Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released their spring 2011, Intelligence Report. Since the 80’s, SPLC began counting hate groups. For the first time, the organization has counted over 1000 hate groups, up from 932 in 2009. Since 2000, there has been a 66% increase in hate groups. According to the SPLC, “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” The report points out, that just because an organization is on the “Hate Group” list, doesn’t imply the group advocates violence or criminal activities.
Other radical Right-wing movements, like the nativists and antigovernment extremists, have also continued to rise. In particular, the antigovernment “Patriot” groups have jumped from 512 in 2009 to 824 in 2010, a 61% increase in just one year. While nativists groups went from 309 in 2009 to 319 in 2010, a 3% increase.
Once again, SPLC has linked the dramatic rise in Right-wing extremism with the increase in political violence across the country. Here is an extended excerpt from the report:
“In an 11-day period this January, a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent. That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension.
It’s also clear that other kinds of radical activity are on the rise. Since the murder last May 20 of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by two members of the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement, police from around the country have contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to report what one detective in Kentucky described as a “dramatic increase” in sovereign activity. Sovereign citizens, who, like militias, are part of the larger Patriot movement, believe that the federal government has no right to tax or regulate them and, as a result, often come into conflict with police and tax authorities.”
The SPLC report includes a “Hate Map” of America where you can clink on each state and see the entire list and locations of the 1002 hate groups counted in the SPLC report. Interestingly, along with the usual hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan nation, holocaust deniers, and the Nation of Islam, the SPLC includes a few Christian “anti-gay” organizations, including the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition.
SPLC’s inclusion of ant-gay organizations has not set well with some on the Christian right. The radical Right claims the SPLC’s listings are just another example of a liberal smear. Yet, the SPLC makes it clear that these few Christian Right-wing organizations end up on the hate list because of their involvement in dark campaigns of lies, smears and general hateful language. Here is how the SPLC says a Christian Right, anti-gay group ends up on their hate group list:
“The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as “perverts” with “filthy habits” who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and “convert” them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging “facts” about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the “bestial” black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.”
Yep, while I’m not a lawyer, it does appear some Christian Right-wingers like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council have engaged in the same kind of defamation once used to disparage black men. Anti-gay bashing is a form of bigotry. The SPLC is right to include the radical Christian organizations into their list.
Looking at the graphs in the “Intelligence Report”, it would be nice to see a national map of the Right-wing nativist, anti-government Patriot, and militia groups. Nonetheless, the report shows that Right-wing extremists groups have grown in America by 22 percent. This is an alarming number and something all American should consider. The American Right-wing needs to look deep within and ask, “Why are Right-wing hate groups on the rise?”
Hurricane Dean 
1. There is no legal definition for “hate group,” which is why even the FBI does not track “hate groups.”
2. The SPLC uses the deliberately meaningless term “hate groups” in its fund-raising propaganda precisely because it allows them to denigrate their perceived opponents without accusing them of any actual crimes.
3. The “Hate Map” is a fund-raising tool, nothing more. It provides no information whatsoever on the alleged groups, in fact, the SPLC didn’t even bother to make up locations for 262 of the groups; that’s 26% of the total.
In many states, the percentage of phantom “groups” runs as high as 80-100%. Many of the alleged “groups” are listed twice in the same location.
4. Since the SPLC is the sole arbiter of the meaningless “hate group” label, AND because SPLC fund-raising is directly tied to creating the illusion of an ever-increasing threat, it is in their direct financial interest to raise the numbers each year.
Last year the SPLC took in $31 million donor-dollars in donations and earned $26 million in interest on its bloated “Endowment Fund.” That’s $57 million dollars for last year alone. Since 2003, the SPLC has taken in more than a third of a BILLION dollars in tax-free cash, and yet the number of “hate groups” always goes up.
http://wp.me/pCLYZ-82
5. The most ironic (read: “hypocritical”) thing about the Southern Poverty Law Center is that NOT ONE of its top ten, highest paid executives is a minority.
http://wp.me/pCLYZ-7m
In fact, according to the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, despite being located LITERALLY in the back yard of Dr. Martin Luther King’s home church, the SPLC has NEVER hired a person of color to a highly paid position of power in its entire 40 year history.
Some “experts”
Pingback: Anti-Muslim Bigotry: SPLC Intelligence Report | Dailycensored.com
Pingback: Mike Vanderboegh: Right-Wing Threatens American’s | Dailycensored.com
Pingback: The Daily Censored » Anti-Muslim Bigotry: SPLC Intelligence Report
Pingback: The Daily Censored » Mike Vanderboegh: Right-Wing Threatens American's
Thank you for placing your article upon the Web. Linked to via my blog and mentioned elsewhere to assist in fighting the scourge that is the vile SPLC.