All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[zinderel]

I haven't claimed that. You did say "And then you realize that the KKK isn't the only racist shitbag organization in America. There are a LOT of them, and most of them are passing for churches, thanks to the incredibly lax laws that religious zealots won't allow anyone to enforce about what constitutes a religion here." so I'm curious about your thoughts on the matter. But that's not about people who don't organize openly.

https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

Here's a great place to start learning about hate groups and the power they weild. Consider that your president is slated to speak at an event which caters to several of those hate groups who mask themselves as 'concerned christians'.

If you are GENUINELY interested in the reality of hate in America, try actually listening to people who have been victims of it, instead of blowing them off. Try respecting perspectives that aren't your own, and stop making false equivalence between the NFL protests and white power marches. Try thinking about what life is like for people who aren't as lucky as you at the race/gender/class lottery, and how maybe your story isn't the norm, nor is it a universal experience, and that people might not be as easily capable of blowing off racism and bigotry as unimportant.

[Mister Mets]

The logic is, he has criticism for African American NFL players using their first amendment rights to protest racial injustice.

He cannot bring himself to criticize white nationalists WHEN CALLED UPON TO DO SO by many in the public, including by media at press conferences.

We're at a point where we're battling for the soul of this country against white nationalists, Mets. When faced with this choice, are you really just gonna say, "Nah, no big deal."?

You have criticism for Roy Moore, a former judge and current candidate for Senate who has not been accused of murder or sex crimes. But you have yet to bring yourself to criticize a priest who molested children, a police officer who taped an underaged sex partner, and a cop killer, even after these individuals have been brought to your attention.

[zinderel]

You have criticism for Roy Moore, a former judge and current candidate for Senate who has not been accused of murder or sex crimes. But you have yet to bring yourself to criticize a priest who molested children, a police officer who taped an underaged sex partner, and a cop killer, even after these individuals have been brought to your attention.

I dunno where you get that no one has criticized those people. The big, important difference between these individuals and Roy Moore, and the reason why we are more agitated about him, is that Roy Moore, a disgraced judge who thinks the Bible trumps civil law on every level, is on track to gain even more power on a national scale. Power that he will use, without question, to push his dream of a theocratic USA towards reality.

All of the people you mention (and Weinstein) are terrible, awful people who deserve everything they have coming to them. But they aren't on track to be a US Senator.

[Mister Mets]

https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

Here's a great place to start learning about hate groups and the power they weild. Consider that your president is slated to speak at an event which caters to several of those hate groups who mask themselves as 'concerned christians'.

If you are GENUINELY interested in the reality of hate in America, try actually listening to people who have been victims of it, instead of blowing them off. Try respecting perspectives that aren't your own, and stop making false equivalence between the NFL protests and white power marches. Try thinking about what life is like for people who aren't as lucky as you at the race/gender/class lottery, and how maybe your story isn't the norm, nor is it a universal experience, and that people might not be as easily capable of blowing off racism and bigotry as unimportant.

Are you referring to Trump's upcoming speech at the Value Voters summit?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/10/11...voters-summit/

What racist organizations will be there?

I dunno where you get that no one has criticized those people. The big, important difference is that Roy Moore, a disgraced judge who thinks the Bible trumps civil law on every level, is on track to gain even more power on a national scale. Power that he will use, without question, to push his dream of a theocratic USA towards reality.

All of the people you mention (and Weinstein) are terrible, awful people who deserve everything they have coming to them. But they aren't on track to be a US Senator.

I'm noting the logic of WBE's position. I'm not claiming that anyone is obligated to criticize the most awful people before going after someone with greater power who didn't do something as awful.

Hell, the idea that anyone's not obligated to criticize the most awful people before going after someone with greater power who didn't do something as awful was my exact position when it comes to why Trump (or anyone else) shouldn't have to say anything about 40-50 racist shitbags who went on a ten minute march.

This is not to say that the athletes who use the national anthem as a forum to protest police brutality are awful, but if Trump disagrees with their position and with how they're using their profile as celebrities/ role models, it doesn't stand to reason that expressing that opinion while not making a public statement about a Neonazi march means he thinks more of racists.

