“The SPLC routinely smears conservatives and other critics of left-wing identity politics because that’s how the group makes money.”
(Author Peter Hasson)
Most of you know that, but just in case, the Capital Research Centerposted a nice little update story of where thing stands with the Southern Poverty Law Centerafter it was forced to give the boot to its longtime leader Morris Dees.
The article features Peter Hasson’s new book with the great cover—The Manipulators—about how Big Tech often uses the SPLC to police speech.
Embarrassment About SPLC Should Be Shared by Others (II)
After the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., fired its founder Morris Dees and publicly admitted that he mistreated people—reportedly on the basis of race and sex—we wrote last June about how some embarrassment surrounding that which occurred there should probably be shared by other organizations who relied on the discredited group’s work for longer than they should have. At the time, these groups included GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and the Amalgamated Foundation—which purport to provide information that can be used to evaluate the quality of nonprofits, like SPLC.
Daily Caller News Foundation senior investigative reporter Peter J. Hasson’s new The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech’s War on Conservatives reminds us of yet others who should perhaps share in the embarrassment, as well.
For many years, as Hasson overviews, the high-profile SPLC has liberally used its “hate-group” and “extremist” designations to unfairly label conservative groups and individuals, as it was engaging in questionable financial practices and fundraising tactics. After Dees’ departure, public scrutiny was more widely brought to bear on its behavior.
As part of that scrutiny, more than a few former SPLC employees and journalists from the Montgomery Advertiser reported that SPLC’s longtime tacit acceptance of Dees’ behavior was always something of an open secret.
After the scandal, SPLC retained attorney and onetime Michelle Obama chief of staff Tina Tchen, to conduct an investigation into what had been going on there. The work of Tchen—who many believe tried to influence the Cook County (Ill.) State’s Attorney earlier last year to drop 16 felony charges of disorderly conduct against Jussie Smollett for his fraudulent allegation of a racist, anti-gay attack—has not been open. There has been no “Tchen report” (or summary of one) released by SPLC, at least as of this writing.
“The SPLC is a once-respected discrimination watchdog that has long since devolved into a smear-mongering fundraising mill,” according to Hasson, and now often assists Big Tech campaigns to police speech.
“The SPLC routinely smears conservatives and other critics of left-wing identity politics because that’s how the group makes money,” he observes. “Ultra-wealthy leftists write massive checks to the SPLC to demonstrate their wokeness because the SPLC is to identity politics what Planned Parenthood is to abortion.” In fact, “SPLC’s fear-mongering is a lucrative operation, and one that’s tax-exempt to boot. The SPLC has more than $400 million in assets, including a cool $90 million stashed in offshore funds”—a number that The Washington Free Beacon reports is now $162 million.
Over at Refugee Resettlement Watch I keep a close eye on a favorite issue of the Left and that is their prediction that millions of “climate refugees” will be surging across the globe looking for new homes where you live. So every day I look through alerts on the subject.
The number of alerts for stories on the “climate catastrophe” topic are expanding exponentially, including ones like this about how climate change is responsible for rich people leaving coastal Florida and thus pushing gentrification into low income neighborhoods inland. The theme of course is that the rich are going to hurt the poor (again).
But, I have noticed a new angle from the hard Left (because they never miss a beat and famously never let a good crisis go to waste) including now linking the Chinese Virus ‘crisis’ to climate change (yes, making any stretch they can to get their message out).
Here at a demonstration in London this week, Extinction Rebellion’s banner says it all.
Those are children’s shoes lined up (sans the children who presumably will be dead)!
“COVID Today, Climate Tomorrow”: Climate Activists Stage Protest Installation in London
In Britain, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion staged a protest in London’s Trafalgar Square Monday, lining up over 2,000 pairs of children’s shoes to draw attention to the ongoing threat of climate catastrophe. Activists are demanding the government tackle the climate crisis and refuse to bail out extractive industries as part of the coronavirus recovery effort. A banner reading ”COVID Today, Climate Tomorrow, Act Now” was unfurled at the protest. “One crisis doesn’t stop because another starts,” said Extinction Rebellion.
