The immensely profitable and influential hate-propaganda racket known as the Southern Policy Law Center is in the news today for firing its 82-year-old founder, Morris Dees, for unspecified “personnel violations”.
I’m glad to hear it, of course: the SPLC is a “social-justice” flim-flam in the business of organized slander against everyone to its right, and its blacklist of “hate groups” is amplified with destructive force by powerful agents throughout media and politics. In particular, mainstream news outlets routinely cite the SPLC as a canonical authority on whom to despise. Morris Dees has made a fortune at this, and I’m happy to see him go — though of course he is merely retiring into luxurious senescence, which is a shame. (I suppose religious readers can take comfort in the certainty that once his cushy retirement comes to an end, he will rot in Hell.)
But there’s another SPLC story out there that should make your skin crawl. It is a story from the Detroit News, telling us that Michigan’s Attorney General, one Dana Nessen, is planning a smothering assault on “hate”:
Michigan’s attorney general and Department of Civil Rights on Friday laid out plans to increase the documentation and prosecution of hate crimes…
Bad enough already; the very idea of “hate crimes” is an abomination against justice. But it gets much, much worse:
Michigan Department of Civil Rights Director Agustin Arbulu announced the department is creating a process to document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.
Wait, what?
Attorney General Dana Nessel previously announced plans for a hate crimes unit in her office. She reiterated the plans Friday after a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center found active hate and extremist groups in Michigan had increased by more than 6 percent from 2017 to 2018.
The center’s report said Michigan has 31 hate and extremist organizations ”” an uptick from the 28 the group reported in 2017 ”” but some of the listed groups take issue with the classification.
I’m sure they do. But there is no court of appeal here: what the SPLC says, goes. Once they’ve called you a “hate group”, you can count on the slander being repeated anytime your name comes up in the media. But the worst is still to come:
Nessel’s new unit will fight against hate crimes and review any groups identified in the SPLC list, her spokeswoman Kelly Rossman-McKinney said.
There you have it: catch the SPLC’s attention, and you will come under “review” by the “hate-crimes” commissariat of Dana Nessel’s Ministry of Justice. (Just imagine what “review” means.) And if you think you’ve got nothing to fear, because you’ve never done anything wrong, think again:
Arbulu’s plans for a database would document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime. The database would then be used to identify areas where awareness and education programs are most needed, he said.
“Education programs”.
Arbulu said he hopes the database will allow the department to be proactive and address issues before they rise to the level of a crime.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”