Stop Referring To “Southern Poverty Law Center”

[protectionist]

SPLC declared Maajid Nawaz a proponent of hate speech. That's all one needs to know about them. That man risks his life every day trying to fight a hopeless battle against hate, and they proclaim him to be the hateful one. Disgusting.

Par for the course for the looneytune SPLC.

It is sad but telling that the SPLC’s so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremists, but is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC.

The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitz—none of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots.

The fact is that more than 40 years after its founding, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now aggressively defending the kind of violent supremacists (Muslim Brotherhood front groups) it had once sought to prosecute, and attacking types like Nawaz it had once defended against violence.

Why Did the SPLC Label 15 Prominent Writers and Thinkers 'Anti-Muslim Extremists'?

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Look how the liberals are flocking to this thread to defend one of their mainstay orgs. (SPLC)

Try telling us that this is an "invalid Report" Try telling us that this was "exagerated

Domestic terror threat remains serious five years after Sikh massacre

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Look how the liberals are flocking to this thread to defend one of their mainstay orgs. (SPLC)

Tell us that these are not hate groups, but the SPLC is:


The SPLC is the premiere U.S. organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others. Hate & Extremism

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Statement on Alliance Defending Freedom's attack on SPLC and ABC News

"The Alliance Defending Freedom spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community in this country and seeks to criminalize it abroad. If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail. It was inappropriate for Attorney General Sessions to lend his credibility to the group by appearing before it, and it was ironic that he would suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community."

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Look how the liberals are flocking to this thread to defend one of their mainstay orgs. (SPLC)

Hey Sparky!! Here is more "useless shit " that the SPLC does,. Now please let us hear what you problem with this is:

Federal judge in SPLC case orders drastic overhaul of Alabama prison mental health care system

or this:

SPLC sues neo-Nazi leader who targeted Jewish woman in anti-Semitic harassment campaign

Spit it out Bubba, or STFU

 

[protectionist]

Try telling us that this is an "invalid Report" Try telling us that this was "exagerated

Domestic terror threat remains serious five years after Sikh massacre

A correct report doesn't validate dozens of slanderous, incorrect reports, or clear the SPLC from the looney bin. It also doesn't clear them from their seditious and treasonous,, supporting affiliation for jihad.

 

[protectionist]

Tell us that these are not hate groups, but the SPLC is:

The SPLC is the premiere U.S. organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others. Hate & Extremism

The problem is with the NON-hate groups that the SPLC calls hate groups. and their support-affiliation with the worst hate groups who are in the jihadist category.

 

[protectionist]

Statement on Alliance Defending Freedom's attack on SPLC and ABC News

"The Alliance Defending Freedom spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community in this country and seeks to criminalize it abroad. If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail. It was inappropriate for Attorney General Sessions to lend his credibility to the group by appearing before it, and it was ironic that he would suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community."

If the ADF is trying to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community, that is 100% APPROPRIATE, and long overdue.

The LGBT community is a group of abnormal, looney sex perverts, who SHOULD NOT be granted equal protection of the law, because they are NOT EQUAL. In fact they should be granted LESS protection by banning them from endevours in connection with children (ex. teaching, scouting, etc_

 

[protectionist]

Hey Sparky!! Here is more "useless shit " that the SPLC does,. Now please let us hear what you problem with this is:

Federal judge in SPLC case orders drastic overhaul of Alabama prison mental health care system

or this:

SPLC sues neo-Nazi leader who targeted Jewish woman in anti-Semitic harassment campaign

Spit it out Bubba, or STFU

How about if YOU STFU, ?....since all you're doing is changing the subject, and displaying your inability to contest the topic.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Try telling us that this is an "invalid Report" Try telling us that this was "exagerated

Domestic terror threat remains serious five years after Sikh massacre

A correct report doesn't validate dozens of slanderous, incorrect reports, or clear the SPLC from the looney bin. It also doesn't clear them from their seditious and treasonous,, supporting affiliation for jihad.

You need to provide some documentation of those "dozens of slanderous, incorrect reports" You can't just spew crap like that and expect that it will just be accepted. That is just an appeal to ignorance fallacy.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Hey Sparky!! Here is more "useless shit " that the SPLC does,. Now please let us hear what you problem with this is:

Federal judge in SPLC case orders drastic overhaul of Alabama prison mental health care system

or this:

SPLC sues neo-Nazi leader who targeted Jewish woman in anti-Semitic harassment campaign

Spit it out Bubba, or STFU

How about if YOU STFU, ?....since all you're doing is changing the subject, and displaying your inability to contest the topic.

