[Peace-discuss] These people should be locked up & silenced...

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Point well taken on ADL & SPLC.  Here's Cockburn on the latter. --CGE]

	King of the Hate Business
	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

What is the arch-salesman of hate-mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern
Poverty Law Center doing now? He’s saying that the election of a black president
proves his point. Hate is on the rise! Send money!

Without skipping a beat, the mailshot moguls, who year after year make money
selling the notion there’s been a right resurgence out there in the hinterland
with massed legions of haters, have used the election of a black president to
say that, yes, hate is on the rise and America ready to burst apart at the
seams, with millions of extremists primed to march down Main Street draped in
Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the
other, available for sneak photographs from minions of Chip Berlet, another
salesman of the Christian menace,  ripely endowed with millions to battle the
legions of the cross.

Ever since 1971 US Postal Service mailbags have bulged with Dees’ fundraising
letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his
lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by
the SPLC. Nine years ago Ken Silverstein wrote a devastating commentary on Dees
and the SPLC in Harpers, dissecting a typical swatch of Dees’ solicitations. At
that time, as Silverstein pointed out, the SPLC was “the wealthiest civil rights
group in America,” with $120 million in assets.

As of October 2008 the net assets of the SPLC were $170,240,129, The merchant of
hate himself, Mr. Dees, was paid an annual $273,132 as chief trial counsel, and
the SPLC’s president and CEO, Richard Cohen, $290,193. Total revenue in 2007 was
$44,727,257 and program expenses $20,804,536. In other words, the Southern
Poverty Law Center was raising twice as much as it was spending on its
proclaimed mission. Fund-raising and administrative expenses accounted for $9
million, leaving $14 million to be put in the center’s vast asset portfolio.

The 990 non profit tax record for the SPLC indicates that the assets fell by
about $50 million last year, meaning that like almost all non profits the SPLC
took a bath in the stock crash. So what was thr end result of all that
relentless hoarding down the year, as people of modest means, scared by Dees,
sent him their contributions. Were they put to good use? It doesn’t seem so.
They vanished in an electronic blip.

But where are the haters? That hardy old stand-by, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s
predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted
troupe, at least 10 per cent of them on the government payroll as informants for
the FBI. As Noel Ignatiev once remarked in his book Race Traitor, there isn’t a
public school in any county in the USA that doesn’t represent a menace to blacks
  a thousand times more potent than that offered by the KKK, just as there aren’t
many such schools that probably haven’t been propositioned by Dees to buy one of
the SPLC’s “tolerance” programs. What school is going to go on record rejecting
Dees-sponsored tolerance?

Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate like the arms
manufacturers inventing new threats and for the same reason: it’s their staple.

The SPLC’s latest “Year in Hate” report claims that “in 2008 the number of hate
groups rose to 926, up 4 per cent from 2007, and 54 per cent since 2000.” The
SPLC doesn’t measure the number of members in the groups, meaning they probably
missed me. Change that total to 927. I’m a hate group, meaning in Dees-speak,
“one with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,”
starting with Dick Cheney. I love to dream of him being water-boarded, subjected
to loops of Schonberg played at top volume, locked up naked in a meat locker.
But the nation’s haters are mostly like me, enjoying their (increasingly
circumscribed) constitutionally guaranteed right to hate, solitary,
disorganized, prone to sickening relapses into love, or at least the sort of
amiable tolerance for All Mankind experienced when looking at photos of Carla
Bruni and Princess Letizia of Spain kissing.

The effective haters are big, powerful easily identifiable entities. Why is Dees
fingering militia men in a potato field in Idaho when we have identifiable,
well-organized groups which the SPLC could take on. To cite reports from the
Urban League, and United for a Fair Economy, minorities are more than three
times as likely to hold high-cost subprime loans, foisted on them by predatory
lenders, meaning the big banks; “all black and latino subprime borrowers could
stand to lose between $164 billion and $213 billion for loans taken during the
past eight years.”

Get those bankers and big mortgage touts into court, chief counsel Dees! How
about helping workers fired by people who hate anyone trying to organize a
union? What about defending immigrants rounded up in ICE raids? How about
attacking the roots of southern poverty, and the system that sustains that
poverty as expressed in the endless prisons and Death Rows across the south,
disproportionately crammed with blacks and Hispanics?

You fight theatrically, the Dees way, or you fight substantively, like Stephen
Bright, who makes only $11,000 as president and senior counsel of the Southern
Center for Human Rights. The center’s director makes less than $50,000. It has
net assets of a bit over $4.5 million and allocates about $1.6 million a year
for expenses, 77 percent of its annual revenue. Bright’s outfit is basically
dedicated to two things: prison litigation and the death penalty. He fights the
system, case by case. Not the phony targets mostly tilted at by Dees but the
effective, bipartisan, functional system of oppression, far more deadly and
determined than the SPLC’s tin-pot hate groups. Tear up your check to Dees and
send it to Bright,( http://www.schr.org/) or to the Institute for Southern
Studies (http://www.southernstudies.org.html) run by Chris Kromm, which has been
doing brilliant spadework on the economy, on poverty and on exploitation in the
south for four decades.


