Over at one of my favorite local blogs – it’s iconoclastic to the max – “Mayor Sam’s Sister City” (for Sam Yorty, a dead former mayor of Los Angeles) I tripped over this image:
Do you find this picture as offensive as I do? Can you imagine an image more insulting to the people who serve in our military than this one?
Let me tell you where it comes from: the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The post is about SPLC’s position – as reported by one reporter – that various anti-illegal immigration groups are “hate groups”.
The image is the head on a SPLC expose on white radicals in the military – it’s cropped, and the full image is here:
The Mayor Sam’s blog posts’ author, Walter Moore, needs to use Google more.
Back in 2000, SPLC was the subject of an article in Harper’s. You’d assume an anti-hate group would get plaudits from a progressive magazine. Assume again.
Here’s the article (reprinted at Freep, but the substance is exactly as I recall reading it).
Ah, tolerance. Who could be against something so virtuous? And who could object to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Alabama-based group that recently sent out this heartwarming yet mildly terrifying appeal to raise money for its “Teaching Tolerance” program, which prepares educational kits for schoolteachers? Cofounded in 1971 by civil rights lawyer cum direct-marketing millionaire Morris Dees, a leading critic of “hate groups” and a man so beatific that he was the subject of a made-for-TV movie, the SPLC spent much of its early years defending prisoners who faced the death penalty and suing to desegregate all-white institutions like Alabama’s highway patrol. That was then. Today, the SPLC spends most of its time–and money–on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. “He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,” renowned anti- death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, “though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.” The Center earned $44 million last year alone–$27 million from fund-raising and $17 million from stocks and other investments–but spent only $13 million on civil rights program , making it one of the most profitable charities in the country.
It’s profitable because they work at it.
Morris Dees doesn’t need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest civil rights group in America, though this letter quite naturally omits that fact. Other solicitations have been more flagrantly misleading. One pitch, sent out in 1995-when the Center had more than $60 million in reserves-informed would-be donors that the “strain on our current operating budget is the greatest in our 25-year history.” Back in 1978, when the Center had less than $10 million, Dees promised that his organization would quit fund-raising and live off interest as soon as its endowment hit $55 million. But as it approached that figure, the SPLC upped the bar to $100 million, a sum that, one 1989 newsletter promised, would allow the Center “to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fund raising. ” Today, the SPLC’s treasury bulges with $120 million, and it spends twice as much on fund-raising-$5.76 million last year-as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors, estimating that the SPLC could operate for 4.6 years without making another tax-exempt nickel from its investments or raising another tax-deductible cent from well-meaning “people like you.”
Now I like a good hate-group bashing as much as the next guy. But when I wrote my posts on “Skybox Liberals”, this article was a part of what I was thinking about. Doing well by doing – kinda – good.
Raising tempests in teapots appears to be their stock in trade. Slandering the troops is just the latest marketing communications from their ad shop.
It makes sense that they slander American troops by implication, because they expect to get rewards for it. The way society is set up, they are right.
They would not show such an image of Hizballah, or of many other Muslim militant forces, though in that case it would be true and they could just use photographs. (Without Photoshop, even.) That would not be rewarded.
It could even be punished. If you point to things that are true but hateful (like Little Green Footballs does all the time), that makes you a “hate group” or something similar. Attacking hate groups is profitable, so they get attacked a lot.
I see in this picture a pure expression of the corrupting, effects of perverse incentives.
I see in the balance sheet of the Southern Poverty Law Center a measure of how well greed, dishonesty, moral corruption and socially destructive attacks on essential institutions are rewarded by our system of giving the grease to the squeaky wheel. They are rewarded consistently and lavishly.
That’s not good.
By the way, this is not necessarily a left-right thing.
This image is not worse than a shocking advertisement the NRA used to literally scare up funds by showing American police as the enemy.
They wanted to jolt people so they could get paid. They didn’t care if it was socially destructive. It’s the same thing.
What is so unfortunate about the SPLC’s descent from activism into “activism” is that the need for a watchdog has not gone away. Racism is still a problem in this country and the SPLC should not have chosen to marginalize themselves.
The possibility of lowered standards leading to white supremacists infiltrating the army is not one I would dismiss out of hand.
But the slanderous image which SPLC has used to sensationalize the issue is likely to turn off most of the people who should really be caring.
Once again: lashing out is fun, being heard is hard work. SPLC seems to have chosen the former path.
The sad thing is that these entities all seem to follow a “startup” trajectory: they start with shoestring budgets and committed people dealing with hard problems. They win some battles, get some funds, and begin to become “institutions”. Sometime after, Management arrives, with more interest in their careers and benefits than the original mission. And then, it just becomes yet another political player, with a pile of cash, a well-compensated “management team”, and lots and lots of fundraising drives. They then decide the “real fight” is in Washington, and they become pure lobbying organizations.
This has happened with pretty much every NGO that lasts longer than a few years; I pretty much don’t bother donating to any non-religious NGO (religious groups seem less likely to get captured by a “management team”) that is older than 20 years or so.
