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The SPLC began when Morris Dees recognized the lucrative potential of the '72 McGovern campaign's mailing list. Exactly when the SPLC jumped the shark has long been a subject of debate, but it was certainly at some point prior to their identification of columnist Don Feder (!) as a menace to society. Potok's ironic quote appears in a story that portrays Michelle Malkin as a menace to society, and reasonable people have begun to notice the Potokian pattern. Basically, if you're a conservative and you haven't been denounced by Mark Potok yet, you need to stop goofing off and get to work. I've been on Potok's Menace To Society List since May 2000, when I published a feature article based on an interview with Kansas author Laird Wilcox:

"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."

That quote is from Wilcox's book, The Watchdogs, which among other things explains what he describes as the "links-and-ties" method by which the SPLC and similar outfits create the false impression of ironclad connections between groups and individuals based on incidental associations. Wilcox is himself a veteran researcher of extremist "fringe" movements, whose records comprise The Wilcox Collection On Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas Library. Unlike Morris Dees, however, Wilcox doesn't have the McGovern donor list or an ax-grinding agenda against Republicans, so he never gets quoted by the Washington Post.

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A video clip of Jerry Kammer by Media Matters: he charges the SPLC is mainly about raking in the money: Morris Dees “learned that he can take in more money by exaggerating the size and menace of the Klan”  — “Jihad for dollars.” Kammer points out, many of the most trenchant critics of the SPLC have been on the left.

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ORIGINAL: DomYngBlk

Oh, wonderful another white male that things racism is dead. You think that all the African Americans hung by a rope in the last century were at the hands of the KKK? Think again bubba.

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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

Hunky, when I get a spare six months to read the patriot act, I will probably find that Ron Paul is only a few words away from meeting the legal definition of a terrorist. (notice how quiet he's been lately)

HEY, all you refined researchers can do me a big favor. With your internet searching skills perhaps you can find out who actually wrote the patriot act. I'd like to know who wrote the equivalent of at least a trilogy of novels in a matter of days.

T

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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

"Interesting how the only websites that come up regarding Morris Dees in a negative light are those of wingnuts"

And what tells you this ? Is it something in the URL or do you have a seriously advanced browser or what ?

We have .com, .org. .gov, .edu, .us, so now we need .nut ? That would sort everything out really fast.

That statement almost asserts that everyone on Dees' side is an articulate, understanding, open minded and logically thinking mature person. Everyone else is a knuckle dragging, beer guzzling, gun toting, pickup truck driving hillbilly named bubba. Is that what you were trying to say ?

Well in that case, GWB saved the US oil industry and there were no mysterious deaths in AK when Clinton was governor. The Kennedys didn't run moonshine, they were doctors delivering medicine. FDR had no reason to believe that the Japanese would dare react to his sanctions and embargos. And Oliver North was only guilty of being innocent. Further Carter's protecting the great humanitarian known as the Shah of Iran was based only on humanitrian goals, purely altruistic in nature, having nothing to do with money.

Y'all sound like everybody in the world is a philanthropist and everyone is good and kind to one another and I must be fucked up here. Maybe instead of getting on the same page we all need to get on the same TV news channel, because for some reason I am seeing something different.

T