The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) once played a pivotal role in fighting for the rights of African-Americans in America, but has now fallen on hard times; or rather, flush with cash and needing to cry wolf, they’ve shifted focus to more questionable activities. They’ve engaged in sleazy behavior, like funneling millions of their dollars to offshore accounts (legal but probably unethical), and then extended their accusations to people whom the SPLC should have defended.
I refer in particular to the SPLC’s one-time “field guide to anti-Muslim extremists”, which was a “Islamophobe list”, put up in December, 2016, along the lines of Joe McCarthy’s “Communist list” (for my posts on the SPLC and this list, go here).
I wasn’t familiar with most of the names on that list, but I did know of two: Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Nawaz is a liberal Muslim, Ali a Muslim apostate, but both are engaged in liberalizing and reforming Islam. I can’t speak for the others once listed, but the activity of making such lists is questionable, and I am absolutely opposed to the inclusion of Nawaz and Hirsi Ali on any such list. The SPLC’s “field guide” page (you can find my post about it here) demonized 14 people as Islamophobes in this way:
Fueling this hatred [against Muslims] has been the propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.
Well, Nawaz is a Muslim, and Hirsi Ali’s latest book is a description of five ways Islam should reform to become more progressive (e.g., stop taking the Qur’an literally, etc.).
Both Hirsi Ali and Nawaz objected vehemently to their inclusion on this list; she wrote a NYT op-ed, “Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center Targeting Liberals?“, and Nawaz took the more direct action of threatening to sue the SPLC. In addition, a petition on Change.org, which I and probably many readers signed, got over 14,000 people urging the SPLC to remove these two from their “little list.”
Well, I doubt that the petition did much—these things rarely do—but in America the threat of legal action speaks loudly. And so, according to the National Review (try finding this information in the left-wing media!), the SPLC has quietly removed the entire page from its site. When you go to the old SPLC page, you get this:
The list still exists in pdf form, however; it’s here (along with the indictments of both Hirsi Ali and Nawaz). I don’t know how long it will be up, though someone will surely archive it. At any rate, the National Review reports this:
Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, said during a Wednesday night appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast hosted by comedian Joe Rogan, that the report was removed from the SPLC website under legal threat sometime in the last two days.
“We have retained Clare Locke, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it — the Southern Poverty Law Center — and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years,” Nawaz said on the podcast.
Of course the SPLC didn’t announce the deep-sixing; they just quietly put the list in the bin. They could have removed just Nawaz, or Nawaz and Hirsi Ali, but the entire page is gone.
In my view, they owe not only those two, but everyone else on the list, as well as the SPLC’s supporters, an explanation for why they acted as they did. But the SPLC being not only sleazy but pusillanimous, I doubt we’ll see one. After all, they’d have to say, “Well, folks, maybe we overstepped, and we retreated in the face of legal threats.”
I would like to see some non-conservative sites reporting this, and if you find any, by all means let us know in the comments.
Non-conservative here.
Wrote about this days ago.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/04/19/the-splc-has-removed-its-controversial-page-listing-anti-muslim-extremists/
And if they think that deleting the page from their site makes it go away then they don’t know how the internet works:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i2DU4aa02UkJ:https://www.splcenter.org/20161025/journalists-manual-field-guide-anti-muslim-extremists+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
They did the right thing.
For the wrong reason.
At least the law still works on them.
Glen Davison
I’m glad the whole list has gone. There’s something very sinister about keeping lists of political opponents in any case (it’s the kind of thing Stalin and McCarthy were keen on) but when you are listing critics of people who murder for the slightest ‘provocation’ (writing books, drawing cartoons, being Jewish) you are effectively writing a kill list
How about a list of despots who kill their political opponents? Or a list of mullahs who called for the murder of Salman Rushdie after publication of The Satanic Verses? Or a list of journalists who acted as apologists after the Charlie Hebdo massacre?
Seems to me the value and ethics of such lists lie in the eye of the beholder. I’m leery of them, given the sinister use to which political “enemies lists” have been put across US history. But I’m chary to say they never serve a worthy purpose.
I agree, but also think we’re talking about slightly different sorts of lists.
The SPLC’s appalling list relied on subjective judgement, and is therefore a bad thing imo.
A list of leaders who jail and/or kill journalists such as that produced by Reporters Without Borders relies on facts. It’s info we should know and I think it’s a good thing.
I’m glad the SPLC took the list down, and I think it was a grave injustice for Maajid and AHA to have been on it in the first place. If I recall, SPLC did already actually offer an explanation for Nawaz’s inclusion back when the list first came out, and it was predictably awful.
With that said, I do think his lawsuit was the wrong response to it.
“…I do think his lawsuit was the wrong response…”
Why?
“If I recall, SPLC did already actually offer an explanation for Nawaz’s inclusion back when the list first came out, and it was predictably awful.”
Can you recall what that “explanation” was?
Watch the Joe Rogan show Maajid did recently. He details the ever-changing and trivial “reasons” for his inclusion on the list. It gets worse for the SPLC every time you hear it.
