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Showing posts with label Southern Poverty Law Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Southern Poverty Law Center. Show all posts
One of President Donald Trump's most powerful liberal opponents is reeling after the release of a report revealing rampant racism and homophobia throughout the organization.
"The National Health Law Program, or NHeLP, was founded in 1969 to advocate for health care rights of underserved people," POLITICO reports. "It has grown more prominent in the Trump era, taking on causes like fighting Medicaid work requirements.
Liberal organizations like NHeLP are targeting Trump with accusations he is racist and homophobic, but too often they are ones spreading hate.
"…(S)ome of its employees have described an environment allowing mistreatment of minority and LGBTQ employees, including instances of bullying black women; employees telling 'off-color jokes' about women and Jewish people; and a 'sense of not belonging among LGBTQ staff,' according to a 2018 assessment on its workplace culture obtained by POLITICO."
A 53-page report confirming the allegations was presented to NHeLP leaders in January 2018, but numerous current and former employees tell POLITICO little has been done to stop the culture of abuse.
"They say we hear you and we understand you but then don't see results," said one employee, who asked to remain unidentified.
The report mirrors findings of other investigations into liberal groups founded to accuse conservatives of racism.
One of the most prominent "anti-racist" liberal organizations is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has made millions of dollars producing "reports" accusing mainstream conservative organizations of being "hate groups."
But its founder, Morris Dees, was forced to resign this March after years of reports of racist and sexist abuse of employees.
"Dees was reportedly fired at a time when SPLC staff was complaining about alleged racism and sexism within the organization, which purportedly seeks to end hate and discrimination," Daily Wire's Ashe Schow reports. "As the Times reported, the leadership of SPLC is 'predominantly white.'"
The SPLC's statement firing its founder indicates a "climate" of racism and sexism within the organization.
"Today we announced a number of immediate, concrete next steps we're taking, including bringing in an outside organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices, to ensure that our talented staff is working in the environment that they deserve — one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected," said SPLC President Richard Cohen.
It's not the first time the SPLC has been accused of the very racism it claims to fight.
PJ Media reports:
In February 1994, Dan Morse ran a series of articles in the Montgomery Advertiser exposing the SPLC's leadership problems.
"Outside the Southern Poverty Law Center, a stunning civil rights memorial honors those who died to give blacks more opportunities. Inside, no blacks have held top management positions in the center's 23-year history, and some former employees say blacks are treated like second-class citizens," Morse wrote.
...
Morse contacted 13 black former SPLC staffers, and 12 said they either experienced or observed racial problems in the organization. Three recalled hearing racial slurs, three compared the SPLC to a plantation, and two said they had been treated better at predominantly white corporate law firms. Only three said the SPLC did not treat them worse than any other workplace.
According to internal memorandums, staffers accused Morris Dees of being a racist and making black employees feel "threatened."
Only one African American was ever among the SPLC's top five wage-earners and, before leaving, he was also one of merely two black staff attorneys in the legal advocacy organization's history.
Read more at https://americanactionnews.com/articles/major-anti-trump-group-exposed-as-cesspool-of-racism-homophobia#tFYMJrCKjVzA1MgQ.99
SPLC Implodes: President And Legal Director Resign Amid Sexual Misconduct Scandal
The Southern Poverty Law Center - the "vicious left-wing attack dog" used by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon to identify "hate groups" - is unraveling.
A week after co-founder Morris Dees was ousted over sexual misconduct claims - with two dozen employees signing a letter of concern over "allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism," the head of the SPLC, Richard Cohen, as well as the organization's legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, resigned on Friday.
Cohen had been with the organization 33 years and was one of its most prominent figures.
At 5:03 p.m. Friday, Cohen sent a message to staff, with the subject line “Stepping Down,” announcing that he, too, would be leaving the organization that he and Dees had turned into a research and fundraising juggernaut.
“Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them,” Cohen wrote, while asking the staff to avoid jumping to conclusions before the board completes an internal review of the Montgomery, Ala., organization’s work culture. -LA Times
Earlier this week, the SPLC board of directors appointed Michelle Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen - who, in an unrelated matter, unsuccessfully tried to pull strings and have the Jussie Smollett case transferred from the Chicago PD to the FBI. Tchen is heading up the inquiry into the sexual misconduct claims.
