Southern Poverty Law Center drops Nation of Islam from list of “hate groups”

 Image from the FBI monograph of the Nation of Islam (1965): Typical Front Pages of Cult Newspaper

The SPLC lists Jihad Watch, of which I am the director, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, of which I am vice president, and its Stop Islamization of America project as hate groups, and these classifications, unsurprisingly, have become a staple of every report from lazy Leftist journalists. None of them ever pause, and probably none of them ever wish to pause, to consider the question quis custodiet ipso custodes? — Who watches the watchmen? Why is fighting for the freedom of speech and the equality of rights of all people now classified as “hate”? An uncritical, uninformed public takes for granted that the SPLC is some kind of neutral observer, when actually it is a far-Left attack outfit, using its “hate group” classifications to stigmatize and demonize foes of its political agenda. But it classifies no Islamic jihad groups as “hate groups,” and has now dropped the racist, violent and paranoid Nation of Islam from its hate group list.

The cynicism and irresponsibility of this is obvious. Not that any mainstream media reporter will deign to report on it.

“Number of Ohio hate groups drops in 2013, report says,” by JoAnne Viviano for The Columbus Dispatch, February 25:

The number of hate groups in Ohio fell by about 17 percent in 2013, according to data released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The center counted 30 such groups in the state in 2013, compared with 36 in 2012.

Nationwide, the center says, the number of identified hate groups dropped by about 7 percent, from 1,007 to 939, the fewest number since 2009. Numbers had increased each year from 1999 to 2011, climbing from 457 to 1,018.

The report, titled “The Year in Hate & Extremism,” cited these factors for the decline: the co-opting of issues by mainstream politicians, an improving economy, law-enforcement crackdowns, same-sex marriage advancements, implementation of national health-care changes, Obama’s re-election, and little action on firearms and immigration laws.

“Those factors, along with the collapse or near-collapse of several major groups for a variety of reasons, seem to have taken some of the wind out of the sails of the radical right, leaving the movement both weaker and somewhat smaller,” says the report, which appears in the spring 2014 edition of the center’s Intelligence Report.

“But that has not dampened the violence and terrorism coming out of the movement.”

Remember when you read that about “violence and terrorism” that the SPLC lists no Islamic groups as “hate groups.”

The center said two hate groups are in central Ohio: ISD Records of Lancaster, in Fairfield County, is categorized as a racist-music group, and the Columbus-based Mission: America is categorized as anti-gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender.

On its website, Mission: America addresses the center’s claims against it on a “to our critics” page. It refers to its hate-group label as a “deliberate and puzzling smear campaign” and asks readers to “please take every accusation with a great deal of skepticism.”

“Mission: America is not a hate group, as claimed by the far-left SPLC,” the statement says. “In fact, based on how the SPLC has begun listing respected Christian conservative groups as if they could be compared with the likes of the Ku Klux Klan, it seems that the SPLC would qualify for this label itself by using such underhanded and invalid tactics.

The statement goes on to say that the organization is not racist and that “we … don’t ‘hate’ homosexuals. We simply object to homosexuality, the behavior, which is unnecessary.”…

No longer identified as hate groups are a Columbus-based Nation of Islam group, classified as “black separatist,” and a Chillicothe-based Crusaders for Yahweh, termed an “identity” group….

EDITORS NOTE: To learn more about Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam’s beginnings click here. Wallace Fard founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s. Christianity was the white man’s religion, declared Fard.