A rhetorical trap we get into is that there's really no need to criticize someone who is pretty much universally despised, be it a Neonazi or a copkiller. Typically, it's when an issue is controversial that expressing an opinion is meaningful.

[TheInvisibleMan]

Are you referring to Trump's upcoming speech at the Value Voters summit?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/10/11...voters-summit/

What racist organizations will be there?

Steve Bannon - representing Breitbart (the self proclaimed "platform for the Alt-Right)

Brigitte Gabriel - founder of ACT for America - notorious anti Muslim group - Gabriel herself has been quoted as saying that Muslims "cannot be loyal citizens of the United States

there are other representatives of problematic groups attending - March For Life, The Heritage Foundation

[mojotastic]

Did Bannon say that before or after the whole Richard Spencer saying heil trump?

[zinderel]

Are you referring to Trump's upcoming speech at the Value Voters summit?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/10/11...voters-summit/

What racist organizations will be there?

As I said before, stop assuming that all racists are open about it. Stop assuming all of them join organizations that proclaim their racism. Instead, look at the timbre of their meetings. Look at HOW they speak about race issues. After all, the Values Voters Summit has been party to some pretty racist shenanigans that no one bothered decrying until it hit the news, if even then.

https://thinkprogress.org/obama-waff...-e71486a893c4/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...r_are_you.html

http://www.politicalresearch.org/201....tyDUSoaG.dpbs

Also, the John Birch Society is a rather constant presence at the Summit. Other than the Birchers, I can't name, off the top of my head, any groups that are specifically racist as part of their mission statement, but I can name several that are openly Islamophobic, which is absolutely racism disguised as 'concern', and only a blind man would miss that reality, considering that the majority of Muslims are Asian, not Arab, and have no connection to ISIS or any other terrorist organization. Every single organization that will be discussing Islam at the Summit will be discussing SPECIFICALLY Arab Muslims, of the fundamentalist persuasion, and lumping ALL Muslims into that pile. It's been that way every year, and every year, it's fucking racist, and no one cares, because they'very been taught that Muslim = middle eastern terrorist.

And all of that above isn't even going into the rampant, openly homophobic organizations that infect these events, year after year.

Finally, I dunno if you know this or not, but...bigots tend to be equal opportunity haters, so a homophobe will often also be a racist, and a racist is almost CERTAINLY also a homophobe, so...

Anyway, it's all one fight, and not a bunch of unrelated skirmishes. Even though I myself am a poor white man from a middle class family - one who isn't DIRECTLY affected by racism - I am also a gay man, with empathy and compassion. As such, I stand with my brothers and sisters of color, as they have stood by me. I don't need to experience racism to know it is abominable and intolerable. They don't need to experience homophobia (though many absolutely do experience both) to know it is abominable and intolerable.

[mojotastic]

Also I know i am late but i just noticed, how did you guys lose a soccer match against Trinidad and Tobago? come on, i actually wanted to see the U.S team going to Russia,i wanted to see U.S playing soccer against Russia.

[TheInvisibleMan]

Also I know i am late but i just noticed, how did you guys lose a soccer match against Trinidad and Tobago? come on, i actually wanted to see the U.S team going to Russia,i wanted to see U.S playing soccer against Russia.

because the team is garbage, coaching is garbage, management is garbage

they would have been better off putting the women out there

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Are you referring to Trump's upcoming speech at the Value Voters summit?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/10/11...voters-summit/

What racist organizations will be there?

Your boy will be speaking at an honest to God hatefest, and you're nitpicking over whether or not racist groups will be there? Seriously?

[zinderel]

Your boy will be speaking at an honest to God hatefest, and you're nitpicking over whether or not racist groups will be there? Seriously?

First president to address a gaggle of bigots and fundamentalists as one of them.

First president to give a pass to 'very fine' white supremacists.

First president to openly brag about committing sexual assault.

First president to declare that he could shoot someone in the street and not lose his core support.

Boy, Trump really IS full of firsts...

