This article was written before Charlottesville, but it takes on a new urgency now, as the SPLC’s spurious and defamatory list of “hate groups” is being used to target and destroy those groups. The freedom of speech is rapidly being denied to all those who are deemed to be propagating “hate,” and given the SPLC’s lumping-in of groups such as Jihad Watch, AFDI, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the Center for Security Policy with the KKK and neo-Nazis, soon only hard-Left voices will be given any platform at all.
“A Demagogic Bully: The Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes respectable political opponents as “hate groups”—and keeps its coffers bulging,” by Mark Pulliam, City Journal, July 27, 2017:
H.L. Mencken described the secret of successful demagoguery as “keep[ing] the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Mencken was referring to “practical politics,” but his insight is equally applicable to public relations and fundraising campaigns trafficking in extravagant claims. For the past 40 years, a self-styled watchdog group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has excelled in promoting such unwarranted alarm, with a politicized series of hobgoblins, in the process amassing a fortune from its credulous donors.
According to the SPLC, America is rife with dangerous “hate groups”: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, anti-government militia groups, radical-right terrorists, and many more. “We’re currently tracking more than 1,600 extremist groups operating across the country,” the SPLC’s website claims. Readers of SPLC’s press releases, reports, and—importantly—direct-mail solicitations would be justified in imagining an America teeming with smoldering churches and synagogues, cross burnings, storm troopers bearing swastikas, and even lynchings.
Reality is different. In fact, racial tolerance is at an all-time high, diversity is universally promoted as a civic virtue, and “hate crimes,” as defined and reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have declined over the past decade to fewer than 6,000 incidents a year, a modest number in a country with 326 million people. The principal threats of radical extremism in the United States today are jihadist attacks (radical Islam), militant anti-police rioters (such as Black Lives Matter), and masked Antifa (so-called “anti-fascist”) mobs shutting down free speech on college campuses and violently protesting the election of President Donald J. Trump, while the greatest perpetrators of violence in America are criminal street gangs—including the deadly MS-13—that have turned some of our inner cities into war zones.
The virulently anti-Trump “Resistance” movement has fueled partisan acrimony with poisonous rhetoric, to the extent of condoning—and in some cases even encouraging—physical attacks against political opponents. Yet the SPLC largely ignores such groups, focusing instead on the moribund KKK (many of whose estimated 2,000 members are thought to be FBI informants) and similar relics from the Jim Crow era. The SPLC myopically focuses on white racism directed at minority groups, especially African-Americans. A former SPLC lawyer, Gloria Browne, charged that SPLC programs were calculated to cash in on “black pain and white guilt.” Racism undoubtedly exists, but it is neither pervasive nor exclusively practiced by whites.
Ironically, the SPLC not only overlooks most of the real hate groups in operation today, along with overtly race-based organizations, such as the pro-Latino National Council of La Raza and MEChA, but also labels moderates with whom it disagrees “extremists” if they deviate from its rigid political agenda, which embraces open borders, LGBT rights, and other left-wing totems. The SPLC has branded Somali-born reformer Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslin extremist” for her opposition to female genital mutilation and other oppressive Islamic practices, and designated the respected Family Research Council as a “hate group” for its opposition to same-sex marriage. Likewise, the organization deems mainstream immigration-reform advocates such as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as hate groups. British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz—regarded by most observers as a human rights leader—is suing the SPLC for listing him as an extremist.
Critics of the SPLC accuse the lavishly funded organization of peddling fear and smearing political opponents—mostly conservatives—as bigots. Its “Hatewatch” list is avowedly ideological, acknowledging that it “monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.” Few left-wing organizations—and no Islamist groups—are branded in this way by the SPLC. Nevertheless, the SPLC, founded in 1971, has burrowed itself into the civil rights movement, the organized bar, the cloistered culture of large law firms, the education system, and even law enforcement as a champion for “the exploited, the powerless and the forgotten.” Its executives are richly compensated, some in excess of $400,000 annually. Operating from palatial six-story quarters in Montgomery, Alabama (sometimes called the “Poverty Palace”), it enjoys a $300 million endowment, including more than $23 million in cash. It fundraises ceaselessly. It’s no coincidence that SPLC co-founder Morris S. Dees Jr. has been inducted into the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame.
