A prof friend at the University of Delaware sent me this article this morning. I thought it might be interesting to those in this discussion.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/14/white-supremacy-turning-campus-speeches-and-leaflets
Re: #99
It is not just this one group, although that group has been empowered by other political shifts. What is the message that people hear when a prominent leader of a major political party calls out a political candidate for making a “textbook definition of a racist comment” but still endorses that candidate anyway? That is an example of giving away one’s voice.
There is one response from a politician that white supremacists are praising. That’s about as far as we can go without delving into politics, though.
"alwaysamom: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map
I don’t know if that indicates an increase but 917 groups is certainly frightening."
The SPLC founded by Morris Dees certainly began with good intentions but it has lost its way. It now deems everyone and everything a “hate group” if it doesn’t align exactly with its far left policies.
Case in point: In 2010, SPLC added the conservative Family Research Council to its list of hate groups. Now it’s a conservative group, but it doesn’t advocate hate or violence.
In early 2015, SPLC added Dr. Ben Carson to its list of hate groups!!! Dr. Ben Carson, for God’s sake!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (the former Muslim who speaks out against female genital mutilation) has been added to the SPLC’s hate group list. Ali has many death threats but the SPLC labels her the “hater”, and not those (of her former faith) who have made the threats against her.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is designated a hate group, although it spends most of its time defending free speech issues on campus.
The one issue i haven’t seen addressed is the anarchist who have now become part of protest group marches. These people don’t care about the issues of the protest march but want an excuse to riot, damage property and fight. These unpredictable people are why I would tell my kids to stay from any protest march now.
Also part of the calm at the Auburn protest were the police enforcing the law and ensuring people removed their mask or they would be arrested.
some won’t like the source but they show how the Auburn police helped keep the peace before the event started.
wondering if the police in Charlottesville were also given a stand down order by the civilian authorities.
That was apparently in response to anti-gay comments by an FRC leader, including advocacy of outlawing gay behavior: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35224225/ .
ADF is also anti-gay.
“White silence is violence” – Protest chant in Denver yesterday
“I escaped the Nazis once. You will not defeat me now” – A Holocaust-survivor’s sign in Brooklyn yesterday.
We can’t be silent. Period. End of story. Yes, I would approve of my children protesting on campus.
“Hate” doesn’t mean “violent.” It means “hate.”
The Family Research Council is an anti-gay organization.
They’re against: Gays in the military, gay marriage, gays working in schools, public businesses having to serve gays like any other customer, etc. They create propaganda to incite fear and shunning of gay people.
The combined result of their various positions is: They want gays to have a lower place in society than others, segregated out of certain opportunities and institutions.
In their opinion, that is being “religous” or “conservative.” To those whose freedom to live their lives as they please is threatened by those positions, it is hateful.
Every group that the SPLC tracks has an write up on the website. Google: site:splcenter.org and the name of the group or person you are interested in learning more about
You mean “pro-biblical faith”, in the case of Family Research Counsel, I think (though I’m not that familiar with it). And that’s ok.
Noted that the ridiculousness of Dr. Ben Carson (and Ali) being on the SPLC list is not addressed.
There are many groups devoted to advocating their particular issues and that’s fine. It is not the purpose of the First Amendment to silence unpopular views. So long as violence doesn’t occur, just ignore someone blathering on with whom you disagree. It’s a whole lot more effective, as the media has noted. Some would prefer to see violence, car bombings, building destruction and hospitalizations it seems, rather than simply ignore groups with views with which it disagrees.
I don’t care what sort of group wants to have its little meeting and speak. Unless it spills out onto the street and causes violence or shuts down the roads so people can’t get to work or the hospital, then have at it. I can do the same in my own location.
Not seeing the evidence that the Family Research Council encourages “fear and shunning of gay people”. It seems pretty pro-marriage on its Facebook page and seems to advocate for conservative interests, just as other groups advocate for liberal interests. Advocating for both is fine with me. I think we can all see that the Supreme Court has spoken on your issue.
At any rate, I won’t be sidetracked into a discussion of one particular organization, because my point was merely that the SPLC’s designation of hate groups seems pretty politically loaded, such as the inclusion of Dr. Ben Carson in 2015.
And the First Amendment protects free speech. Period. Don’t like it? Don’t listen. There are certainly many outlets on which I won’t waste time, as they are nonsensical in their myopic and distorted views.
