06/14/2015
The news that Ann Coulter’s ¡ADIOS, AMERICA! has just debuted at Number Two on The New York Times Best-Seller list cannot have been well received in the Poverty Palace, the notorious Montgomery, AL headquarters of the Southern Poverty
Law Center ($PLC to VDARE.com), or in the downtown DC offices of Media Matters For America. The Left vigilante groups, which substantially set the Main Stream Media agenda, had passed the word that Coulter was to be cast into the outer darkness. And the MSM was clearly cowed, with only Jorge Ramos and a few hosts on Fox News willing to debate the issue. But suppression has failed — for now.
The $PLC’s latest smear against Coulter bashed her for denying America is a racist country and proceeded to link her with things other people have said [Ann Coulter — A White Nationalist in the Mainstream, SPLC, May 28, 2015]. This isn’t guilt by association, it’s guilt by non-association — a standard $PLC tactic.
But Coulter may be lucky. At least in her case, $PLC employees didn’t shout racial slurs and then accuse her of doing it.
![Floyd_Lee_Corkins_II_insert_courtesy_US_Attorneys_office[1]](/assets/img/2015/06/Floyd_Lee_Corkins_II_insert_courtesy_US_Attorneys_office1.jpg)
The tactics are especially “problematic,” as Leftists would say, because the SPLC’s eliminationist rhetoric has real-world consequences. In 2012, a disturbed black “progressive,” Floyd Corkins II (right) attacked the socially conservative Family Research Council, having selected his target based on the $PLC’s “Hate Group” listing. Violence and threats of violence are common tactics against those whom the $PLC smears as “haters,” and though the $PLC quibbles with the tactics, it excuses them as an example of a “good cause clouded by bad choice” . [A Better Way, by Don Terry, SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer 2013] The $PLC prefers the “better way” of simply rendering targets unemployable.
Even as this is written, anti-sharia campaigner Pamela Geller is under threat of death because the terrorist group ISIS has tweeted out her address, telling supporters to “go forth” and kill her. [ISIS Tweets Pam Geller Home Address, WND, June 13, 2015] Geller’s organization has also been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, with the result that even as she deals with threats of beheading from a group that has built a de-facto terrorist state in the Middle East, the echo-chambering MSM is accusing her of “relishing” the attention and is busy debating whether she should even have the right to speak [CNN Host Asks Target of Jihadist Beheading Plot If She’s ‘Stoking the Flames,’ by Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, June 3, 2015]
The $PLC’s Mark Potok has said it is “outrageous” to link the $PLC to acts of violence against its targets. But casually linking political opinions to “violence” is the essence of the SPLC’s program. And it even exaggerates what little violence does exist. But until recently, the $PLC was working closely with the Department of Homeland Security to track “hate crimes” — even as the far larger problem of ordinary violent crime continues to increase. The SPLC’s Orwellian “Intelligence Report” is still sent to law enforcement bodies around the country.
The SPLC creates a narrative of “hate groups” running around the country, although even the Anti-Defamation League has noted that it’s vastly overblown with single individuals comprising multiple “groups” and some groups not even existing.
Exactly this has happened with Geller, with her “American Freedom Defense Initiative,” “Stop the Islamization of America,” and “Stop the Islamization of Nations” all being counted as separate “Hate Groups.” Cha-ching!
As the late Alexander Cockburn observed in The Nation, the $PLC profiteers by “selling the notion that there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other.”
The mission creep of the $PLC’s “hate map” implicitly supports Coulter’s point that Leftists are inventing “racism.” Of the “hate groups” on the SPLC’s list that actually exist, the list includes the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), ProEnglish, the American Family Association, and, of course, the Family Research Council, a selection so risible it was condemned even by Establishment Republicans like John Boehner and Eric Cantor [Family Research Council, top GOP lawmakers fight back against SPLC ‘hate group’ label, by Matthew Boyle, Daily Caller, December 15, 2010].
(Full disclosure: VDARE.com was named a “Hate Group” eleven years ago, allegedly after a completely harmless speech given by Editor Peter Brimelow, more likely at the behest of some irritated $PLC donor. With typical sloppiness, the latest version of the $PLC’s Hate map repeats the error that the VDARE Foundation is based in Warrenton VA, although it is not and never has been).