Thank you for contributing to the high level of intellectual discourse with you thoughtful and cogent remarks. You a true USMB asset.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Tell us that these are not hate groups, but the SPLC is:

The SPLC is the premiere U.S. organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others. Hate & Extremism

The problem is with the NON-hate groups that the SPLC calls hate groups. and their support-affiliation with the worst hate groups who are in the jihadist category.

What "non hate groups" do they call hate groups. Again documentation! It's probably that you have strange ideas about what a hate group is. And what is this obsession with Jihadist? When have they defended Jihadists? Oh I know, in you dark and strange world, all Muslims are Jihadists.

 

[LeftofLeft]

The easiest way to spot an invalid report (typical of MSM) is to see its use of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This laughingstock organization purports to list what it calls “hate groups”. Problem is, some things in life SHOULD be hated. Hate, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing (as SPLC commonly indicates).

One can get the feeling that if this were 1943, the SPLC woud crab about Americans hating Hitler and his Nazis, and Hirohito, and his Japanese imperialist invaders, all while they were killing our soldiers.

Now we have another world war. It is the international jihad (ISIS, al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabbab, Boko Harem, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc) vs the sane world. But just say something that goes in the direction of protecting America from these genocidists, or their subversive counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood, and SPLC will be ragging at you as a hate group or individual.

A little background on the SPLC can clear things up about this phony organization, which has nothing to do with either “poverty” or “law”, and is primarily about stuffing their pockets with donations from wary liberals, whom they scare to death with exaggeration reports.

Journalists who have no ideological or financial interest in skewing the outcome one way or the other have conducted examinations of the SPLC’s nearly 40-year history. While the political leanings of the publications and journalists who undertook several of the investigations would lead one to expect a favorable evaluation of the SPLC, quite the opposite was the case.

Articles published in The Nation, Harper’s, and even the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser all make the same assertion: the SPLC exaggerates, and manipulates incidents of “hate” for the sole purpose of raising vast sums of money. The Nation. In response to a letter published in the February 26, 2001 edition of the magazine from Richard Cohen (the SPLC’s president and CEO) defending the SPLC’s activities, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski questioned what the organization does with its vast war chest: The center doesn’t devote all of its resources to any kind of fight. In 1999 it spent $2.4 million on litigation and $5.7 million on fundraising, meanwhile taking in more than $44 million—$27 million from fundraising, the rest from investments.

A few years ago the American Institute of Philanthropy gave the SPLC an F for ‘excessive’ reserves. On the subject of ‘hate groups,’ though, Cohen is almost comically disingenuous. No one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of such groups than the center’s millionaire huckster Morris Dees, who in 1999 began a begging letter, ‘Dear Friend, The danger presented by the Klan is greater now than at any time in the past ten years.’ Hate sells; poor people don’t, which is why readers who go to the center’s web site will find only a handful of cases on such unlucrative causes as fair housing, worker safety or healthcare, many of those from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Why the organization continues to keep ‘Poverty’ (or even ‘Law’) in its name can be ascribed only to nostalgia or a cynical understanding of the marketing possibilities in class guilt. The Nation’s opinion of the SPLC has only diminished with the passage of time. Syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing article entitled “King of the Hate Business,” for the April 29, 2009 edition of the magazine. In his piece, Cockburn lambasted the SPLC and its founder, Morris Dees. Noting the election of Barack Obama and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Cockburn observed, “It’s also horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion that there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other.” Cockburn, like just about everyone else who has examined the SPLC’s record, noted the organization’s shameful record of hyping hate for profit.

What is the archsalesman of hatemongering, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. Harper’s. In the November 2000 edition, Washington editor Ken Silverstein published an exposé of the SPLC and its tactics and operational activities. Entitled “The Church of Morris Dees,” Silverstein concluded that the SPLC “spends most of its time—and money—on a relentless fundraising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate."

In a follow-up in March 2007, Silverstein noted that not much had changed since his 2000 article. Back in 2000, I wrote a story in Harper’s about the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, whose stated mission is to combat disgusting yet mostly impotent groups like the Nazis and the KKK. What it does best, though, is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of those groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation’s richest “civil rights” organization.

