The SPLC smear machine is being funded by liberal billionaires -- why?

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/08/29/splc-smear-machine-is-being-
funded-by-liberal-billionaires-why.html

In a scathing August 24 New York Times op-ed, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-
born feminist, author, scholar and former Dutch parliament member,
lamented that the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “has hit the
jackpot” in huge donations in the aftermath of the violence in
Charlottesville. Hirsi Ali noted that Apple pledged $1 million to the
SPLC; JP Morgan Chase & Co. half a million; George and Amal Clooney $1
million.

While Hirsi Ali condemned Nazism, white supremacy and racial bigotry as
having no place in a civilized society, she made it clear that
contributing to the SPLC is the wrong way to combat this poison.

As I explained in a 2016 Fox News Opinion article, the Southern Poverty
Law Center is a left wing smear machine that tries to denigrate
conservative individuals and organizations by lumping them together with
white nationalists, KKK members and neo-Nazis on so-called hate lists. In
a recent Frontpage Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield described the SPLC
as “one of the longest running malicious jokes on the internet.”

Conservatives targeted by the SPLC include American Enterprise Institute
scholar Charles Murray, Accuracy in Media President Cliff Kinkaid (who
SPLC has singled out for challenging global warming), the Family Research
Council, and WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah.

Smearing anyone who speaks out against radical Islam is one of the SPLC’s
priorities. Accordingly, it has placed on its hate lists Jihad Watch and
its Director Robert Spencer; American Freedom Defense Initiative and its
director Pamela Geller; and Maajid Nawaz a Muslim reformer who runs
Quilliam, a London-based organization that aims to counter jihadism and
extremism. My organization, the Center for Security Policy and our
president Frank Gaffney, also are on the SPLC’s hate lists due to our
principled stand against the Global Jihad Movement.

Despite how transparently political the SPLC’s hate lists are, the main
stream media regularly cites them as authoritative sources.

Last October, the SPLC added Ayaan Hirsi Ali to its hate list, an
appalling act that ignored the decades of intimidation, hatred and fear
Ms. Hirsi Ali has endured from radical Islamists. This decision also
reflected the SPLC’s disgraceful practice of turning a blind eye to the
violent hatred and extremism of radical Islam, which Hirsi Ali noted in
her op-ed includes weekly killing sprees around the world, justifying
wife-beating, enslavement of female unbelievers, murdering gay people and
virulent anti-Semitism.

The violence, hatred and intimidation radical Islamists have inflicted on
Ayaan Hirsi Ali have been extreme. She was subjected to female genital
mutilation (FGM) at the age of five when she lived in Somalia. She fled
to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage. After becoming a Dutch
citizen, Hirsi Ali was elected to the Dutch Parliament and began working
on a film with filmmaker Theo van Gogh titled “Submission” on the
oppression of women under Islam. Van Gogh was assassinated by a radical
Islamist for making this film. After other radical Islamists threatened
to kill Hirsi Ali for her work on the film, she was forced to live in a
secret location in the Netherlands under high security.

Hirsi Ali moved to the United States in 2006 and is now a fellow at
Harvard University’s JFK School of Government and a Research Fellow at the
Hoover Institution. She has written two best-selling books, "Infidel"
(which chronicles her life) and "Heretic: Why Islam Needs Reformation
Now." Because of continuing threats against her life by radical
Islamists, Hirsi Ali lives with round-the-clock security and does not
travel without an armed security detail.

Despite how transparently political the SPLC’s hate lists are, the main
stream media regularly cites them as authoritative sources. CNN recently
ran a story about hate groups in the U.S. citing these hate lists which it
was forced to partially retract after a backlash by conservatives.
Because of this CNN article and other recent misleading press stories
driven by the SPLC, PayPal suspended the accounts of Robert Spencer,
Pamela Geller and their organizations. Fortunately, another backlash
forced PayPal to quickly reverse this decision.

Targeting conservatives as haters has been very profitable for the SPLC.
It uses its hate lists to generate huge donations, in part through a
sophisticated direct mail fundraising operation. Based on its 2010 tax
return, the liberal website Daily Kos criticized the SPLC in 2012 for its
enormous wealth, offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands, and
ownership in several foreign corporations.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali concluded her op-ed by cheering efforts to stand up to
neo-Nazi displays like what happened in Charlottesville. But she urged
Apple, JP Morgan and the Hollywood A-list to find more trustworthy and
deserving partners to work with other than the odious SPLC to counter this
and all other forms of political violence and intolerance.

Let’s hope Apple and George Clooney haven't mailed in their checks yet.


Fred Fleitz is senior vice president for policy and programs with the
Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank. Follow him on
Twitter@FredFleitz.


--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party has run out of gas.

Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for ending the disaster of the
Obama presidency.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.

ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.

Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.

Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.