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This is the third in a three-part series on the movement for religious freedom in the U.S. legal system today. Check out the first part about how Christians who refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine face “medical death row” here and the second part about the “rise of global censorship” here. NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Mike Farris, general […]
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Ph.D. biologist Colin Wright is publicly inviting the Southern Poverty Law Center to debate him on the subject of what the SPLC calls “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience,” specifically on the transgender issue. The SPLC released a 41,000-word report claiming that “the controversy over trans health care is manufactured to reinforce both white supremacy […]
The group of conservative organizations signing on to an open letter addressed, so to speak, to the news media are absolutely correct:
We are writing to you as individuals or as representatives of organizations who are deeply troubled by several recent examples of the media’s use of data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a “hate group” label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it.
At this point, citing the SPLC as some sort of arbiter of “hate” is either lazy or malicious. The group has inspired a good deal of hate, itself, including a 2012 attack on the Family Resource Council that left a security guard injured. And now its list of political enemies may be insinuating itself as a guide for corporations to blacklist organizations, as with the Ruth Institute’s loss of online payment processing.
As Tyler O’Neil notes, the same net that puts the Ruth Institute on the SPLC’s list ought to ensnare the Catholic Church, as well, except that inclusion of the church would expose the SPLC’s list for what it really is. It’s a ploy to label as bigots those who wish to promote a culturally conservative worldview through persuasion and good works and thereby prevent them from participating in American society.
Journalists should have no part on advancing that ploy… unless, of course, they’re just left-wing activists, themselves.
This is the second in a three-part series on the movement for religious freedom in the U.S. legal system today. Check out the first part about how Christians who refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine face “medical death row” here. NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Ryan Bangert, senior vice president at the religious freedom law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, […]
Jamie Reed, the former clinician who blew the whistle last year on a gender clinic in St. Louis, tells “The Daily Signal Podcast” that there are more whistleblowers out there, and she raises the alarm about the “totalitarian” mentality of large LGBTQ organizations that seek to silence those who disagree with them. Reed, who herself […]
Last week, a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop strong-arming Big Tech into silencing Americans’ free speech online in a first-of-its-kind temporary injunction. Rather than celebrating this move to uphold free speech, many legacy media outlets appear to be demonizing the very idea of protecting speech from government censorship, according to one of […]
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican who is also running for governor, secured a pledge from JPMorgan Chase that may help protect conservatives from the threat of “debanking”—when banks cut off services over the religious or political stance of a customer, including nonprofits. Cameron slammed the “hypocrisy that we see from big businesses.” Speaking […]
Nicole Neily, a mother of two, says she couldn’t believe it when she learned that a far-left group had branded her parental rights organization an “antigovernment extremist” group. Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, says her organization teaches parents how to “engage with the process to help schools” by showing them how to submit comments […]
ORLANDO, Fla.—The greatest tool for fighting antisemitism is the Bible, and Jew-hatred is on the rise in the U.S. because Americans are less and less familiar with the holy text, a Christian leader warns. Antisemitism “is on the rise in general,” Luke Moon, deputy director at The Philos Project and leader of Philos Action League, […]
The American College of Pediatricians scored a major victory last month when a federal judge ruled in its favor and halted the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used in chemical abortions. Just weeks later, the organization endured a cyberattack carried out by hackers intending to cause major damage. As if that […]
For decades, schoolchildren across America have taken field trips to presidential homes such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier. Students and adults alike have learned about the lives and legacies of the men who crafted our founding documents and stood for freedom at the risk of their own lives. […]
A new report from Heritage Foundation scholar Brenda Hafera provides unique insights and observations into how the presidential homes of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison mostly are failing to teach accurately what these men achieved to establish our country. George Washington’s Mount Vernon is easily the best of the three, remaining relatively faithful to its former […]
Christine Rousselle draws attention to a story that seems like a significant slip in our country’s shared appreciation of civil rights and dialogue:
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal organization that promotes life, marriage and religious liberty, has been removed from the “AmazonSmile” charitable giving program after being designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
AmazonSmile is a program that allows users to choose a nonprofit foundation to receive a small percentage of their Amazon purchases. ADF has been part of the program since its inception in 2013.
It is no longer the case that we can have multiple sides defending their own rights and interests. The SPLC — itself a hate group that has inspired violent attacks — can designate as unacceptable an entirely mainstream conservative organization that specializes in the legal defense of civil rights, and the organization’s funding will come under attack even from broad and neutral-seeming public accommodations like Amazon.
