Apparently the Southern Poverty Law Center is feeling the pinch as the economy is still creeping along at a snails pace. Donations are falling for nearly every charitable and political organization and while many have made sincere pleas to their traditional supporters, the SPLC has chosen to cry “Wolf” once again and tell America how close we are to anarchy at the hands of the hateful right.
In an article penned by Mark Potok, he claims that the “radical right” has reared its ugly head once again and is breathing the flames of hatred all across the nation. His article states that hate groups stayed at record levels of roughly one thousand and that anti-immigrant vigilante groups have risen eighty percent; adding as many as 139 new groups in 2009 alone. If the name Mark Potok sounds familiar it is because he has also written for that other voice of Liberal reason, the Huffington Post. As much as the Huffington Post uses their pages to routinely bash Conservative values and has often sought to soften the jagged edges of violent radicals on the left, they usually don’t align themselves with single-minded conspiracy seekers.
Since defense is usually a trait of the guilty, I refuse to lend credence to Mr. Potok’s odd observations by wasting my time rebutting them line by line. I will however, delve into why Mr. Potok makes these charges so vociferously. Mark Potok has made a name for himself scouring the internet and airwaves looking for words and phrases to reinforce his notion that Conservatives in the United States are little more than a seething pot of zealots bent on the destruction of anything that is not white or Christian. Most of the “Hate Groups” that Mr. Potok refers to are phantom websites that are reflective of a very small minority and it takes a vivid imagination to claim that they are a product of the Tea Party or are representative of Conservatism as a movement.
In Mark Potok’s world, the populist movement that is calling for tax relief and a halt to Federal spending are simply hateful and dangerous. He has worked feverishly to take the isolated opinions of a few people living on the fringe of society and wrap the entire Conservative movement in a very thin veil he made though his efforts. The links he claims exist between the two would be laughable if he were not so sadly serious about them.
The anti-immigration vigilantes his article claims are so prevalent are also the product of his fertile mind. For an anti-immigration group to be considered “vigilante” it would have to necessarily follow a path of violence against immigrants; a violence that is curiously absent on the scale that he writes of. Of course if all of the mainstream media were involved in this grand conspiracy, then news of these violent incidents might go unreported. Considering that most of the mainstream media share Mr. Potok’s views of Conservatives and Tea Party members, the chances of vigilante violence against immigrants going unreported are statistically impossible.
Of course, the SPLC doesn’t have an issue with Potok’s crusade to uncover right wing conspiracies because it plays into their own reasons for existence; bashing the Conservative right and fund raising. The SPLC was founded in 1971 by two Alabama attorneys, Morris Dees and Joe Levin. Their stated mission is to track the activities of hate groups and bring legal action against them where feasible. Of course this mission seems to be overwhelmingly directed at so called “right wing” hate groups while the actions of the left and radical left are largely ignored. They are famous for overstating the membership and dangers posed by white supremacist groups; often launching ridiculous claims that “the heirs of Hitler” will soon be marching through the streets of America while trying to frighten donations out of elderly Liberals.
The SPLC spends twice as much on fund raising as it does on legal services and that may be the reason for the slant of the ink that finds its way to their paper. After all, liberals tend to be very generous when it comes to what they believe is social justice while Conservatives usually look for the truth in what they have been told before they will commit to spending their resources or time on any cause. Why do I believe this is more about cash than conscience? Well, co-founder Morris Dees’ one time business partner Millard Fuller once said: "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."
Even former SPLC legal fellow Pamela Summers said in an interview with The Montgomery Advisor: "They're drowning in their own affluence…What they are doing in the legal department is not done for the best interest of everybody (but) is done as though the sole, overriding goal is to make money." "I think people associate the SPLC with going to court," added Summers. "And that's why they get the money. And they don't go to court." Curiously, there were several studies through the 1990’s that Dees and other top SPLC personnel earned disproportionately higher salaries than the top personnel of most non-profit organizations.
Of course that doesn’t explain all of their leftward tilt but Julian Bond does. Julian Bond, the NAACP’s current Chairman, was the SPLC’s first President and is still a member of their Board of Directors. Bond is fervent believer that America is a racist nation and has gone as far as saying that the Republican “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.” Bond will never recognize that America has fundamentally changed since the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s because he refuses to accept the ascension of minorities into the power base that guides the nation.
According to Bond, blacks that espoused conservatism are not proof of America’s greatness, they are nothing less than traitors that had joined a vast right wing conspiracy plotting to reverse affirmative action, voting rights for minorities and public education reforms. Conservative blacks, according to Bond, are ventriloquist’s dummies that speak in the puppet master’s voice. In an even more bizarre twist, Bond equated Hitler’s relationship to Jews with Nixon’s relationship to Blacks and accused former National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice of being a murderer working for the Bush “oil cabal”. Bond had also suggested that Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were both token black appointees that the Bush Administration was using as “human shields against any criticism of [its] record on civil rights.”
