Tag Archives: Southern Poverty Law Center

Racist Hate Group To Conduct Nighttime Patrols On College Campus

Think Progress

White Student Union founder Matthew “Commander” Heimbach

A racist hate group at Towson University has announced plans to conduct its own nighttime police patrols on campus.

Founded last year, the White Student Union has stirred significant controversy already. The organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, its founder, Matthew Heimbach (who goes by the title “Commander Heimbach”), and fellow organizer Scott Terry interrupted a minority outreach panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month in order to defend slavery, noting that slaveholders provided blacks with food and shelter. Terry later told ThinkProgress that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa” and he’d be “fine” living in a society where blacks are permanently subservient to whites.

The Towerlight has more on the vigilante plan:

The controversial White Student Union has resurfaced on Towson’s campus with plans to conduct random nighttime patrols, which members say are for students’ protection.

Some members of the group, equipped with flashlights, will conduct on-campus safety walks, and female members will carry pepper spray in an attempt to protect students from various crimes like sexual assaults and robberies, WSU President Matthew Heimbach said. [...]

Heimbach said female members have also been enrolling in self-defense classes, and members have been going to local gun ranges as a group, but not in a “military way,” Heimbach said.

He said group members would carry no weapons on the nighttime walks.

One need look no further than the White Student Union’s blog to see why their vigilante operations could turn problematic. In a blog post last month entitled “Black Crime Wave Continues!“, the group writes:

The frequent robberies, sexual assaults, and acts of vandalism at Towson University are not often reported in the local media. For those who are not Towson students it seems hard to fathom that every single day black predators prey upon the majority white Towson University student body. White Southern men have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people.

As a result, the post reads, “The WSU executive board has unanimously approved to make it mandatory for all female WSU members to begin taking some form of unarmed self defense training over the next month.”

Though no Towson faculty would sign on as a sponsor for the WSU, the administration allows the group to use university resources. As the group bragged in September 2012, it is “excited to report that it has taken one step closer toward becoming recognized by Towson University,” pointing to its profile on a university website.

 

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Filed under Hate Groups, Racism

Gun Appreciation Day Sponsored By American Third Position, White Supremacist Group

Gun Appreciation Day

The Huffington Post

Firearms enthusiasts around the country are being encouraged to head down to their local gun shops on Saturday, constitutions and American flags in hand, to send a message to President Barack Obama about Second Amendment rights — and, of course, to buy more guns.

The event is being billed as Gun Appreciation Day and has backing from white supremacist group American Third Position (A3P), Media Matters reported on Friday.

A3P, which is listed on the Gun Appreciation Day website as a sponsor, does little through its own content to veil the fact that the political movement is dedicated to white supremacy.

In its mission statement, A3P writes that it “believes that government policy in the United States discriminates against white Americans, the majority population, and that white Americans need their own political party to fight this discrimination.”

It goes on, saying that the group aims to “stop the immigrant invasion” in order to put “America first!”

A3P has been listed as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In an email to The Huffington Post last year, A3P’s chairman candidly admitted to his white nationalism, saying that he found it a “just and proper position for all white people to hold.”

(For more on A3P’s controversial history, click over to Media Matters)

Gun Appreciation Day has raised some eyebrows for reasons apart from its questionable ties. The event’s founder, Larry Ward has rejected claims that he’s an extremist, but earlier this week he sparked outrage when he suggested that slavery could have been prevented in the United States if African Americans were allowed to carry guns.

“I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history,” Ward said.

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Is Hate On The Agenda At This Weekend’s Values Voter Summit? (VIDEO)

 

Uh, yes, it is…

Addicting Info

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), along with other signatories, sent a letter asking several prominent speakers, including vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, to reconsider attending the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. this weekend because of defamatory comments against the LGBT community made by the host of the conference, the Family Research Council (FRC) and one of its co-sponsors, the American Family Association (AFA). Both of these organizations are classified as hate groups by the SPLC and they cite specific examples of why they are designated as such in their letter:

Here is what Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issue Analysis, wrote in 2010: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” He once said that welfare rewards black people who “rut like rabbits.”The FRC’s extremism is also illustrated by its recent hiring of retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, a radical anti-Muslim propagandist and conspiracy theorist, as its executive vice president. Last year, Mr. Boykin stated that “Islam is not a religion and does not deserve First Amendment protections”— a statement that is antithetical to American ideals. In the Affordable Care Act, he literally sees a plot to create a shadow police force that he compares to Hitler’s “Brownshirts.” Yet, the FRC has not only hired Mr. Boykin, it has given him a prominent speaking slot at the Summit.