Despite numerous exposés over the years in publications spanning the political spectrum—including Harper’s, The Progressive, The Weekly Standard, Reason, the Baltimore Sun, and even the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser—the liberal establishment continues to treat the group as credible, largely because its preoccupation with right-wing bigotry aligns with the stereotypical view of liberals who dominate newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times. In our polarized culture, the epithet “hate group” is the ultimate slander of political opponents. The SPLC’s spurious imprimatur gives mere calumny gravitas, allowing liberal journalists to wield its highly charged judgments as a weapon, citing it as if it were a dispassionate authority. Many liberal (or merely lazy) journalists discredit conservative organizations by noting that they are “listed by the SPLC as a hate group,” treating its often dubious designations as gospel truth.
One would expect an organization that holds itself out as an expert on hate groups to have a consistent definition of that term, but in Humpty-Dumpty fashion, it turns out that a “hate group” is whatever the SPLC decides it is. The SPLC claims that “917 Hate Groups are currently operating in the U.S.,” but offers only vague guidelines for what qualifies: “groups hav[ing] beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” Despite its insinuations that hate groups are inherently violent, the SPLC casts a much broader net: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafletting or publishing” (emphasis added). Indeed, some of the SPLC’s hate “groups” are merely websites or publications—even record labels and religious sects.
This fluid and subjective definition allows the SPLC to lump together—along with the KKK, neo-Nazis, and racist skinheads—such varied groups as religious-liberty advocates Alliance Defending Freedom and Liberty Counsel; pro-family groups such as the World Congress of Families; Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy; the David Horowitz Freedom Center and, separately, its Jihad Watch program; Ann Corcoran’s Refugee Resettlement Watch; and many immigration-reform groups, including CIS and FAIR. Without irony, SPLC president Richard Cohen has defended designating the Family Research Council as a hate group “because it traffics in incendiary name-calling.” To the SPLC’s credit, it also classifies the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party, and a few other black separatist groups as hate groups, though these organizations are seldom mentioned in its stream of emails and bulletins.
In addition to hate groups, SPLC tracks a broader category of “extremist groups,” with an equally amorphous definition; apparently all hate groups qualify as extremist, but not vice versa. The SPLC considers as “extremist” eminent political scientist Charles Murray, evangelical historian David Barton (of WallBuilders), author Peter Brimelow, the Social Contract Press, Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily, and many other proponents of traditional marriage, border security, and immigration restrictions—views held by millions of Americans. This is not to suggest that all groups and persons labeled by the SPLC as “extremist” are necessarily laudable, but reasoned discourse requires that disagreement be expressed through facts and argument, not pejorative name-calling, innuendo, and guilt by association. The SPLC deliberately blurs the distinction between true hate groups, peaceful activists, and reputable organizations with which it disagrees.
The SPLC frequently rails against public figures as “enablers” not technically designated as hate groups or extremists, such as Texas governor Greg Abbott, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, radio talk show host Glenn Beck, Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul. Rush Limbaugh, the Breitbart News Network, the Boy Scouts of America, and Focus on the Family (founded by psychologist, broadcaster, and best-selling author James Dobson) have also earned the SPLC’s wrath. The term “extremist” connotes an outlier: marginal, on the fringe, out of the mainstream. Yet the SPLC uses the term—and “enabler”—to denigrate elected officials, public figures, and organizations with considerable popular support, solely because of their views on specific issues. As a definitional matter, how “extremist” can these positions be if they command widespread (and even majority) support?
What many of the individuals and groups condemned by the SPLC have in common is a conservative orientation. Favoring traditional marriage becomes the moral equivalent of cross-burning; opposing illegal immigration or amnesty for illegal immigrants equates to advocating genocide; resisting the spread of radical Islam invokes Timothy McVeigh; and anti-tax Tea Party groups are now indistinguishable from armed militias or Holocaust deniers. Thus, dissent is de-legitimatized, and political foes are demonized. All those who oppose the Left are, by definition, “fascists,” “white nationalists,” “Islamophobes,” “hate groups,” or “extremists.” SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok, a 20-year veteran of the organization and editor of its “hate list”—a quarterly publication—has admitted that “our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”
SPLC co-founder Dees, an Alabama native, has an unconventional background for a self-styled civil rights icon. The son of a cotton farmer, his childhood nickname was Bubba. As a young man, Dees supported politicians such as future Alabama governor George C. Wallace (whom Dees calls “my onetime hero”) and even served as state campaign manager for segregationist attorney general candidate MacDonald Gallion.
