Twitchy is a Twitter aggregation site with a conservative bent, so it’s no surprise that it put up a couple of article about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) recent bad behavior, since the SPLC is becoming increasingly allied with the Regressive Left.
You may remember that the SPLC put both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz on its list of “Anti-Muslim extremists”. When called to account for this unconscionable slur on Muslim reformers (one of whom is still a Muslim), and on Nawaz in particular, Heidi Beirich, Head of Intelligence (?) at SPLC simply lied, claiming that Nawaz had called for increased surveillance of mosques (see Heather Hastie’s post on the SPLC and the links therein). This was clearly an untruth that Beirich made up: as Nawaz noted, he’s called for decreased surveillance of mosques:
I hope Nawaz forces them to retract their slur, or even sues them for slander, as this is surely a deliberate lie that damages his reputation.
What many people are coming to realize is that the SPLC, once a great organization for protecting civil rights and prosecuting racist offenders, is now transforming into an entitled McCarthyite organization, compiling “hate lists” and defending Islam, even at the cost of slandering reformers. These “hate lists” are not without controversy, and the Center itself has been the focus of credible reports of financial mismanagement (see here).
Like many Regressive Leftists, the Center has taken a position against Muslim reformers. Now, as reported by Twitchy (here, here, and here), the organization tried its best to dissimulate when Juan Thompson, a black man and former writer for The Intercept, was arrested for making 8 threatening phone calls to Jewish community centers in Atlanta. There have been at least 100 such threats against Jewish organizations so far this year—I haven’t mentioned them lest I be accused of defending threatened Jews but not Muslims—and most of these weren’t made by Thompson. They’re probably part of a general xenophobia against immigrants, Jews, and Muslims that, previously under wraps, was unleashed by Trump’s election.
At any rate, Thompson’s threats were “excused” by the SPLC as “not anti-Semitism” since they may have been made as part of his harassment of a former girlfriend (see the New York Times piece and an article in Time Magazine), since they were made in the name of his girlfriend. The SPLCC swung into action, issuing this tweet which has been reproduced below since the SPLC later removed it:
But given that there were a hundred threats, why was the SPLC so eager to exculpate Thompson for 8 of them, denying that he was anti-Semitic? They even issued another tweet (below), saying in effect, “It’s not anti-Semitic because it was a copycat crime. Besides, what about the unsolved threats?”:
In 8 instances, Thompson seems to have been opportunistically copycatting the horrific JCC bomb threats. This doesn’t explain the other 92.
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) March 3, 2017
More attempts to exculpate Thompson:
Thompson appears culpable in a small fraction of the JCC threats, but this is not case closed and it’s imperative we continue to #ReportHate
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) March 3, 2017
Twitchy suspects, and they might be right, that since the arrested suspect was an African-American, he didn’t fit the SPLC’s narrative of hatred emanating from white supremacy groups, and thus they tried to minimize Thompson’s involvement, as in the tweets below:
Thompson "is not believed to be the main suspect behind the rash of bomb threats, according to law enforcement” https://t.co/Q00OLcu3o4
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) March 3, 2017
Thompson was fired from The Intercept for fabricating stories and quotes, and has shown signs of being unhinged since then. And he published some pretty strong anti-Israel tweets before all this went down—statements that should have been noticed by the SPLC’s investigation. Well, Thompson may not be anti-Semitic, but he’s shown clear signs of being anti-white, as the Anti-Defamation League revealed in their own tweets. But of course to the SPLC, that’s not bigotry. I wonder if they’d have defended Thompson against charges of anti-Semitism if he was a white Republican male who was just trying to harass his girlfriend by making threats against Jewish community centers.
Change the typo “not” to ‘now’ 5 lines down from the Nawaz quote.
Already noticed and fixed, thanks.
“They’re probably part of a general xenophobia against immigrants, Jews, and Muslims that, previously under wraps, was unleashed by Trump’s election.”
I can’t really agree with this sentence after reading for a long time statistics about antisemitic incidents in U.S. Seth J. Frantzman, who is very far from any “trumpism”, wondered about it as well in a very illuminating article: https://sethfrantzman.com/2017/03/01/there-were-more-than-7000-anti-semitic-incidents-under-obama-and-they-were-largely-ignored/
Excellent article and this is also an example of what journalism should and could be.
I don’t think anyone questions the bigotry of Trump and his followers but they did not invent this antisemitic condition. I think the basic prevalent cause in America for this element of bigotry is learned from parents and others. I see and know some who make extreme antisemitic comments who have never met or even know any Jews. It is the same ignorance and bigotry that surrounds the white community concerning African Americans.