Bond may despise Conservatives and America but appears to have great admiration for Communism. For someone that is so unabashedly angry over his perception of racial injustice, Bond seems more than willing to ignore the ethnic cleansing that has punctuated the history of many Communist States. Bond praised longtime Communist Party USA leader James E. Jackson, Jr., an individual described by CPUSA Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner as “a consummate teacher of Marxism-Leninism.”
Bond’s affiliation with Communism is not a new revelation. In 1965 Bond was elected to the Georgia State Assembly however, the Assembly refused to seat Bond, citing his endorsement of a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s directive that urged young black men to illegally avoid the military draft. Bond won a second election, then a third, with the same result. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court, for the first time in American history, overruled a state legislature’s right to establish and maintain its own qualifications for seating members. During the period that he fought for his Assembly seat, Bond had become a celebrity. He was endorsed by the Communist Party, participated in Communist political forums, and campaigned for Communist and left wing politicians as he continued to urge blacks to resist the draft.
My father often told me that a “Fish stinks from the head down” and if the leadership of the SPLC is rife with such disgusting characters, then it is no surprise that they would attract people that are equally myopic. Mark Potok is only one of the conspiracy theorists writing for the SPLC but combined, their anger is clearly fueled by the despicable displays of Bond’s racial hatred and encouraged by the insatiable greed of Morris Dees.
This is not a denial that racial prejudice exists in the country; I am sad to say it does. What Mr. Potok refuses to see is that the Conservative movement and the Tea Parties also treat prejudice with disdain. The hate groups that Potok speaks of are isolated and small cells of radical zealots that are no longer welcome in American society and for the most part, conduct their nefarious acts using pseudonyms to hide their identity while they spew their poison on the internet. I would dare to say there is more left wing hatred than there ever was on the right and while the left wing radicals threaten the existence of the United States, real Conservatives and Tea Partiers are raising their voices in support of the Constitution and that support shouldn’t threaten anyone that is not threatened by the Constitution itself.
Paul
Source material obtained from:
The Southern Poverty Law Center
Discoverthenetworks.org
The New York Daily News
In an article penned by Mark Potok, he claims that the “radical right” has reared its ugly head once again and is breathing the flames of hatred all across the nation. His article states that hate groups stayed at record levels of roughly one thousand and that anti-immigrant vigilante groups have risen eighty percent; adding as many as 139 new groups in 2009 alone. If the name Mark Potok sounds familiar it is because he has also written for that other voice of Liberal reason, the Huffington Post. As much as the Huffington Post uses their pages to routinely bash Conservative values and has often sought to soften the jagged edges of violent radicals on the left, they usually don’t align themselves with single-minded conspiracy seekers.
Since defense is usually a trait of the guilty, I refuse to lend credence to Mr. Potok’s odd observations by wasting my time rebutting them line by line. I will however, delve into why Mr. Potok makes these charges so vociferously. Mark Potok has made a name for himself scouring the internet and airwaves looking for words and phrases to reinforce his notion that Conservatives in the United States are little more than a seething pot of zealots bent on the destruction of anything that is not white or Christian. Most of the “Hate Groups” that Mr. Potok refers to are phantom websites that are reflective of a very small minority and it takes a vivid imagination to claim that they are a product of the Tea Party or are representative of Conservatism as a movement.
In Mark Potok’s world, the populist movement that is calling for tax relief and a halt to Federal spending are simply hateful and dangerous. He has worked feverishly to take the isolated opinions of a few people living on the fringe of society and wrap the entire Conservative movement in a very thin veil he made though his efforts. The links he claims exist between the two would be laughable if he were not so sadly serious about them.
The anti-immigration vigilantes his article claims are so prevalent are also the product of his fertile mind. For an anti-immigration group to be considered “vigilante” it would have to necessarily follow a path of violence against immigrants; a violence that is curiously absent on the scale that he writes of. Of course if all of the mainstream media were involved in this grand conspiracy, then news of these violent incidents might go unreported. Considering that most of the mainstream media share Mr. Potok’s views of Conservatives and Tea Party members, the chances of vigilante violence against immigrants going unreported are statistically impossible.
