The CNN appearance of Lou Dobbs' guest, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC].
By way of introducing the segment, Dobbs states that he has not caught the "nuances" of an earlier Potok assertion that verged on labelling him, Dobbs, as a racist. Potok denies that Dobbs was called a racist, going on to focus on Arizona's November, 2004 vote on Proposition 200,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/28/ldt.01.html [abbreviated]
Potok: "...But the point is that just a couple of weeks before that bill, in fact, went to the polls, before that proposition went to the polls, a woman named Virginia Abernethy was appointed to head their national advisory board. This became immediately a scandal really Arizona-wide. Virtually every paper and newscast in Arizona covered the fact that she was, in fact, a member of the white supremacist group. Or in her own words, a self-described white separatist. This really affected what was said in Arizona. It was on all the debates, on all the front pages."
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Notes:
On wonders, first, to which hate group does Potok refer? In April, 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of 800 hate groups. These include the Young Americans for Freedom of Michigan State University and also Minnesotans for Immigration Reform. The SPLC claims to distribute their hate group list to over 50,000 law enforcement agencies, schools, and universities.
In Arizona, I was appointed to be the National Advisor to Protect Arizona Now [PAN], which ultimately succeeded in bringing Proposition 200 the the vote [November, 2004] and passing its three provision with a 56% majority. The provisions were 1] Proof of citizenship must be shown when registering to vote; 2] A photo ID must be shown when voting; 3] Only those entitled to receive welfare may receive it. As National Advisor, I spoke to reporters for foreign news media, often in Spanish. In the November, 2004, vote, 47% of the Hispanic vote in support of Prop. 200. [For comparison, in the national election of 2004, President George Bush received 34% of the Hispanic vote.]
The SPLC sees "separatism" as evil. In fact, separatism refers to belief in the free association of persons and recognizes the sociological principle that people spontaneously cluster in groups that are perceived as similar to themselves. Examples of formal separatist associations include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples [NAACP], La Raza Unida, B'nai Brith and minority housing on college campuses. Examples of informal associations include ethnic neighborhoods such as "little Odessa" in Brooklyn and "little Havana" in Miami.
The SPLC is itself one of the nation's foremost "hate groups" -- a term of art with which they label others. The SPLC lists 800 "hate groups" including 25 in Michigan and most recently Young Americans for Freedom [YAF] at Michigan State University. YAF and Michigan State's Young Republicans came into the SPLC's crosshairs for bringing in Congressman Tom Tancredo to speak on immigration, an event that the open-borders lobby attempted to cancel and did protest by picketing and vandalizing cars. http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=40212........................................
Excerpt, April 26, 2007 Letter to Kalispel, Montana School Board at the request of a parent:
The SPLC is regarded in some quarters as a genuine hate group in its own right. In so far as they have a fine-sounding name, you ask how this can be so.
In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, collects millions from trusting donors while flagrantly distributing school and police force training manuals that disproportionately depict European-Americans as exploitative, intolerant, and criminal [Silverstein, 2000; Tharpe, Series on the SPLC. The Montgomery Advertiser, 1995.] The SPLC spends untold amounts in monitoring and attempting to destroy the reputations of persons in academia, journalism, and other positions in order to prevent political perspectives contrary to their own from gaining a public forum. The SPLC's Mark Potok even insinuated that so well-regarded a news analyst as CNN's Lou Dobbs is a "racist."
For their series critical of the SPLC, The Montgomery Advertiser became a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. The editor, Jim Tharpe, was himself a Nieman Fellow in 1988-90. Complete references to The Advertiser and Harper's Magazine articles are below.
With best regards,
Virginia Deane Abernethy, Ph.D.
References:
Silverstein, Ken. The Church of Morris Dees. Harper’s Magazine , November 2000.
Tharpe, Jim [Ed]. Series on Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC]. The Montgomery Advertiser, 1995.
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The following is a Longer TRANSCRIPT of
Mark Potok on LouDobbs Show, CNN, March 28, 2007 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/28/ldt.01.html .
DOBBS: Wow. What are you saying about me? Are you calling me a racist? Are you calling me a liar? What are you doing there? It's a little nuanced for me.
POTOK: No. It's unrelated to -- I don't think you're a racist at all, and we've not argued that. You know what, we are really saying, Lou, is that your show, which is an important show which plays in an hour seven days a week, that is, you know, commonly seen by the nation as a leading news hour, your show, I think, covers a movement that, in effect, is not real.
In other words, you simply do not cover the unsavory aspects of this movement. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the goals of the anti-illegal immigration movement. So in my opinion, there are numerous instances in which the Dobbs show, in which your show, has simply not covered major developments in this case.