Here’s a short video displayed the rabid hate that will be on display this weekend:

Really?! These are the values that Republicans and their Christian supporters want us to vote for? The breakout sessions scheduled for Saturday on the Values Voter Summit site sound innocuous enough when you read the titles but I think they are masking their real agenda so I’ve provided my own translation of the actual topics being addressed:

  • Economic Inequality: Reconciling Capitalism And Compassion (Screw The Poor)
  • Israel, Iran And The Future Of Western Civilization (Bring On The Rapture)
  • Speechless? Silencing The Christians (Adopt Our Beliefs or Get the Hell Out)
  • Understanding Radical Islam 101 (Converting The Heathens)
  • One Life: 40 Years Of Roe V. Wade, Ending Abortion Today (Every Egg is Sacred)
  • Repealing Obamacare (Screw the Sick)
  • Can You Protect Your Children From The Commercial Sex Industry? (Okay, No One Is Pro Child Sex Trafficking)
  • Preparing For The Coming Economic Earthquake (President Mitt Romney)
  • Grassroots Activism Get-Out-The Vote (GOTV) Workshop (Voter Suppression 101)
  • Vertical Vote Campaign For Life, Marriage and Religious Liberties (God Hates Fags)
  • Millennial And The Future Of Political Engagement (Homeschoolers Unite)
  • Debunking The Myth Of Separation…Why Pastors Must Engage In Politics (America, Christian Theocracy)

Three days of anger, fear and hate in the name of God. Just like Jesus would have wanted!

 

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Misinformation, Fear, And Hate In America

More right-wing fear and loathing of the POTUS.  This is a stirring critique…

Democratic Underground ~ proud2BlibKansan

The GOP and the Right Wing Media, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al, have been propagating a campaign of irrational fear and hate against President Barak Obama since 2007. These devious and dishonest attacks are designed to delegitimize the Presidency of Barak Obama, and to characterize him as; the other, foreign, un-American, non-Christian, and alien.

He has been called socialist, communist, fascist, The New Hitler, Marxist, Stalinist, Muslim, African Anti- Colonialist, Anti-Christ, baby killer, gay lover, uppity, The Food Stamp President, and n!@@&r. The base of the GOP is clearly without any morality, their claim to Jesus and God rings hallow as they practice Anti-Christ in the name of Jesus.

Their base constituency has been duped with fear, into a position of unfounded distrust and hate. In their fevered zealotry, they express a fanatical willingness to vote against their own self-interest. The Conservatives have been conquered, their party has taken over by the Corporatist, in a pact with the Theocrats, and the Objectivist. Watch this video in its entirety, and then tell me how anyone with a modicum of intelligence, or any degree of honesty, could vote for a Republican.

“I don’t agree with all the people who support me, and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in, but I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.” – Mitt Romney 

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Tea Party Nation Declares Liberals ‘Deranged’ Bloodthirsty Maniacs After FRC Attack

Addicting Info

It’s almost like I can see the future! Recently, I predicted that the right would be outraged, OUTRAGED, by the botched attack on the DC headquarters of the anti-gay hate group, The Family Research Council, by what is presumably a liberal. I also said that, magically, this one incident would overshadow the decades long pattern of right-wing violence.

Here’s Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation and hate/fear-monger in charge to prove me right,

Yesterday was a day we in the conservative movement will need to remember for a very long time.  It represents something we had better learn about and learn to deal with quickly.

What is it?

It was the shooting at the Family Research Council in DC.

It was left on right violence.