Dees graduated from the University of Alabama law school in 1960. The next year, he defended a Klan member, Claude Henley, accused of attacking Freedom Riders. The case was heard in federal court before Judge Frank M. Johnson, the famed civil rights pioneer. Dees says that he managed to get his client off, for a fee of $5,000 (paid by the Klan and the White Citizens’ Council), though a Life photo showed Henley beating up a television reporter during the incident in question. In his vainglorious 1991 memoir, A Season for Justice (reissued in 2001 as A Lawyer’s Journey), Dees described the Henley case as a personal epiphany regarding civil rights, though a decade passed before he helped found the SPLC. Dees’ primary contribution to civil rights was suing to force the Birmingham YMCA—a private organization—to desegregate in 1969.
During the 1960s, Dees veered left, got involved with the American Civil Liberties Union, and helped finance the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Ted Kennedy. Though he has long promoted himself as a successful trial lawyer, Dees made his fortune in publishing.
Dees’s original business partner, Millard Fuller, recalls that “Morris and I . . . 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.” Their path to prosperity was marketing cookbooks and similar fare. Dees then used his direct-mail expertise to help raise money for McGovern’s presidential campaign. When the South Dakota senator was defeated, Dees brought to the SPLC a donor list containing the names of nearly 700,000 McGovern supporters, providing the basis for the organization’s lucrative direct-mail program.
In its early years, SPLC focused on issues relevant to “Southern poverty,” primarily performing pro bono legal services, such as death-penalty appeals and suing to desegregate the all-white Alabama State Troopers. By the 1980s, the SPLC’s focus had shifted to fighting easily sensationalized bogeymen such as the KKK and neo-Nazi groups, despite those groups’ dwindling membership and scant political influence.
In 1984, Dees brought a highly publicized lawsuit against the United Klans of America (UKA) in Mobile, Alabama on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, whose son had been murdered in 1981 by two UKA thugs. In 1987, years after the perpetrators were convicted and sentenced, Dees obtained a much-hyped $7 million judgment against the UKA, downplaying the fact that the actual recovery against the impecunious group amounted only to about $50,000. The UKA case proved a fundraising goldmine, though: the SPLC raked in $9 million from direct-mail solicitations.
The die was cast; henceforth, the SPLC would pursue essentially meaningless but headline-grabbing cases, exploiting its uncollectible verdicts through sensational fundraising appeals that generated massive donations. One disgruntled former SPLC attorney complained that “[Dees] was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on.” The SPLC’s legal staff was appalled by the cynical change of direction. Journalist Ken Silverstein reported in Harper’s that “in 1986, the Center’s entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees’s refusal to address issues—such as homelessness, voter registration, and affirmative action—that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK.”
In a replay of the civil case against the UKA, the SPLC would go on to bring high-profile lawsuits against other Klan groups and similar fringe organizations, such as the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) in Portland, Oregon, and the Aryan Nations in Idaho, typically in cases alleging that associates of the organizations who committed violent acts were operating directly as representatives of the racist groups. These grandstanding lawsuits were mismatches, and the cash-strapped associations—lacking resources to defend themselves—were routinely routed by the SPLC’s well-funded legal team. In his memoir, Dees gloats that, when the SPLC sued WAR, its president, Tom Metzger—a TV repairman—chose to represent himself at trial, with predictable results. The SPLC won a $12.5 million jury verdict against WAR, and against Metzger personally. Dees boasts that “We took away Metzger’s house. . . . Back home we call that cleaning somebody’s plow.”
The 80-year-old Dees, who still serves as the SPLC’s “chief trial counsel,” presents himself as a courtroom champion for the downtrodden, in the image of his personal hero, Clarence Darrow. Revealingly, Dees opens and closes A Season for Justice with quotations from Darrow, and claims that reading Darrow’s autobiography in 1968 changed his life forever: “I was reading my own thoughts and feelings,” he recalls. Darrow, however, fought formidable opponents and never crowed about dispossessing outmatched adversaries who couldn’t even afford an attorney.