Edit: Apparently, Woodrow Wilson spoke to, and spoke fondly of, the KKK.

[aja_christopher]

We're at a point where we're battling for the soul of this country against white nationalists, Mets. When faced with this choice, are you really just gonna say, "Nah, no big deal."?

I think at this point, the answer is pretty clear.

[Mister Mets]

Your boy will be speaking at an honest to God hatefest, and you're nitpicking over whether or not racist groups will be there? Seriously?

My boy? I voted against him twice.

As I said before, stop assuming that all racists are open about it. Stop assuming all of them join organizations that proclaim their racism. Instead, look at the timbre of their meetings. Look at HOW they speak about race issues. After all, the Values Voters Summit has been party to some pretty racist shenanigans that no one bothered decrying until it hit the news, if even then.

https://thinkprogress.org/obama-waff...-e71486a893c4/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...r_are_you.html

http://www.politicalresearch.org/201....tyDUSoaG.dpbs

Also, the John Birch Society is a rather constant presence at the Summit. Other than the Birchers, I can't name, off the top of my head, any groups that are specifically racist as part of their mission statement, but I can name several that are openly Islamophobic, which is absolutely racism disguised as 'concern', and only a blind man would miss that reality, considering that the majority of Muslims are Asian, not Arab, and have no connection to ISIS or any other terrorist organization. Every single organization that will be discussing Islam at the Summit will be discussing SPECIFICALLY Arab Muslims, of the fundamentalist persuasion, and lumping ALL Muslims into that pile. It's been that way every year, and every year, it's fucking racist, and no one cares, because they'very been taught that Muslim = middle eastern terrorist.

And all of that above isn't even going into the rampant, openly homophobic organizations that infect these events, year after year.

Finally, I dunno if you know this or not, but...bigots tend to be equal opportunity haters, so a homophobe will often also be a racist, and a racist is almost CERTAINLY also a homophobe, so...

Anyway, it's all one fight, and not a bunch of unrelated skirmishes. Even though I myself am a poor white man from a middle class family - one who isn't DIRECTLY affected by racism - I am also a gay man, with empathy and compassion. As such, I stand with my brothers and sisters of color, as they have stood by me. I don't need to experience racism to know it is abominable and intolerable. They don't need to experience homophobia (though many absolutely do experience both) to know it is abominable and intolerable.

Your statements were about "racist shitbag organization"s, so by definition, that's going to be about groups that organize openly (even if their racism may not be as open.)

In that context, you brought up how the President is "slated to speak at an event which caters to several of those hate groups." I wanted a better understanding of a perspective on why the President is wrong (in this case, that he is attending an event that is racist), so my focus is exclusively on racist groups at the moment, rather than any other form of bigotry or about how many people are secretly racist but not organized. The article I linked to attacked the Value Voters Summit for ties to a hate group, but focused largely on the Family Research Council, which was labeled a hate group by the SPLC for homophobia, rather than racism.

The groups listed as racist seem to be Breitbart, the John Birch Society, and some Islamophobic groups (there is the counterpoint that any argument about Islam is about religion, although it is a faith favored by black and brown people within the United States). The organization is accused of hosting events that featured racist revisionism (albeit with conservative African-American speakers) and selling politically incorrect allegedly satirical items.

I get the venn diagram of homophobia and racism, so I was interested in the extent to which one argument bled into another.

[Mister Mets]

On the topic of the Southern Poverty Law Center, they've gotten some pushback for dodgy practices in their declarations of hate groups, as well as fundraising off liberal pet causes.

On the Media did a piece on this a few weeks ago, and there was a Politico piece in June.

But today, the group is best known for its “Intelligence Project,” which has essentially cornered the market on identifying and tracking hate groups, as well as extremists and “hate incidents.” The Intelligence Project’s 15 full-time and two part-time staffers (it’s in the process of hiring five more) pump out reports that are regularly cited by just about every major mainstream media outlet, including Politico, and their researchers have become the go-to experts for quotes on those topics.

