Posted on 04/11/2013 10:15:58 AM PDT by AuntB
The Southern Poverty Law Center has released its annual report on "The Year in Hate and Extremism," in which the organization estimates the size of the "extremist" threat. Since its count of hate groups has dropped since last year—the number went down from 1,018 to 1,007—the center is hyping a 7 percent increase in another category: what it calls "conspiracy-minded antigovernment 'Patriot' groups." The SPLC's definition of "Patriot" is pretty broad: The list ranges from the conservative websites WorldNetDaily and FreeRepublic.com to the Moorish Science Temple and its offshoots. The Moors, a black militant movement, are presumably included because they sometimes borrow ideas from the sovereign citizens and other folks often associated with the right.
For SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok, that 7 percent surge is a sign that a growing terrorist threat demands the Department of Homeland Security's attention:
Eighteen years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote then-Attorney General Janet Reno to warn about extremists in the militia movement, saying that the "mixture of armed groups and those who hate" was "a recipe for disaster." Just six months later, the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed. Today, with our country’s political polarization at historic levels and government officials being furiously demonized by Patriots, we may be approaching a comparable moment.
In the 1990s, warnings that might have averted some of the violence from the radical right failed to stick. Now, as we face another large and growing threat from the extremists of the Patriot movement, the country needs to do better. One important start would be to demand that the Department of Homeland Security, which gutted its non-Islamic domestic terrorism unit after unjustified criticism from the political right, rebuild its important intelligence capabilities.
A different story emerges if you study the list itself. For one thing, while the number of Patriot groups has gone up since last year, the number of militia groups has gone down, from 334 to 321. That doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer people involved in militias: One quirk of the SPLC's decision to measure activity by counting groups is that if an organization splinters in a faction fight that shows up as growth, but if two smaller groups join forces it looks like shrinkage. But given that Potok invokes the militias in both the opening and the conclusion of his article, and given that the article makes a big deal of the increased Patriot count, it seems disingenuous not to mention that the militia count is actually declining.
More important, neither the number of militias nor the number of Patriot groups writ large is a good proxy for the number of potential terrorists. As I wrote in response to an earlier edition of the SPLC's list, the Oath Keepers—whose chapters take up 67 spots on the 2013 list—have a history of distancing themselves from violent-minded supporters, and the whole point of the organization is to persuade the government's agents to refuse orders the group considers unconstitutional, a central tactic not of terrorism but of nonviolent civil resistance. Meanwhile, 41 groups on the SPLC list are chapters of the John Birch Society. Far from an adjunct to the militias, the Birchers—notorious for their own conspiracy theories—devoted a lot of effort in the '90s to debunking the more elaborate conspiracy yarns popular in much of the militia world. They frown on insurrectionary violence, too, sometimes suggesting that it merely plays into the hands of the Grand Cabal.[snip]
Lately SPLC talking points are being used by REPUBLICANS against most of us to pass amnesty!
[snip]At the heart of the attack is the accusation that the leading members of some groups critical of immigration policy were or still are environmentalists and liberals. This attack piggybacks on earlier work by the Southern Poverty Law Center that used some of the same information to accuse those groups of being tied to Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups. There’s something rather strange when “conservative sites” not only begin advocating for illegal alien amnesty, but begin repeating the claims that the Center for American Progress, Mother Jones and the Southern Poverty Law Center were making about anti-immigration groups 5-10 years ago. The same Norquist tactics being used to attack the anti-immigration movement can and will be used to attack the Counterjihadist camp. http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=Splc
Marxist idiots.
So despite any corroborating evidence, patriotic, liberty-minded Americans who discuss politics on websites like FR are immediately suspect and should be investigated by DHS?
GFY SPLC!
Does this organization get government money or is it privately funded? If it DOES get government money, someone needs to shut it down...and NOW!
hurl
The point that seems missed, is that our ‘conservative tea party’ elected legislators, like Rubio with the help of Grover Norquist is using SPLC talking points against us to pass amnesty!
[snip]At the heart of the attack is the accusation that the leading members of some groups critical of immigration policy were or still are environmentalists and liberals. This attack piggybacks on earlier work by the Southern Poverty Law Center that used some of the same information to accuse those groups of being tied to Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups. There’s something rather strange when “conservative sites” not only begin advocating for illegal alien amnesty, but begin repeating the claims that the Center for American Progress, Mother Jones and the Southern Poverty Law Center were making about anti-immigration groups 5-10 years ago. The same Norquist tactics being used to attack the anti-immigration movement can and will be used to attack the Counterjihadist camp.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=Splc
also:Grover vs. ‘the Bitter Enders’(Grover trying to give Rubio political cover)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3006017/posts
Add up the IQ of that whole collection of libtards and you wouldn’t even get to the level of one Atlanta public school teacher.
FUSPLC.
FUBO.
Your sole contribution to history will be the fact that you all will the cause of CW-II..which you WILL loose.
Fricking NAZI scumbags. Nothing but useful idiots. If the hardline commies ever do succeed in taking over the US, these useful idiots would be among the first to the gulags.
They remind me of Psycho (Francis) in Stripes - "You just made the list!"
Especially if they meet in cold water.
We must be over the target.
“Does this organization get government money or is it privately funded? If it DOES get government money, someone needs to shut it down...and NOW!”
Well, they are a ‘non-profit’, so I’m sure they get grants, especially from this administration. And as long as the GOP DEPENDS on them and approves of their conclusions, WHO is going to stop them???
See post 7
SPLC is a privately run “nonprofit” set up some years ago by a shyster lawyer named Morris Dees. He saw how Black leaders were making money crying racism and knew he could do the same as he had a background in mass marketing. He set up SPLC and makes money by sending out mass mailings of alerts about what he says are racist or right wing dangers. Most on the list are not a threat or way old and gone. Of course every alert is a fundraising plea, most of the money raised goes to Dees and his few top employees.
Holy crap. So now, presenting and/or discussing the news is a terrorist act?
The SPLC *IS* a terrorist organization.
Re: Lately SPLC talking points are being used by REPUBLICANS against most of us to pass amnesty!
The SPLC called the Center for Immigration Studies a “Hate Group” a year or two ago.
I believe it also called “Numbers USA” a hate group.
The best way to stop that kind of political libel and slander is a serious lawsuit with serious monetary damages.
Instead, CIS and Numbers just put out feckless denials that the average voter never hears about.
The ‘Southern Poverty Law Center’ is more a terrorist origination than most any of theses ‘groups’.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an extremist organization. They should put themselves on the threat list. I mean, look how psychotic they make already unstable liberals act.
They are as dangerous as they come, especially that wack-job Mark Potok.
They collect millions of dollars a year from little old church ladies and liberals across the country by scaring them over nonsense.
They have over $100mm in cash that the three dirtbags who run the place use to pay themselves and their expenses, while they hire idealistic young lawyers to work for them for a song to do all the "research."
It's a brilliant scam they've been milking for forty years.
I've met Morris Dees. He lives like a king and pays no taxes.
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