It is soon to be the new norm.

BE AFRAID! THE LIBERALS ARE COMING! Judson blathers on for a bit and finally gets to the part where conservatives are the true victims and liberals are out of control monsters:

Conservatives have been the victims of left-wing violence.  In 2009, Kenneth Gladney was beaten by leftist thugs in a St. Louis Tea Party event.   More recently we have seen violence committed by the Occupy mobs.

Ah. Kenneth Gladney? THIS Kenneth Gladney? I wonder if Judson thinks a man getting into a scuffle with two other men is the same as a liberal woman being thrown to the ground and stomped on by Rand Paul supporters? Probably not. She had it coming, after all. Just a heads up, the Gladney case ended in an acquittal for the “union thugs” while the manly stomper of women plead out for probation and paying for his victim’s medical bills. Also, notice that Judson can’t be bothered to say what KIND of violence has occurred at the Occupy protests? Probably because it’s hard to spin smashed windows and graffiti into a credible attack on conservatives.

Judson wraps it up with a textbook case of projection in which he transfers the sins of the right to the “radical left”:

Left wing media outlets and radical far left groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center are creating the hysteria that is the catalyst for violence.  The blood is on their hands. (be afraid - FLS)

I wish I could say the shooting at the FRC yesterday was an isolated incident.  It is not.  It is an example of growing violence against conservatives in this nation. (be afraid – FLS)

Fortunately yesterday, no one died.   Unfortunately, I fear it is only a matter of time before that happens. (be afraid – FLS)

The left is getting more desperate.  They are seeing their power fade and the left must have power.  They know they will lose the Senate and the White House in the election this fall and they are becoming more and more desperate. (Be. Afraid. – FLS)

For conservatives, the message is simple.  We must be on our guard. (BE. AFRAID. – FLS)

These are dangerous times for conservatives.  Before this is all over, I fear there will not only be more violence against conservatives, I fear conservatives will be killed by some of these deranged far left wing activists. (BE AFRAID! – FLS)

In most cases, I like to be right in my predictions.  In this one case, I pray I am very wrong. (OH MY GOD ARE YOU TERRIFIED YET?! – FLS)

The message here is clear: “Go out and get more guns to protect yourself and if you happen to blow away a few liberals, they probably had it coming.” This is precisely the kind of “hysteria” the left DOESN’T create but the right specializes in. Oh? he didn’t mention guns so I’m exaggerating? What, pray tell, does the right festishize for self-defense? Guns, pepper spray, tasers or martial arts? That’s right, guns. Let’s move on.

Conservatives love the idea that they are under siege and Republicans love the idea of their base being terrified of their neighbors. It makes them easier to control. It’s nice to see Judson running plays right out of the GOP handbook: “How To Keep’em Dumb & Scared – Your Guide To Winning Elections.” He’s definitely earned his Koch money this week.

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Filed under Family Research Council, Judson Phillips - FRC

O’Reilly uses hate group shooting to exonerate himself in abortion doctor’s murder

Bill O'Reilly talks about Dr. George Tiller

Bill O’Reilly always claimed that he had nothing to do with “brainwashing”  the killer of  the late Dr. Tiller, and now he goes further…

The Raw Story

During a Thursday interview where Tony Perkins blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for the recent shooting of a Family Research Council (FRC) employee, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly took the opportunity to insist he did not “exacerbate” the situation that led to the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller by calling him a “baby killer.”

“Now you may remember back in 2009, some in the liberal press accused me encouraging the assassination of late-term abortionist George Tiller in Kansas,” O’Reilly said.

As PBS’ Now noted, O’Reilly had mentioned Tiller’s name on 27 episodes of his Fox News show, often calling him “Tiller the Baby Killer” without attributing the label to anyone.  He also said  Tiller had “blood on his hands,” was guilty of “Nazi stuff” and was “operating death mills.”

“I never called him a killer,” O’Reilly insisted on Thursday, even though PolitiFact found that the Fox News host had used the term “baby killer” to describe Tiller at least 24 times.