E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
> The Anti-Defamation League is involved with the SPLC in the preparation of
> these reports and press releases.  That is not a conspiracy theory, it's a
> fact.    The ADL is also active in special "training" for state and local
> police, some of which training occurs in Israel.   Illinois State Police
> personnel were included in such training in Israel in 2009.
> 
> The ADL and the SPLC were involved in the 2009 release of "information" to
> state "Fusion Centers" including the somewhat famous release of "information"
> regarding supporters of Chuck Baldwin and Ron Paul and anti-abortion groups.
> ADL tends to stay behind the scenes in the press releases but details of
> ADL's involvement can be found on the ADL website.
> 
> I had nothing in particular against the ADL or even the SPLC for that matter
> but these rather unmerited attacks did turn up some interesting findings
> about their activities and makes one wonder why they are doing it.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu> 
> To: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Sent: Thursday,
> March 04, 2010 2:09 PM Subject: [Peace-discuss] These people should be locked
> up & silenced...
> 
> 
> Dobbs, Beck, Palin, Bachmann Share Blame For Rise in Right-Wing Extremism,
> Says Activist Group Southern Poverty Law Center Cites Violent Incidents; Lou
> Dobbs Calls SPLC Director 'Paranoid' By ANNA SCHECTER March 3, 2010 —
> 
> Anti-government sentiments in the U.S. have reached levels so high they could
>  result in another attack like the Oklahoma City bombing, according to a 
> report released Tuesday by an organization that tracks right-wing extremists
>  and the authors of the report place part of the blame on Lou Dobbs, Glenn
> Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.
> 
> In a statement to ABC News, Lou Dobbs hit back at the director of the group
> that prepared the report, calling him "paranoid."
> 
> A host of recent attacks on law enforcement, plots against President Obama,
> and a shooting at Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust museum are "signs of the 
> times," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a
> non-profit group that monitors militias, white supremacists, and other
> extremist activity. Potok made his comments during a teleconference with
> reporters to promote the SPLC's latest annual report on hate-group activity.
> 
> "We've seen more threats and actual attacks in the past 18 months than we've 
> seen at any given period over the past 15 years," claimed Potok.
> 
> Potok said he blames some public personalities and conservative politicians
> for inciting fear.
> 
> Potok cited talk-show host Glenn Beck for stoking fears that the Federal 
> Emergency Management Agency is running concentration camps, former CNN host
> Lou Dobbs for incurring fears about supposed Mexican plots to take over the 
> southwestern U.S., Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for making statements 
> about secret political reeducation camps, and former vice presidential 
> candidate Sarah Palin for referring to Obama "death panels" during the health
> care debate. Bachmann and Beck are also cited by name in the SPLC's report,
> but Dobbs and Palin are not.
> 
> "These people help to bring completely groundless conspiracy theories from
> the margins into the mainstream," said Potok.
> 
> In a phone interview, Dobbs scoffed at the report. "It's sad that Mr. Potok 
> insists upon maintaining his paranoia, and I hope that he recovers."
> 
> "Beyond that, I have nothing to say about the man," said Dobbs.
> 
> 'Another Oklahoma City Is Very Much a Possibility'
> 
> A spokesperson for Beck declined comment. Spokespersons for Bachmann and 
> former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin did not respond by press time to requests
>  for comment.
> 
> Bachmann and Beck are discussed in the report itself as possible sources of 
> anger, while Potok cited Palin and Dobbs in separate articles accompanying
> the report.
> 
> The latest annual SPLC report, "Rage on the Right," claims there has been a 
> startling rise in numbers of extremist groups, particularly in the Patriot 
> movement and militias, the paramilitary branches of these Patriot groups. 
> Patriot groups see the federal government as their primary enemy and adhere
> to extreme antigovernment doctrines, frequently believing in groundless 
> conspiracy theories.
> 
> According to the SPLC's figures, the number of active Patriot groups grew
> from 149 to 512, an increase of 363 groups (244 percent) in 2009, and the 
> number of militia groups grew from 42 to 127, an increase of 85 groups (200 
> percent) in 2009. The number of nativist vigilante organizations that go
> beyond advocating strict immigration policy and actually confront or harass
> suspected immigrants grew from 173 to 309, an increase 136 groups (almost 80
> percent) in 2009, the report said.
> 
> The number of hate groups based on racism, anti-Semitism and anti-gay 
> sentiment grew from 926 to 932 in 2009. SPLC said this increase caps a decade
> in which the number of hate groups surged by 55 percent from 2000 to 2009
> (602 groups to 932).
> 
> Potok says the expansion of hate groups in 2009 would have been much greater
> if not for the demise of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a key
>  neo-Nazi group whose founder, Bill White, was arrested in October 2008. The 
> group had 35 chapters.
> 
> Taken together, these three radical strands -- antigovernment Patriot groups,
>  nativist extremist groups and hate groups -- increased their numbers by 
> approximately 40 percent in 2009, according to Potok.
> 
> Potok said one of the main fears is that these radical groups are 
> infiltrating mainstream groups like the Tea Party movement because of cross 
> pollination of individuals who attend radical group meetings and more
> mainstream gatherings.
> 
> Potok said he thinks that the climate today matches that of the 'white hot' 
> tension among anti-government groups prior to the Oklahoma City bombing that 
> killed 150 people in 1995.
> 
> "Another Oklahoma City is very much a possibility," said Potok.
> 
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> 

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