The New Anti-Racist Racists

[Michael Ejercito]

The New Anti-Racist Racists
by Douglas Murray
October 28, 2016 at 5:00 am
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9210/splc-racists

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There is a trait campaigning groups have that is well known. Once they have
achieved their objective, they continue. Usually it is because there are
people with salaries at stake, pensions, perks and more.

Suddenly the SPLC seemed to spy a new fascism. The SPLC saw this new fascism
in people who objected to people flying planes into skyscrapers,
decapitating journalists and aid workers and blowing up the finish line of
marathons.

One got the impression that it had become immensely useful for some people
to be able to smear those concerned about Islamic fundamentalism, and try to
make them akin to Nazis. The only other movements who find this equally
useful are, of course, Islamic extremists.

Here is this "anti-racist" organisation, largely made up of white men who
present themselves as being anti-racists, and yet who spend their time
attacking Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a black immigrant woman. At the top of any list
of "hate-groups," the SPLC must in future be sure to place itself.

The SPLC's list of "anti-Muslim activists" also includes a practising
Muslim, Maajid Nawaz, one of the most principled and courageous people
around calling out the extremists in his faith for their bigotry and hatred.
He does so, like Hirsi Ali, at no small risk to himself.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC), based in Montgomery, Alabama, has
struck again. The self-appointed boundary-markers and policemen of free
discussion have issued what they call a "Field Guide" to help "guide" the
media in "countering prominent anti-Muslim extremists." It is hard to know
where to start with such idiocy, so let us start from the beginning.

The SPLC was founded in 1971, ostensibly to fight for civil rights among
other good causes. By the end of its first decade it was targeting the KKK
and other racist organisations. So far so good. But like many a campaigning
organisation, they experienced the happy blow of basically winning their
argument. By the 1990s, there were mercifully few racist groups in America
going about unchallenged. When a member of the KKK cropped up everybody in
civil society pretty much understood that here was a bad person who should
not be given a free pass.

But there is an odd trait in campaigning groups that is well known. Once
they have achieved their objective, they continue. Why is this so? Usually
it is because there are people with salaries at stake, pensions, perks and
more. Campaigning for a particular thing or against a particular thing has
become their way of life and their means of earning. And so they find a way
to continue. For some years, the SPLC staggered around in such a manner, as
pointless and purposeless an organisation as could be imagined.

And then in the last decade something happened to this increasingly obscure
institution. It is not for me to speculate why or how this happened, whether
it had to do with new staff or new money, but the focus of the organisation
changed. Suddenly the SPLC seemed to spy a new fascism. They did not spy it
in people who flew planes into skyscrapers, decapitated American journalists
and aid workers or blew up the finish line of marathons. No, the SPLC saw it
somewhere else. The SPLC saw this new fascism in people who objected to
people flying planes into skyscrapers, decapitating journalists and aid
workers and blowing up the finish line of marathons. For the SPLC, the big
threat on the horizon was not Islamists but those people who objected to
Islamists -- that is, people they called "Islamophobes." In the same way,
they did not seem to have any particular problem with jihad, but they
developed a huge problem with people they called "counter-jihadists." To
their existing lists of designated "hate-groups" they now added such people.

More honest groups might have balked at such a stance. More informed groups
would have walked a thousand miles from such a stance. But the SPLC did no
such thing. In fact, one got the impression that it had become immensely
useful for some people to be able to smear those concerned about Islamic
fundamentalism and try to make them akin to Nazis. The only other movements
who find this equally useful are, of course, Islamic extremists.

The media today in America are increasingly wary of Islamic extremists. Most
journalists do not want the parameters of what should be discussed dictated
by Islamic fanatics. Whereas an organisation such as the SPLC, which did
something good forty years ago, is the sort of institution that the media is
for the time-being happy to hear from. Perhaps after this latest development
that will no longer be the case.

The SPLC's latest production is disgraceful, discrediting and sloppy even by
its own increasingly disgraceful, discredited and sloppy standards. For this
publication, they have listed "Fifteen anti-Muslim activists," most likely
in the hope that they will scare the media off inviting them on, or the
wider public from being allowed to listen to them.

Among the list is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The SPLC lists a set of allegedly
outrageous things that she has said, which have appeared in such obscure and
extreme venues as The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart. They mention in passing -- as though it were an incidental
mishap -- that Hirsi Ali's film-making partner, Theo van Gogh, was
slaughtered on an Amsterdam street by a jihadist, with a death-threat to
Hirsi Ali pinned into van Gogh's dying body. But they still clearly cannot
imagine why anybody would have a problem with such a thing. One wonders how
the staff of the SPLC would feel if one of their colleagues was murdered in
such a manner? Doubtless they would shrug it off. Yet it remains that case
that here is this "anti-racist" organisation, largely made up of white men
who present themselves as being anti-racists, and yet who spend their time
attacking a black immigrant woman.

Hirsi Ali is of course well known for being an ex-Muslim. But the SPLC's
list of "anti-Muslim activists" also includes a practising Muslim. Of
course, if Maajid Nawaz were an Islamic extremist then SPLC would have
nothing to say about him. But Maajid Nawaz is not an extremist -- he is one
of the most principled and courageous people around calling out the
extremists in his faith for their bigotry and hatred. He does so, like Hirsi
Ali, at no small risk to himself. If the jihadists within Islam are ever
going to be defeated, it will be because of Muslims like Nawaz, who are
willing to argue for reform on liberal, progressive, pluralistic and
democratic grounds.

Yet for the SPLC, this Muslim is not just not the right type of Muslim -- he
is "anti-Muslim." The charges that SPLC levels against Nawaz are (this is
not satire) that he has (a) co-operated with, rather than worked against,
the British police (b) suggested that customers in banks should have to show
their faces (c) once failed to abide by the most hardline interpretation of
Islamic blasphemy law (d) once visited a strip club on his stag-night.


The Southern Poverty Law Center decided to turn itself into a racist
organization, with its attacks on principled and courageous critics of
radical Islamism such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left), a prominent ex-Muslim
writer, and Maajid Nawaz (right), a moderate practising Muslim writer, radio
host and politician. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)
Who knows what lapses in personal decorum have occurred among the staff of
the SPLC? Perhaps one of them once had extra-marital intercourse? Or perhaps
one of them once consumed a glass of Merlot, in contravention of the
hardest-line interpretations of Islamic scripture? Who knows, but who the
hell would anybody else be to judge, and who the hell do the SPLC think they
are? It seems that the SPLC has decided to turn itself from an anti-racist
organisation into a racist one. An organisation that used to prosecute white
racists has ended up attacking black and Muslim immigrants. At the top of
any list of "hate-groups," the SPLC must in future be sure to place itself.

Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is
based in London, England.