I knew that the Southern Poverty Law Center was Fuldkommen Gak, but this shocked me. It takes a certain unbridled gall to put out a slime list like this of people who they mockingly refer to as “patriots”.
Not content to focus on organizations, and not content to focus on people advocating violence, they put together this Stasi-like file on a lot of people, who if they were considered to be part of the “left”, would be considered by SPLC to be righteous community organizers.
First off, they don’t seem to have a definite mission statement, but they do have a number of links with trite names like “hate and extremism”. A click on the “hate map is instructive. I clicked my state of Washington, and got 15 “hate” organizations, 14 of which were neo-Nazi, white nationalist, and in one case they even had a group flagged as “Radical Traditional Catholicism”. Scary. Latin mass is a racist conspiracy. And they had one token Black Separatist group.
So I went down to Oregon as a double check. This time 10 groups. Again, a bunch of skinhead/Nazi/klan types, and one token Black Separatist group.
I did this, because they won’t define “hate and intolerance”, but they are clearly trying to create the appearance of it being predominantly a thing of the “right”, with the fig leaf of the token black separatist group thrown in to pretend that they don’t have an ideological ax to grind.
Which brings us to the “patriots”. According to them:
In the last year and a half, militias and the larger antigovernment “Patriot” movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right. This spectacular growth (see timeline) is the result of several factors, including anger over major political, demographic and economic changes in America, along with the popularization of radical ideas and conspiracy theories by ostensibly mainstream politicians and media commentators.
“In the last year and a half” is dogwhistle for “since Barack Obama was elected”. Jeez, guys, can you be any more transparent? So let me deconstruct that.
Since Barack Obama was elected, militias and the larger antigovernment “Patriot” movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right.
Ok? Is that a little more honest?
This spectacular growth (see timeline) is the result of several factors, including anger over major political, demographic and economic changes in America, along with the popularization of radical ideas and conspiracy theories by ostensibly mainstream politicians and media commentators.
The “timeline” is all reported by the SPLC, and doesn’t prove an increase in anything. There are no quantitative measures of anything. They freely intermix actual allegations of violence with people simply saying things that they don’t like.
Their claimed reasons are also pure conjecture. So with this hyperventilating in the background, they go on to slime a lot of people as interchangeable with hard-core kooks. The first character, Chuck Baldwin, seems a little out there, but I don’t see him advocating violence. Is it the mission of the SPLC to out people for exercising their right to free speech?
Their inclusion of the second featured individual, Joe Banister, I find more than a little disturbing. He is silent on issues of race, religion, and even culture and immigration. His “sin” in the eyes of the SPLC? He is a critic of the IRS. This is sick that the SPLC has the time and resources and energy to dog tax critics.
The third individual is more than a little out there. He’s an antisemitic asshole, who deserves no defense, but he still has the right to free speech.
The inclusion of the fourth individual is also a puzzle. What was Catherine Bleish guilty of? Criticizing Treasury Secretary Geithner for not paying taxes. That apparently makes one a dangerous bigot in the estimation of the SPLC.
On to the fifth guy – the man who the MSM tried to tell us was a white racist. Except whoops. He turned out to be black, but the MSM specifically cropped that inconvenient truth out. By open carrying his gun in Arizona, he freaked the bejeebers out of every prog this side of Pluto. According to the SPLC,
Broughton made headlines in August 2009 when he showed up outside an Obama rally in Phoenix with an AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol holstered on his waist, becoming a hero to many in the “Patrtiot” movement in the process. He said he carries his guns habitually.
Broughton, apparently assuming that the Obama Administration planned gun control measures, said he wanted to make a point about the right to own guns. “The overwhelming statement I was trying to make was whether you like it or not, my guns aren’t going away,” said the Phoenix machinist. “They’re going to be here until you kill me and take them away.”
Oh noes! A machinist!!! A black guy who carries guns and works at a (gasp) real job! No wonder he makes the SPLC wet their pants. White guys who carry guns and work for a living are scary enough, but…Fuldkommen Gak!!!
“Barack Obama is responsible for more death than my guns ever will be,” Broughton said. “He could end so much suffering immediately, and instead he uses his power to force his agenda. I do hate him.”
Hate!!!
Number six is someone who also is guilty of opposing BHO.
Bob Campbell and his American Grand Jury are on a mission to drive President Obama from office and put him on trial for treason. Obama “is a certified crook that has committed treason and fraud,” Campbell wrote on his website late last year. “He is a fraud and a traitor.”
This makes him a dangerous terrorist in the SPLC’s bong dream.
Number seven seems to be a nutball, but not dangerous:
The chilling footage, shot with night-vision equipment, was posted to YouTube, and Crooks E-mailed a link to several prominent nativist leaders. “This video shows how to keep a ‘Home Depot’ parking lot empty,” Crooks wrote. He chided other nativists who, he suggested, could “talk the talk” but not “walk the walk.”
At first, Crooks denied making the video. But when faced with an investigation, he acknowledged making it and said the shooting was nothing but a hoax. The reason he did it: “We’re old men and we’re bored.”
Squirrely. But then, apparently inadvertently, SPLC concedes that the Minutemen don’t welcome this kind of squirreliness:
Other Minuteman organizations cut ties with Crooks over the episode. But he remains in the public eye. Last year, he appeared on ABC’s “20/20” and was the subject of a Penthouse magazine profile.
So these guys are reading…ahem…research in Penthouse. Yeah.
Next is the only well-known member of the group, the nutty, but nonetheless harmless Joseph Farrah of WND fame. I won’t spend any more space on him, because he’s a known quantity, and while out there, not dangerous. It is noteworthy however that SPLC seems to imply that it’s dangerous to question the nativity of Obama:
He is a leading fomenter of the baseless claim that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, but in Africa, and so is not qualified to be president. Farah has repeatedly demanded that Obama release a full-form birth certificate. “It’ll plague Obama throughout his presidency,” he said. “It’ll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration.”
So SPLC seems to have a rather long totalitarian streak; insisting that questioning Obama’s nativity makes one a second-class citizen, unworthy of the equal protection of the law.
The list goes on over six pages, and 35 individuals, and while many on this cherry-picked list are crackpots and nutballs (and even more aren’t), they haven’t furnished any evidence that any are dangerous.
This is the Southern Poverty Law Center. Stirring up trouble, because it pays. You should have said “mission accomplished” and folded up shop when you shut the klan down, instead of trying to manufacture right-wing racists in order to try in vain for a second orgasm.
Tags: SPLC
