamic terrorist attacks on Western targets almost daily “hate” list’s focus on the FRC inspired Floyd Corkins, a now, CAIR literally threatens venues, organizers, and homosexual activist, to attempt a mass shooting at FRC’s speakers who discuss the threats from Islamic terrorism headquarters in 2013. Corkins said he was motivated and the Islamic supremacy doctrine of Shariah.4 to “kill as many people as possible,” after he saw the And while CAIR goes on the warpath, the SPLC SPLC’s list, which labeled FRC “anti-gay.”6 The FRC assists by labeling individuals and groups “bigots,” remains on the SPLC list.7 Capital Research Center is a Washington, D.C. think tank focusing on non-profit organizations and foundations. Center president Scott Walter says, “Hate is the issue here. When you talk about hate groups, James Simpson is an investigative journalist, business- you’re talking about a group that is a threat because man, and author. His most recent book is The Red- of its violent tendencies and racism. It’s an outrageous Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration, and the Agenda lie that some mainstream Christian group is a threat in to Erase America. His articles and research work have terms of violence and racism.”8 been published in Accuracy in Media, Breitbart, The As the editors point out (see pages 4 and 5 of this Washington Times, American Thinker, Capital Re- issue), the SPLC recently added the Center for Immigr- search Center, Daily Caller, FrontPage Magazine, PJ ation Studies (CIS), a highly respected immigration Media, WorldNet Daily, Watchdog, DefenseWatch, and think tank, to its list. CIS produces fact-based studies elsewhere. Mr. Simpson is also featured in the docu- on problems with illegal immigration and our overall mentaries The Enemies Within, AGENDA: Grinding immigration system—which few disagree is in need of America Down, and Agenda II: Masters of Deceit. major overhaul. But that fact is irrelevant to the SPLC. 8 Spring 2018 The Social Contract For years the SPLC has been at war with any Matthews, SPLC spokesman Mark Potok stated: immigration policy group that advocates any restrictions Well, let me say for starters that our—when we on immigration at all. It does not discriminate between name groups “hate groups,” that has nothing legal and illegal immigrants. They all deserve “justice” to do with any allegation of criminality 9 in the eyes of the SPLC. or some kind of measure of expected SPLC even attacks the Remembrance Project, violence. It’s purely about ideology.14 which advocates for victims of illegal alien crime. SPLC At a public speaking event, Potok was even more claims the Project inflates illegal alien crime statistics, a pointed: claim directly refuted by official government data.10 In so doing, the SPLC dishonors the hundreds of thousands Sometimes the press will describe us as mon- of families impacted by the illegal alien crime epidemic, itoring hate crimes and so on … I want to say including tens of thousands killed.* It goes without say- plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these 15 ing that with controlled borders, many fewer would be groups, to completely destroy them... victimized. In another notorious example of this bias, National The SPLC’s targets do not all lean to the right Review columnist Charles Cooke confronted the SPLC either. Their sole sin seems to be that they disagree with about the violence of an Ohio Occupy Wall Street group, the extreme Left or Islamic radicals. Maajid Nawaz, a noting that, in the name of anarchy, it sought “the whole- moderate British Muslim reformer who was held as a sale destruction of Cleveland, Ohio,” and “to blow up political prisoner in Egypt, was stunned to learn he had the Republican convention.” The SPLC representative been listed in SPLC’s 2016 Field Guide to Anti-Muslim responded, “They were Anarchists.... We’re not really Extremists:11 set up to cover the extreme Left.”16 Through the counter-extremism organisation THE LANGUAGE OF HATE Quilliam that I founded, I have spent eight years defending my Muslim communities in Unlike most of its targets, the SPLC is the organi- Europe, Pakistan, and beyond from the dik- zation that genuinely expresses hate. In fact, hatred is its tats of Islamist theocrats. I have also argued stock-in-trade. The SPLC’s goal is to identify and dis- for the liberal reform of Islam today, from credit, or even, in Potok’s words “completely destroy” within.... In a monumental failure of com- those organizations and individuals it disagrees with. It prehension, the SPLC have conflated my does so by attempting to label them “racist,” “homopho- challenge to Islamist theocracy among my bic,” “Islamophobic,” “xenophobic,” etc.—name your fellow Muslims with somehow being “anti- phobe. Muslim.” The regressive left is now in the To reconcile the SPLC’s often contradictory and business of issuing fatwas against Muslim usually false narratives, one must understand that its reformers.12 constant vilification of political enemies is entirely tactical. The terms “hater,” “bigot”, “racist,” and so Also included in the anti-Muslim list is Somali forth are frequently misunderstood as a spontaneous, former Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an author and former visceral reaction to policies the Left opposes. Those member of the Dutch parliament who speaks out against with more political savvy recognize such narratives as Muslim suppression of women, especially the barbaric an application of Saul Alinsky’s Rule Number 13: Pick practice of female genital mutilation. In SPLC’s descrip- the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.17 tion, it even acknowledges that her friend, filmmaker But this rule actually comes from a very specific Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim and her tactic first articulated 100 years ago by Vladimir Lenin, name was pinned to his body with a knife.13 But she’s the first leader of the Soviet Communist Party, who said: the hater? The SPLC never criticizes any organization of the We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, Left, no matter how extreme. The SPLC even admits law-breaking, withholding, and concealing this, making plain that the “extremist” designation is truth… We can and must write in a language specifically related to the political positions staked out which sows among the masses hate, revul- by those it labels. In an interview with NBC’s Chris sion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.18 In the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, indi- *Unpublished data obtained from the Government Accountability 19 Office by the author reveal over 7,000 illegal alien homicide viduals so vilified could face a death sentence. But convictions in five states in 2008 alone. Timothy P. Bowling to the tactic was urged on party members everywhere, as James Simpson, (PRI-14-267), U.S. Government Accountability suggested by this 1943 Soviet message broadcast to the Office, January 13, 2015. world’s communist parties: 9 Spring 2018 The Social Contract Members and front organizations must Davis also attended the reestablished Frankfurt School continually embarrass, discredit, and degrade in Germany at Marcuse’s suggestion, where she studied our critics. When obstructionists become with other Frankfurt School scholars, and remained in too irritating, label them as fascist or Nazi touch with Marcuse throughout. Davis described Mar- or anti-Semitic... constantly associate those cuse as having “a profound influence on my life and who oppose us with those names that already work.”26 have a bad smell.