Supporting the SPLC satisfies a deeply held yearning of the legal profession, which is broadly left of center politically, to believe in its own virtue and importance. It’s not surprising, then, that legal groups have been drawn to Dees’ carefully cultivated mythology. Even Dees’s critics concede, as Charlotte Allen puts it, that he is “an indisputable genius at self-promotion.” Among the many awards Dees has received are the Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize from the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 2016, the ABA Medal from the American Bar Association in 2012 (the organization’s highest honor), and the Roger Baldwin Award from the ACLU in 1990.
In 2006, the prestigious international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom created the annual Morris Dees Justice Award at Dees’s alma mater, the University of Alabama law school, to honor lawyers devoted to public service. Atlanta-based civil rights lawyer Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights and longtime lecturer at Yale Law School, declined to accept the award in 2007 because he saw Dees as a “con man and fraud.” The award was discontinued in 2010, but it is still featured prominently on the law school’s website, along with a list of past recipients. Such awards, along with a hagiographic TV movie, Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story (1991), and—most importantly—adulatory coverage by the liberal press corps, give SPLC an undeserved aura of authority, which the organization exploits to promote its leftist agenda.
The SPLC’s investment portfolio (which it justifies as a contingency “for the day when nonprofits like SPLC can no longer afford to solicit support through the mail because of rising postage and printing costs”) has steadily grown to over $300 million, and includes offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. As Charlotte Allen drolly noted in The Weekly Standard, “SPLC is probably the richest poverty organization in the history of the world.” In the philanthropic world, nonprofit organizations such as SPLC are expected to use donors’ funds to provide services consistent with their charitable mission. Hoarding of cash is discouraged.
Accordingly, the nonprofit rating group CharityWatch (formerly known as the American Institute of Philanthropy) gives SPLC an “F” rating, its lowest grade, downgrading the group for having seven years’ worth of available assets in reserve. (By contrast, the ACLU Foundation earned an “A” rating.) In CharityWatch’s view, it’s reasonable for a nonprofit to have up to three years of operating expenses in reserve, but accumulating a financial cushion for longer than that indicates that a group places a higher priority on fundraising than on charitable programming. The near-namesake of Dees’s former business partner, noted anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer, described Dees as the nonprofit equivalent of a televangelist, exploiting faithful believers with incessant fundraising appeals: “He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement.”
Another monitor of nonprofits, Philanthropy Roundtable, is also critical of the SPLC, calling it “a notoriously partisan attack group,” “tendentious,” “irresponsible,” and “a cash-collecting machine.” In a recent report, Philanthropy Roundtable concluded:
[t]hough it styles itself as a public-interest law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center does shockingly little litigation, and only small amounts of that on behalf of any aggrieved individuals. Its two largest expenses are propaganda operations: creating its annual lists of “haters” and “extremists,” and running a big effort that pushes “tolerance education” through more than 400,000 public-school teachers. And the single biggest effort undertaken by the SPLC? Fundraising. On the organization’s 2015 IRS 990 form it declared $10 million of direct fundraising expenses, far more than it has ever spent on legal services.
The favorable press that the SPLC garners tends to obscure its glaring blunders, of which there have been many. Any one of these missteps would have been fatal to the credibility of an organization operating in the typical media fishbowl, but reporters enamored with the group’s message look the other way.
In an irony for an organization dedicated to fighting hate and extremism, the SPLC has long promoted Bill Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist of the 1970s and founder of the radical Weather Underground, as an “education activist” and exemplar of “tolerance.” The SPLC’s education project, “Teaching Tolerance,” and its companion website, tolerance.org, market Ayers’s books and describe him as “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.” Failing to mention that Ayers dedicated the Weather Underground’s 1974 revolutionary manifesto, Prairie Fire, to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, the SPLC lauds Ayers for his “rich vision of teaching that interweaves passion, responsibility and self-reflection.”
