Southern Poverty Law Center, A Legal Con (Guest Post)

 
There are many liberal organizations that have fallen over the edge, going as far as breaking the law to fulfill the socialist dreams that reside in their fevered brains. There are many organizations that will coerce and defame any individual or group that disagrees with them, slandering them by calling them “racists” or haters, to try and silence the opinions of those who disagree.

Of all these Obama-aligned leftist organizations, none is more pronounced in their violent rhetoric or more misleading in its rhetoric than the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Created in 1971, it is nothing more than a leftist organization whose goals seem to be to advocate for all liberal positions on immigration, multiculturalism, homosexuality and Islam. While having these positions are not in itself a problem, the processes that this organization uses against those with whom they disagree may be.

SPLC was founded by Morris Dees whose sole purpose, according to his law partner Millard Fuller, was to make money – a lot of it – and he didn’t care how.

Dees, in 1958, served as the state campaign manager for McDonald Gallion, a segregationist running for attorney general in Alabama. The year 1961 saw the beating of the Freedom Riders in Montgomery and when one of the men charged with the beating came to the Dees/Fuller office for representation, they took the case. The White Citizens Council and KKK financed the legal fees.

Dees went on in 1971 to start the Southern Poverty Law Center with Julian Bond and Joseph Levin (who left the SPLC in 1976).

Dees in 1975 was removed from court for trying to bribe a witness in the Joan Little case. The charges were later dropped but the presiding judge refused to let Dees back into his court. This was one of the first cases involving the Nation Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a communist group intent on turning the trial into a political movement rather than a legal one.

Dees went on to fundraise for Jimmy Carter but felt that Carter was not extreme enough. He was a fundraiser for both Ted Kennedy in 1980 and Gary Hart in 1984.

By 1988, as a result of mailing appeals to almost half a million Americans, he lured in many and was known to be a left-of-center group that raised more money than any other.

In 1993, because of fundraising practices that provoked watchdog groups to question the practices they used, the American Institute of Philanthropy rated the SPLC a “D’ on an “A to F” scale.

In 1991,  Klanwatch formed as part of the SPLC, but rather than assisting clients, the Klanwatch was used as a clandestine arm of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Randal Williams, the founder of Klanwatch, and four staff attorneys resigned in 1968 .

In 1994, the Montgomery Advertiser exposed the unethical fundraising of Dees and the SPLC, Including a fundraising letter that stated the SPLC had gotten an award from the United Klan of America to pay $7 million to the mother of Michael McDonald when in actuality, she only received a little less that $52,000. What was even more unethical, the SPLC used the lie in mailings to supporters, bringing in millions of dollars.

SPLC claims to be working for the right of blacks, a crusader for the suffering and, yet, it is run by whites, hiring only two black staff attorneys, both of which left in short order.

In 1986, the entire SPLC staff resigned in protest of the direction the SPLC was taking. Instead of chasing the Klan, a largely irrelevant, forgotten group in the United States, the staff thought more time should be spent on issues more important to poor minorities, such as poverty, jobs,voter registration, and homelessness. Dees disagreed, and was more concerned about keeping the money flowing. Since 1984, the SPLC has taken in about $62 million dollars, with only $21 million going to programs according to tax records on file.

In 1994, the Birmingham News investigation showed that blacks were not happy working there. Christine Lee who interned at the SPLC in 1984 was told, “We don’t need black people telling us how to handle black problems.” Dees responded “ We don’t have white slots and black slots. The most discriminated people in the country are white men when it comes to jobs.”

In an article reported in 1996, it was reported that Dees SPLC was the richest civil rights organization with $68 million in assets. In the same article in USA today, Stephen Bright, a Dees associate, told a reporter that “Dees is a fraud who has lied to a great many wonderful, caring people”.

Not to be deterred, Dees was found to be “misinforming” the press about a black church burning in April 1996. He has pushed to label associations of two or more people who train in firearms as “illegal militias”

There are rumors of Dees paying witnesses and supplying hush money in the trial of Tom Metzger, a neo-Nazi extremist. These accusations were put forward by Greg Withrow, one of the witnesses.

A great deal of money that comes to the SPLC is through the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC #0454), a listing of charities that is given annually to federal civil servants and military personnel.

They make a great deal of money from imposing white guilt on their financial targets.