The SPLC’s hate group and extremist labels are effective. Groups slapped with them have lost funding, been targeted by activists and generally been banished from mainstream legitimacy. This makes SPLC the de facto cop in this realm of American politics, with all the friction that kind of policing engenders.

The organization has been criticized for spending more of its money on fundraising and overhead and less on litigation than comparable groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. And it has taken flak for amassing a huge endowment—more than $200 million—that is disproportionately large for its operating costs. SPLC President Richard Cohen defends the endowment as necessary to ensure the group can survive legal battles that might last for years. (As for Dees himself, he made $337,000 in 2015, according to the watchdog group Charity Navigator; Cohen made $333,000 the same year.) In 1994, the local paper, the Montgomery Advertiser, ran a series investigating the group’s marketing, finances and personnel practices that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. (Dees responded—according to a transcript from a 1999 Nieman Foundation discussion on journalism about nonprofits—by mobilizing prominent liberal politicians for whom he had raised money to lobby the Pulitzer Board not to award the prize to the Advertiser.)

Other critics say the SPLC picks its causes with its bottom line in mind. In the 1980s, the group’s entire legal staff quit to protest Dees’ obsession with the remnants of the KKK—which still captured the imagination of the group’s liberal donor base—at the expense of lower-profile but more relevant targets. In its marketing, the SPLC still touts seven-figure judgments it has won against Klan organizations, even though the plaintiffs have been able to recoup only a tiny fraction of that from the groups, which possessed paltry assets. It has also been criticized for marketing that exaggerates the threat posed by the moribund Klan.

But the SPLC did not back down after it labeled Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council—one of the country’s largest and most established Christian conservative advocacy groups—a “hate group” for its positions on homosexuality, and even after an unhinged gay-rights supporter named Floyd Corkins subsequently shot up the FRC’s lobby in an attempt to murder its staff, in 2012. Corkins said he had read on the SPLC’s website that the FRC was an anti-gay group. The episode prompted fierce condemnation of the SPLC from social conservatives, who view FRC’s stances on homosexuality as legitimate and consistent with Christian teachings. But the FRC remains on the SPLC’s list of hate groups, along with a blurb explaining, “The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.”

William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell and critic of the SPLC, says the group has wrapped itself in the mantle of the civil rights struggle to engage in partisan political crusading. “Time and again, I see the SPLC using the reputation it gained decades ago fighting the Klan as a tool to bludgeon mainstream politically conservative opponents,” he says. “For groups that do not threaten violence, the use of SPLC ‘hate group’ or ‘extremist’ designations frequently are exploited as an excuse to silence speech and speakers,” Jacobson adds. “It taints not only the group or person, but others who associate with them.”

Ken Silverstein, a liberal journalist and another critic of the group who authored a scathing investigation of its marketing and financial practices for Harper’s in 2000, attributes the growing scope of the SPLC’s censures to a financial imperative to wade into hot-button issues that will rile donors. “The organization has always tried to find ways to milk money out of the public by finding whatever threat they can most credibly promote,” he says.

The Klan may be out of commission, but Dees says these new tactics of organized American racism are “just as bad as burning up this building. He just burned up an individual in a small town.”

Trump supporters, of course, would disagree. Trump campaigned as a rebel against political correctness, and in a sense his election was a backlash against the power amassed by liberal groups like the SPLC—a rejection of the idea that liberal activists should determine what views are considered out of bounds in American politics.

The SPLC fields tips and scours websites, message boards and news reports to compile its directory of 917 mostly ring-wing hate groups. But finding and defining hate groups is not exactly a science, leaving the process open to criticism even under the best of circumstances. Berger says that defining a hate or extremist group is notoriously problematic when using extensive, technical criteria, and that the problem becomes greater in the case of the SPLC, which reserves discretion in how and when it applies those labels. “There’s no consensus academic definition of extremism, and the SPLC’s methodology for making that call isn’t clear,” he says. “So it’s very subjective even within academia, and even more so for a motivated organization.”

Their decision to list Charles Murray as a white nationalist was particularly egregious.

[Tendrin]

Charles Murray may or may not have white nationalist views but the bell curve remains junk science.