DOBBS: Like what?
POTOK: I think, for instance, a very good example is the way the show treated the Proposition 200 battle in 2004 in Arizona. As I imagine people will remember, this was essentially proposition which would limit very severely any kind of benefits given to undocumented immigrants.
DOBBS: And that bill won passage by the people of Arizona.
POTOK: Absolutely.
DOBBS: In point of fact.
POTOK: Absolutely. But the point is that just a couple of weeks before that bill, in fact, went to the polls, before that proposition went to the polls, a woman named Virginia Abernethy was appointed to head their national advisory board. This became immediately a scandal really Arizona-wide. Virtually every paper and newscast in Arizona covered the fact that she was, in fact, a member of the white supremacist group. Or in her own words, a self-described white separatist. This really affected what was said in Arizona. It was on all the debates, on all the front pages.
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News Story
Reference: http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=40212
Law center lists YAF as \'hate group\'
Published March 15, 2007
by JOEY NOWAK
A list of national hate groups produced by an internationally known civil rights organization now includes the name of MSU\'s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, the first university-affiliated group to be placed on the list.
The Southern Poverty Law Center\'s annual Hate Group list, which names more than 800 groups in the country and 25 in Michigan, is predominantly symbolic and does not imply any consequences or penalties.
The list is released to approximately 50,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide that uses the list as a tool for monitoring hate groups, said Heidi Beirich, deputy director of the Intelligence Project, which monitors hate and extremist activity through the law center.
Beirich said three of the main reasons MSU\'s YAF was placed on the list were its constant use of slur words the proposal that the governanc! e for MSU to be white supremacist and its \"constant immigrant bashing.\"
The MSU College Republicans and YAF were in the spotlight for bringing Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo to MSU to speak about immigration last semester. The Tancredo event was protested, and students reported assaults and the vandalization of vehicles.
YAF also has been in the news for attempting to sponsor \"Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day\" on campus. After much controversy and debate, the event was canceled.
\"It is evident to any fair observer that YAF does not deserve to be on this list,\" YAF adviser William Allen wrote in an e-mail. \"Unfortunately, the standards (SPLC co-founder) Morris Dees adheres to clearly no longer apply in the work of what has been a highly valuable organization with exacting integrity.\"
YAF Chairman Kyle Bristow said the organization \"might file a lawsuit for character defamation.\" He called! the SPLC \"disgusting\" and extremely \"left-wing\" and sai d it was simply trying to discourage conservative activism.
\"They don\'t have a right to compare us to Nazis or the KKK when we\'re not like that,\" Bristow said.
Other Michigan groups on the list include the National Socialist Movement in Grand Rapids and the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Kalamazoo.
\"I really don\'t take the SPLC for very much,\" MSU College Republicans Chairman Jeff Wiggins said.
\"I see them as more of a left-wing organization, anyway. They\'re prone to bias.\"
Beirich stressed that it was MSU\'s chapter of the organization being added to the list, not the nationwide group. A group does not have to be violent to be considered hateful, she said.
\"In the case of national YAF, they don\'t have any of these principles or beliefs at all,\" Beirich said. \"It\'s a totally legit conservative outfit. Nothing they believe has anything to d! o with what Kyle Bristow says. I don\'t even understand the relationship between the two groups.\"
Terry Denbow, MSU\'s spokesman, said the views of an external organization do not affect the action MSU takes pertaining to its anti-discrimination policy.
\"The criteria established for registered student organizations are criteria that the institution must create and abide by, as must the student organizations,\" he said.
\"I know of no violation of the criteria at this time. Once you start allowing external groups to establish criteria, that begins a slippery slope within the free marketplace of ideas.\"
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said the university is trying to get more information about why the group was placed on the list.
\"It seems unusual of all the YAF chapters that this one was selected,\" Simon said.
Both Bristow and Allen said YAF\'s future ! plans will not be hindered by the SPLC attention and YAF is not concer ned.
\"I would prefer that it had not happened; I believe that these students will one day find it necessary to explain this in forums where it will be unpleasant to do so,\" Allen said. \"It is a slur upon their characters far more than it is any comment upon their operations.\"
Last year, Bristow was ousted from his position as ASMSU Student Assembly representative of James Madison College.
\"During the course of his tenure with ASMSU, he made many controversial statements about what he stood for that his constituents didn\'t like,\" Mike Leahy, a representative of the College of Social Science, said. \"He was legitimately elected and legitimately removed.\"
Beirich said the list of hate groups would be released in April and could be found in the SPLC Report and on its Web site, www.splcenter.org.
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=40212
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