“I simply referred to what Tiller was doing in detail and the press hounded me for it,” O’Reilly continued, bringing on Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to talk about the most recent shooting.

“I believe that the Southern Poverty Law Center is responsible for creating an environment that led to this,” Perkins explained. “[Your critics are] saying you are using hate speech — well, the Southern Poverty Law Center — because they disagree with our position on marriage and certain religious issues — have labeled us a hate group, and that gives license to lunatics like this that come in and shoot innocent people.”

“It’s a shocking situation,” O’Reilly agreed. “And as we said in the Tiller situation, there’s no excuse for it. I didn’t exacerbate that situation.”

“And I don’t know about the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the self-proclaimed culture warrior added. “We will check that out. Absolutely.”

In a statement released on Thursday, Southern Poverty Law Center senior fellow Mark Potok said that his organization “deplores all violence” and Perkins was just using the tragedy to “score points.”

“Perkins’ accusation is outrageous,” Potok wrote. “The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.”

Potok pointed out that Perkins had claimed that that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” and another official at the Family Research Council had said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.”

“Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people,” Potok Concluded. “The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.”

ED note: (Emphasis are mine)

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Armed neo-Nazis patrol the streets of Sanford, looking for race riots

NSM rally in 2009 in California via Flickr

The original issue in the Martin-Zimmerman kerfuffle is simple, why is George Zimmerman not in jail?

For armed “neo-nazis” to incite a “race riot” is absurd…

The Raw Story

Heavily armed neo-Nazis are said to be patrolling the streets of Sanford, Florida to protect “white citizens in the area” in case of race riots.

According to a blog at the Miami New Times, the patrols were initiated by Jeff Schoep of the Detroit-based National Socialist Movement in response to the shooting of African-American teen Trayvon Martin by self-appointed neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman.

“We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody,” Schoep insists, “but we are prepared for it,. We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over.”

“Because nothing diffuses racial tension,” blogger Michael Miller comments wryly, “like gun-toting racial separatists patrolling an already on-edge commnity.”

Schoep is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist hate groups, as “a neo-Nazi true believer since age 10 who has managed, largely by luck, to end up heading one of the largest explicitly Hitlerite groups in America. Schoep’s group is known for the crudeness of its propaganda, the violence it works hard to provoke, and the faux SS outfits that have caused many other neo-Nazis to deride NSM members as ‘Hollywood Nazis.’”

Schoep’s group is best known for the rally it staged against “black crime” in an inner-city neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio in 2005. NSM members had to be rescued from an angry crowd by the police, and the day ended with some local residents attacking police and 100 being arrested. The NSM considered this outcome a great success.

Schoep asserts that he and the Florida residents he has recruited are acting “totally within the law” and that their patrols “wouldn’t intimidate anybody” and are simply meant as a “show of solidarity with the white community down there.”

He says he decided to launch the Sanford patrols following an offer by the New Black Panther Party to pay a $10,000 bounty for a citizen’s arrest of Zimmerman, which he took as proof that “the possibility of further racial violence… is brimming over like a powder keg ready to explode into the streets.”

“We are a white civil rights organization,” Schoep said of the National Socialist Movement, describing himself as a while equivalent of Reverend Al Sharpton. He added that he wasn’t even taking sides on the shooting because Zimmerman is “half Hispanic or Cuban or something. He certainly doesn’t look white to me.”

Photo of NSM rally by Josh LaClair via Flickr

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American kids of immigrants denied food stamps in Alabama

Apparently the term compassionate conservatism died the moment it was “invented”…

The Raw Story

A civil rights law firm based in Alabama says that children who are U.S. citizens from at least five families have been denied food stamps because their parents are undocumented immigrants.

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Legal Director Mary Bauer confirmed to Raw Story that Alabama’s Department of Human Services had cited the state’s anti-immigration HB 56 law, which makes it illegal to conduct “business transactions” with undocumented workers, as a reason they were denied food stamps.

“We have heard from a number of people that several localities in Alabama have adopted the policy that they’re required to verify the status of parents who are trying to help their kids apply for food stamps — even if they themselves are not applying for food stamps,” Bauer explained. “Of course, that is illegal under federal law.”