I don’t want my kids anywhere near where violence and building destruction and car damage like Berkley and Baltimore and Ferguson are taking place. I suspect one would go anyway though.
Protesting generally does not change the minds of the general population. For instance, if I protest against something you believe in, chances are you wouldn’t care what I had to say, and depending on how violent my protest was, your position against me might even be strengthened. This is likely what happened to the white supremacists following the charlottesville incident – this group probably feels more emboldened now that they were given attention on the national stage. The counter-protests have forced them to defend themselves and their beliefs.
However, where I think protesting does have some merit is in influencing government policies that can work to restrain these unpopular movements. You can bet that government policymakers/representatives/etc. are, at the very least, much more aware now of how unpopular and unacceptable this movement is, given how much pushback it received from people and the media. If nobody showed up, and everyone had remained silent, chances are it would have been mildly condemned and then forgotten about a few days later.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Small correction to that Fox News report - Auburn does not have University Police, the City of Auburn Police have jurisdiction over the campus.
Godwin has posted today that Godwin’s Law does not apply here–since they are actual Nazis.
Edit, I see @anomander already posted this!
Interesting when posters show their concern for and spend their energy posting about SPLC criticisms, Ferguson, BerkEley, instead of Charlottesville and white supremacists…
The demonstration in Charlottesville was organized because the city, like many southern cities, is removing Confederate statuary and renaming parks. Good for Charlottesville. These misfits know they are losing ground, and they are trying to mount a comeback. I don’t see them making much progress.
There aren’t any nations on the planet that have removed racism from their populations completely and it isn’t likely here. Because of the internet we are hearing about these groups just as we are hearing more about grisly crimes and freak accidents. People are fascinated by it in a sick and voyeuristic way. The goal should be to shine enough light on them to show how ridiculous (yes, worthy of ridicule) they are, but not treat them as though they are a major national force.
I do not see how one can look at history–Ghandi, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement–and say that protesting doesn’t change minds. No, protesting ALONE may not change all minds and hearts, but it is part of the picture.
Were these white hate groups going on campuses in the past?
Yes, because of the internet we are hearing more about them but it also gives them more organization and reach and they use it for recruiting, as I’ve mentioned before not unlike Isis.
Even the military warns and trains there recruiters and officers to be on the lookout and what to watch for.
Are you an attorney, cobra, one who specializes in Constitutional Law?
Something to think about for folks who state they’d forbid their kids from attending protests in college and think protests make no difference:
If everyone from past generations followed that mantra:
We in the US would still be under the dominion of the British Crown without the Revolutionaries who made up no more than around 20% of the colonial population at the start of the American Revolution…and likely one which the monarch wouldn’t feel as constrained to refrain from interfering with day to day politics as George III attempted with Lord North.
We’d still have an electoral system in which only landowners who owned land worth more than a minimum cutoff amount were allowed as was the case in the first few decades of the Republic. Sad thing is there’s still some folks today who advocate a return to this undemocratic system.
Slavery would have taken much longer time to die out or worse, still exist without the protests/publications/active civil disobedience(Helping runaway slaves escape to Canada on the Underground railroad which WAS ILLEGAL in the antebellum period) of Abolitionists…especially in the south where secessionists actually cited the right to maintain slavery as one reason for leaving the union after not too long after Lincoln was elected.
Women would not have gotten the right to vote in the US in 1920 without the protests/publications/active civil disobedience of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. And contrary to popular belief, some of those protests/acts of civil disobedience weren’t genteel or polite by any means contrary to popular belief.
De jure segregation, sundown towns, and other forms of legal discrimination would not only still exist, but be much more normalized in the mainstream than what transpired after the Civil Rights Protests/activism of the '50s/'60s.
Such protests were considered so threatening by the Southern White establishment of the period that even peaceful protests were labeled “violent” and “against law and order” by them and their sympathizers of the day. And they reacted accordingly with extreme violence as shown by LEOs like “Bull” Connor.
but recruiters are also looking out for gang members, or people belonging to any extremist group who are trying to have their members join the military and then come back and train the other members of the extremist group. Gangs were choosing specific members to join the military and would ensure these individuals would not go afoul of the law so they would pass the background checks.
This isn’t a recent issue either and has been discussed since the 90s within the military.