Also out on Friday was Rhonda Brownstein - who had worked with the organization for nearly three decades, according to the Montgomery Advertiser's Melissa Brown.
Inside the SPLC "Scam"
As the Washington Examiner's Beckett Adams writes, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a "scam," which has taken " no care whatsoever for the reputational and personal harm it causes by lumping Christians and anti-extremist activists with actual neo-Nazis."
As it turns out, the SPLC is a cynical money-making scheme, according to a former staffer’s blistering tell-all, published this week in the New Yorker. The center’s chief goal is to bilk naive and wealthy donors who believe it's an earnest effort to combat bigotry.
The only thing worse than a snarling partisan activist is a slimy conman who merely pretends to be one. -Washington Examiner
"“Outside of work," recalls Bob Moser of his days working for the organization, "we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about … the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, ‘hate’ always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. ‘The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,’ we’d say."
"[I]t was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam," added Moser.
The way Moser tells it, the center’s chief founder, Morris Dees, who was dismissed unceremoniously last week for unspecified reasons, discovered early on that he could rake in boatloads of cash by convincing “gullible Northern liberals” that his group is doing the hard work of fighting “hate.”
But the center’s supposed mission of combating bigotry doesn’t actually matter to its top brass, Moser says. It’s just a business choice and one that has been extremely lucrative throughout the years. Moser’s article reminds readers of the time Dees actually said of the SPLC in an interview with then-Progressive magazine reporter John Egerton, “We just run our business like a business. Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same.” -Washington Examiner
Moser claims that the SPLC's business model centers entirely around keeping its precious donors in constant fear using gimmicks such as "hate maps" and "hate lists."
"[T]he center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention,” he writes adding the group’s “central strategy” involves “taking on cases guaranteed to make headlines and inflame the far right while demonstrating to potential donors that the center has not only all the right enemies but also the grit and know-how to take them down."
Moser adds there is an inescapable sense of “guilt” that comes with thinking about “the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.”
Who knew you could make the big bucks simply by lumping Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ben Carson with actual, honest-to-God neo-Nazis? -Washington Examiner
Right wing commentator and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes is currently suing the SPLC for labeling his right-wing fraternal organization, the Proud Boys, a hate group.
The SPLC has gone from a noble institution genuinely dedicated to eradicating hate to a hate group in and of itself that pretends this country is frothing with bigots desperate to foment World War III," McInnes said in a press release.
McInnes has raised nearly $200,000 out of a goal of $250,000 to continue his lawsuit. From his website Defendgavin.com:
I'm suing the SPLC. And it's not just because they destroyed my career and shattered my reputation. It's because they could do the same to you. Though this group is often cited as a credible source by the media, nobody who actually knows stuff takes them seriously.
No, being called an extremist by the SPLC does NOT mean you're an extremist. No, being called a Hate Group by the SPLC does NOT make you a Hate Group. And no, being called a racist or an anti-Semite or an Islamophobe or a transphobe or a homophobe by the SPLC does NOT make you any of those things. -Gavin McInnes
We wonder if there will even be an SPLC left to sue by the time it reaches a courtroom.
Rep. Keith Ellison, D.-Minn., is the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ostensibly the No. 1 person in the party nationally and a candidate for governor of his state.
Last week he called on Amazon.com to ban the sale of books by all authors associated with “hate groups” as defined by the extremist left-wing wackos at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
While his letter to Jeff Bezos, the founder of the world's largest online retailer, was later scrubbed from Ellison’s own website, it was hardly an idle threat, since Amazon already partners with the SPLC, as do Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as “expert” consultants for determining which organizations and individuals are guilty of “hate speech.”
Also last week, Facebook put on a dog-and-pony show for the entertainment media in Beverly Hills to unveil its new video platform. Top execs were there to answer questions from the press, but the reporters weren’t as interested in the new video platform as they were in why Facebook was not completely banning certain media from the largest social media enterprise in the world.
