Tag Archives: Left-Wing

News

What is the Southern Poverty Law Center?

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The Southern Poverty Law Center was connected to a 2012 domestic terrorism attack
The Southern Poverty Law Center was connected to a 2012 domestic terrorism attack

We hear a lot in the news about an organization called the “Southern Poverty Law Center”, or SPLC. Big technology companies and news media corporations rely on the SPLC to tell them about “hate groups”. But did you know that the SPLC was once directly linked to anti-Christian, anti-conservative domestic terrorism? The attack happened way back in August 2012.

Here is a recent USA Today editorial by Jessica Prol Smith, in which she recalls the act domestic terrorism that nearly claimed her life.

She writes:

I’ll never forget the moment I learned we were on lockdown. It was Aug.15, 2012. My frustration mingled with fear. Trapped on the sixth floor, we knew someone had been shot. We knew we couldn’t leave yet. We knew little else.

While I was missing lunch, a crime scene played out in the office lobby below me. My coworker and friend Leo wasn’t armed, but he had played the quick-thinking and inadvertent hero, disarming a young man on a mission to kill me and as many of my colleagues as possible. The gunman had packed his backpack with ammo and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches — later admitting that he had planned to smear them on our lifeless faces as a political statement. Leo took a bullet in the arm but managed to hold the attacker until law enforcement arrived.

[…]The assailant acknowledged later in FBI testimony that he had selected our office precisely because the SPLC had labeled my employer a “hate group.”

She was working for the Family Research Council, a Washington D.C. think tank that specializes in abortion policy, marriage policy, and religious liberty issues. Just to be clear, they have a bunch of people with doctorates who write research papers that lawmakers then use to make policy. This is a prestigious organization, but that didn’t save them from a gay activist with a gun.

She continues:

For years, the left-wing interest group has used its “hate group” list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox beliefs about marriage and sex are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.

These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap. The SPLC dismissed its co-founder in March, and its president has resigned amidst numerous claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism within the organization — a parade of disgraces that vividly force the conclusion: The SPLC is hollow, rotten and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.

[…]Jobs and years have passed, and I work now for Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF ranks among “the top performing firm(s)” litigating First Amendment cases, according to the Empirical SCOTUS blog, and is the “Christian legal powerhouse that keeps winning at the Supreme Court,” according to The Washington Post.

And yes, my new employer has also attracted one of the SPLC’s spurious hate labels.

I actually do not accept that there are ANY hate groups on the political right. If you understand right-wing as meaning what it meant at the founding: free markets, individual liberties, constitutional government, federalism, rule of law, etc., then there is nothing hateful about being a conservative. There is nothing about race differences in right-wing ideology. On the other hand, it’s left-wing groups like the Black Panthers, KKK, La Raza and the Democrat party who are constantly trying to divide people into groups by race.

Recently, we saw a mass shooting in Dayton committed by a socialist who supports Elizabeth Warren, and two mass shootings by eco-terrorists in Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas. And there was also a recent domestic terrorism attack committed by Antifa in Tacoma Washington, which could have killed hundreds of people:

A burning vehicle sending flames shooting high above a perimeter fence can be seen in new surveillance video obtained by Fox News that shows an attack by an armed Antifa supporter last month at a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Washington state. The assault was ultimately foiled, but a former acting director of the agency said it could have killed “hundreds.”

“Thank God for the Tacoma P.D.,” ICE former Acting Director Tom Homan said on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday. “Their professionalism and quick response prevented the loss of hundreds and hundreds of lives, so hats off to them and their quick response.”

I could be mistaken, but Antifa appears to be the fascist shock troops of the anti-Semitic socialist Democrat party, similar to the Brown Shirts who helped Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic socialist party to seize power in 1930s Germany.

Does the SPLC label any left-wing groups as “hate groups”? Not that I’m aware of.

I think it’s important for people to understand that groups like SPLC might just be trying to deflect criticism from far-left hate groups by labeling mainstream groups they disagree with as “hate groups”. And sometimes, that false labeling results in real violence against mainstream Christians and conservatives.

News

Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter ally with leftist group linked to domestic terrorism

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

If you care about religious liberty, then you know all about religious liberty litigation groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Center for Law and Justice. These are the lawyers who argue religious liberty cases against secular-leftist fascists at the Supreme Court. In fact, Kristen Waggoner just won a case at the Supreme Court, defending Christian small business owner Jack Phillips from Colorado gay activists.