The SPLC’s ever-expanding list of targets makes for hilarious reading. It has also attacked The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, men trying to “pick-up” women, and even Dr. Ben Carson, who was placed on the “Extremist Watch” list (sort of the JV version of the “Hate Group” list). Stung by the resulting laughter, the $PLC removed Carson from the list because the profile did not meet its “standards” (lol), apologized, and then attacked him for saying “extreme” things again [SPLC Statement on Dr. Ben Carson, February 11, 2015].
What about Media Matters? This group often doesn’t even bother to rebut what Coulter or other conservatives say, limiting itself to what we call the “point and sputter” maneuver. And practically every prominent conservative in America has his or her own Media Matters tag tracking the “offensive” statements, including Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and especially Rush Limbaugh. Even National Review is under the gun.
To give an example of the caliber of these attacks, one of the latest phony outrages is that Limbaugh guest host Erick Erickson made an “ageist” attack on Hillary Clinton [Limbaugh Guest Host Erick Erickson Uses Platform to Launch Ageist Attacks on Hillary Clinton, Media Matters, June 11, 2015].
Good thing the Left never made age an issue when it came to Ronald Reagan, right?
Media Matters was founded by David Brock, who remains Chairman of the Board. Brock, who by his own description was a “hit man for the right” as an American Spectator writer in the Clinton Era, apparently realized the big money was on the other side and switched to trying to get conservative media shut down. With a permanent look of faux concern, Brock now spends his days coordinating coverage with the Obama White House while concern-trolling about what ideas should and should not be allowed worthy of discussion. Brock openly admits he wants to practice “containment” against media he cannot control, and if that fails, wage “guerilla warfare and sabotage” against outlets like Fox News [Media Matters’ war against Fox, by Ben Smith, Politico, March 26, 2011].
As you might expect, tiresome and tenuous accusations of “racism” are a large part of this, with Media Matters recently attacking Ann Coulter (in Spanish) for having read Peter Brimelow’s 1992 National Review cover story on immigration.
But any coverage critical of either the Obama White House or even Hillary Clinton is now considered out of bounds according to Brock and Media Matters [David Brock Calls on The New York Times To Issue “Prominent Correction” To Sloppy Clinton Email Reporting, by Nicholas Rogers, Media Matters, March 3, 2015].
This isn’t surprising, as Brock — now described as a “Clinton enforcer” even by even by Politico, a Democrat enforcer — is busy trying to convince wealthy liberals to cough up donations to the Clinton campaign [Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals, by Kenneth Vogel, Politico, June 2, 2015]. We can expect one of his targets to be the international financier George Soros, a prominent backer of Media Matters and other Leftist organizations.
Of course, if Soros was donating to conservatives, we can only imagine what Media Matters would do with Soros’s own questionable past during the Nazi occupation and his statements that the time was the “happiest time of my life.”
Both Media Matters and the $PLC are not so much public interest groups as for-profit businesses, “nonprofits” only in name. If they were actually concerned about African-Americans, we would expect them to host a discussion of how mass immigration harms our most vulnerable fellow citizens, not strive to prevent that discussion from taking place.
But the $PLC now operates and resembles a hedge fund both in terms of its financial holdings, its massive investments and cash reserves, and in the decidedly non-diverse makeup of its leading figures. Meanwhile, Media Matters too is hardly noted for the diversity of its prominent spokesmen and initially tried to resist an effort by its staff to unionize led by the illegal immigration supporting SEIU [Media Matters for America is resisting SEIU’s effort to unionize its staff, by Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner, April 17, 2014].
Why are these groups taken seriously, especially by supposed conservatives? Complaining about Ann Coulter isn’t about “justice” or fighting “hate” but about generating headlines and ginning up donations. The Hate Industry is practicing the very thing they are accusing Coulter of doing by “trolling” for their own private gain.
If people want to have a serious debate on immigration devoid of exaggeration, hyperbole, and hysteria, serious immigration patriots are ready.
But that debate can’t take place as long as profiteers continue to earn a lucrative living by screeching the Fourth Reich is upon us every time someone appears on Fox News — let alone VDARE.com.
James Kirkpatrick is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.