Not advertised in the Combined Federal Campaign is the fact that the SPLC failed an audit by the Arlington Better Business Bureau which sets the standards for charity programs. One of those standards is that at least 50% of all proceeds should be spent on the programs and activities listed on the charter that runs the existing programs – the very reason that charitable programs exist. The SPLC has been shown to spend 89% on fundraising and administrative costs.

So what does the SPLC do to assist in the fundraising that pays Morris Dees a $289,000 annual salary?

One of the programs that they use to instill fear in donors is the SPLC “Hate List” as seen on the SPLC website. I tried for four days in a row, and could not get a list of the hate groups to come up on their site. I sent a request on the contact page about getting the list, and never received an answer.

A copy of the hate list available elsewhere on line has shown some remarkable tendencies. There are no left wings groups on the list. The Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and other various groups of that type have no listing. The website clearly states that their objective is to keep on eye on the Radical Right.

Mark Potok, author of the “Intelligence Report” for the SPLC, pictured below, admitted that the list is all about ideology.

Part of the ideology that the SPLC follows is immigration. The SPLC has specific targets that it tries to smear with false information, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Numbers USA.

Based on nothing in particular, the SPLC labeled FAIR as a hate group.

Working in concert with LaRaza, a far left nationalist group working to annex the southwest United States to Mexico by claiming it was stolen from them, he started a “Stop the Hate” campaign to try and have FAIR excluded from national discussions on immigration.

The SPLC knew that if they could spread enough false information that the media, which doesn’t pay attention to such things, would do what the SPLC was suggesting they do.

Even though the Hate group designation was a lie, none of the media would follow up and disprove it. No one in the mainstream media ever researched any of the allegations made by the SPLC, nor did they investigate the connection between the SPLC and LA Raza.

Rather that debate organizations like Numbers USA and FAIR about the current comprehensive immigration reform, the SPLC and LA Raza have started a campaign against both groups, inundating the media with false information intending to cause the groups to be coerced into silence, or spend a great deal of the precious time they have to refute stories that denigrate their reputation with little if any relevant information.

Knowing that the SPLC can not go after scholars and journalists who know who they are, they attack such people an John Tanton, the founder of FAIR, with distorted and exaggerated information that Mr. Tanton then has to spend his time refuting.

In this way FAIR will not have the resources available to get the information out that the citizens can actually use to make an informed decision.

It is character assignation of the worse sort, involving ignoring the basic standards of judgement, honesty, and just simple human decency. The SPLC has shown that it will use any tactic to tie up those who oppose the views held by this far left organization, and, instead of teaching tolerance, has shown that it is markedly intolerant of those with whom it disagrees.

Tom Barry, director of the Trans Border project at the Center for International Policy in Washington noted that the SPLC’s designation of an organization like FAIR as a “hate group” with a massive membership, good media relations, and with policy makers in the government is akin to a character assassination.

La Raza and the SPLC worked in concert to try to defame FAIR. The propaganda worked well for a time, a strategy of making FAIR appear as a hate group could be used to reduce the input the organization would have in the arena of public opinion.

LA Raza President and CEO Janet Murguia personally stated on the Lou Dobbs show in 1988 that the SPLC had labeled FAIR as a known, documented hate group. The media did not ask any questions or they would have known there was no documentation to back up the opinion. The media, the good little lieftist lap dogs that they are, just spread the smear.

In fact, there were other groups toeing SPLC’s line such as Americas Voice, who took out full page ads in Politico and Roll Call touting the SPLC’s declaration that FAIR was a hate group. Looking closely at the ads, there is no documentation, nothing to prove the point they are trying to make, just that the SPLC said so. A full page ad with “FAIR” and “HATE GROUP” in big red letters was only meant to be noticed. The fact that there was nothing backing up the claim would never be discussed. The same Tom Barry questioned not only the wisdom, but importantly, the integrity of this campaign.

Both La Raza and SPLC have donors who are liberal, and some who should question just what the money they are donating is being used for. Companies such as Bank of America, Carnegie Corporation, Citibank, ConAgra Foods, General Motors the Ford Foundation, Wal Mart, and the Gates Foundations are all big donors to one or both the SPLC or LaRaza.

Again, the program that is shown to prospective donors is considerably different than the actual core of either group. Heidi Beirich, the SPLC director of research pictured below, has admitted that there is no formal written criteria of what designates a group as a hate group. With no written formula to go by, it then becomes simple to designate and denigrate the opposition as was done to FAIR in a politically inspired smear.

Next: Who else will the SPLC go after, and where is the press?