The Montgomery Advertiser, the city’s leading newspaper, began scrutinizing the SPLC, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, as early as 1994. In 1995, the Pulitzer Board nominated the Advertiser’s eight-part series of investigative reports as a finalist for its distinguished Pulitzer Prize. In a May 1999 seminar at Harvard University’s Nieman Center, then managing editor Jim Tharpe described the SPLC’s efforts to intimidate his reporters during their investigation: “Our series was published in 1995 after three years of very brutal research under the threat of lawsuit the entire time.” 3 Like Harper’s and The Nation, the Advertiser’s investigation concluded that the SPLC was little more than a hugely successful fundraising operation that delivered little of what it promised to its donors. Tharpe stated: "The Center was building up a huge surplus. It was 50-something million at that time; it’s now approaching 100 million, but they’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs."

A sampling of their donors showed that they had no idea of the Center’s wealth. The charity watchdog groups, the few that are in existence, had consistently criticized the Center, even though nobody had reported that. By looking at 990s, what few financial records we did have available, we were able to corroborate much of that information, many of the allegations they had made, the fact that the Center didn’t spend very much of its money that it took in on programs, the fact that some of the top people at the Center were paid very high salaries, the fact that there weren’t minorities in management positions at the Center. But the Advertiser’s investigative reporters found something even more remarkable for an organization that prides itself on “exposing” racism in others.

The newspaper was able to corroborate institutional racism within the SPLC. Addressing Harvard’s Nieman Center, Tharpe stated: "There was a problem with black employees at what was the nation’s richest civil rights organization; there were no blacks in the top management positions. Twelve out of the 13 black current and former employees we contacted cited racism at the Center, which was a shocker to me. As of 1995, the Center had hired only two black attorneys in its entire history." None of these 3 publications had any obvious political or economic interest in discrediting the SPLC. In fact, Tharpe, whose newspaper was literally next door to the SPLC’s headquarters, noted, “They [SPLC officials] were friends with people at the paper; we hung out with them.” Nevertheless, all three, after closely examining the SPLC, independently arrived at the conclusion that the organization is not a credible or objective source of information.

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/SPLCGuide_Final.pdf?docID=3541

yes, how horrible that white supremacists have an opponent.

but as long as "fairus" says so.

see, this is why people like you are clueless and ignorant and uninformed.

SPLC stopped going after actual white supremicists decades ago. Now all it does is declare any group up to and to the right of Mitt Romney to be a "hate group".

It's basically one guy using the name of a once good organization for his own biased and bigoted agenda.

Racial conflict is big business for the modern day SPLC.... keep despair alive when it comes to race relations. God forbid these activist groups ever give US high marks on race relations. How many lynchings are there today compared to 50 years ago? Same with voting. Who is being denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin? The SPLC is scraping for business.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Statement on Alliance Defending Freedom's attack on SPLC and ABC News

"The Alliance Defending Freedom spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community in this country and seeks to criminalize it abroad. If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail. It was inappropriate for Attorney General Sessions to lend his credibility to the group by appearing before it, and it was ironic that he would suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community."

If the ADF is trying to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community, that is 100% APPROPRIATE, and long overdue.

The LGBT community is a group of abnormal, looney sex perverts, who SHOULD NOT be granted equal protection of the law, because they are NOT EQUAL. In fact they should be granted LESS protection by banning them from endevours in connection with children (ex. teaching, scouting, etc_

Now your true colors are showing. Of course you don't like the SPLC. You must not care much for the ACLU, PFTAW or the Human Rights Campaign either. Thank you for admitting your bigotry

 

[protectionist]

You need to provide some documentation of those "dozens of slanderous, incorrect reports" You can't just spew crap like that and expect that it will just be accepted. That is just an appeal to ignorance fallacy.

No I don't, because I already did in Post # 41 >>

Why Did the SPLC Label 15 Prominent Writers and Thinkers 'Anti-Muslim Extremists'?

I also mentioned Act for America, a truly patriotic organization that the SPLC labels a hate group They hung themselves with that one.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

The easiest way to spot an invalid report (typical of MSM) is to see its use of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This laughingstock organization purports to list what it calls “hate groups”. Problem is, some things in life SHOULD be hated. Hate, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing (as SPLC commonly indicates).

