Mark Steyn observes in The Collapsing of the American Skull:
One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the subject honestly….
The Southern Poverty Law Center has become a moving force in the collapsing of the political skull.
Because of its history of fighting against the Klan and other actually violent groups (although even that narrative is questionable), when the SPLC puts a “hate” label on a person, group, or issue, it’s devastatingly effective because SPLC gives others the cover to shut down the debate by pointing to the SPLC label.
We saw that with the Family Research Council, with violent results.
Lee Stranahan also has a good post about how the SPLC “hate” label is shutting down discussion of Jihadist violence, Southern Poverty Law Center Provides Cover for Jihad Apologists.
It’s against this backdrop that I noted this video by Bill Maher via an approving reference from Andrew Sullivan, Dismembering Liberal Bullshit On Islam:
Bill Maher backs me up. I’m not Islamophobic; I’m trying to tell the truth and understand what happened last week.
(language warning):
SPLC does not have Maher on its anti-Muslim Hate Watch list even though his statements in the video, which he has made numerous times before, seem to fit squarely within SPLC’s definition. (For the record, I don’t think Maher should be on the list, even though he would be by the SPLC definition.)
It’s not hard to guess the reason. Maher’s base is SPLC’s base. Maher is a liberal with a very large megaphone, a bigger megaphone than SPLC. Maher could do more damage to SPLC’s fundraising than SPLC could do to Maher’s career.
Who is not on SPLC’s lists says as much about the politicized nature of SPLC as who is on the lists.
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Comments
Maher is an ass, but he gets credit here for speaking the truth.
These groups know who to protect and when to protect them. Hypocrisy is not a concern. It’s about power or access to power.
A: We LET the left co-opt the language. (‘Red states, blue states’ — how the hell did we fall for that?)
B: The left is tied intimately to radical Islam: ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
C: The the malignant clowns at the Southern Poverty Law Center have any effectiveness at all because we have not taken the lead and destroyed their credibility verbally or by treating them like the racist frauds they are.
D: Worse, I believe our own discussion is way behind the curve. We play catch-up to the left, while the left is playing major league propaganda. Collectively, we are on the propaganda effectiveness scale of a John Boehner, while the left has all stars.
It is worth noting that the left’s house of propaganda is a just house of cards — and their great symbol ‘Barack Obama’ is a joke waiting to be told. Start pulling out the bottom cards and telling the damn joke already
Yup.
The reason SPLC doesn’t label Maher a H8r is that no rich white liberal would send them a penny to fight Maher. He doesn’t scare them.
Klansmen, Aryan Nation nuts, militias, and Christian fundamentalists scare the pants off the liberal elites, so they get the scary label in SPLC fundraising appeals.
While most of SPLC’s historical narrative is smoke and mirrors (yes they brought a lawsuit which bankrupted the last little KKK group, which hastened their demise by a couple of years), today’s group is only about raising money, and has been for decades. And they are very good at it.
SPL’s existence is much more about raising money than being hatchet-men for America’s leftist mob. And a mob is what it is.
Treating the SPL as anything more than a group of race-baiting scammers on the left’s payroll (by way of our tax dollars) is as stupid as adopting the leftist idea of conservative states being ‘red’ states (the long-time color of Communism) and leftist states being ‘blue’ states (blue being the long time color of freedom and democracy.
Enough already!