SPLC exaggerates hate groups to justify funding

In recent years the SPLC has expanded their role as a "hate group watcher" to watching anyone who may disagree with mainstream U.S. capitalist doctrines. Since the SPLC cannot justify their budget by spying on anti-globalist activists, they need some credible evidence of genuine neo-Nazi hate groups and magnify their membership numbers so that people will continue to trust the SPLC as a legitimate source of knowledge. In reality, the SPLC has embraced the cause of Zionism and neo-liberal globalist (free trade) capitalism that includes the indefinite continuation of NAFTA/WTO free trade agreements with the resulting steady stream of undocumented immigrants ready to be exploited in the U.S. by slaughterhouses, agribusiness plantations and other industrial corporations..

The "Third Position" website defends their views against propaganda put out by SPLC in their "Neither Left nor Right" report that villifies anti-globalization activists;


"NEO-LIBERAL HATE AND RESISTANCE

“More and more, people on both ends of the traditional political spectrum … are finding that their world views overlap. They are opposed to what are seen as the homogenizing forces of globalism. They despise capitalism, with its tendency to concentrate wealth and to make people and economies more and more alike. … They pine for nations of peasant-like folk tied closely to the land and to their neighbors. They fight for a pristine environment, a land unsullied by corporate agriculture and urbanization. They detest man-centered philosophies, seeing animals as no less important than humans. They reject rationalism in favor of a kind of mystical spirituality. Above all, these mainly young people -- in some ways, the descendants of the "back-to-the-land" hippies of the 1960s -- favor decentralization."

“… [T]hese ideas have had a real impact on the American racist rock scene”

-- Southern Poverty Law Center, “Neither Left Nor Right”, Intelligence Report

Despite their typically ridiculous non sequitur mode of thinking, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which turns profits by suing small “far right” organizations who lack the financial resources to defend themselves, has been leading the charge to expand the definition of “hater” and “extremist” to include not only “Third Positionist” doctrines but also traditional Trotskyist and Anarchist left-wingers. In this, they have cooperated with the ADL and B’nai B’rith, who have press released numerous concerns of late about “anti-Zionism”, which they equate with “anti-Semitism”, among the American and Canadian campus based student left. Both groups, seeing their usual enemies -- the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, the Aryan Nations, and the like -- largely exhausted financially and with little left to attack, have been desperately trying to justify their existence with these ad hominem expansions of the war on “hatred” – though there is some indication that the larger world is not buying it. As long time left-wing anarchist activist P. Milstein wrote in his recent essay “The Enemy of Our Enemy: The Southern Poverty Law Center ‘Bad Jackets’ Anarchists”:

“Are anarchists now the allies and recruits for the latest trend in white neo-fascism? That is the amazing Big Lie being put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), on its popular civil rights website. ... This attack on revolutionary anarchism is more than a simple mistake, more even than just pro-government propaganda that needs to be shot down. It's a slipping of the mask, exposing the contradiction of pro-capitalist ‘anti-racism’ in America. …

“What kind of ‘anti-racist’ organization would do all this? The Southern Poverty Law Center itself and its founder-director, Morris Dees, while a public relations and fund-raising powerhouse, has for years been viewed by many activists with misgivings. … It appears that SPLC is the model of capitalist "anti-racism"--that is, it functions like a business with government connections using anti-racism as a commodity. And far from being a critic of the racist system, it is a small gear in the machinery of capitalist hegemony and institutional repression.”

third position on SPLC @;
http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/third_position%20beyond%20left%20and%20right.htm

If that site is too far to the right, here's some additional info written by an anarchist;

"The Southern Poverty Law Center

The SPLC has followed a similar path from legitimate anti-racist work to the demonization of radical dissent. The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971, as a small law firm focusing on civil rights cases. During the 1980s, the SPLC was catapulted into the national spotlight by a series of legal victories that bankrupted KKK and neo-Nazi groups. It quickly became one of the most visible and best funded anti-racist watchdog groups in the US.

Like the ADL, the SPLC has attracted significant controversy. In 2000, Harper’s Magazine published an article by Ken Silverstein—the magazine’s award-winning Washington Editor—alleging that the SPLC greatly overstates the threat posed by hate groups in order to raise more money.

“In 1986,” Silverstein wrote, “the SPLC’s entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees’ refusal to address issues—such as homelessness, voter registration and affirmative action—that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK.”

Another similarity to the ADL is the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, which gathers information on a variety of “extremist” groups and publishes its findings in the quarterly Intelligence Report. While typically focused on white supremacists, the Report began covering the anti-globalization, animal rights and radical environmental movements following the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, Washington. Although the Report has generally avoided the “ecoterrorism” label in favor of “ecoradicalism,” it has undermined this sober restraint through a campaign of innuendo, conjecture, misinformation and fear-mongering that makes the ADL look amateurish by comparison.

