Hatred: the god that failed
May 2, 2019 08:44:59 #
no propaganda please
Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
Hatred: the god that failed
America’s unofficial arbiter of h**e groups is facing a crisis
Michael Cook |
The headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama
With hatred so h**ed today, it’s hardly surprising that some genius would find a way, not just to use hatred to smear political opponents, but to monetize it. That genius was Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is the story of his rise and fall, and the rise and uncertain future of the group he founded.
Dees, who is now 82, began his career as both an Alabama lawyer and direct-mail marketing entrepreneur. In 1971 he created the SPLC to litigate civil rights cases. He developed an innovative and highly successful way of dealing with h**e groups – he sued them out of existence. In 1981 he won a US$7 million judgement against the United Klans of America; in 1991 a $12 million judgement against the White Aryan Resistance; in 2001 against Aryan Nations.
Building on the prestige of his legal victories over these extremist groups, he campaigned for donations from Northern liberals. The message was simple (direct mail messages have to be simple): h**e groups are multiplying like cockroaches and American needs the SPLC to exterminate them. The SPLC website displays a map of h**e groups which is widely reported in the media when it is updated every year. An organisation on its list is often described by journalists as “a recognized h**e group”.
Dees and the SPLC have been incredibly successful at raising money. From nothing it has become a company with 350 employees, a $60 million operating budget and an “endowment” of US$471 million “to support our future work”. As a gauge of its wealth, Planned Parenthood has an endowment of only $120 million. While the SPLC does a lot of good work campaigning for prisoners, migrants, and civil rights, it is hatred of hatred which kept the dollars rolling in.
But despite the SPLC’s massive resources and efforts, the flames of American hatred are leaping higher and higher -- at least according to the desperate language used on its website. In 2018, the SPLC’s tally of h**e groups had reached 1,020, up 7 per cent from last year and 30 percent since 2014.
Who are these h**ers? They include Alt-Right groups, Black Nationalist groups, Holocaust Denial groups, Male Supremacy groups, Neo-Confederate groups and more. But along with genuine r****t and anti-Semitic groups, the list was inflated by adding anti-immigration, “h********c” and “t***sphobic” organisations.
And here the wheels fell off the bus. Included also were groups like the Family Research Council, the World Congress of Families, the Ruth Institute, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American College of Pediatricians, the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) and others. Their only offence was supporting traditional marriage and opposing legal and social changes which strengthened homosexual and t*********r ideologies. But no matter how much they protested, their image was blighted by their label as an SPLC-designated h**e group. This made it difficult for them to raise funds and tainted their image in the media. The SPLC was churning out defamation on an industrial scale. (Disclosure: articles by people working for some of these groups have been published on MercatorNet.)
Until now.
Over the past three weeks the moral authority of the SPLC has crumbled like a skyscraper demolished with a controlled blast. On March 13, Morris Dees, its co-founder and leader for nearly 50 years was fired. A press release raised eyebrows everywhere:
We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse — t***h, justice, equity, and inclusion. When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.
It seems that a mortar from #MeToo had been lobbed into the SPLC headquarters. Within ten days the president, Richard Cohen, and the legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, had resigned. Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for Michelle Obama, was engaged “to advise us on workplace culture issues”.
But bland reassurances that the “SPLC is in good hands for many years to come” without any explanation of why Dees had been terminated rang hollow.
Suddenly the media exploded with revelations about the internal working of the SPLC. There were allegations of sexual harassment, g****r discrimination and racial discrimination. The shining Camelot of American civil rights activism had been unmasked as just your average toxic workplace.
Once Sir Galahad’s shield of righteousness had cracked, the media started to listen to the long-standing complaints of groups which had been defamed as “h**ers”.
Stephen Bright, an SPLC critic who is a Yale law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, was not surprised. “The chickens have had a very long trip, but they finally came home to roost," he told the Los Angeles Times. “Morris is a flimflam man and he’s managed to flimflam his way along for many years raising money by telling people about the Ku Klux Klan and h**e groups. He sort of goes to wh**ever will sell and has, of course, brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars.”
The New Yorker ran a damning feature which claimed that Dees was a “’super-salesman and master fundraiser’ who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals.”