I was following some of the links and got “this SPLC error page:”:http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp?T=17&m=3
I wasn’t requesting hate, for crying out loud, I was just looking for the “Hate Groups Map”. Cripes.
Y’all are behind the times…the SPLC marginlized themselves during the previous adminstration. During Clinton’s second term, they acted as his ‘informal’ GESTAPO, going after political enemies of Bill & Hill.
Besides, a left-leaning org taking up the Bush=Hitler chant? Oh, I’m shocked.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Prior to WWII, the ‘raised arm’ salute was identified with Republican Rome. If you look in the right places, you can find photos of Americans doing same. Prior to 1934 (approximately…) you might find photos of American soldiers making such a salute.
The painting “The Oath of Horatiaii” by David from the Revolutionary Romantic period shows the Republican heroes saluting their pledge with the raised arm.
One more thing the Nazi’s ruined.
Really, please provide a link to the alleged advertisement.
SPLC is, itself, a hate group.
re: nazi salute
interesting comment. couldn’t find evidence of it. found this though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lebanese_Hezbollah_recruts_being_sworn_in.jpg
David Blue: “By the way, this is not necessarily a left-right thing. This image is not worse than a shocking advertisement the NRA used to literally scare up funds by showing American police as the enemy.”
#8 from Thorley Winston: “Really, please provide a link to the alleged advertisement.”
I haven’t been able to find one with a quick search, and there may not be one. However it’s the one that caused the 41st American President George H.W. Bush to cancel his life National Rifle Association membership.
It was a fair sized scandal at the time, even though nobody seems to have remembered it.
GHWB’s resignation came after the NRA referred to the BATF as jack-booted thugs.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OpEds/op950500.htm
I believe this was in response to several episodes including Waco.
Read the SPLC report, yet failed to see how it “slanders the troops.” I think it criticizes recruitment leniency, enforcement of existing DoD policy, and makes itself very clear in the first couple of graphs that the topic is several hundred individuals.
The image is fine in the context of a reader who might actually read the f-in article (or even the byline!), not some hypothetical moron who casually scans the cover and deduces that “bush=troops=hitler!”
Magazine covers often use of provacative imagery, even imagery contrary to the thesis of the article to tease the reader and create interest. This cover was probably intended to offend on first glance, until the byline was read.
I don’t think the accusation, “slander the troops” is something to be tossed around so lightly, and I’ll add that doing so is in turn taking advantage of our troops. Perhaps if you spent more time around some of them you might not be so keen to invoke their names in your own cynical blog posts, or be so eager to put them in harms way.
friendly grizzly, thanks for providing the link. I actually do remember that incident and fund-raising letter enough to realize that David Blue was mischaracterizing it in order to create a false moral symmetry. The “jack-booted thugs” line BTW was from a Democratic Senator.
The image is reckless of the context of our nation being at war and having an American magazine putting out an image of American troops as Nazis is precisely the sort of propaganda that emboldens our enemies. Particularly when it’s the picture and not the text which will most likely get reproduced.
Thorley,
John Dingell (D-Mi) who was holding hearings about the abuses of the BATF, long before Waco.
I guess I kind of agree with SAO (except for the vague accusation of the last paragraph).
The picture appears over the title:
“*A Few Bad Men* — Ten years after a Pentagon crackdown, neo-Nazi extremists continue to infiltrate the military.”
If that is your thesis, what illustration would you use to accompany it?
A few months ago, I defended a Mohammad cartoon that some people thought depicted all Muslims as terrorists. I believed that it depicted some Muslims as terrorists, juxtaposing religious and violent imagery to make a point or ask a question.
I believe a normal response to the above image would be outrage at combining the image of NAZI-ism with the military that lost many lives to defeat it. An abnormal response would be that our troops are Nazis.
I know a lot of the people that disagree with me are placing the illustration in a larger context. But that contest is that there are people and organizations doing a lot worse than this.
They say a picture is better than a thousand words. The picture says everything. The article accompanying the picture means nothing.
SAO, that there are a few hundred Nazi sympathizers in the 2.3 million or so people in the military is only a shock to those who are looking to be shocked. I’m sure there are several hundred of anything one can name (as long as their records are clear and they can pass some basic psych testing). I’m sure there are several hundred members of the Crips, Bloods, and Eme. I’m sure there are several hundred who’ve cheated on taxes, or their wifes or husbands. I’m sure there are several hundred who have…pick anything.
So is this a mjor problem? Well, if I’m Morris Dees and worred about meeting my fundraising goals…
…and nice try at a dig, and you’re welcome to some spend a week with my any time and you can come help.
A.L.
PD Shaw –
Well, as an idea, how about a rank of US soldiers, all standing in attention in uniform, with US flags on the shoulders of all but one – and a Nazi armband on that one?
That makes the point in a more realistic way…and doesn’t insult – or slander – the 99.999% of the troops in the military who aren’t Chicago Nazis.
That took me longer to write up than to think up. And I’m not a high-paid graphics professional.
A.L.