With that in mind, take a look at this story from the Daily Caller, about the big media corporations who oppose groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Excerpt:

Four of the world’s biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for “hate speech” or “hate groups,” a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

The SPLC is on a list of “external experts and organizations” that Facebook works with “to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in an interview.

So, most people reading this are probably thinking “what’s the big deal? I’m just an ordinary mainstream Christian / conservative. My speech doesn’t count as hate speech”. If you’re thinking that, you clearly do not know who the SPLC is.

More:

Of the four companies, Amazon gives the SPLC the most direct authority over its platform, TheDCNF found.

[…]Jeff Bezos’ company grants the SPLC broad policing power over the Amazon Smile charitable program, while claiming to remain unbiased.

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told TheDCNF.

[…]The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon.

Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.

Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom — which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the Supreme Court — are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, TheDCNF found in May.

One month later, the anti-Semitic groups — but not the Alliance Defending Freedom — are still able to participate in the program.

So, Amazon actually banned a law firm that won a religious liberty case at the Supreme Court. Won that case 7-2, by the way. I wonder if Amazon considers that law firm a “hate group”. And whether it considers the speech that persuaded 7 out of 9 Supreme Court judges to be “hate speech”.

Ben Carson, the former Republican presidential candidate and current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was also labeled an “extremist” by the SPLC.

Carson responded:

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong. It is important for us to once again advocate true tolerance,” Carson said in response.

The Daily Caller article notes that the SPLC has been criticized from the left as well:

The SPLC has faced tough criticisms not just from conservatives, but from left-wing establishment publications, as well:

“At a time when the line between ‘hate group’ and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation,” Ben Schreckinger, now with GQ, wrote in a June 2017 piece for Politico.

Washington Post Reporter Megan McArdle, while still reporting for Bloomberg, similarly criticized the SPLC’s flimsy definition of “hate group” in  September 2017. Media outlets who trust the SPLC’s labels, McArdle warned, “will discredit themselves with conservative readers and donors.”

First, recall from this article posted at The Federalist that the Southern Poverty Law Center was the source of the “hate map” which was used by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins in his attempt to shoot and kill everyone at the Family Research Council.

Excerpt:

Corkins would later admit that he had located Family Research Council’s office on a “hate map” produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and he planned to shoot people in the building and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches on them.

[…]Much of the ensuing media coverage ignored or downplayed Corkins’ motives, which the Washington Post referred to as “a detail sure to reignite the culture wars.” A year later, Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees was still publicly defending the inclusion of Family Research Council on the organization’s “hate map.”

Just to be clear, this gay activist was convicted of domestic terrorism, and received 25 years in prison. He was stopped by a security guard, and this video is the footage of the attempted mass murder.

Let’s find out more about SPLC, courtesy of this article from the centrist City Journal, a very respected source.

Here is the article from City Journal.

Excerpt:

Ironically, the SPLC not only overlooks most of the real hate groups in operation today, along with overtly race-based organizations, such as the pro-Latino National Council of La Raza and MEChA, but also labels moderates with whom it disagrees “extremists” if they deviate from its rigid political agenda, which embraces open borders, LGBT rights, and other left-wing totems. The SPLC has branded Somali-born reformer Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslin extremist” for her opposition to female genital mutilation and other oppressive Islamic practices, and designated the respected Family Research Council as a “hate group” for its opposition to same-sex marriage. Likewise, the organization deems mainstream immigration-reform advocates such as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as hate groups. British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz—regarded by most observers as a human rights leader—is suing the SPLC for listing him as an extremist.

More:

Critics of the SPLC accuse the lavishly funded organization of peddling fear and smearing political opponents—mostly conservatives—as bigots. Its “Hatewatch” list is avowedly ideological, acknowledging that it “monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.” Few left-wing organizations—and no Islamist groups—are branded in this way by the SPLC. Nevertheless, the SPLC, founded in 1971, has burrowed itself into the civil rights movement, the organized bar, the cloistered culture of large law firms, the education system, and even law enforcement as a champion for “the exploited, the powerless and the forgotten.” Its executives are richly compensated, some in excess of $400,000 annually. Operating from palatial six-story quarters in Montgomery, Alabama (sometimes called the “Poverty Palace”), it enjoys a $300 million endowment, including more than $23 million in cash.

The non-profit rating group “Charity Watch” gives the SPLC an “F” rating. This is the lowest grade possible.