A journalist for a left-leaning publication, Current Affairs, delved into the SPLC’s marketing strategy:
The biggest problem with the h**e map, though, is that it’s an outright fraud. I don’t use that term casually. I mean, the whole thing is a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC. The SPLC reported this year that the number of h**e groups in the country is at a “record high,” that it is the “fourth straight year” of h**e group growth, and that this growth coincides with Donald Trump’s rise to power. There are now a whopping 1,020 h**e groups around the country. America is teeming with h**e.
Let’s dig into this number a bit. The first thing you should note is that it’s meaningless. The SPLC consistently declines to identify how many members these h**e groups have. It just notes the number of groups. Without knowing how large they are, what does it mean that they exist? Are they one person? 1000?
In short, even the mainstream media is starting to realise that the SPLC h**e map is fatally flawed. However, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the t***h can get its boots on. The reputations of a good number of honest organisation have been badly tarnished by being described as h**e groups. The new president and board of the SPLC should use its internal reboot to break with its own shameful past and make amends for the h**e map’s libels.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.
America’s unofficial arbiter of h**e groups is facing a crisis
Michael Cook |
The headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama
With hatred so h**ed today, it’s hardly surprising that some genius would find a way, not just to use hatred to smear political opponents, but to monetize it. That genius was Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is the story of his rise and fall, and the rise and uncertain future of the group he founded.
Dees, who is now 82, began his career as both an Alabama lawyer and direct-mail marketing entrepreneur. In 1971 he created the SPLC to litigate civil rights cases. He developed an innovative and highly successful way of dealing with h**e groups – he sued them out of existence. In 1981 he won a US$7 million judgement against the United Klans of America; in 1991 a $12 million judgement against the White Aryan Resistance; in 2001 against Aryan Nations.
Building on the prestige of his legal victories over these extremist groups, he campaigned for donations from Northern liberals. The message was simple (direct mail messages have to be simple): h**e groups are multiplying like cockroaches and American needs the SPLC to exterminate them. The SPLC website displays a map of h**e groups which is widely reported in the media when it is updated every year. An organisation on its list is often described by journalists as “a recognized h**e group”.
Dees and the SPLC have been incredibly successful at raising money. From nothing it has become a company with 350 employees, a $60 million operating budget and an “endowment” of US$471 million “to support our future work”. As a gauge of its wealth, Planned Parenthood has an endowment of only $120 million. While the SPLC does a lot of good work campaigning for prisoners, migrants, and civil rights, it is hatred of hatred which kept the dollars rolling in.
But despite the SPLC’s massive resources and efforts, the flames of American hatred are leaping higher and higher -- at least according to the desperate language used on its website. In 2018, the SPLC’s tally of h**e groups had reached 1,020, up 7 per cent from last year and 30 percent since 2014.
Who are these h**ers? They include Alt-Right groups, Black Nationalist groups, Holocaust Denial groups, Male Supremacy groups, Neo-Confederate groups and more. But along with genuine r****t and anti-Semitic groups, the list was inflated by adding anti-immigration, “h********c” and “t***sphobic” organisations.
And here the wheels fell off the bus. Included also were groups like the Family Research Council, the World Congress of Families, the Ruth Institute, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American College of Pediatricians, the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) and others. Their only offence was supporting traditional marriage and opposing legal and social changes which strengthened homosexual and t*********r ideologies. But no matter how much they protested, their image was blighted by their label as an SPLC-designated h**e group. This made it difficult for them to raise funds and tainted their image in the media. The SPLC was churning out defamation on an industrial scale. (Disclosure: articles by people working for some of these groups have been published on MercatorNet.)
Until now.
Over the past three weeks the moral authority of the SPLC has crumbled like a skyscraper demolished with a controlled blast. On March 13, Morris Dees, its co-founder and leader for nearly 50 years was fired. A press release raised eyebrows everywhere:
We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse — t***h, justice, equity, and inclusion. When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.
It seems that a mortar from #MeToo had been lobbed into the SPLC headquarters. Within ten days the president, Richard Cohen, and the legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, had resigned. Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for Michelle Obama, was engaged “to advise us on workplace culture issues”.