First, they mentioned Alex Jones’ Infowars, which the Facebook execs admitted stifling, if not outright banning. Then, just like that, a reporter demanded to know why Fox News, the No. 1 cable TV news channel in America, was permitted on Facebook. When the execs dodged the question for "lack of time," other reporters demanded: “Answer the question!” and “We’ll give you more time!”
It’s worth noting that Infowars videos have already been dropped by YouTube, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. It’s also worth noting that the No. 1 search engine in the world admits using its algorithms to give preference to news sources like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Huffington Post at the expense of independent media, thereby throttling the reach of news sources with a more centrist or right-leaning perspective.
While so-called “progressives” like to think of themselves as defenders of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech, the free press and freedom of religion, it is simply no longer the case. In fact, we are approaching a very dangerous time in America, in which the left-wing book burners and news controllers are in positions of influence – within government and within the boardrooms of tremendous corporate power. They are already controlling the news through what I call the “Internet Cartel” – the five anti-American corporate tech giants Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.
As I’ve been telling you since January, these monopolistic, ideological totalitarians are transforming America’s foundational “first freedom” of an open society into an Orwellian nightmare world in which independent media and publishers face overwhelming disadvantages and a grossly un-level playing field in the arena of news and commentary.
Something must be done – soon. There have been a few congressional hearings. Most people, if they are really paying attention, know what’s going on. But those who get their news and information from the Internet Cartel’s favored sources are completely in the dark. And that’s the goal – to control news and information by favoring only those companies with the stamp of approval of the SPLC hate-mongers. Don’t think the Fox News alternative will be No. 1 for long if this trend continues.
I know something personally about this war on free expression as the founder of the very first independent online news organization in the world 21 years ago. I started WND because the Internet offered a more level playing field. Indeed, WND thrived and grew for nearly all that time. But all that changed after the 2016 election – one strongly impacted by the ever-growing influence of independent media. Since then, the "progressive" media blessed with the Internet Cartel’s preferential algorithms, and advantaged by the blacklisting of independent media competitors by their partners in the SPLC, have been at war with Trump and anyone in the press who didn’t join in that political hate-fest.
WND and the rest of the independent media are feeling the heat from the Internet Cartel, which controls traffic, revenue, search power, hosting and distribution of news and information through social media, not to mention retail sales of all books.
It’s a scary time of rapidly shrinking traffic and revenues. WND, for instance, has seen drops in revenue from more than $10 million in 2016 to $6 million last year to perhaps as little as $4 million in 2018.
This is unsustainable, of course. And that’s what the Internet Cartel knows and is aiming for – the extinction of honest, courageous voices of dissent and debate, which they think of as “hate speech.”
There is only one way out for WND – support from users. We can no longer make the money necessary to do serious reporting without the direct support of those who appreciate what we do – and lots of it right now.
Please give us a chance to survive, regroup, expose the fascistic thuggery of the left-wing zealots in control of communications and fight another day.
Two Stanford administrators present -- Nanci Howe, associate dean and director of student affairs, and Snehal Naik, assistant dean and associate director of student affairs -- not only nodded approvingly at the walk-out, but actively aided it, first by denying entry to many students who actually wanted to attend the event, and then by not allowing them to enter after the walkout, despite the fact that the auditorium was largely empty. They also forbade the hosts from live-streaming the talk on the Internet.
The reason for having to smear Robert Spencer was clear. Portraying him as someone who has led to the killing of Muslims was the way to try to have him banned from the campus, without abandoning the principle of free speech. Yet no student or faculty member produced a shred of evidence linking Spencer to violence against Muslims at Stanford or anywhere else. All they were able to produce as "proof" of Spencer's incitement was the same libelous blurb on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.
What De Leon, Najaer, Beckman and Fine failed to mention was that a mere few months earlier, at the end of May, the Stanford student senate voted to fund an on-campus speech by the son of Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for orchestrating three deadly attacks.