One can get the feeling that if this were 1943, the SPLC woud crab about Americans hating Hitler and his Nazis, and Hirohito, and his Japanese imperialist invaders, all while they were killing our soldiers.

Now we have another world war. It is the international jihad (ISIS, al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabbab, Boko Harem, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc) vs the sane world. But just say something that goes in the direction of protecting America from these genocidists, or their subversive counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood, and SPLC will be ragging at you as a hate group or individual.

A little background on the SPLC can clear things up about this phony organization, which has nothing to do with either “poverty” or “law”, and is primarily about stuffing their pockets with donations from wary liberals, whom they scare to death with exaggeration reports.

Journalists who have no ideological or financial interest in skewing the outcome one way or the other have conducted examinations of the SPLC’s nearly 40-year history. While the political leanings of the publications and journalists who undertook several of the investigations would lead one to expect a favorable evaluation of the SPLC, quite the opposite was the case.

Articles published in The Nation, Harper’s, and even the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser all make the same assertion: the SPLC exaggerates, and manipulates incidents of “hate” for the sole purpose of raising vast sums of money. The Nation. In response to a letter published in the February 26, 2001 edition of the magazine from Richard Cohen (the SPLC’s president and CEO) defending the SPLC’s activities, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski questioned what the organization does with its vast war chest: The center doesn’t devote all of its resources to any kind of fight. In 1999 it spent $2.4 million on litigation and $5.7 million on fundraising, meanwhile taking in more than $44 million—$27 million from fundraising, the rest from investments.

A few years ago the American Institute of Philanthropy gave the SPLC an F for ‘excessive’ reserves. On the subject of ‘hate groups,’ though, Cohen is almost comically disingenuous. No one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of such groups than the center’s millionaire huckster Morris Dees, who in 1999 began a begging letter, ‘Dear Friend, The danger presented by the Klan is greater now than at any time in the past ten years.’ Hate sells; poor people don’t, which is why readers who go to the center’s web site will find only a handful of cases on such unlucrative causes as fair housing, worker safety or healthcare, many of those from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Why the organization continues to keep ‘Poverty’ (or even ‘Law’) in its name can be ascribed only to nostalgia or a cynical understanding of the marketing possibilities in class guilt. The Nation’s opinion of the SPLC has only diminished with the passage of time. Syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing article entitled “King of the Hate Business,” for the April 29, 2009 edition of the magazine. In his piece, Cockburn lambasted the SPLC and its founder, Morris Dees. Noting the election of Barack Obama and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Cockburn observed, “It’s also horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion that there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other.” Cockburn, like just about everyone else who has examined the SPLC’s record, noted the organization’s shameful record of hyping hate for profit.

What is the archsalesman of hatemongering, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. Harper’s. In the November 2000 edition, Washington editor Ken Silverstein published an exposé of the SPLC and its tactics and operational activities. Entitled “The Church of Morris Dees,” Silverstein concluded that the SPLC “spends most of its time—and money—on a relentless fundraising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate."

In a follow-up in March 2007, Silverstein noted that not much had changed since his 2000 article. Back in 2000, I wrote a story in Harper’s about the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, whose stated mission is to combat disgusting yet mostly impotent groups like the Nazis and the KKK. What it does best, though, is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of those groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation’s richest “civil rights” organization.

The Montgomery Advertiser, the city’s leading newspaper, began scrutinizing the SPLC, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, as early as 1994. In 1995, the Pulitzer Board nominated the Advertiser’s eight-part series of investigative reports as a finalist for its distinguished Pulitzer Prize. In a May 1999 seminar at Harvard University’s Nieman Center, then managing editor Jim Tharpe described the SPLC’s efforts to intimidate his reporters during their investigation: “Our series was published in 1995 after three years of very brutal research under the threat of lawsuit the entire time.” 3 Like Harper’s and The Nation, the Advertiser’s investigation concluded that the SPLC was little more than a hugely successful fundraising operation that delivered little of what it promised to its donors. Tharpe stated: "The Center was building up a huge surplus. It was 50-something million at that time; it’s now approaching 100 million, but they’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs."

A sampling of their donors showed that they had no idea of the Center’s wealth. The charity watchdog groups, the few that are in existence, had consistently criticized the Center, even though nobody had reported that. By looking at 990s, what few financial records we did have available, we were able to corroborate much of that information, many of the allegations they had made, the fact that the Center didn’t spend very much of its money that it took in on programs, the fact that some of the top people at the Center were paid very high salaries, the fact that there weren’t minorities in management positions at the Center. But the Advertiser’s investigative reporters found something even more remarkable for an organization that prides itself on “exposing” racism in others.