But bland reassurances that the “SPLC is in good hands for many years to come” without any explanation of why Dees had been terminated rang hollow.
Suddenly the media exploded with revelations about the internal working of the SPLC. There were allegations of sexual harassment, g****r discrimination and racial discrimination. The shining Camelot of American civil rights activism had been unmasked as just your average toxic workplace.
Once Sir Galahad’s shield of righteousness had cracked, the media started to listen to the long-standing complaints of groups which had been defamed as “h**ers”.
Stephen Bright, an SPLC critic who is a Yale law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, was not surprised. “The chickens have had a very long trip, but they finally came home to roost," he told the Los Angeles Times. “Morris is a flimflam man and he’s managed to flimflam his way along for many years raising money by telling people about the Ku Klux Klan and h**e groups. He sort of goes to wh**ever will sell and has, of course, brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars.”
The New Yorker ran a damning feature which claimed that Dees was a “’super-salesman and master fundraiser’ who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals.”
A journalist for a left-leaning publication, Current Affairs, delved into the SPLC’s marketing strategy:
The biggest problem with the h**e map, though, is that it’s an outright fraud. I don’t use that term casually. I mean, the whole thing is a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC. The SPLC reported this year that the number of h**e groups in the country is at a “record high,” that it is the “fourth straight year” of h**e group growth, and that this growth coincides with Donald Trump’s rise to power. There are now a whopping 1,020 h**e groups around the country. America is teeming with h**e.
Let’s dig into this number a bit. The first thing you should note is that it’s meaningless. The SPLC consistently declines to identify how many members these h**e groups have. It just notes the number of groups. Without knowing how large they are, what does it mean that they exist? Are they one person? 1000?
In short, even the mainstream media is starting to realise that the SPLC h**e map is fatally flawed. However, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the t***h can get its boots on. The reputations of a good number of honest organisation have been badly tarnished by being described as h**e groups. The new president and board of the SPLC should use its internal reboot to break with its own shameful past and make amends for the h**e map’s libels.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.
May 2, 2019 09:32:40 #
no propaganda please wrote:
Hatred: the god that failed br America’s unofficia... (show quote)
An excellent article there NPP and very true. I have been skeptical of the SPLC as well as ACLU for quite some time and I believe that they are both milking millions from the rich liberals all across our land.
May 2, 2019 14:04:24 #
no propaganda please wrote:
Hatred: the god that failed br America’s unofficia... (show quote)
Sadly h**e groups have grown as a result of the internet. Just a few years ago a r****t crank had to rely on the mail to find fellow travelers and as a result they sat alone quietly, their horrible beliefs would have them ostracized by their communities if they made them public. A good example of this was the 19 year old nut job who shot up the people in the California Synagogue. His family denounced and disowned him and his beliefs and were shocked, embarrassed and saddened by his horrific act. He filled his heart with h**e straight from internet chat rooms and found a community there that invited him and stoked his lunacy. The SPLC was nothing short of heroic in destroying or at least holding h**e groups accountable. There is little wrong with its h**e map. The people attempting to defend their h**e, bigotry and discrimination with the cloak of religion are no different from those in the past who used religion to defend wrongs from s***ery to Miscegenation. They are evil and on the wrong side of history.
May 2, 2019 15:31:35 #
no propaganda please
Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
Kevyn wrote:
Sadly h**e groups have grown as a result of the in... (show quote)
Why do you think that all hatred is r****t in nature? I have known people who h**e the opposite sex, and those who h**e people that are smarter than they are. Most often, however, I know of people who h**e people who have more money than they do. The other group that the "progressives" seem to h**e are Jewish people, particularly those who are not only Jews by birth but Jewish in their religion. Neither condition has anything to do with race, but are the most commonly h**ed people. I for one, have only one group of people that I h**e, and that is the group of people who rape, beat, and/or torture children. It is my opinion that all of those should be sent to the South Pole with just the clothes on their backs.
May 2, 2019 16:57:49 #
no propaganda please wrote:
Why do you think that all hatred is r****t in natu... (show quote)
Amen and Amen
May 2, 2019 17:01:12 #
Kevyn wrote:
Sadly h**e groups have grown as a result of the in... (show quote)
That post denies reality. The SPLC is just the opposite of heroic. What they are is a political tool. They are indeed a h**e group themselves for needlessly giving others 'h**e group' status. What they've done is marginalize real h**e groups by kowtowing to special interest groups.