It is no surprise that students at Stanford University disrupted best-selling author Robert Spencer's lecture on November 14. Given the lead-up to his talk -- "Jihad and the Dangers of Radical Islam: An Honest Discussion" -- the scenario was scripted in advance, with the encouragement and support of the school's administration.
As soon as the Stanford College Republicans invited Spencer, founder of the website Jihad Watch, to speak on campus -- as part of the Fred. R. Allen Freedom Lecture Series, sponsored by the Young America's Foundation -- a concerted campaign was launched to prevent him from being allowed to set foot on the premises. Stanford students, faculty members and administrators published a steady stream of articles in the student publications the Stanford Daily and Stanford Review, claiming not only that Spencer was unqualified to speak to them -- despite frequently addressing FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, military, and other government groups for years -- but also pronounced that his presence threatened Muslim students on campus; that he enabled anti-Semitism; that his message deprived Muslims of "personhood;" and that he was endangering students by replying to their attacks on his website.
When that effort failed, they employed other means to intimidate Spencer and the students who wished to hear what he had to say. Not only did hundreds of protesters cause a disturbance outside the venue, but another 150 entered the auditorium, played Arabic music loudly to drown out what Spencer was saying, and then staged a mass walk-out minutes after the event began. Two Stanford administrators present -- Nanci Howe, associate dean and director of student affairs, and Snehal Naik, assistant dean and associate director of student affairs -- not only nodded approvingly at the walk-out, but actively aided it, first by denying entry to many students who actually wanted to attend the event, and then by not allowing them to enter after the walkout, despite the fact that the auditorium was largely empty. They also forbade the hosts from live-streaming the talk on the Internet.
According to one report of the event, published in the Stanford Review the following day:
"[T]he protest was a deliberate attempt to block students from engaging with Spencer in any capacity. If you personally do not wish to engage with the man, fine, power to you. But preventing others from doing so is shameful."
Stanford University associate dean and director of student affairs, Nanci Howe (front left), pats on the back a woman who is walking out of Robert Spencer's speech in protest.
Meanwhile, another event took place on campus -- "Stanford Against Spencer: A Rally Against Islamophobia" -- timed to coincide with Spencer's talk. In the Facebook invitation to the rally, the "coalition of concerned students and organizations that formed in response" to Spencer's lecture referred to him falsely as a "self-proclaimed Islamophobe and co-founder of two known hate groups," while lambasting him for responding on his blog to the barrage of defamation to which he had been subjected by Stanford students and faculty during the past few weeks.
In "An open letter to the College Republicans regarding Robert Spencer," printed in the Stanford Daily on November 8 -- penned by a "coalition of concerned student groups" -- Spencer is accused of being "an established Islamophobe, and "Islamophobia" is described as:
"more than just anti-Muslim sentiment, [but] institutionalized through U.S. foreign policy (the ongoing "war on terror") and immigration policy (Trump's xenophobic Muslim ban), extending its violent impact on people from and in Muslim-majority countries."
In other words, supporting the eradication of global terrorism constitutes "Islamophobia" in the eyes of the signatories of the letter, all far-left organizations -- such as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Queer Liberation, Students Against Militarism, Student And Labor Alliance and Students for the Liberation of All People -- known for their radical views and responsible for the often violent curtailing of the free speech of anyone who disagrees with their politics at universities across the United States.
Furthermore, to justify their call on fellow students not to "engage with [Spencer], even if you are critical of [his views], because engaging in a conversation about Islam with a known Islamophobe is a contradiction," the authors of the letter referred to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their key source of information. The SPLC, which has been discredited widely for its left-wing biasand unreliable designation of conservative groups on its "hate list," was also quoted by a Pakistani Muslim student at Stanford, who wrote about being "afraid" as a scarf-wearing Muslim on campus. Of course, this is ludicrous, as no Muslim has ever been harmed on the Stanford campus, while in the student's native Pakistan, Christians are persecuted by Muslims on a daily basis.
The reason for having to smear Spencer was clear. Portraying him as someone who has led to the killing of Muslims was the way to try to have him banned from the campus, without abandoning the principle of free speech. Yet no student or faculty member produced a shred of evidence linking Spencer to violence against Muslims at Stanford or anywhere else. All they were able to produce as "proof" of Spencer's incitement was the same libelous blurb on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.