Conversely, the SPLC has been quick to condemn honorable men and women without justification. For example, in 2014, the SPLC listed Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, a retired pediatric brain surgeon now serving as HUD secretary, as an “extremist” due to his opposition to same-sex marriage. Following a public furor over the designation, he SPLC had to remove the mild-mannered Carson from the list and publicly apologize. Similarly, the SPLC has defamed Murray—who has two Asian children—as a “white nationalist.” Murray addressed the genetic components of human intelligence—a taboo to the Left—in his 1994 best-seller, The Bell Curve, coauthored with Richard Herrnstein. A single deviation from liberal orthodoxy is sufficient to negate a distinguished record of scholarship.
Shortly after the SPLC labeled the Family Research Council as a “hate group” in 2012—a designation that even Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank condemned as “reckless”—a deranged SPLC follower, Floyd Lee Corkins, made an armed attack on FRC’s Washington headquarters. Corkins acknowledged that he was able to locate the building with the help of the “Hate Map” provided on the SPLC’s website. Fortunately, no one was killed. Prompted by the FRC shooting, in 2014 the FBI removed SPLC from the “resources” page of its website.
The SPLC’s latest campaign is to seek the removal of more than 700 Confederate-themed statues and monuments from public areas and to eliminate all “publicly sponsored symbols” of Confederate leaders. The effort would include renaming at least 1,500 schools, highways, parks, bridges, counties, cities, lakes, dams, roads, military bases, and other public works in 41 states, as well as eliminating official holidays or observances in six states. The justification for expunging markers of consequential historical events? Prior to murdering nine people attending Bible study at the Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015, disturbed lone wolf Dylann Roof was photographed holding a Confederate battle flag. In the SPLC’s logic, Confederate symbols foster violence because they represent, not American history, but merely a hateful legacy of slavery and white supremacy. (The SPLC is currently willing to leave untouched the thousands of Civil War battlefields, cemeteries, markers, plaques, and similar symbols, because they “merely reflect historical events.”) This breathtaking initiative entails the classic elements of the SPLC’s finely honed demagoguery: false association of a repugnant killer with the SPLC’s target, in this case, Confederate symbols; raising the specter of racism to suppress dissent; and exploiting a divisive issue for fundraising purposes.
The long-simmering controversy over SPLC tactics boiled over in July, when ABC News reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had delivered a speech in California to an “anti-LGBT hate group”— the religious-liberty advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom—based solely on the SPLC’s designation. Many conservative publications criticized ABC and other news outlets for repeating the SPLC’s slur of a respected nonprofit that has litigated—and won—numerous cases before the Supreme Court. ADF is a legal organization, no different from the American Civil Liberties Union, except that it defends traditional Christian beliefs shared by millions of Americans. The outpouring of commentary regarding Sessions’s address to the ADF focused on the SPLC’s partisan mission, aggressive tactics, and cozy relationship with likeminded reporters.
The SPLC’s authority derives from its presumed occupation of a moral high ground, which is belied by its record of character assassination, questionable fundraising practices, excessive salaries, and poor ratings from philanthropic monitors. “I’ve long regarded Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center as collectively one of the greatest frauds in American life,” wrote the late progressive journalist Alexander Cockburn in 2007.
Unlike when the SPLC was created in 1971, many organizations today provide legal services to needy people: local legal aid groups, law school clinical programs, and law firm pro bono programs. The SPLC delivers little in the way of legal representation to indigent clients. For decades, the name Southern Poverty Law Center has not accurately described the SPLC’s mission.
The SPLC’s principal function currently is to provide an aura of respectability to liberal journalists wishing to disparage conservative groups and to provide cover for political battles, such as the removal of Confederate symbols. By unfairly applying the labels “hate,” “extremism,” and “racism,” SPLC seeks to stifle the type of robust public debate necessary for democracy to flourish. Cornell University law professor William Jacobson maintains that the SPLC, “by equating legitimate political opposition with criminal violence, is doing substantial damage to our national fabric.”…
gravenimage says
Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes respectable opponents as “hate groups”—and keeps its coffers bulging
………………
Shameless. Yet all too many credulous twits cite the SPLC as a respectable organization.
Westman says
Simply looking at the SPLC demographics on charity evaluation websites, using their own financial reports, there is no question that the SPLC is a business and its primary goal is staying in business.