Heroic. What a joke. They've never had to face any repercussions for the wrongs they've done to others.
May 3, 2019 05:41:38 #
susanblange
Loc: USA
no propaganda please wrote:
Why do you think that all hatred is r****t in natu... (show quote)
Abuse and neglect of children is one of the seven deadly sins. Children are our future. The Messiah was neglected and abused as a child by both parents. Psalm 109:14. "Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out". The Messiah was "crucified" by her parents on October 22, 1969. The Psalms this fulfilled correspond to the day and year it happened. Psalm 22, and 69. Also Job 16. The Messiah's father will be tried, tortured, and executed with a sharp, two edged sword for it. "An eye for an eye". Job 20:25, Isaiah 27:1.
May 3, 2019 13:32:31 #
Rose42 wrote:
That post denies reality. The SPLC is just the opposite of heroic. What they are is a political tool. They are indeed a h**e group themselves for needlessly giving others 'h**e group' status. What they've done is marginalize real h**e groups by kowtowing to special interest groups.
Heroic. What a joke. They've never had to face any repercussions for the wrongs they've done to others.
Heroic. What a joke. They've never had to face any repercussions for the wrongs they've done to others.
You are seeing clearly Rose. The designated h**e groups, some are nothing more than mothers and fathers whom you see every day that are just tired of being pushed aside by those who call themselves elites. Or. another example; I'm male, white and American. They'd say I'm in most h**e groups when the t***h is I'm in none. Leave me alone to the sovereignty of my family and home or consequences.
May 4, 2019 01:11:00 #
maximus
Loc: Chattanooga, Tennessee
susanblange wrote:
Abuse and neglect of children is one of the seven ... (show quote)
What on earth are you talking about? Jesus was/is the Messiah. He was not a woman. His parents didn't abuse him. Joseph is not mentioned after the return from Egypt. I don't ever remember hearing that Mary sinned, although she was human and all humans sin. October 22, 1969??????? What messiah are you talking about?
May 4, 2019 11:05:51 #
no propaganda please
Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
maximus wrote:
What on earth are you talking about? Jesus was/is the Messiah. He was not a woman. His parents didn't abuse him. Joseph is not mentioned after the return from Egypt. I don't ever remember hearing that Mary sinned, although she was human and all humans sin. October 22, 1969??????? What messiah are you talking about?
I have seen a number of her posts over the year, and I think she has serious mental problems, so at this point I leave her alone, she is welcome to live in her own little world, with or without drugs, but I can choose to ignore her always.
May 4, 2019 15:34:00 #
maximus
Loc: Chattanooga, Tennessee
no propaganda please wrote:
I have seen a number of her posts over the year, and I think she has serious mental problems, so at this point I leave her alone, she is welcome to live in her own little world, with or without drugs, but I can choose to ignore her always.
Thank you for the heads up. I knew something was really off there. I would hope that NO rational person would say those things.
May 4, 2019 16:26:54 #
susanblange
Loc: USA
maximus wrote:
What on earth are you talking about? Jesus was/is the Messiah. He was not a woman. His parents didn't abuse him. Joseph is not mentioned after the return from Egypt. I don't ever remember hearing that Mary sinned, although she was human and all humans sin. October 22, 1969??????? What messiah are you talking about?
The Messiah was "crucified" in her childhood, almost 50 years ago. It was not a crucifixion, it was something unique and different and it literally fulfilled every verse of the prophecies about it. Psalm 22:30-31. "A seed shall serve him, it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this". There were witnesses and my father will be tried and executed for it. Isaiah 27:1. "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the d**gon that is in the sea".
May 4, 2019 17:56:16 #
maximus wrote:
Thank you for the heads up. I knew something was really off there. I would hope that NO rational person would say those things.
Hopefully she gets the help she needs. She may just be putting us all on though.
May 4, 2019 23:24:16 #
maximus
Loc: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Rose42 wrote:
Hopefully she gets the help she needs. She may just be putting us all on though.
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