More:

The SPLC frequently rails against public figures as “enablers” not technically designated as hate groups or extremists, such as Texas governor Greg Abbott, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, radio talk show host Glenn Beck, Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul. Rush Limbaugh, the Breitbart News Network, the Boy Scouts of America, and Focus on the Family (founded by psychologist, broadcaster, and best-selling author James Dobson) have also earned the SPLC’s wrath.

And finally:

What many of the individuals and groups condemned by the SPLC have in common is a conservative orientation. Favoring traditional marriage becomes the moral equivalent of cross-burning; opposing illegal immigration or amnesty for illegal immigrants equates to advocating genocide; resisting the spread of radical Islam invokes Timothy McVeigh; and anti-tax Tea Party groups are now indistinguishable from armed militias or Holocaust deniers. Thus, dissent is de-legitimatized, and political foes are demonized.

[…]SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok, a 20-year veteran of the organization and editor of its “hate list”—a quarterly publication—has admitted that “our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”

Previously, I blogged about a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Academic Questions, found that the SPLC “…fails to use objective criteria in determining which organizations should be labeled a “hate group”…”. Something to keep in mind now that you know that media corporations are letting them censor content.

Podcasts

Can a person be postmodern and a Christian at the same time?

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Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Not for long
Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Let’s look at their leader

Wow. Postmodern “Christian” Brian McLaren has completely abandoned traditional Christianity. McLaren, you may already know, spear-headed the “emergent church” movement – an attempt to fuse postmodern relativism with liberal Christianity.

Greg Koukl and Kevin DeYoung analyze his latest book “A New Kind of Christianity”.

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity
Host: Greg Koukl

Guest: Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” (00:00:00)
Commentary: Reality vs. Religion? The Modern Upper Story Leap (00:56:39)
Guest: Dennis Prager – Reality vs. Religion (01:52:25)

We’re interested in the first hour of the three-hour show.

Topics of hour one:

  • What is Brian’s view of Creation?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of Scripture?
  • What is Brian’s view of Truth?
  • What is Brian’s view of sin and Hell?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of atonement?
  • How did Brian’s leftist political views infect his theology?
  • How did postmodernism affect Brian’s epistemology?
  • How faithful is Brian in interpreting the text?

There’s also a nice blog post about Brian McLaren by Melinda from Stand to Reason, too.

Excerpt:

McLaren doesn’t think the Bible is to be taken literally. For instance, the Garden of Eden story isn’t about sin and the Fall, rather it’s a “compassionate coming of age story.”  Consequently, the whole idea of sin and Hell is a horrible overreaction and has caused the church to offer a violent message and image all these years.  It follows from this interpretation then, that there is no need for the cross and Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Those are violent ideas resulting from a bad reading of the Bible.

And a couple of longer reviews are linked.

Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung have written excellent and more in-depth reviews of McLaren’s new book and I highly recommend them.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast and if you know anyone who is being influenced by the (non) religious left, take a look at the articles, especially the DeYoung article, which is quite good.

A generous “orthodoxy”?

And finally, here is a review of another much earlier Brian McLaren book by Biola University professor of philosophy Doug Geivett – one of my absolute favorite people. This is back when McLaren was just starting to leave orthodox Christianity behind.

Excerpt:

Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) has been called a manifesto of the “emerging church” — a movement that is rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of postmodernism. McLaren is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md.

[…]In using the term “orthodoxy” for his position, McLaren is making a political move to subvert traditional evangelical theology. “Orthodoxy,” as he uses it, is whatever happens to be in vogue and culturally dominant. Also, an important theme among postmodernists has to do with the nature of belief — they doubt that people have, or need, good reasons to believe as they do, so they emphasize behavior over belief. (This probably explains why McLaren’s book relies less on evidence and argumentation and more on rhetoric.) However, in de-emphasizing the importance of belief, McLaren and other postmodernists overlook three things.

First, belief is the engine that drives behavior. The best way to cure wrong action is to identify false beliefs. Second, all people — even postmodernists — have definite beliefs about the things that matter most. They can’t help it. While McLaren resists the invitation to state clearly what he believes — for example, about the eternal destiny of nonbelievers — surely he has some view of the matter and that view influences his approach to the proclamation of the gospel. (As a pastor, he should have good ideas about this and a host of other issues of theological significance.) Third — though postmodernists sneer at the idea of evidence — evidence matters because it’s how we determine what’s true and is crucial to ordering our lives according to truth. In this respect, the postmodernist is out of step with the culture because human beings are by nature evidence-gatherers.

Very important to understand where these postmodern “Christians” are coming from, and where they end up when they’ve worked their mystical anti-realism through to its conclusions.