It spends an inordinate amount to make money by buying lists of possible donors to target mail solicitations. Send a small donation to any rights charity, say the ACLU or Anmesty International, and you will shortly receive a donation solicitation from the SPLC. It seems to be unique among soliciting “charities” by tracking the individual non-response to a mailing solicitation and not continuing ineffective mailings – an earmark of a finely tuned business.
The non-profit designations of US law need to be re-examined. Any pet cause can qualify as a charity while its administration receives high salaries, uses a professional fund solicitaion service, and does very little for the cause it espouses. The crème de la crème of the charity business is becoming a “charity foundation”, a charity granting organization which simply collects the loot, pays itself and its board, and determines which charities shall receive the “grants”.
The SPLC has outdone the money-granting charities, which only make money; it has become the left’s “political legitimacy gatekeeper foundation” while supporting itself from their donations. In effect it is a political organization without donation accountability, a virtual super-PAC.
mariam rove says
Who funds those bastards? That is what I want to know? m
John Forbes says
HOW on earth can the US allow this ??? It is blatant shutting down of FREE SPEECH !
Is it a LACK of EDUCATION on what is happening ?? Do the general public not understand ??
jihad3tracker says
Now that Steve Bannon is out and McMaster appears to remain.
All of us — who know the jihad threat will grow ever bigger and more deadly, and the SPLC Leftist haters of truth will continue to spread lies — must double and even triple our work to get Islam identified as the pathology of death.
Here is one suggestion, which we can begin this weekend if a half-hour of precious spare time appears:
USE THE “DRAFT” FEATURE OF YOUR EMAIL — to write a message suitable for sending to clueless family, friends, and deliberately blind deniers about The Religion Of Shredded Pieces. Include at least 5 citations from the Qur’an. 5 Hadiths, and some concrete facts regarding how Muhammad was a subjugative and violent scourge upon so many persons. And definitely put in hotlinks to as many counter-jihad websites as possible.
As I have recommended previously, be sure to write about your own progress from knowing nothing, onward to have a good grasp of that supremacist ideology.
WITH THE “DRAFT” FEATURE, you can save it, look again later, improve for clarity, and add more content, when you are freshly rested on another day. In that way, when you finally are satisfied, it will be an effective hard-hitting dose of reality.
Pam Geller, David Wood, Robert Spencer, and other courageous tireless people have devoted years to waking our fellow citizens. Commit yourself now, and permanently to the fight along with them.
Lydia says
Absolutely!
In fact, I’ve been doing this for years! I’ve been a voice of warning under a list of aliases in many websites, sending out email lists like that, etc. I figure it’s like that with the freedom of speech; use it or lose it. I’ve battled on the front lines for years. I will continue as long as is physically possible.
In fact, I will share my list now again, I may have before, but I do so much I can’t remember. See next email.
Lydia says
Please feel free to copy and paste this list into your email and send out en masse, just email it to yourself and list all the email addresses in the CC or BCC line. That way you will get a copy too.
The Truth about Islam
“Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it.” (Surah 2:216)
“Seek out your enemies relentlessly.” (Surah 4:103-)
“…make war on the leaders of unbelief…Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them. He will grant you victory over them…” (Surah 9:12-)
“Fight against such as those to whom the Scriptures were given [Jews and Christians]…until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued.” (Surah 9:27-)
“If you do not fight, He will punish you sternly, and replace you by other men.” (Surah 9:37-)
“Prophet make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home.” (Surah 9:73)
“Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them.” (Surah 9:121-)
“Muhammad is God’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another.” (Surah 48:29)
Quran (9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” “People of the Book” refers to Christians and Jews. According to this verse, they are to be violently subjugated, with the sole justification being their religious status. This was one of the final “revelations” from Allah and it set in motion the tenacious military expansion, in which Muhammad’s companions managed to conquer two-thirds of the Christian world in the next 100 years. Islam is intended to dominate all other people and faiths.
Mohammed said, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” (Hadith Al Buhkari vol. 9:57) This command is practiced in almost all Islamic Fundamentalist countries today.
Mohammed said: “No Muslim should be killed for killing a Kafir (infidel).”(Hadith vol. 9:50) This means a non- Muslim.
