The zombie-like SPLC keeps doing its thing

Southern Poverty Law Center, which ought to be renamed the Southern Anti-Hate Hate Hate Center, has an article on the recent Preserving Western Civilization conference. They must have had an agent in attendance taking notes. The article is written in SPLC’s usual brutalizing, thought-destroying style, in which the words “hate” and “racist” are made into all-purpose adjectives and automatically appended to every person and organization that is mentioned. It’s sort of like, what “f——” was to Norman Mailer’s scatological novel Why Are We in Vietnam, “hate” and “racist” are to the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” reports.

To give an idea of SPLC’s style, if they reported on a dinner I had recently with Michael Hart and Michael Berman in New York City, the account would go something like this:

The hate astrophysicist Michael Hart met with the hate blogger and essayist Lawrence Auster along with the well known racist Michael Berman in New York where they discussed hate and racism all evening over a hate dinner in a racist restaurant.

The SPLC’s crude propaganda is not even amusing, it’s just unreadable.

Update: Also, the article’s brief quotations from my talk at the conference are either oddly incorrect or distorted by being removed from their context. Here’s one example:

“If a society can’t distinguish itself, it will not continue to exist,” [Auster] told those assembled. “If we open ourselves to threats, we go out of existence.”

The quotation omits and changes my words, leaving the statement sounding incoherent and rather stupid.

—end of initial entry—

Mike Berman (who had previously mentioned the comments following the SPLC article) writes:

The hilarious discussion at SPLC continues. That “professor” who can’t write a literate sentence is an expert in literacy. This is too much to believe. Ain’t affirmative action swell! Here are his credentials:

As far as not being able to find me on Google, I can only say that not everything worth knowing is on Google. My book is Readings in Diagnosis and Instruction in Literacy published by Kendall/Hunt Publishers. I am on the faculty of Kennesaw State University and an Associate Professor of Language Arts and Literacy in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

James P. writes:

What I found fascinating about the SLPC article is its weird preoccupation with “Who’s the Jew?” The Jewishness of the Jewish participants is unfailingly emphasized: Jewish astrophysicist, Jewish academic racist, the Jewish-descended Auster, Jewish comedienne. What’s up with that? Is that to highlight the apparent contradiction of Jews—who are supposed to be enlightened and tolerant—aligned with “racist haters”?

Beyond that, the article should have been titled, “Mainstream Scholars State the Blindingly Obvious”—e.g. blacks are not as intelligent as whites, immigrants are destroying America, Islam is no religion of peace, California is doomed, and immigration does not benefit the native-born. Strip out all the pejorative drivel about hate and racism, and nothing the article says could possibly be controversial to anyone who isn’t a liberal zombie.

LA replies:

Your second paragraph captures the real meaning of SPLC’s message.

As for your question about the report’s treatment of the Jews at the conference, I imagine it’s because they recognize that the purpose of the conference was to be the “un-AR,” a conference of race-conscious, immigration-restrictionist conservatives that not only included many Jews but clearly excluded anti-Semites. So it’s to be expected that SPLC would highlight the Jewish element, in order to show that these Jews are just as hate-filled and racist as the anti-Semites.

A. Zarkov writes:

The article reads like a report from Soviet apparatchik written in the late 1930s. Just replace “racist” with “Kulak,” and “Jew” with “rootless cosmopolitan.” This thing is a parody of itself. I can’t help thinking that if someone had set out to write to make fun of the SPLC by writing a bogus article, he couldn’t have done better. One would think the author would be embarrassed to write such a thing, but I suppose these people are beyond that kind of self awareness.

Unfortunately many companies buy filter packages to block internet sites and they often contain bogus hate sites as designated by the SPLC. For example, I found out that the brokerage Charles Schwab blocks (or used to block) Vdare. Of course anyone can get around these filters by going to a proxy site. It would not surprise me if VFR was blocked at many government and corporate offices. This kind of thing should provoke enormous outrage, but for some reason it doesn’t.

John L. writes:

Who funds the SPLC? I’m guessing it’s mostly nice little old Jewish ladies in New York. The SPLC writes these uniformly scary reports in order to frighten them into thinking that the Gentiles are just trembling on the edge of a pogrom. Only the SPLC stands between them and another genocide. The fact that some Jews are among these horrid nasty racists haters adds a particularly lurid sense of danger, ideal for motivating them to make another donation.

If this funding model is correct, it would explain the SPLC’s apparently mindless repetition and their serial accusations against all and sundry. They depend financially on their donors perceiving an imminent and ever-present threat.

Dan R, writes:

A quick aside about the pompous Mr. Hess and his book, Readings in Diagnosis and Instruction in Literacy, published by Kendall/Hunt in 2002. Kendall/Hunt is a minor textbook publishing company doing much custom publishing, which usually involves books that are rejected by the major publishing companies. As a 7-year old textbook it’s noteworthy that the book has never gone into a newer edition, which is standard practice for a book that sells reasonably well. To underscore, its sales ranking on Amazon.com is presently #3,217,375 in Books, obviously very low. One must give him credit for being an Associate Professor, even if at a little-known college, but overall it does not make for an overly impressive set of credentials.—Dan R.

Mike Berman writes:

The juvenile level of the discussion at SPLC brought to mind the lyrics of a performance I saw so many years ago.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2009 02:52 PM | Send