You can look it up on my website http://www.heatherhastie.com
A search of: maajid nawaz splc response
will probably find it.
I wrote separate posts about the inclusion of each on the list. I also wrote to SPLC and got a response, which I posted and critically analysed.
I can’t add links from my current device, but will within 2-3 hours.
Sorry forgot. Here are the posts:
Why Maajid Naawaz Shouldn’t be in SPLC’s ‘Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’:
https://www.heatherhastie.com/nick-cohen-adds-his-voice-to-the-defence-of-maajid-nawaz/
Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali Shouldn’t be in SPLC’s ‘Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’:
https://www.heatherhastie.com/why-ayann-hirsi-ali-shouldnt-be-on-splcs-field-guide-to-anti-muslim-extremists/
SPLC Responds to My Complaint re ‘Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’:
https://www.heatherhastie.com/splc-responds-to-my-complaint-re-field-guide-to-anti-muslim-extremists/
Maybe not the place but as I don’t seem able of other way to ask for this…
Your site doesn’t have RSS feeds, does it? I checked it for the first time, and I would like to follow it, but without RSS it’s complicated.
There are 2 links to RSS feeds in the left side-bar. the link for all posts is:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/feed
Well, yes, but I was asking about Heather’s blog.
Sorry, I replied via the email notification that didn’t contain the full context.
No. Sorry. Currently the only ways to follow are via email or WordPress. I will check to see if that would be possible under my current arrangements.
Thanks
I think the SPLC is confusing hatred with indignation. “Hatred” makes more sense if you replace in their paragraph “Muslims” with “unbelievers”. Something like that:
Fueling this hatred [against unbelievers] has been the propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-unbelief extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited superstition and credulity, among other things, to demonize the entire population of unbelievers.
What people like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali feel is clearly indignation, and what the SPLC was doing, ironically, is fuelling hatred.
Sub
The list may be hidden, and later they may purge it entirely. But that is a far cry from admitting a mistake which I suspect they will never do.
I hope I am wrong on this, but not admitting to an overstep is an attribute among the Crl-Left crowd.
That SPLC list was a clear case of Ctrl-left smooching with fundamentalist Islam. They deserve to be flayed (figuratively), even with that list removed.
At any rate, they appear at present to be nothing more than a “money making machine”, I hope Maajid will persist with his lawsuit, and will be awarded substantial financial repairs. I think Quilliam -and the AHA foundation- will use those millions much better.
Every decent and progressive person should remember which scumbags defended the SPLC’s list…
PZ Myers.
** *******.
Dan Arel.
“WMDKitty”
“Peter Norway”
Peter “Humanisticus” Ferguson
…and a bunch of other regressive and New Racist scumbags.
‘ . . . the SPLC’s one-time “field guide to anti-Muslim extremists” . . . .’
I want to see the SPLC’s list of islamofascists.
They don’t have the server space for that.
:>)
As someone else pointed out, the SPLC is incapable of admitting a fault (in regard to the list in question) or anything else. The cardinal rule of pop-Leftism is: when you are wrong NEVER ADMIT IT.
In a general way, the entire outlook of the regressive Left is based on the notion that the Soviet Union and its satellites became the way they were, and Peoples’ China and Peoples’ North Korea became they way they are, by coincidence, or weird accidents, or “bourgeois encirclement”. or something—and whatever it was needn’t be thought about carefully. The possibility of a basic defect in the revolutionary thinking of people as serious as Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zhou Enlai, etc. etc., not to mention three generations of their Western admirers, cannot be entertained: instead, the rule is, CHANGE THE SUBJECT. “Islamophobia” is one of the new subjects, along with such burning problems as personal choice in pronouns.
SPLC – Southern Preposterous Lie Center
SPLC – Stupid People Libeling Conservatives
However, there’s a catch…
https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/987378512813219840
In the linked article Sam Harris cites, they write the following:
Consider this astonishing assertion, that follows just after the above: “Under the guise of scientific objectivity”, they write, he argues “that black people are genetically inferior to whites”.
Aside from yet another extreme smear, it’s also immensely counterproductive. Because of this, it became impossibe to make aware the real and actual influence of the Alt Right. Their narratives and dog whistles have seeped far into the “skeptic” online movement, but not through Sam Harris.
Other people on the list really gave platforms to extreme right individuals, like Richard Spencer himself, and others like him that were previously known only to the extreme right.
Of course, whenever I bring this up and try to alert people that it’s not ordinary business to have a nice chat with Spencer et alii, and much more like that, then the actual Far Right can simply laugh it off, with a Big Thanks to the SLPC and the likes. Many ordinary people who are clueless then laugh it off as well, and won’t bother.
What makes this particularily pernicious is that Sam Harris’ anti-Trump stance is a recurring theme. Why would they omit this? This shows that the SPLC is also highly selective, which is typical for people of their ideology. The SPLC is a fascist-enabling institute.