The newspaper was able to corroborate institutional racism within the SPLC. Addressing Harvard’s Nieman Center, Tharpe stated: "There was a problem with black employees at what was the nation’s richest civil rights organization; there were no blacks in the top management positions. Twelve out of the 13 black current and former employees we contacted cited racism at the Center, which was a shocker to me. As of 1995, the Center had hired only two black attorneys in its entire history." None of these 3 publications had any obvious political or economic interest in discrediting the SPLC. In fact, Tharpe, whose newspaper was literally next door to the SPLC’s headquarters, noted, “They [SPLC officials] were friends with people at the paper; we hung out with them.” Nevertheless, all three, after closely examining the SPLC, independently arrived at the conclusion that the organization is not a credible or objective source of information.

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/SPLCGuide_Final.pdf?docID=3541

yes, how horrible that white supremacists have an opponent.

but as long as "fairus" says so.

see, this is why people like you are clueless and ignorant and uninformed.

SPLC stopped going after actual white supremicists decades ago. Now all it does is declare any group up to and to the right of Mitt Romney to be a "hate group".

It's basically one guy using the name of a once good organization for his own biased and bigoted agenda.

Racial conflict is big business for the modern day SPLC.... keep despair alive when it comes to race relations. God forbid these activist groups ever give US high marks on race relations. How many lynchings are there today compared to 50 years ago? Same with voting. Who is being denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin? The SPLC is scraping for business.

So because things may not be as bad as they were 50 years ago, that which is still wrong should be ignored?? Or, do you just think that there is not more racism.?

 

[protectionist]

Racial conflict is big business for the modern day SPLC.... keep despair alive when it comes to race relations. God forbid these activist groups ever give US high marks on race relations. How many lynchings are there today compared to 50 years ago? Same with voting. Who is being denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin? The SPLC is scraping for business.

If the SPLC had an ounce of decency, honesty, and credibility, it would label the NAACP as a hate group for its longtime support of malicious, racial discrimination against Whites, in Affirmative Action.

 

[protectionist]

Now your true colors are showing. Of course you don't like the SPLC. You must not care much for the ACLU, PFTAW or the Human Rights Campaign either. Thank you for admitting your bigotry

Not bigotry. Just simple reporting of the facts. LGBT are abnormal nutjobs, and you pretend otherwise. Not my problem. And my true colors (objective truth) have ALWAYS been showing.

 

[protectionist]

So because things may not be as bad as they were 50 years ago, that which is still wrong should be ignored?? Or, do you just think that there is not more racism.?

There is just as much "racism" now as there was 50 years ago (1967), because Affirmative Action (by far the # 1 racism in America) has been with us since 1961.

 

[RealDave]

The easiest way to spot an invalid report (typical of MSM) is to see its use of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This laughingstock organization purports to list what it calls “hate groups”. Problem is, some things in life SHOULD be hated. Hate, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing (as SPLC commonly indicates).

One can get the feeling that if this were 1943, the SPLC woud crab about Americans hating Hitler and his Nazis, and Hirohito, and his Japanese imperialist invaders, all while they were killing our soldiers.

Now we have another world war. It is the international jihad (ISIS, al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabbab, Boko Harem, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc) vs the sane world. But just say something that goes in the direction of protecting America from these genocidists, or their subversive counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood, and SPLC will be ragging at you as a hate group or individual.

A little background on the SPLC can clear things up about this phony organization, which has nothing to do with either “poverty” or “law”, and is primarily about stuffing their pockets with donations from wary liberals, whom they scare to death with exaggeration reports.

Journalists who have no ideological or financial interest in skewing the outcome one way or the other have conducted examinations of the SPLC’s nearly 40-year history. While the political leanings of the publications and journalists who undertook several of the investigations would lead one to expect a favorable evaluation of the SPLC, quite the opposite was the case.

Articles published in The Nation, Harper’s, and even the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser all make the same assertion: the SPLC exaggerates, and manipulates incidents of “hate” for the sole purpose of raising vast sums of money. The Nation. In response to a letter published in the February 26, 2001 edition of the magazine from Richard Cohen (the SPLC’s president and CEO) defending the SPLC’s activities, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski questioned what the organization does with its vast war chest: The center doesn’t devote all of its resources to any kind of fight. In 1999 it spent $2.4 million on litigation and $5.7 million on fundraising, meanwhile taking in more than $44 million—$27 million from fundraising, the rest from investments.

