November 15, 2006

Academic McCarthyism from the SPLC?

Say it ain't so! However, consider the case of Kevin MacDonald, a Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach. If he didn't have tenure he'd probably be looking for another job, because the Southern Poverty Law Center has mounted a vigorous campaign against him which appears to be all or almost all based on smears. (The SPLC is also indirectly linked to the Mexican government and is also involved in a Georgia lawsuit which would have the effect of helping Mexico send us more of their citizens.)

For the shortest possible summary of this case, take a look at the section concerning MacDonald from the "Thirteen Scariest People in America" (alternet.org/story/43586); that section was written by two people from the SPLC. Then, take a look at Kevin MacDonald's rebuttal. Then, for the longer version, see "Heidi Does Long Beach: The SPLC vs. Academic Freedom".

If you see any MSM sources presenting the SPLC as a trustworthy source, please at least send them the first link and suggest they do a bit more research.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at November 15, 2006 03:29 AM

Comments

Links to the SPLC exposes by marxist Alexander Cockburn and the liberal Harper's magazine here and here.

Posted by: perroazul del norte at November 15, 2006 08:39 AM

One of the many indications that we are living in a Dark Age is that the sleazy gang of witch-hunters know as the SPLC is still considered by the MSM to be a respectable, mainstream organization.

>A HREF="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j062399.html">Libertarian Justin Raimondo on the SPLC at the time of Clinton's war on Serbia.
(...)
In the vanguard of this rhetorical shift is the veteran witch-hunter and professional character assassin Morris Dees, whose Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has become the premier rightist-baiting outfit in the country. Dees has constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which virtually all of the groups and individuals to the right of William F. Buckley, Jr., are part of some vast interconnected network of cells, a "leaderless resistance" allegedly invented by Louis Beam, an obscure right-wing "theoretician" who Dees and his "researchers" imagine to be a kind of far right Svengali. The SPLC peddles a brand of conspiracism just as garbled and elaborately wrongheaded as some of the wackos they "investigate," and in this sense the group is a scam, a fundraising machine that pays Dees an exorbitant salary. As his former partner, Millard Farmer, put it to the Progressive: "I thought he was sincere. I thought the Southern Poverty Law Center raised money to do good for poor people, not simply to accumulate wealth." In another sense, however, the SPLC is deadly dangerous, a private spy agency that runs an "intelligence project" aimed at political dissent, This was brought home in an article in their quarterly Intelligence Report, "Kosovo and the Far Right" – a vicious attempt to smear the antiwar movement as racist, anti-Semitic, an evil plot by the Ku Klux Klan and Slobodan Milosevic to subvert the Allied cause.
(..)
What is really ominous about Dees and the SPLC is their ability to work with the government and law enforcement agencies to smash dissent, infiltrate and disrupt the antiwar movement, and threaten the civil liberties of American citizens. As Randall Williams, the original director of Klanwatch – the SPLC's earlier incarnation – told the Progressive: "We were sharing information with the FBI, the police, undercover agents. Instead of defending clients and victims, we are more of a super snoop outfit, an arm of law enforcement."
(...)

Posted by: perroazul del norte at November 16, 2006 07:18 AM

That link should have been Libertarian Justin Raimondo on the SPLC at the time of Clinton's war against Serbia

Posted by: perroazul del norte at November 16, 2006 07:23 AM