Sura 15:66: “And We made known this decree to him, that the last remnants of those (sinners) should be cut off by the morning.”
sahih muslim Book:41 Number:6985
Keywords: Jews,Fight & Kill
Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
sahih muslim Book:19 Number:4366
Keywords: Christians,Jews,Only islam
It has been narrated by ‘Umar b. al-Khattib that he heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim.
Comment: NO tolerance for non-muslims
• Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them(2:191)
• Make war on the infidels living in your neighboorhood (9:123)
• When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them (9:5)
• Kill the Jews and the Christians if they do not convert to Islam or refuse to pay Jizya tax (9:29)
• Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable (3:85)
• The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them (9:30)
• Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticise Islam. (5:33)
• The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque (9:28)
• Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies
(22:19)
• Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them (47:4)
• The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them (8:65)
• Muslims must not take the infidels as friends (3:28)
• Terrorise and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an (8:12)
• Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorise the infidels (8:60)
When the sacred months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. – Surah 9:5
Paul N Silas says
Back in the 1980’s a KGB agent defected and told the West how the Left was going to take over. The plan was called “Active Measures” and involved a change in culture and an infiltration of our Media.
It sure as hell is working, thanks to Soros’s’ money and all of the useful Idiots like the SPLC
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
… soon only hard-Left voices will be given any platform at all.
Well, besides Fox RINO the globo-socialists already have an exclusive platform. As for the former, I see on Fox RINO that even genuine conservatives are constrained. The great Mark Steyn standing in for Eric Bolling as host of The Fox News Specialists has declined to even mention the contents of the Holy Ko-Ran. Don’t blame him, do that and never appear on FNC again. Last night Walid Phares was on the channel as a terrorism analyst to discuss the mass murder in Spain. He was asked straight up by substitute Tucker Carlson Tonight host Gregg Jarrett whether the terrorists were acting in the name of Islam. Great question. Phares answered that depended on what ISIS operative “radicalized” those in the Spanish mass murder cell, evading the question altogether. Jarrett didn’t bother to press Phares for an answer.
Lydia says
Yes, the SPLC is totally anti-Christian and we as Christians are their #1 target.
It’s not just them. I posted a list earlier about the government watch list. Maybe I should get that one out again too.
See below, I got this from a website, you can just google and find it too.
Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…
1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”
2. Those that advocate for states’ rights
3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”
5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”
6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”
7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”
8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”
9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”
10. “Anti-Gay”
11. “Anti-Immigrant”
12. “Anti-Muslim”
13. “The Patriot Movement”
14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”
15. Members of the Family Research Council
16. Members of the American Family Association
17. Those that believe that Mexico, Canada and the United States “are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ‘North American Union’”
18. Members of the American Border Patrol/American Patrol
19. Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
20. Members of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition
21. Members of the Christian Action Network
22. Anyone that is “opposed to the New World Order”
23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”
24. Anyone that is opposed to Agenda 21
25. Anyone that is concerned about FEMA camps
26. Anyone that “fears impending gun control or weapons confiscations”
27. The militia movement
28. The sovereign citizen movement
29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”
30. Anyone that “complains about bias”
31. Anyone that “believes in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia”
32. Anyone that “is frustrated with mainstream ideologies”
33. Anyone that “visits extremist websites/blogs”
34. Anyone that “establishes website/blog to display extremist views”
35. Anyone that “attends rallies for extremist causes”
36. Anyone that “exhibits extreme religious intolerance”
37. Anyone that “is personally connected with a grievance”
38. Anyone that “suddenly acquires weapons”
39. Anyone that “organizes protests inspired by extremist ideology”
40. “Militia or unorganized militia”
41. “General right-wing extremist”
42. Citizens that have “bumper stickers” that are patriotic or anti-U.N.
43. Those that refer to an “Army of God”
44. Those that are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”
45. Those that are “anti-global”
46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”
47. Those that are “reverent of individual liberty”
48. Those that “believe in conspiracy theories”
49. Those that have “a belief that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack”
50. Those that possess “a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”
51. Those that would “impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”
52. Those that would “insert religion into the political sphere”
53. Anyone that would “seek to politicize religion”
54. Those that have “supported political movements for autonomy”
55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”
56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”
57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”
58. “Rightwing extremists”
59. “Returning veterans”
60. Those concerned about “illegal immigration”
61. Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”
62. Anyone that is engaged in “ammunition stockpiling”
63. Anyone that exhibits “fear of Communist regimes”
64. “Anti-abortion activists”
65. Those that are against illegal immigration
66. Those that talk about “the New World Order” in a “derogatory” manner
67. Those that have a negative view of the United Nations
68. Those that are opposed “to the collection of federal income taxes”
69. Those that supported former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr
70. Those that display the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”)
71. Those that believe in “end times” prophecies
72. Evangelical Christians
The groups of people in the list above are considered “problems” that need to be dealt with. In some of the documents referenced above, members of the military are specifically warned not to have anything to do with such groups.
