May 9, 2000
Researcher says hate
'fringe' isn't as
crowded as claimed
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
They collect millions of dollars for their crusades
against hate groups, but do so-called "watchdog"
organizations exaggerate the dangers posed by
neo-Nazis and other racist movements?
Laird Wilcox thinks so. A Kansas author and
editor who has spent decades researching what he
calls "fringe" groups, Mr. Wilcox says the total
numbers of active, organized extremists on the right is
not much more than 10,000.
"Because of their nature, it's very difficult to come
up with firm numbers" for such groups, Mr. Wilcox
says, but estimates "the militias are probably 5,000
or 6,000 people. The Ku Klux Klan are down to
about 3,000 people. And the combined membership
of all neo-Nazi groups are probably just 1,500 to
2,000."
In a nation of more than 270 million people, the
small size of such fringe groups represents a tiny
danger, yet they are the target of what Mr. Wilcox
calls an "industry" of watchdog groups.
"There is an anti-racist industry entrenched in the
United States that has attracted bullying, moralizing
fanatics, whose identity and livelihood depend upon
growth and expansion of their particular kind of
victimization," Mr. Wilcox wrote in his 1999 book
"The Watchdogs."
Naming such organizations as the Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery,
Ala., Mr. Wilcox claims "the anti-racist movement
has become a massive extortion racket."
The SPLC, founded in 1971, has amassed an
endowment of $113 million through the efforts of
co-founder Morris Dees, who served as finance
director for Democratic Sen. George McGovern's
1972 presidential campaign. According to the
Atlanta Constitution, he "then used the campaign's
donor list of 700,000 liberals for the law center."
The SPLC has consistently exaggerated the size
and numbers of extremist groups, says Mr. Wilcox,
who for more than 20 years has edited the "Guide to
the American Right" (now in its 24th edition) and the
"Guide to the American Left" (in its 21st edition),
each of which lists hundreds of organizations.
In 1992, for instance, SPLC's Klanwatch division
claimed there were "346 white-supremacy groups
operating" in the United States. But, says Mr.
Wilcox, "in terms of viable groups . . . the actual
figure is about 50."
Even when it recently announced that the number
of hate groups had declined, the SPLC claimed "the
reported decline in numbers of groups may be
deceiving" in part because of a trend of consolidation
in which "smaller groups disbanded or joined larger
organizations."
SPLC spokesman Mark Potok said Mr. Wilcox
has "had an ax to grind for a great many years. He
spends his time attacking other people who do
anti-racist work, calling them everything from
Communists to opportunistic slime."
Mr. Wilcox's criticism has been "used by
right-wing extremists very frequently as a vehicle to
attack us," Mr. Potok said.
But Mr. Wilcox is not the only critic of the SPLC.
Former employees of the organization have called the
SPLC "a joke" and "evil," and have called Mr. Dees
"amoral." Former black employees have claimed they
were discriminated against by the SPLC, according
to press accounts.
The SPLC has also been criticized by left-wing
writer Alexander Cockburn, who said Mr. Dees
raised millions "by frightening elderly liberals that the
heirs of Adolf Hitler are about to march down Main
Street."
In "The Watchdogs," Mr. Wilcox chronicles
several recent scandals involving anti-racist groups,
including:
� The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which
monitors anti-Semitism, was scandalized in 1993
when the FBI accused one of its paid investigators,
Roy Bullock, of using confidential information from
San Francisco police inspector Tom Gerard to
compile computerized files on political groups.
ADL espionage targets included such liberal
groups as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, as well as labor
unions and environmental groups. More recently, the
ADL was the target of a lawsuit by a Colorado
couple who accused the group of defaming them
after an ADL official accused them of "anti-Semitic
harassment." On April 28, a federal jury in Denver
awarded the couple $10.5 million in the suit.
� The Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR), an
Atlanta-based group begun in 1979 as the National
Anti-Klan Network, sparked a national media
uproar in 1996 by claiming "a well-organized
white-supremacist movement" was responsible for an
"epidemic" of arson attacks against black churches in
the South.
Within months, journalists and law enforcement
officials had concluded that church-burnings had
actually declined, that racism was a motive in less
than half of the arsons, and that white churches were
more often targeted by arsonists.
� Political Research Associates (PRA) is based in
Cambridge, Mass. In 1992, the Rev. Francis S.
Stryokowski was forced to resign after PRA analyst
Chip Berlet "conclusively identified" the 76-year-old
Catholic priest as having attended a 1988 meeting of
the "Anti-Communist Confederation of Polish
Freedom Fighters."
A former Klan leader, Bob Miles, gave an
anti-Semitic speech at the meeting in Salem, Mass.,
though Mr. Stryokowski later claimed he "did not
know ahead of time" about the nature of the meeting.
Mr. Berlet, who noted that he has himself been
critical of some anti-racist groups in the past,
accused Mr. Wilcox of mischaracterizing PRA's
activities.
"Laird Wilcox is not an accurate or ethical
reporter," he said. "He simply can't tolerate people
who are his competition in this field."
But Mr. Wilcox says what most watchdog groups
have in common is a tendency to use what he calls
"links and ties" to imply connections between
individuals and groups.
"It's kind of like three Catholics hold up a bank in
San Francisco, and you blame the pope," he said,
citing the Oklahoma City bombing as an instance
where the "links and ties" method was used to blame
militia groups for the bombing.
"Militias had nothing to do with Oklahoma City,
absolutely nothing," he said, citing the massive FBI
investigation that turned up "absolutely no tangible
link between [convicted bomber Timothy] McVeigh
and any militia group."
The "links and ties" of anti-racist groups reveal
their own political agendas, Mr. Wilcox says. In "The
Watchdogs," he details how the Center for
Democratic Renewal was an offshoot of the
Communist Workers Party, a Maoist splinter of the
1960s "New Left" movement.
It is not surprising that these groups use
accusations of extremism, according to David
Horowitz of the Center for the Study for Popular
Culture.
"The extreme left . . . needs the extreme right to
justify its own agendas," says Mr. Horowitz, a former
leftist who is now a popular conservative author.
"That's the way it worked in the '60s."
Left-wing groups "exaggerate these dangers" from
white supremacists, Mr. Horowitz said. "Who has
more influence, David Duke or Louis Farrakhan?" he
said, comparing the Louisiana ex-Klansman to the
Nation of Islam leader, both of whom have
frequently been accused of anti-Semitism.
Watchdog groups may actually help the hate
groups they claim to oppose, says free-lance writer
Jim Redden, by generating media coverage of
extremists.
"My belief is that there aren't that many hard-core
racist activists in this country," said Mr. Redden, who
has covered the activities of extremists in the Pacific
Northwest. "And . . . even with their Internet sites,
they're very limited in their ability to get their ideas
before the public, so the mass media coverage of
their movement does more to publicize their beliefs
than what they do themselves."
http://www.washtimes.com/culture/default-20005922336.htm
--
Bard
"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the
lowest crime rates in the country."
-- Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry
We are a Nation of the Rule of Law;
however, I, for one, will not be Ruled by the Lawless.
To All Elected Officials:
"Stop stealing my earnings
that you use to give to
those whom you know will
vote for you."
There's not a dime bit of difference between a DemoRat and a RepubRat,
they're simply two wings of the same bird of prey which pecks at your
earnings while insidiously devouring your Freedom.
BUCHANAN-Reform
http://gopatgo2000.com/default.htm
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