Of course, the SPLC doesn’t have an issue with Potok’s crusade to uncover right wing conspiracies because it plays into their own reasons for existence; bashing the Conservative right and fund raising. The SPLC was founded in 1971 by two Alabama attorneys, Morris Dees and Joe Levin. Their stated mission is to track the activities of hate groups and bring legal action against them where feasible. Of course this mission seems to be overwhelmingly directed at so called “right wing” hate groups while the actions of the left and radical left are largely ignored. They are famous for overstating the membership and dangers posed by white supremacist groups; often launching ridiculous claims that “the heirs of Hitler” will soon be marching through the streets of America while trying to frighten donations out of elderly Liberals.
The SPLC spends twice as much on fund raising as it does on legal services and that may be the reason for the slant of the ink that finds its way to their paper. After all, liberals tend to be very generous when it comes to what they believe is social justice while Conservatives usually look for the truth in what they have been told before they will commit to spending their resources or time on any cause. Why do I believe this is more about cash than conscience? Well, co-founder Morris Dees’ one time business partner Millard Fuller once said: "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."
Even former SPLC legal fellow Pamela Summers said in an interview with The Montgomery Advisor: "They're drowning in their own affluence…What they are doing in the legal department is not done for the best interest of everybody (but) is done as though the sole, overriding goal is to make money." "I think people associate the SPLC with going to court," added Summers. "And that's why they get the money. And they don't go to court." Curiously, there were several studies through the 1990’s that Dees and other top SPLC personnel earned disproportionately higher salaries than the top personnel of most non-profit organizations.
Of course that doesn’t explain all of their leftward tilt but Julian Bond does. Julian Bond, the NAACP’s current Chairman, was the SPLC’s first President and is still a member of their Board of Directors. Bond is fervent believer that America is a racist nation and has gone as far as saying that the Republican “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.” Bond will never recognize that America has fundamentally changed since the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s because he refuses to accept the ascension of minorities into the power base that guides the nation.
According to Bond, blacks that espoused conservatism are not proof of America’s greatness, they are nothing less than traitors that had joined a vast right wing conspiracy plotting to reverse affirmative action, voting rights for minorities and public education reforms. Conservative blacks, according to Bond, are ventriloquist’s dummies that speak in the puppet master’s voice. In an even more bizarre twist, Bond equated Hitler’s relationship to Jews with Nixon’s relationship to Blacks and accused former National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice of being a murderer working for the Bush “oil cabal”. Bond had also suggested that Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were both token black appointees that the Bush Administration was using as “human shields against any criticism of [its] record on civil rights.”
Bond may despise Conservatives and America but appears to have great admiration for Communism. For someone that is so unabashedly angry over his perception of racial injustice, Bond seems more than willing to ignore the ethnic cleansing that has punctuated the history of many Communist States. Bond praised longtime Communist Party USA leader James E. Jackson, Jr., an individual described by CPUSA Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner as “a consummate teacher of Marxism-Leninism.”
Bond’s affiliation with Communism is not a new revelation. In 1965 Bond was elected to the Georgia State Assembly however, the Assembly refused to seat Bond, citing his endorsement of a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s directive that urged young black men to illegally avoid the military draft. Bond won a second election, then a third, with the same result. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court, for the first time in American history, overruled a state legislature’s right to establish and maintain its own qualifications for seating members. During the period that he fought for his Assembly seat, Bond had become a celebrity. He was endorsed by the Communist Party, participated in Communist political forums, and campaigned for Communist and left wing politicians as he continued to urge blacks to resist the draft.
My father often told me that a “Fish stinks from the head down” and if the leadership of the SPLC is rife with such disgusting characters, then it is no surprise that they would attract people that are equally myopic. Mark Potok is only one of the conspiracy theorists writing for the SPLC but combined, their anger is clearly fueled by the despicable displays of Bond’s racial hatred and encouraged by the insatiable greed of Morris Dees.
This is not a denial that racial prejudice exists in the country; I am sad to say it does. What Mr. Potok refuses to see is that the Conservative movement and the Tea Parties also treat prejudice with disdain. The hate groups that Potok speaks of are isolated and small cells of radical zealots that are no longer welcome in American society and for the most part, conduct their nefarious acts using pseudonyms to hide their identity while they spew their poison on the internet. I would dare to say there is more left wing hatred than there ever was on the right and while the left wing radicals threaten the existence of the United States, real Conservatives and Tea Partiers are raising their voices in support of the Constitution and that support shouldn’t threaten anyone that is not threatened by the Constitution itself.
Paul
Source material obtained from:
The Southern Poverty Law Center
Discoverthenetworks.org
The New York Daily News
If you really want to know about Morris get his IRS records and check into a shadowy fund called the Southern trust fund that as of several years ago had no record of existing.According to the Alabama office in charge of trusts.
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