And, here NY Magazine is linking Corornavirus and Climate too in a lengthier description of a doomsday scenario.
The author predicts a much hotter summer (I wish it would get here because it is a cold spring where I live!). However, the full impact of their climate catastrophe prediction won’t be felt until 2070. So I leave it to you youngsters to report when that day comes.
Less than a week ago I told you about how Facebook is blocking sites like VDARE that apparently the woke and oh-so-smart people at Facebook don’t like, and it is no surprise to see Google hard at work doing the same.
Here is Robert Spencer, whose blog Jihad Watchhas been the go-to site for the latest news about the ‘religion of peace’ for going on two decades, finding the site buried by Google.
And, look who is here—Imam-extraordinaire Omar Suleiman!
Daniel Greenfield, the peerless Shillman Fellow and FrontPage writer, tweeted the news on May 7: “Google just erased my Sultan Knish blog and Front Page Mag articles from the first pages of results for my name doubt very much this is accidental.”
I did too, so I checked for myself, and sure enough: a Google search for “Robert Spencer” now does not bring up Jihad Watch, where most of my writing outside of books has been published for the last seventeen years, but it does give you defamatory and distorted attack pieces from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center*** and the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, and nothing that doesn’t portray me and my work in the most unfavorable possible light.
This latest example of the tech giants’ determination to silence all dissenting voices reveals one often overlooked fact: they are desperately afraid.
Google is so afraid of Jihad Watch, in fact, that it is going to great lengths to make you think that the site (which you can find here) doesn’t exist at all.
Several years ago, under pressure from the Texas-based imam Omar Suleiman, Google changed the algorithm for its search results so as to bury anything critical of Islamic jihad violence or Sharia oppression of women. Jihad Watch, which for years had been the first result in a Google search for “jihad” (back when Google searches were based solely on relevance and the popularity of the site), fell off the front page of “jihad” searches.
Now Google has gone even farther to make sure you don’t see Jihad Watch. Just this morning, I was looking for an old Jihad Watch article from a few years ago that I needed for a citation, and I entered an exact phrase from that article into the Google search bar. What came back were two sites where the article had been republished, but no indication that it had ever been at Jihad Watch at all.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel of a totalitarian society, 1984, to which far more people refer than have actually read the book, the dissenter Winston Smith’s job in the Ministry of Truth involves erasing from all historical records any mention of people who have been declared “nonpersons.” Foes of the regime aren’t just vilified. Their very existence is erased. Dissent is easy to control if all record of it ever having been enunciated is eradicated, and Google has apparently taken a page from Orwell’s book.
Of course, Jihad Watch is one of the least of the concerns of Big Tech. They’re erasing all manner of people who dissent from the Leftist agenda. Greenfield notes that “Google controls 80% of search. That means it controls what the internet looks like. And it’s continuing to erase conservatives from the internet. I’m just the latest victim. Its censorship and creepy surveillance have reached new heights during the pandemic.”
*** One of the funniest things I ever read from someone who had newly been labeled a hate GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center was Daniel Greenfield’s post in 2012when he learned he (with his blog Sultan Knish) had been added to the SPLC’s Hate GROUP list.
HOW I BECAME A HATE GROUP
Here are just a few snips:
When I went to sleep last night, little did I know that while outside sirens competed with car alarms in the symphony that is New York City, I had already been declared a hate group.
Being declared a hate group wasn’t in my plans for the day, but like winning the lottery, it seems to be one of those things that happens when you least expect it. Except that as the little bald man in front of the bodega tells you, you have to play to win, but you don’t even have to buy a ticket to be declared an official hate group.
My first response on finding out that I was now a hate group was to look around to see where everyone else was. A hate group needs the “group” part, and one man and a cat don’t seem to be enough. Even when the cat is a well known bigot who hates mice, birds, car alarms that go off in the middle of the night, the plumber and sudden noises.
Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed, “Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield” as one of their “Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups…”
I suppose I found this so funny because the SPLC has done the same to me (I have a cat) too!
You have surely heard the rumors that some Dems have taken advantage of their ‘vacation’ to get face work done. Watching Nancy yesterday should confirm for you that she must have been one of them.
I know you are saying, so what else is new, but this latest gambit by the Dems to include amnesty for illegal aliens (not to mention payments to them!) due to the Chinese virus is a bridge too far.
Fortunately Tucker took her on in a ten minute segment at Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Normally I don’t write about topics that are widely covered by all sorts of media, but this is just too much.
And, our Open Borders agitators are not alone as Gatestone reported hereyesterday in a detailed discussion of what is happening in Europe where the socialists are not letting a crisis go to waste and are looking to legalize the illegals too.
“Coronavirus: Lockdown for Europeans, Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants”
Read Gatestoneand then see Tucker (let me know if this youtube video disappears as happens often these days).
Well they didn’t specifically stand up to Facebook in defense of VDARE, but VDAREis presumably an early causality of Facebook’s speech “Oversight Board” or perhaps is a test run to see how upcoming purges will be received.
If you hadn’t heard about the silencing of VDARE, learn about it here at VDAREitself and make VDAREa regular stop on your daily reading list. I just now googled VDAREand the first item that came up was not its website, but this headline (VDARE | Southern Poverty Law Center) and that is because Google is also (as you are surely well aware) in the silencing business too.
Here is aVDARE storyfrom yesterday you should see about a black sniper killing an 80-year-old couple visiting their son’s grave in a Delaware veterans’ cemetery. Have some fun and see if you can post it at facebook!
Report: Black Male Murders White Couple In Their 80s With Sniper Rifle—Revenge For Ahmaud Arbery?
Now here is what 60 conservative leaders sent to Facebook last Friday:
The conservative Free Speech Alliance, led by Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell, III, and including more than 60 conservative leaders, among whom are CHQ Managing Editor George Rasley and American Target Advertising President of Corporate Affairs attorney Mark J. Fitzgibbons, yesterday released the following statement about Facebook’s new Oversight Board and efforts to decide what content should be taken down from the site:
While leftist organizations savaged him, we supported CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he talked about making Facebook a marketplace of ideas and spoke forcefully saying the company “must continue to stand for free expression.”
Yet leftist forces within and outside of Facebook have condemned him for this, agitating for the company to become an arbiter of what is, and isn’t truth; and therefore what should and should not be presented on Facebook. Facebook wants the public to believe that its new Oversight Board will help solve the problems “about what content to take down or leave up.”
Conservatives warned from the start that any new oversight mechanism was fraught with danger. Our fears were well founded. This new board will damage Facebook more than it can imagine.
[…..]
It is too early to tell how such this board would rule. [Not really, it looks like VDARE was a test run.–ed] But it is terrifying to imagine how a powerful, leftist group like this might view control conservative speech — speech that defends free enterprise, traditional marriage, religious freedom, the lives of the unborn, free speech and gun rights, to name but a few.
The answer in social media has often been to call such beliefs “hate speech,” the club the left has used to beat their opponents into submission on college campuses and online. And it has been a code word for anti-conservative censors like the Southern Poverty Law Center to shut down speech it doesn’t like.
Go herefor more of the letter and to see who signed it.
Now head on over to VDARE(vdare.com) and see what Facebook and the Southern Poverty Law Center do not want you to see!
After the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., fired its founder Morris Dees and publicly admitted that he mistreated people—reportedly on the basis of race and sex—we wrote last June about how some embarrassment surrounding that which occurred there should probably be shared by other organizations who relied on the discredited group’s work for longer than they should have. At the time, these groups included GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and the Amalgamated Foundation—which purport to provide information that can be used to evaluate the quality of nonprofits, like SPLC.