We’ve already seen YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter suppressing conservative views and conservatives’ ability to raise funds. Add that to campaigns to remove corporate sponsorships. The next milestone will likely be a decision by Amazon not to carry books by those with whom its executives disagree.
Let’s be direct. This was a predicted outcome of government’s decision to use the power of law to redefine marriage under the moral mandate that the traditional definition of the institution had no rationale but bigotry. Once that principle is accepted, rights are written off cheaply.
Even non-conservative Americans aren’t going to like where this assault winds up, whether it’s civil war or shared oppression, but by the time they awaken to the hangover of the “tolerance” happy juice, doing anything about it is going to be painful, indeed.
As Islamists “cocoon” and work with the Left to do the dirty work of cultural deconstruction, the Right can’t afford to retrench.
What responsibility do journalists have to properly frame “hate crime” hoaxes that accomplish the same goals for which we punish “hate crimes” more stringently?
Speaking of keeping an eye on how liberals, progressives, and journalists move forward from the shocking election of Donald Trump to the presidency, here’s an excellent example of the sort of thing that has made so many of us distrustful of the mainstream:
The [Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC’s)] widely cited report — “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation’s Schools” — reported that 40 percent of the more than 10,000 educators who responded to the survey “have heard derogatory language directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants and people based on gender or sexual orientation.” …
But the SPLC didn’t present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators — whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”
Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information “from the researchers.” Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that “about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question.”
In other words, we can file any SPLC reports under “fake news” and arguably treat the organization as a hate group for crafting a message to increase hatred of a particular demographic group — not as an isolated slip, but fully in line with its demonstrated mission and ideology.
Keep an eye out for journalists who cite its work uncritically, but be understanding and compassionate when they do. It’s a difficult thing to learn that the good guys and watchdogs are actually the bad guys and attack dogs. Of course, don’t rule out the possibility that they’re not exactly innocent, themselves; after all, the SPLC’s hiding of significant information is very much in keeping with my observations of the news media’s reports since the election (and before).
Part of my weekend went toward an attempt to view some unedited video taken by Steve Ahlquist of RI Future at the first #NotMyPresident rally in Providence. My suspicion is that somebody in the crowd shouted some outrageous things (even more outrageous than the “shut up, white boy,” that slipped past the censor), and the smiling activist making a speech at the time agreed with him.
We know from news reports that other journalists were in attendance, and within ear shot, at the time, and yet I’ve seen not a word about it and precious little about the racism that the speaking activist, Mike Araujo, unambiguously proclaimed. And yet… here’s a story out of California that did make today’s Providence Journal, by way of the Washington Post:
Three young men were standing on the sidewalk [at a Veterans Day parade in a northern California town], each carrying a variation of the Confederate flag. …
Two of the men, the congressman said, were wearing Donald Trump T-shirts.
A few guys holding flags and wearing t-shirts in an unnamed town on the other side of the country? That’s news. Overt racism at an event in Providence? Not so much.
An unconfirmed story about somebody threatening a Muslim college student and demanding she take off her hijab in Michigan? That fits the narrative. An anti-Trump protester holding a “Rape Melania” sign or a man being beaten while his attackers shout about his supporting Trump? Eh, the page layout people just don’t see the space.
Led by the progressive hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the mainstream media is already hard at work constructing another false narrative. For younger readers, this is now an undeniable pattern. During the two terms of George W. Bush, the media made stars out of people who hated him and fomented as much outrage as they could. During Barack Obama’s two terms, the “stars” turned into villains, and the president’s own outrages were barely covered and never, ever characterized as “scandals.”
Now, they’re back to ginning up “resistance” without missing a beat, and the violence they’re stoking is starting out at a much more fevered pitch. With these stories, anybody who genuinely feels endangered in the Trump Era will only live under a larger shadow, and any of them inclined toward violence will only feel more justified in using it.
Anybody who might ask how we can trust a news media that behaves this way, the short answer is that we can’t. Specific facts reported will likely be reliable (although look carefully for words like “unconfirmed” tucked deep in the text), but the narrative they’re constructing is false. Moreover, it’s a central reason we wound up with Donald Trump as a president. I shudder to think what might be next if they keep it up.
In attacking Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, Steve Ahlquist gives reason to believe he’d have been a different kind of oppressor in a different time.