From: Michael Smith
I've vaguely heard of this organization over the years, but know next to nothing about it. Recently I happened upon a rather shrill Chicken Little piece from one of their staffers, Mark Potok, who runs something they call their "Intelligence Report": http://www.alternet.org/story/145869/right-wing_rage%3A_hate_groups%2C_vigilantes_and_conspiracists_on_the_verge_of_violence or: http://tinyurl.com/ruitcaelum Anybody have any experiences with or observations about SPLC? I wasn't very impressed by Potok's piece, and "Intelligence Report" has an almost Larouche-ite ring to it. ^^^^^^^^ CB: I've been an anti-Klan activist for about 30 years. In my opinion, SPLC is highly reputable and courageous. It does the working class a tremendous service They won a lawsuit against the KKK, and won their building from them. They publish a regular newsletter. Their empirical work on the status of fascistic-racist groups is helpful over the years. Do you have any basis for questioning the claims in the Potok article as "Chicken Little-like" ? Was there not a surge in fascistic racist organizations in 2009 ? You must not be much involved in anti-Klan-type organization work if you've only vaguely heard of SPLC. Your comments seems to be tending toward "anti-KKK- lite", i.e. ..ooh how can I characterize it ? : tending not to see racism when it's there; and tending not to be alarmed when alarm is called for; downplaying fascistic racist dangers because "that's what the Communists do to try to get support for the Democratic Party." That's a widespread phenomenon among uhhh. you know (smile). The style on this isssue is like going through the motions of being anti-racist because it's hard to be left without being anti-racist, but not seeing a lot of racism just like post-Reaganite American masses don't; Colorblindness and a blase attitude in the area of fascistic racist groups. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