Isn’t it amazing how, by percentage of population, Hews have more hate crimes committed against them per year than any other group, but SJWs and their groups (like the SPLC) don’t care even a whiff?
“Sorry, Jews, you don’t fit on our oppression hierarchy! Plus, we hate you.”
I experience antisemitism on campus back when I went to a liberal arts school in my first year of 2003. They are awful to Jews.
In the SJW world, having over a billion people actively advocate for your extinction isn’t nearly as bad as having your feelings hurt.
Plus, most of the people advocating that genocide and the wiping of Israel from the map are among the most prized of the SJW groups: Muslims.
The regressive left believe two things don’t matter: anything against white women; racism against whites period.
Well summed up. It is rather revealing isn’t it.
Thompson is a former colleague of Glenn Greenwald so his derangement isn’t unexpected.
The SLPC’s argument is that Thompson isn’t anti-Semitic – he’s merely harassing his ex-girlfriend. Well, that’s okay then. Wouldn’t like to tarnish his good name.
So long as he’s just a misogynist that’s nothing for the SPLC to be concerned about. We know where they stand on women’s rights.
The SPLC has apparently revised its position with this tweet, issued on March 3rd.
“Regardless of motivation, the act of threatening Jewish institutions is anti-Semitic and instills terror.”
But, I find this tweet troubling because it removes motivation as a factor in classifying whether an act can be fairly called anti-Semitic. Suppose a non-Jewish employee of a Jewish institution is fired for poor job performance and is quite aggrieved. He then returns to his former place of employment and shoots up the place, killing several people. Upon apprehension and questioning, it becomes clear that the fact that the organization is Jewish affiliated had nothing to do with his action – he simply wanted to get revenge on people he believed had wronged him. I would not classify this action as ant-Semitic. Motivation must be considered.
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/837863597699186689
I agree completely. I wonder if that would take it out of the category of a “hate crime.”
Thompson has also spread stories that his ex-partner deliberately speeas sexually transmitted diseases and that she collects child porn. He also sent nude photographs of her to her boss.
His threats to Jews included one threatening a ‘Jewish Newtown’ attack on a Jewish school.
While at The Intercept he faked quotes supposedly from a cousin of Dylann Roof.
Sounds like a swell guy.
Even if the excuses are true, he had to have done some sort of informal, internal, calculus where he weighed the personal benefit of revenge on his girlfriend against the moral cost of terrorizing JCCs. The fact that his own personal calculus resulted in a “yep, it is” answer to that question shows that he doesn’t evaluate the moral cost of terrorizing JCCs very highly.
Put another way, he could’ve sought to implicate his girlfriend in all sorts of hateful acts. He could’ve called a black church and threatened it in her name. Or a local government office. Or Planned Parenthood. That he chose the JCCs probably says at least something (negative) about his valuation of Jewish bystanders vs. other bystanders.
+1
That’s what I thought too.
The SPLC is itself now a hate group.
This is sad. I used to contribute to SPLC, back when their main target was racist, neo-Nazi, and skinhead type groups. That was over 20 years ago. But just a couple of days ago I got a “renewal” notice from them.
We all know Jews don’t fit on the Oppression Scale/Hierarchy of the SJWs. Of course the SPLC would do this.
This strikes me as curious. For a long time (have not checked it out as yet), the SPLC condemned black separatist groups (e. g. Nation of Islam) for being anti-Semitic.
They apparently have upgraded themselves.
He apparently ranted against “white New York liberal media.” That sounds a little bit racist taken on its own and I wonder if he was right-wing whether a few people would not claim there was an implicit suggestion that New York liberal means Jewish.
I quit donating to the SPLC back in the ’80s when its mission shifted from defending poor folk from the death penalty to bringing civil lawsuits against bigots — primarily because, if they’re pursuing civil litigation, they should be self-sufficient; and, secondly, because it started making case law that shrank rather than expanded civil liberties.
The likely explanation for the non-Thompson anti-Semitic attacks is that they’re “part of a general xenophobia … previously under wraps … unleashed by Trump’s election.” But let the chips fall where they may.
Thwy’vw bwcome an absurdly dishonest, SJW-supporting organization. Remember that recent “study” they released on the rise of hate crimes since Trump’s election? If one looked very closely at their methodology, they counted mean tweets as “hate crimes.” That’s how they got their numbers.
Nobody should donate to the SPLC. It is not the organization it once was, and hasn’t been for a very long time.
The regressive left don’t care about hatred against Jewish people. Look at Amnesty International. There was a vote in AI on whether they should condemn anti-semitism. They voted against that.