Thread: Dan Stein on the SPLC

This is a great starting point for information on the SPLC. He has done a good job of attacking this hate group and hits the nail on the head regarding the point in time when the SPLC decided to try and utilize immigration reformers as a new cash cow for their fundraising. It is probably one of the best write-ups on a hate group I have ever seen.

steinreport(.)com
The article also mentions Ken Silversteins brilliant article in Harpers magazine in 2000 that gets to the source of the hate group. It was entitled "The Church of Morris Dee's."

Here is an excerpt:

Emergence of the "hate group" industry

It all culminated in an article in Harpers Magazine in 2000 entitled "The Church of Morris Dees" in which Washington Editor Ken Silverstein found that the SPLC was a massive rip-off organization that made staggering amounts of money tilting at windmills while inflating the size and impact of the modern day Klan. He proclaimed the SPLC a "do-nothing" organization and suggested people donate elsewhere.

Today, Silverstein says, nothing has changed:

Southern Poverty: richer than Tonga

Back in 2000, I wrote a story in Harper's about the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, whose stated mission is to combat disgusting yet mostly impotent groups like the Nazis and the KKK. What it does best, though, is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of those groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation's richest "civil rights" organization. The Center earns more from its vast investment portfolio than it spends on its core mission, which has led Millard Farmer, a death-penalty lawyer in Georgia, to once describe Morris Dees, the SPLC's head, as "the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement" (adding, "I don't mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye").

When in 1978 the Center's treasury held less than $10 million, Dees said the group would stop fund-raising and live off interest when it hit $55 million. As he zeroed in on that target a decade later, Dees upped the ante to $100 million, which the group's newsletter promised would allow it "to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fund raising." At the time of my story seven years ago, the SPLC's treasury bulged with $120 million, and the organization was spending twice as much on fund-raising as it did on legal services for victims of civil-rights abuses-yet its money-gathering machinery was still running without cease.

It's still going. Last week, a reader sent me the SPLC's 2005 financial filing with the IRS, which is required by law for charities. In five years, the SPLC's treasury had grown by a further $48 million, bringing its total assets to $168 million. That's more than the annual GDP of the Marshall Islands, and has the SPLC rapidly closing in on Tonga's GDP.

Revenues listed for the 2005 filing came to about $44 million, which dwarfed total spending ($29 million). Of that latter amount, nearly $5 million was spent to raise even more money, and over $8 million was spent on salaries, benefits, and other compensation. The next time you get a fund-raising pitch from the SPLC, give generously-but give to a group that will make better use of your money. Like Global Witness. -- http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/03/ ... 1172847076, March 2007.

The SPLC continues to mass hundreds of millions of dollars for a rainy day. But this criticism began to sting. The "Intelligence Report" is now seen as nothing more than a cultivation mailing used to inflame fear among its gullible donors that intolerance and hatred is breaking out all over the country. Despite the media's willingness to dutifully report periodic reports claiming a "skyrocketing increase in hate crimes," few reporters look to the Intelligence Report as a real source of "intelligence." No one was really impressed with its work beyond its role as a group celebrating civil rights leaders from the 1960s. The Civil Rights community has apparently told the SPLC that it needs to go to work on real and relevant problems affecting the national community today.

A great information source.

The SPLC is slightly different than other hate groups in that it coordinates the actions of "street gangs" like Mecha and La Raza. It provides propaganda and organizational techniques tools and even posts advisors to their rallies and pro-violence actions. When the headquarters of a hate movement is stepping into direct action it simply means funds are low, their street thugs aren't pulling off their thug tactics and politicians aren't paying them much mind. Now they are only left with defamation and slander of character. Hard line Soviets have to be surprised that their little darling lasted this long and has taken on things autonomously since they cut off funding in the 90's.