I make at least two-thirds of these items on the list.
Lydia says
Oh, and I heard about a case not too long ago about a few Christian charities being labeled as ‘hate groups’ by some watchdog organization (I don’t recall which one) because we don’t support the sin of lgbt.
When you see all these pieces and then you see them all coming together, you get the big picture.
While I was still clueless the picture was revealed to me. After that I noticed all the pieces falling into place, like a puzzle. I used to warn about this a lot on Christian sites, but ran into mostly ostriches. A few voices paralleled mine, but so few it is shocking. The Spirit reveals these things to those who truly submit to the Lord and surrender to Him all of themselves, holding back nothing. There is no stopping this and the only reason I’m saying this is so that people can be prepared. It is in end times Bible prophecy so it is sure.
“However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come. He will glorify Me by taking from what is Mine and disclosing it to you. Everything that belongs to the Father is Mine. That is why I said that the Spirit will take from what is Mine and disclose it to you.” John 16; 13-15
(And yes. It is for today as well.)
“But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. On account of My name, they will deliver you to the synagogues and prisons, and they will bring you before kings and governors. This will be your opportunity to serve as witnesses.” Luke 21; 12-13
(Remember, the whole point of all of our calling and of all of this is so that we can be….
HIS WITNESSES.)
Demsci says
“//The SPLC claims that “917 Hate Groups are currently operating in the U.S.,” but offers only vague guidelines for what qualifies: “groups hav[ing] beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics”//
Very vague. Beliefs that only malign, or exclusively VERBAL attacks, should be protected by freedom of speech. Not only for some “entire class of people”, but also for individuals. Otherwise how can SPLC express it’s own disliking of groups or individuals?
If SPLC limits it’s list to those “groups” that really attack (in violence) groups or individuals their hate list would be very short and JW would not be on it.
And are Muslims an “entire class of people”? Maybe if we stipulate that yes, EVERY Muslim does adhere to Islam, duh.
But even that could be considered just as much as a choice as being a Nazi or KKK. Or conversely; If adhering to Islam is condoned, then why not adhering to Nazism or KKK, when it’s members also well may be indoctrinated from birth?
And we know that Islamic ideology is in quite a lot of parts inherently anti-democratic and pro-dictatorial. And if it is argued that so many Muslims do not practice this ideology, surveys also prove that hundreds of millions of Muslims do interpret and practice this ideology in this way. And in the process they, indeed do target “A whole class of people with immutable characteristics”, namely infidels, and more specifically Jews.
And here I mean that part of the Muslims that confirm this in these surveys. So I do not paint all Muslims with the same black brush, but maintain that just because “not all are guilty”, that that does not mean that “all are innocent” of the charges made against Muslims, which is painting all Muslims with the same white brush.
I think SPLC shies away from public debate because it uses such double standards, which simply cannot defended in a reasonable way to a reasonable public.
Gail griffin says
They are going after Sebastian Gorka now. CNN just did a take down of him on TV yesterday. I never saw anything like it. They called in people , one of which said he was a friend and colleague and just trashed Gorka.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Hey – isn’t “Potok” a Klingon word?
😉
Scorpio says
I am always amazed why people like the SPLC, or Facebook, PayPal, Google and others think they can dictate who will be offered a platform. The fact that Facebook exists and provide a service to the general public, suggests that others who wish to provide such a service can also exist. Why are there no rivals to these monoliths?
There must be someone who would like to start such a business and to prosper, given all the threats by the left-fascists groups? As someone who believes in freedom of speech I would be prepared to invest in an alternative; after all Trump wasn’t elected by people like these creeps.