“The localities are essentially saying that they are required to do this by Alabama’s immigration law,” she added. “What that means is that we have hungry U.S. citizen kids who are unable to get the benefits to which they are legally entitled.”

Yahoo News’ Liz Goodwin first revealed earlier this week that at least five people had called into SPLC’s immigration hotline to make a report.

Department of Human Services spokesman Barry Spear has insisted that the agency had no policy requiring proof of citizenship for services.

“We are unaware of any violations of the policy,” he said.

But Bauer was skeptical of that claim.

“That may be — that he is not aware of it,” she told Raw Story. “But this is the way that it’s playing out in the field and in the real world. And we will bring specifics to the department’s attention and insist that they come into compliance with federal law.”

While federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants from obtaining food stamps and many other welfare benefits, U.S. citizen children are entitled to all benefits regardless of the status of their parents. A recent study  from the Pew Research Center estimated that there were at least 4.5 million born in the U.S. with at least one undocumented parent.

Alabama state Senator Scott Beason, who authored HB 56, told WBRC that SPLC’s claims were “not necessarily factual.”

Update (5:30 p.m. ET): The SPLC tells Raw Story that they have not ruled out taking legal action if Alabama’s Department of Human Services does not come in compliance with the law.

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Southern Poverty Law Center Reminds GOP Of The Hate Groups Behind Values Voter Summit

All one has to do is see  how the folks at the “Values” Voter Summit behaved in past conferences.

Think Progress

As all of the major GOP presidential contenders prepare to speak at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) annual Values Voter Summit, the Southern Poverty Law Center is holding a press conference and has published an ad in the Washington Post reminding the candidates and the press that the groups behind the event “spread lies designed to demonize the LGBT community,” Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and others:

 

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Alabama GOP Official Explains Racial Disparities In Schools: ‘Blacks Misbehave’

When I woke up this morning it was March 2, 2011.  Yet, lately, the news around this country makes me feel that I’m back to being a six year-old in 1952. 

WTF is going on in this country?

Think Progress

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has been evaluating the Huntsville, AL school system’s racial integration, and earlier this month released a report that “wasn’t promising.” The DOJ listed “several outstanding desegregation issues that the school district must address,” including “that predominantly black schools have too few advanced courses” and “that black children at predominantly white schools are punished and suspended at alarming rates.”

But Hugh McInnish, a member of the Madison County Republican Executive Committee who also sits on the state Republican Executive Committee, set out to school the DOJ on the real reason racial disparities exist in Hunstville: “Life is unfair.” In a press conference at his gated community and a letter responding to the DOJ last week, McInnish offered a litany of bizarre “proof” that racial disparity isn’t “manmade,” claiming “blacks misbehave on average more frequently than whites do,” and that black students are unable to perform as well as white students. To McInnish, the only “manmade unfairness here” is that the DOJ wants to “correct a problem that is not of their making”:

McInnish went so far as to include in his letter a chart that purports to show the “black crime rate as (a) multiple of (the) white crime rate.” The chart indicates that black people commit more than six times the violent crime of white people overall; it has them committing about eight times as many murders as white people and more than 14 times as many robberies.[...]

McInnish also argued Tuesday that the gap between white and black students’ participation in advanced courses is not because black students are not afforded the chance, as alleged in the Justice Department letter.

Instead, he said, the gap exists because black students are not able to perform as well in advanced classes.

If the DOJ actually decides to peruse his letter, it will find that most of McInnish’s data is cribbed from the right-wing New Century Foundation (NCF), which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a “self-styled think tank” that propagates “academic racism.” Dedicated “to the ideal of the United States as a white European nation,” NCF also publishes the American Renaissance — a magazine that “publishes frequent articles on the discredited field of eugenics” which is “selective breeding to improve human genetic stock.” Incidentally, the foundation’s “most important publication” is The Color Of Crime (which, to NCF, is black.)                        Read more here…

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Filed under Republican Politics, Republican Racists, Republican Segregationists