A few years ago the American Institute of Philanthropy gave the SPLC an F for ‘excessive’ reserves. On the subject of ‘hate groups,’ though, Cohen is almost comically disingenuous. No one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of such groups than the center’s millionaire huckster Morris Dees, who in 1999 began a begging letter, ‘Dear Friend, The danger presented by the Klan is greater now than at any time in the past ten years.’ Hate sells; poor people don’t, which is why readers who go to the center’s web site will find only a handful of cases on such unlucrative causes as fair housing, worker safety or healthcare, many of those from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Why the organization continues to keep ‘Poverty’ (or even ‘Law’) in its name can be ascribed only to nostalgia or a cynical understanding of the marketing possibilities in class guilt. The Nation’s opinion of the SPLC has only diminished with the passage of time. Syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing article entitled “King of the Hate Business,” for the April 29, 2009 edition of the magazine. In his piece, Cockburn lambasted the SPLC and its founder, Morris Dees. Noting the election of Barack Obama and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Cockburn observed, “It’s also horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion that there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other.” Cockburn, like just about everyone else who has examined the SPLC’s record, noted the organization’s shameful record of hyping hate for profit.

What is the archsalesman of hatemongering, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. Harper’s. In the November 2000 edition, Washington editor Ken Silverstein published an exposé of the SPLC and its tactics and operational activities. Entitled “The Church of Morris Dees,” Silverstein concluded that the SPLC “spends most of its time—and money—on a relentless fundraising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate."

In a follow-up in March 2007, Silverstein noted that not much had changed since his 2000 article. Back in 2000, I wrote a story in Harper’s about the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, whose stated mission is to combat disgusting yet mostly impotent groups like the Nazis and the KKK. What it does best, though, is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of those groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation’s richest “civil rights” organization.

The Montgomery Advertiser, the city’s leading newspaper, began scrutinizing the SPLC, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, as early as 1994. In 1995, the Pulitzer Board nominated the Advertiser’s eight-part series of investigative reports as a finalist for its distinguished Pulitzer Prize. In a May 1999 seminar at Harvard University’s Nieman Center, then managing editor Jim Tharpe described the SPLC’s efforts to intimidate his reporters during their investigation: “Our series was published in 1995 after three years of very brutal research under the threat of lawsuit the entire time.” 3 Like Harper’s and The Nation, the Advertiser’s investigation concluded that the SPLC was little more than a hugely successful fundraising operation that delivered little of what it promised to its donors. Tharpe stated: "The Center was building up a huge surplus. It was 50-something million at that time; it’s now approaching 100 million, but they’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs."

A sampling of their donors showed that they had no idea of the Center’s wealth. The charity watchdog groups, the few that are in existence, had consistently criticized the Center, even though nobody had reported that. By looking at 990s, what few financial records we did have available, we were able to corroborate much of that information, many of the allegations they had made, the fact that the Center didn’t spend very much of its money that it took in on programs, the fact that some of the top people at the Center were paid very high salaries, the fact that there weren’t minorities in management positions at the Center. But the Advertiser’s investigative reporters found something even more remarkable for an organization that prides itself on “exposing” racism in others.

The newspaper was able to corroborate institutional racism within the SPLC. Addressing Harvard’s Nieman Center, Tharpe stated: "There was a problem with black employees at what was the nation’s richest civil rights organization; there were no blacks in the top management positions. Twelve out of the 13 black current and former employees we contacted cited racism at the Center, which was a shocker to me. As of 1995, the Center had hired only two black attorneys in its entire history." None of these 3 publications had any obvious political or economic interest in discrediting the SPLC. In fact, Tharpe, whose newspaper was literally next door to the SPLC’s headquarters, noted, “They [SPLC officials] were friends with people at the paper; we hung out with them.” Nevertheless, all three, after closely examining the SPLC, independently arrived at the conclusion that the organization is not a credible or objective source of information.

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/SPLCGuide_Final.pdf?docID=3541

So, are we supposed to believe FAIR since they called SPLC a hate group?

Sounds to me like an argument: "You are a Hate Group". "No, you are a hate group".