The nation’s most venerable, effective, and credible anti-hate organization set foot in Paso Robles recently, only to be mauled about the leg and ankle by a snarling pit bull of an outfit that it had labeled a hate group.
That sharp-fanged group calls itself Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), here represented by its Paso avatar, City Council candidate Michael S. Rivera, who is the CAPS’s secretary. The outfit with the shirred shins is the relentless caller-out of America’s hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The SPLC, headquartered in Alabama, is coming up on 50 years of fighting the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazis, white supremacists, and others of that ilk. Not surprisingly, it has been ceaselessly attacked by those it exposes, including assassination attempts on its founder. Nevertheless, it persists.
In addition to helping generations of children learn openness and compassion through its Teaching Tolerance programs in schools, the SPLC has been effective in slowing down the rise of anti-American, racist groups, although they continue to slither forward.
SPLC helps the powerless. In June, for example, the organization won a case in Kentucky that kept nearly 100,000 low-income people from being kicked off of Medicaid.
SPLC has achieved success mostly through the courts, but also through maps identifying, mapping, and monitoring activities of hate groups nationwide.
It puts out documents publicizing its findings, such as its annual “The Year in Hate,” and has become a go-to source for the news media.
It has made mistakes, including an egregious whopper of a goof in 2016, when it erroneously labeled a British man and his organization anti-Muslim. The man, Maajid Nawaz and his group, the Quilliam Foundation, sued and won. The SPLC apologized.
That was one of tens of thousands of actions the SPLC has taken. But its opponents have used the error to try to destroy the group’s overall credibility.
That brings us back to Paso, where Rivera chastised New Times and The Tribune for printing the story about his CAPS affiliation and then attacked the SPLC. He upchucked a list of sources he said have disavowed the SPLC. It was an impressive list, almost as long as the line of children being torn out of their mothers’ arms at the U.S.-Mexico border while CAPS does nothing. But it lacked context, contained half-truths, the usual.
That’s how it is these days. A good offense is the best defense, and if someone prints something that makes you look bad, simply attack the messenger and call the whole thing fake news.
Sadly, many fall for this, and I can’t blame them. It’s increasingly hard to know where the truth lies. In this case, for example, is Rivera right, or am I? For a third view on Maajid Nawaz I recommend a balanced June 18 piece in the unassailable Atlantic by David A. Graham, who covered that case from its beginning.
As to assessing the organizations in question, I suggest their websites.
We’ve spoken about the SPLC and its credibility, and you can visit their home page to help decide for yourself.
What about the CAPS? Is it a hate group? The SPLC tagged them because they were founded by a white nationalist and have played footsie with white supremacists, at one point employing a neo-Nazi (whom they later fired).
Is there more to the accusation? Let’s stroll over to the CAPS website and take a look.
First, however, think about the group’s name. Really, give it some thought. “Population stabilization.” That’s a chilling euphemism for something that can turn sinister, and has. It’s been tried in many places.
On the site, the first thing that caught my eye was a photo, and, oh baby, is this picture worth a thousand words. It shows a skinny, blond white boy running gleefully toward the camera, a girl, also white, not far behind. The headline is “Help Save Some America for Tomorrow.”
The message I saw: We need to save the state for the children of Ward and June Cleaver. I didn’t see a kid wearing a hijab in that photo, or a Hispanic child. There is an apparently minority youngster in the background, but that’s the key phrase—”in the background.”
The site also has an article about the murder of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa, allegedly by an immigrant. Her grief-stricken father has begged people not to use Mollie’s death for political purposes. But who cares about a parent’s anguish when you can use the girl’s death to imply that all undocumented immigrants are potential murderers.
Right. And all Irish-American ex-military are potential murderers because Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City and murdered scores of people.
I’m still waiting for the headline “American born-and-bred citizen kills woman.”
What about the CAPS action plan? It’s run-of-the-mill Trump playbook stuff: oppose sanctuary cities and “birthright citizenship,” manipulate the media (Hello New Times and Tribune!).
My favorite article here, however, describes as a “myth” the notion that the United States is special because it is a nation of immigrants. Adios, 240 years of national identity; hasta la vista, Statue of Liberty!
The argument seems to be that everyone everywhere has always emigrated, including the people we call Native Americans, who, after all, started in Asia and sashayed across the Bering Strait from Asia back in the day.
The argument draws forth the question, if immigration is inexorable and inevitable what’s the point of fighting it? The answer seems to be, it depends upon who is doing the immigrating. They deny it, but it seems clear that CAPS’s concerns are about immigrants coming from south of the U.S. border.
Overpopulation is a problem, one that should be taken seriously. Many responsible citizens do. But when a group starts worrying about who is on the move, rather than the movement itself, and tries to keep a category of people out, then they cease to be concerned citizens and become citizens we should be concerned about. Δ
Bob Cuddy is a retired, award-winning journalist who lives in Arroyo Grande. Send comments through the editor atclanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Awareness Issue 2018.