In the Winter 2000 edition of the Report, for example, the SPLC concluded that the WTO protests signaled a coming alliance between right-wing and left-wing opponents of globalization, including neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam and Earth First!. This charge was repeated in the Summer 2001 Report, which flung numerous outlandish accusations at the ELF in the hope that one might stick. The SPLC charged that “the ELF’s use of underground violence strongly resembles ex-Klansman Louis Beam’s concept of ‘leaderless resistance,’” as if this shared organizational structure is proof of a common racist ideology. Never mind the fact that leaderless resistance was actually developed by a US intelligence officer as a strategy for combating communist “extremists.”
"

article cont's @;
http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Why would the SPLC be threatened by people from the far right and the far left having common ground on certain issues, especially globalization (NAFTA/WTO) and corporate power mongering in a globalist economy? The debates surrounding undocumented immigration have shown people that there are common ground issues often ignored by constant bickering between opposing and polarized viewpoints. Those who cannot or will not join with one "side" against the other are marginalized as "fence straddlers", when instead they attempt to promote unity against the primary causes like NAFTA/WTO policies..

When it comes to undocumented immigration, some generalizations are between two polarized opposing groups setting up a false dichotomy debate of "open borders" vs. "closed borders", with neither side willing to discuss the possibility of repealing NAFTA/WTO as a means of stabilizing the economic imbalance between the U.S. and Mexico, giving Mexican farmers the chance to remain in their country of birth and own land, grow crops on their traditional indigenous milpa gardens and in general live well and prosper without being driven out of business by subsidized U.S. grain/corn imports (Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, etc..) that rely on NAFTA/WTO agreements to override protective tariffs..

However, it is easier for the neo-liberal side of the "open borders" groups to denounce anyone who disagrees with their position as racist and the neo-conservative "closed borders" groups to denounce anyone who disagrees as unpatriotic. When neither side is correct and ignores the factors of NAFTA/WTO free trade policies as the primary source of the increased rates of undocumented immigration, the last thing we need is more scare tactics and drama by the SPLC warning people of hate groups who in reality are small in number and resources. The same cannot be said for the profiteers of undocumented immigrant labor, the industrial meatpackers and agribusinesses like ADM, Cargill, Conagra and Monsanto..

That is not to say that competition over ever increasingly expensive resources; food, oil and living wage jobs could result in incidents of anger and violence coming from a small minority of ignorant and misled individuals in the U.S. being directed towards people in the greater immigrant community, especially Mexicans. This is wrong and foolish behavior on the part of the misled attackers, as the true enemies of the people (Mexicans, Anglos, Semites, Asians, Africans, Native Americans, etc..) are the multinational corporations (with their NAFTA/WTO agreements) and the U.S. (& Mexican) government's police state of centralized federal enforcers of corporate rule..

When August Kries, the leader of the Aryan Nations, proposed an alliance with Al-Qaeda, he may have stumbled onto something important. Whether this can happen in reality remains to be seen. It is obvious that localized resistance movements from the Zapatistas (EZLN), Al-Queda, Hamas and the Aryan Nations could accomplish a great deal more by working together as a united front against the corporate and globalist U.S. government power structure than wasting their energy quibbling with one another about racial, ethnic and religious differences. For his effort at putting aside racial politics and instead building strategic bridges between Euro-american nationalist groups and Islamic radicals of Al-Qaeda, August Kreis is either insane, a genius or both. Either way this recent approach by Kreis at building bridges could set the trend for future relationships. It always takes an original thought to grow and evolve into something greater. One possible outcome could be Aryan Nations helping Al-Qaeda with meeting their physical needs (housing, food, etc..) within the North American continent..

"You might think white supremacists like Kreis would spurn al Qaeda, since they tend to view non-Aryan Christians as, in their own term, "mud people." In fact, most of them do. But Kreis wants to change that.

"That's old-school racism, white supremacy, this is something new," he said. "We have to be realists and realize what didn't work [previously] isn't going to work in the future."

entire article @;
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/29/schuster.column/

Of course the SPLC and other neo-conservatives (Daniel Pipes) have exaggerated the potential of this collaboration to take effect in reality..

Some thoughts from Norman Finkelstein on the left and policing "racism";

Do you think The Holocaust Industry would have been published were you not the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors?

"(Laughs) No, I have no doubt about that. First of all, it just got barely published as the son of Holocaust survivorsIf I weren't, there would be no chance at all.I would have been buried alive. Just the other day I was speaking to someone who I cannot name for this interview, who met with a high government official in Germany who we both know. My friend asked him about the questions raised in my book concerning the number of surviving slave labourers, and whether the German government knew that the numbers had been grossly inflated to justify the extortion of huge amounts of money. His response was that 'of course we knew what he was saying was true', but a decision was made early on to go on with the blackmail because 'we were afraid of a huge anti Semitic reaction being unleashed in Germany', and the attitude was Germany was rich enough to pay the ransom. But, if you go to Germany and try to say the things that I did, the so called 'Left' become absolutely hysterical as they have this huge vested interest in being professional anti anti-Semites and semophiles. It's this huge identity that they have carved out for themselves, and when I go out there and say that of course be anti Nazis but a lot of what is being done in the name of anti anti-Semitism, is in fact a gross falsification of history .and unless exposed will do huge damage to the Jewish people, these people go berserk. It is one of the peculiarities of this whole industry, in that it has created an alignment between the Left in Germany and the Right-wing Jewish establishment in the US. They sing the praises of people like Israel Singer (disgraced executive V.P. of the World Jewish Congress), a complete and total hoodlum - something that crawled out of the sewer.and they sing the praises of him! You would think he was Demetrios the way they talk about him."

http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein1.html