TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
This is why it’s not a great ideaThe thread only further goes on to anger me
This is why it’s not a great ideaThe thread only further goes on to anger me
I remember when the SPLC was a legitimate organization that did quality work before its business model shifted to scaring money out of well heeled liberal donors. Those were good days.Some evidence of the money and its political ties funding white supremacist groups.
Donors Pumped Millions into White Nationalist Group
Donors gave the prominent white nationalist hate group VDARE $4.3 million in 2019, over eight times more than the year before, according to tax records the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) obtained and shared with Hatewatch.www.splcenter.org
I remember when the SPLC was a legitimate organization that did quality work before its business model shifted to scaring money out of well heeled liberal donors. Those were good days.
The SPLC has developed a track record of applying the label of “white supremacist” to organizations that aren’t over the last 20 years or so. To the point of having the nickname of “Southern Preposterous Lie Center” in the circles I’ve been in. They took a bad turn during the Bush years and ramped up to full speed during the Obama years went into light speed when Trump showed up.If your contention is that the hate group work by the SPLC is simply a ploy to fund the organization then I'm not sure how to respond.
The SPLC has a workplace culture issue and I don't doubt that rounding-up funds and sales is part of the business model as it is for any organization, but I disagree the notion that completely de-legitimizes the org. or the work that they do.
Do you disagree with the report and/or the notion that these groups labeled as white supremacists or nationalists are just that?
Can you provide examples of the groups they've mislabeled? Genuinely curious.The SPLC has developed a track record of applying the label of “white supremacist” to organizations that aren’t over the last 20 years or so. To the point of having the nickname of “Southern Preposterous Lie Center” in the circles I’ve been in. They took a bad turn during the Bush years and ramped up to full speed during the Obama years went into light speed when Trump showed up.
I’ve been associated in the past with groups they have labeled as such that while definitely strongly anti-government, were not even remotely racist in nature. They’re a joke to the point that I don’t even bother reading anything they publish anymore. Which honestly I find sad. Much like the ACLU they went from pursuing a very clearly defined and quite important non partisan agenda to being an fairly explicitly leftist organization. These are losses to everyone.
My disillusionment centered around their fairly wholesale labeling of militia groups (such as the Three Percent movement) as being white nationalists. Just because a bunch of rednecks get together in the woods to train doesn’t mean they’re trying to set up some sort of ethnostate. Not that you would know that if you believe what the SPLC writes.Can you provide examples of the groups they've mislabeled? Genuinely curious.
Edit: I have read this Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?
Is this an accurate description of the 3% movement to you? Three PercentersMy disillusionment centered around their fairly wholesale labeling of militia groups (such as the Three Percent movement) as being white nationalists. Just because a bunch of rednecks get together in the woods to train doesn’t mean they’re trying to set up some sort of ethnostate. Not that you would know that if you believe what the SPLC writes.
That article lays out a lot of my beefs with them much more eloquently than I could but the basic premise is the same. They have found that scaring donors by exaggerating the amount of white supremacist out there to be an extremely lucrative business model.
My involvement with threepers ended around the time MVB passed away as I was already moving from believing that there was any value in restoring the Republic to seeing it as lost cause and a fool’s errand. That said, the description given of its origin and ideology up until that point is generally correct in broad swaths, if debatable in its details.Is this an accurate description of the 3% movement to you? Three Percenters
And my larger point regarding the SPLC is to view what they write with critical eye because they are full of shit now and then. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is a common thing folks fall victim to. So when someone/something proves themselves to be untrustworthy view everything they produce ever after with an extremely critical eye. The SPLC falls fully into that category.While this devolved into something about the organization, the original point of linking to the SLPC report was to provide an example about political actors and their $ manipulating/playing on the fears of people,who are open to (even easily accept) the notion that race and ethnicity are to blame for their disenfranchisement (real or perceived).
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
And my larger point regarding the SPLC is to view what they write with critical eye because they are full of shit now and then. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is a common thing folks fall victim to. So when someone/something proves themselves to be untrustworthy view everything they produce ever after with an
Mental masturbation feels just as good as the regular kind.If we are so entrenched in beliefs that we refuse to hear what other people think and understand where they come from then why do we talk about any of this at all?
you may not be doing the other kind rightMental masturbation feels just as good as the regular kind.
Maybe you’re not doing the mental kind to it’s fullest abilities?you may not be doing the other kind right
I might vote for the american pie party candidate... particularly if they offer pie.
For all of the miles of column inches devoted to the forever wars in the Middle East, I believe that in time we will come to understand that the single most destructive act of that era was the granting of PNTR to China and the granting of admission to the WTO.Another nudge towards greater awareness of what is shaping up to be the greatest atrocity of this nascent century and towards our lack of awareness and general disinterest of it in the west.
VW’s dilemma in Xinjiang shows how the west is headed for an ethical car crash | Timothy Garton Ash
Europe and the US are economically dependent on China now – ‘change through trade’ is no longer on the cards, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ashwww.theguardian.com