Its funny how the wealthy love to virtue signal their love of immigrants from the safety of the suburbs where they will never have to deal with the fallout besides getting cheaper labor and destroying that pesky native working class who wants to be paid enough to own a home and raise a family where they work. SLO is supposedly a sanctuary city, and the median home price is what $600k? LoL, sanctuary for the rich maybe. And funny how in the working class neighborhoods people aren’t so keen to open the doors to the 3rd world, but hey they are just ignorant flyover people who don’t know the most correct and virtuous ideology of global liberalism. But once you get out of the USA and Western Europe some nations aren’t fooled and dont’ have a bored wealthy class bent on pushing migration to show their status. Like Israel for one, they understand what open borders means, cultural and ethnic suicide, regardless of the attractiveness of super cheap gardeners and the warm fuzzy feeling you get from a good little “tolerant” citizen (this is different from the feeling the virtuous bored rich housewife gets from boxed wine). The Dalai Lama gets it too. He has seen first hand what existential issues result from open borders. Now good Western liberals can’t counter signal Israel because of the holocaust so this is ignored, the Dalai Lama has been problematic however. What happens with science, objective reality, world spiritual leaders, and ancient nations are racist and don’t agree with the boxed wine comfortable air headedness of Western liberal elites?
It never seems to amaze me how a so called award winning journalist could be so out of touch . He actually sounds like a cheap liberal, snowflake, whiner. He needs to get his facts straight! How dare him call Michael Rivera a racist. He needs to research CAPS and see what the truth is. The SPLC is known to be the most unreliable source for truth. Go to splctruth.com and learn. People like this make me sick. And the worst thing about it is the Newtimes is in league with him which is not surprising . This mans opinion is just that. Half truths guilt by association and a bunch of non-sense. He doesnt know enough to understand that another of CAPS founders and original advisory board members was the founder of the Sierra Club. What do you think of that all you environmentalists out there. Another example of fake news and the smacks who suck it in.
“We’ve spoken about the SPLC and its credibility, and you can visit their home page to help decide for yourself.”
The SPLC assigned 954 “hate groups” to the US for 2017 (it being the sole arbiter of that lucrative label). While the company provides no corroborating evidence that a journalist, researcher or donor could use to verify the claims, fully 300 of these alleged groups are listed simply as “statewide,” meaning the SPLC cannot even provide a known city or town location, let alone any kind of estimated membership count.
We get to take the company’s word for it that these groups really, really exist, with no proof, no verification whatsoever.
That’s not good enough and it certainly isn’t good journalism. Big claims demand big proof, or any proof, for that matter.
Nationwide, according to the SPLC, 28 out of 72 alleged KKK groups are “Statewide,” 91 out of 120 alleged neo-Nazi groups (75%), 35 out of 100 alleged White Nationalist groups, and a literally incredible 63 out of 71 alleged Racist Skinhead groups are “Statewide” phantoms, or 89% of the number claimed.
For California, 22 of the 75 alleged “hate groups” the company assigned in 2017 are “statewide” (or pinpointed to either “Southern” or “Northern” California). These include 3 of 8 alleged White Nationalist groups, 10 of 11 alleged Racist Skinhead groups, and 5 of 6 alleged neo-Nazi groups.
“Hard data” come a lot harder than this.
One final factoid from the highly credible SPLC: According to the company, 241 of the 954 alleged groups assigned nationwide for 2017 are Black or Black Muslim, the largest and fastest growing category by far (25% of the grand total). Of those, only 8 are allegedly “statewide” phantoms. For California, 17 of 75, also the largest single category, of which only one is “statewide.”
If the SPLC are going to be your go-to “experts you’ll have to accept ALL of their claims, no matter how patently ridiculous.
SPLC “hate group” numbers are for fundraising, not fact-finding.
“In addition to helping generations of children learn openness and compassion through its Teaching Tolerance programs in schools” —– Helping white children learn that they dont matter and that the brown children of the third world will always be favored over them because ‘whites are evil nazis’ and should feel guilty about establishing this amazing country that as of late (since 1965) has gone to ruin.So keep those borders open kids and remember to virtue signal that you wish you were brown so you could have a voice and be empowered by the mainstream liberal globalist ideology its what Heidi Harmon would want.
“On the site, the first thing that caught my eye was a photo, and, oh baby, is this picture worth a thousand words. It shows a skinny, blond white boy running gleefully toward the camera, a girl, also white, not far behind. The headline is “Help Save Some America for Tomorrow.”
THE FACT THAT YOU ARE CHILLED BY A PICTURE OF WHITE CHILDREN IS HILARIOUS AND PROVES THAT YOU ARE THE REAL RACIST
I see many comments here that are opposed to diversity and vibrancy. You have all been reported to the SPLC for hate comments.
–Shlomo, Bergblatt, and Silvershekel Attorneys at Law