This did not prevent four graduate students (three of them doctoral candidates) -- Joshua De Leon, Umniya Najaer, Jason Beckman, and Jamie M. Fine – from complaining that Spencer had "endangered" the life of a student, by exposing a video of the boy tearing down posters advertising the lecture. The claim was completely nonsensical, of course. In the first place, the student was the one who shared a video of himself on Snapchat removing the posters; Spencer merely re-posted the clip. Secondly, as Spencer responded to the barrage of criticism he received for this:
"I have never called for or condoned violence against any individual. If this Stanford fascist is harmed by anyone, it would be a disgrace, and the perpetrator should be prosecuted. However, [he] is not really in any danger. The College Republicans at Stanford are not neo-Nazis, contrary to the defamation in this latest Stanford Daily piece. Nor am I..."
What De Leon, Najaer, Beckman and Fine failed to mention was that a mere few months earlier, at the end of May, the Stanford student senate voted to fund an on-campus speech by the son of Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for orchestrating three deadly attacks.
The May 25 event -- "Dignity Hunger Strike: Aarab Barghouti on Palestinian Political Prisoners' Demands for Dignity" -- was hosted by the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and co-sponsored by many of the same organizations that protested Spencer's November 14 appearance: Jewish Voice for Peace, STATIC magazine, International Socialist Organization, Students Against Militarism, Student And Labor Alliance and Students for the Liberation of All Peoples.
It is noteworthy that one Jewish student senator at the school told the Stanford Daily why he supported giving a platform to the son of a convicted terrorist, the point of whose lecture was to blame Israel for the alleged plight of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners:
"In the interest of full transparency, I am personally very deeply concerned with the content of [Barghouti's] speech, but I need to make sure that I afford equal access to freedom of speech to groups, even those who I deeply disagree with."
The irony did not escape Spencer, who pointed out:
"There was no uproar when Aarab Barghouti spoke at Stanford. No calls for cancellation or boycott. No statements from administrators offering support to students who found Barghouti's presence disturbing. No protests. No safe spaces opened. No hystericalattackson Barghouti in the Stanford Daily. No calls by dorm staff to report students who put up posters advertising Barghouti's event.
"Likewise, when the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] co-hosted an event at Stanford featuring Mads Gilbert, who supports the 9/11 jihad attacks that murdered 3,000 people, no one at Stanford got hysterical and called for cancellation, boycott, punishment of the students supporting the event, etc."
Yet Stanford's vice provost for student affairs, Susie Brubaker-Cole, and its dean for religious life, Jane Shaw, wrote a blog to reassure the anti-Spencer students that, in spite of the university's "commitment to freedom of expression," it is
"compelled to call out the fact that Mr. Spencer has a track record of actions and speech that motivate hatred towards Muslims, contradicting our university's values of inclusion and respect for all peoples and faiths. We acknowledge the emotional impact of Mr. Spencer's visit on university community members, and we are actively developing supports for the Muslim community before and after his visit."
In conclusion, they said:
"We also recognize that anti-Muslim racism and other forms of bigotry are systemic and require long-range and comprehensive approaches. We reaffirm our support for the Muslim community, and ask all to stand with us in speaking out for a mutually supportive society where all experience care and respect."
It is a travesty that Stanford's administration has no compunction about asserting that Spencer "has a track record of actions and speech that motivate hatred towards Muslims," and that "anti-Muslim racism [is] systemic." Spencer's work focuses on the way in which jihadists use the Koran and other Islamic teachings to justify terrorism and incite Muslims to violence. This is something that Muslims and non-Muslims alike should at least wish to learn about, if not embrace; they certainly should not view it as an affront.
As for the claim that "anti-Muslim racism" is rampant: the only places in the world where Muslims are slaughtered for the way in which they adhere to Islam, or are deemed not to practice it properly, are dominated by Muslims. Anyone teaching or attending an institution of higher learning as illustrious as Stanford should know that.
Ruthie Blum is the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'"
