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

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

You can't be associating SPLC with ACORN.  We all know of good work done by 
ACORN over 40 years; but anyone who cares to look can see that SPLC is a con.

We can't be so stampeded by fear of the Right (as the liberal establishment so 
wants us to be) that, just because a group declares itself liberal, we must 
therefore support it, regardless of what it does. --CGE


Belden Fields wrote:
> 
> 
> Great.  We've done in ACORN, now SPLC, how many more human and civil right
> groups can we do in at the glee of the Right?  Let's try to crucify the
> Center for Constitutional Rights.  They surely must exaggerate rights
> threats, and they PAY money to their lawyers as well!
> 
> Belden
> 
> 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> *From: *"C. G. ESTABROOK" <cge at shout.net <mailto:cge at shout.net>> *Date:
>> *March 7, 2010 1:20:22 AM CST *To: *Socialist Forum
>> <sf-core at yahoogroups.com <mailto:sf-core at yahoogroups.com>> *Subject: **Re:
>> [sf-core] Rise in Right-Wing Extremism*
>> 
>> Mort--
>> 
>> In fact the fraudulent nature of SPLC has been a matter of public record
>> for some time now. See notably Ken Silverstein, "How the Southern Poverty 
>> Law Center profits from intolerance," Harper's Magazine, November 2000
>> (note the date; Silverstein published a follow-up in Harper's in 2007).
>> 
>> As early as 1994 the Montgomery Advertiser ran a series alleging the SPLC
>> was financially mismanaged and employed misleading fundraising practices. 
>> The series was a finalist for but did not win a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in
>> Explanatory Journalism. In 1996 USA Today called the SPLC "the nation's
>> richest civil rights organization," with $68 million in assets at the time.
>> 
>> 
>> In 2008 the American Institute of Philanthropy's Charity Ratings Guide gave
>> the SPLC an "F" rating for "excessive" reserves.  Hate has been very good 
>> to them.
>> 
>> As to "whether there is any threat from the fascist right, hate, or 
>> militarist groups/militias in the USA," all those Republicans and Democrats
>> who check under the bed each night for tea-partiers do indeed have
>> something to worry about - an aroused public, who might realize that their
>> interests are not only different from but diametrically opposed to those of
>> the American elite, for whom both parties toil.
>> 
>> Doug Henwood of the excellent Left Business Observer seems to me to have it
>> just right here:
>> 
>> "I'm still mystified by the curiosity about - I'm deliberately not saying 
>> obsession with - the risks of incipient fascism in the U.S. I have two 
>> questions I'd love some clarification on:
>> 
>> "(1) How is today's threat a significant departure from more than a century
>> of American political violence? To say that the Klan is some kind of 
>> incipient fascist movement is to drain the term of any specific meaning.
>> But over the last 100-150 years, we've had savage repression of labor
>> through public and private means, like national guard units, cops, and
>> Pinkertons. We had lynching. We had serious suppression of civil liberties
>> during and just after World War I. The Panthers were essentially wiped out
>> with death squads. I can understand why mainstream liberals don't want to
>> admit that U.S. history is full of repressive crimes, and want to see
>> George W. Bush or Sarah Palin as some kind of scary departures, but that
>> doesn't characterize [intelligent liberals], does it?
>> 
>> "(2) Why should we worry more about the fascist threat than some real, 
>> imminent dangers like (a) a turn to fiscal and monetary tightening (Obama's
>> deficit commission, which could give him cover to cut Medicare and SS; the
>> Fed's signaling that it's ready to begin withdrawing its extraordinary 
>> stimulus) that could sink us back into recession; (b) Obama's friendliness
>> towards offshore drilling and nuclear power; (c) the incapacity of the U.S.
>> political system to do anything at all about climate change, even something
>> as corp-friendly as c&t; (d) escalation in Afghanistan, and with it an
>> enormous increase in civilian deaths; and (e) tightening the screws on
>> Iran, possibly leading to some sort of utterly mad military strike. These
>> are all initiatives either led or supported by a Democrat president and
>> Congress, not some scary possibilities that some possible future Republican
>> president and/or Congress could perpetrate. Doesn't all the worrying
>> distract from those realities?"
>> 
>> 
>> In fact, the best thing that's happened to the clapped-out Democratic party
>> & Obama administration is the tea-party movement. Screaming "Danger on the
>> Right"; "Fascism on the horizon!" is they hope all that they will need to 
>> cover their transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and their
>> escalation of imperialist murder.
>> 
>> You say AC is "over the top" but then you admit the essentials of his case:
>> 
>> 
>> --the SPLC exaggerates the dangers of hate groups in order to make money;
>> and
>> 
>> --one should distrust their antisemitism warnings & links with ADL; so
>> 
>> --don't send them any money.
>> 
>> Once again, we agree...  --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> 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
>>>> <http://www.schr.org>/) or to the Institute for Southern Studies 
>>>> (http://www.southernstudies.org.html 
>>>> <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 
>>>> <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


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