[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Rise in Right-Wing Extremism

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

Belden--

"Except for his PS"?!

You mean you send the SPLC (& the ADL?) money, knowing what they do?

Did you see the following exchange between two AWARE members?

 > ----- Original Message ----
 > From: E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag
 > To: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>;
 > CC: Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
 > Sent: Fri, March 5, 2010 11:15:58 AM
 > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] These people should be locked up & silenced...
 >
 > 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: "David Green" <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
> To: "E.Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag> 
> Cc: "Peace Discuss"<peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 2:11 AM 
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] These people should be locked up & silenced...
> 
> You should have something against them. Until the 60s, the ADL was largely
> legitimate, focused on genuine anti-Semitism from the right, mostly from
> wealthy (and racist) individuals and popular commentators. Since then, it's
> been focused primarily on criticism of Israel from the left, which is labeled
> anti-Semitism. The SPLC has never been legitimate, focusing on "hate" as
> defined by mainstream liberals and conservatives, but not (as far as I know)
> treading on ADL "anti-Semitism" turf. This is an interesting relationship,
> which I have not heard about. Everyone knows that the ADL is a joke. Perhaps
> partly as a result of this, it will also be more widely known about SPLC. And
> of course, they can take "teaching tolerance" and the horrible Wisenthal
> Center with them. And all of this is very much related to identify "angry
> populists" with conspiracy theorists, violence, etc.


Belden Fields wrote:
> Except for his PS, I agree with Mort.  Cockburn takes pride in being 
> offensive. Belden
> 
> 
> On Mar 6, 2010, at 6:18 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 
>> This Cockburn report is typical over-the-top Cockburn. The only "meat" in
>> his commentary is that the Dees outfit makes too much money out of its
>> operations and solicitations. Hence a scam. Otherwise, he flays Dees for
>> not making America better in all the ways it could be better. And he
>> discounts or ignores whether there is any threat from the fascist right,
>> hate, or militarist groups/ militias in the USA. The Tea Party would seem
>> to indicate a level of hate among many of its "constituants" that could be
>> dangerous to the general welfare.
>> 
>> It would have been more useful if Cockburn outright refuted Dees claims
>> with contradictory information. He only touches on that by saying that
>> Dees' outfit does not give us the number of people involved in militias,
>> etc.
>> 
>> It may be true that the SPLC exagerates the dangers of hate groups in order
>> to make money and sustain and promote its existence. It may also be true
>> that the SPLC does get some things right and may have a useful function to
>> warn against "extremist" hate groups of the right.
>> 
>> Let's try to see things clearly and accurately.
>> 
>> --mkb
>> 
>> P.S. I have been solicited by the SPLC, but reject their pleas for funds. 
>> One should distrust their antisemitism warnings or links (?) with outfits
>> like the ADL.
>> 
>> On Mar 6, 2010, at 5:42 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:
>> 
>>> [Barbara-- SPLC seems to be largely a scam.  Regards, Carl]
>>> 
>>> 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.
>>> 
>>> http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05152009.html
>>> 
>>> Barbara kessel wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 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.
>>>> 
>>>> Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Yahoo! Groups Links
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>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------
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