Tag: Southern Poverty Law Center

‘More than half of white Americans anti-black’

Mark Potok
Mark Potok

During an interview with CNN last week, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center boldly claimed that more than half of white Americans hate blacks.

While discussing whether or not white on black crime has increased in recent years, Potok argued that a drastic rise was evident, alluding that American whites have become more racist due to a black president.

“Well I think the best data shows that in fact anti-black racism has risen over the last four or five years,” Potok said. “There’s polling that shows that both implicit and explicit anti-black attitudes among American whites have gone up quite significantly between 2008 and 2012 to the point where now more than half of white Americans have these anti-black attitudes.”

CNN contributor Reihan Salam, visibly shocked by Potok’s assertions, pointed to the massive strides gained in American race relations.

“I think that’s extremely misleading,” Salam said. “You’ll see for example that one out of 12 marriages in the United States are now interracial marriages.”

Salam also went on to highlight the fact that the definition of racism has drastically changed, with certain groups attempting to find racism in places it may not actually exist.

“The thing is, people are getting very creative in what they are characterizing as racism,” Salam added. “When you look at hard statistics like interracial marriages, interracial friendships, when you look at the level of racial segregation, you’ve seen enormous progress over time and I think that we should celebrate it.”

In an attempt to defend his position, Potok quickly jumped to his own organization’s statistics, claiming that American hate groups are at epidemic levels.

“We’ve also seen an enormous growth over the last 15 years or so in the number of hate groups, primarily white supremacist groups from about 600 in 2000 to more than 1,000 today,” Potok said.

While the SPLC does list some legitimate hate groups on their website, political groups with no connection to racism whatsoever now fill the vast majority of space.

Groups such as Oath Keepers, an organization filled with military, police and firefighters who support their oath to the Constitution, have been labeled as hateful and racist by the SPLC. In its desperate attempt to demonize any group that questions government corruption, the SPLC has even gone as far as labeling alternative media outlet We Are Change as racist as well.

In a surprising move, Salam went on to note the SPLC’s massive wealth increase in recent years, commenting on the groups need for increased racism to remain relevant and lucrative.

“But another thing is we have organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that really have grown enormously in recent years. For example, in 1995 the SPLC had net assets of about $52 million, in 2011 they had net assets over $250 million and this is not a period of time during which racism increased by a factor of five, rather they have been able to grow by drawing on instances of this kind and then weaving them into a story about racism growing,” Salam said.

Just last year, the SPLC’s CEO J. Richard Cohen sent a letter to former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, claiming the need to investigate the country’s alleged “patriot” domestic terror threat.

“Utilizing the standard SPLC modus operandi and fear tactics, Cohen conflates a small number of racist white supremacist groups with the larger and more diverse patriot community,” Kurt Nimmo. “He also characterizes growing concern on the part of millions of Americans in response to egregious violations of the Constituion as dangerous…”

To no surprise, an August 2009 Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Homeland Security’s “right-wing extremism” reports were not based on any legitimate evidence, but random articles found on the SPLC’s website.

While constantly labeling Constitution-supporting Americans from all races as dangerous, the SPLC itself is generating hate and violence.

Source: prisonplanet.com

Anti-Islamic campaign in New York subway

Anti-Islam campaign in NYC

Anti-Islamic advertisements will go up across New York City’s subway system next week after a federal judge ruled that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority could not legally refuse to host the signs on the basis of “demeaning” language.

As early as next Monday, ten NYC subway stations will showcase adverts declaring, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The campaign was created by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an organization considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center watch group.

Pamela Geller, the executive director of the AFDI, stands by her signage despite rampant complaints circulating before the campaign has even begun.

“I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages,” Geller tells Sky News

Geller has long advocated against so-called “Islamist propaganda” in America and has campaigned in the past to call for the shutting down of a Washington, DC museum exhibit that highlighted Muslim contributions to science. The installation was declared “Best Touring Exhibit” by the Museum Heritage Awards in 2011, but Geller claimed “It has indoctrinated hundreds of thousands of children into a rosy and romanticized view of Islam that makes them less appreciative of their own culture’s achievements and more complacent about Islamization in the West.”

For her overt actions waged against Islamic culture, the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League has said Geller “fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.”

Those ideals will be brought to New York subway stations next week despite a legal battle that ended in July with a Manhattan federal judge agreeing that the First Amendment allowed Geller to have her ads run in the metro system.

“I live in America and in America we have the first amendment,” Geller tells Sky News.

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Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, responded to the outlet by condemning Geller’s actions, but agreeing with the federal judge’s decision regardless.

“Our basic position is that the first amendment means that everyone is free to be a bigot or even an idiot like Pamela Geller,” Hooper tells Sky. “We wish she wasn’t provoking and inciting hatred, but in America that’s her right.”

“We encourage Muslims to exercise the same right to publicly denounce such adverts. The real danger is the spread of hatred in our society, which can lead to attacks on innocent people.”

On the website for the AFDI, Geller critiques a journalist who has labeled her efforts as anti-Muslim, insisting that such a label “implies that every Muslim is a jihadi who wants to impose sharia and ‘eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and sabotage its miserable house.’”

Defending her advertisements to KQED News last month, Geller said it was right to refer to Islamic worshipers as “savage,” because “any targeting of innocent civilians is savagery.”

“Mothers and children on a bus are targeted, and that is savagery. Kidnapping and murdering is savagery. The U.S. does not conduct war that way, and neither does Israel. Now, there is sometimes the accidental death of civilians, which is far different than the targeting of innocent civilians,” she said.

Previously, Geller told Huffington Post of her ads, “If I had my way, they’d be in every city in the United States of America and if I can get the funding, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

She has successfully campaigned to have the adverts included in San Francisco and is all but certain to expand to New York in the coming days. In California, San Francisco’s transit authority promised to donate the $3,400 Geller spent on advertising fees to the Human Rights Commission.