The Southern Poverty Law Center's Unintelligence Report

December 31, 2010
By Pamela Geller

The Southern Poverty Law Center's ironically named "Intelligence Report" for Winter 2010 contains a hit piece entitled, "Geller, Jones Amp Up Anti-Muslim Hate Rhetoric."

More disinformation and outright lying from Leftist propagandists.

Their skullduggery is apparent in their presentation of a false narrative. Notice how they are conflating me and my work with the cartoonish Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who gained international fame by threatening to burn the Qur'an - and then backing down. This is Goebbels-style propaganda. Jones is a media creation, a fringe pastor who Tweeted something stupid - that he was going to burn the Qur'an -- and the media descended like locusts. The Ground Zero Mosque story worked in just the opposite way: it became national news in spite of the media's silence, and the American people stood against the mosque despite the media's relentless cheerleading for the Islamic supremacist slumlord Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the other shady Ground Zero Mosque organizers. The Ground Zero mosque was the people's story, the people's outrage, a cry against the disrespect and insult.

The SPLC's "Intelligence Report" didn't bother to mention that I wrote this about the Qur'an-burning back on September 9, before Terry Jones backed off his threat to burn the book: "A stupid idea, of course but protected under the laws of free speech. The burning of books is wrong in principle: the antidote to bad speech is not censorship or book-burning, but more speech. Open discussion. Give-and-take. And the truth will out. There is no justification for burning books. If Americans are free and not under Sharia, then the church can do this if it wants, and their freedom and rights should be protected. Islamic supremacists should not be allowed a victory for their violent intimidation -- if these people want to burn a book, they're free to do so."

The SPLC "Intelligence Report" is just as unintelligent in what it does say: "Earlier this year, Geller - who also has questioned whether President Obama was born in America - bought anti-Muslim ads that were displayed on New York City buses for a month."

Actually, in the past, like many Americans, I simply pointed out that the President had never produced the long-form birth certificate that would definitively put to rest the questions about his place of birth. The new Governor of Hawaii has promised to produce this proof soon, so we shall see; but in any case this is simply not a live issue. Obama is the President, and he will not be removed because of questions revolving around his place of birth. I posted on this - in a small number of 20,000 posts at my website AtlasShrugs.com - during the campaign, and have not pursued the issue since then.

The very idea that merely questioning in a free society would get you preeminent status in the SPLC "Intelligence Report" speaks volumes about how less free we really are, as the left tightens its chokehold on the culture, the media, and politics.

As for my bus ads, they were not "anti-Muslim." They merely offered help to those who were threatened with death in America for leaving Islam, under Islam's traditional death penalty for apostasy - like Rifqa Bary, the Ohio convert from Islam to Christianity who says she was threatened by her father and was certainly threatened by other Muslims on Facebook. Is the SPLC saying that people who receive such threats don't deserve protection? Are we not all equal under the law? Are the lives of Muslims trying to escape the sharia worth less than the Islamic supremacists imposing the sharia in America?

SPLC: "She warned that Muslims will ‘turn to further intimidation, murder and terrorism' if they can't achieve a political takeover."

There have recently been Islamic terror plots uncovered in Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Stockholm, Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; Great Britain; and elsewhere. Islamic jihadists murdered 68 Christians in a church in Baghdad. That's just in the last few weeks. Each of these plots had the imprimatur of an Islamic cleric and was plotted in the name of Islam. How much "intimidation, murder and terrorism" from Muslims is the SPLC going to ignore before it speaks out for the victims of these attacks?

SPLC: "Her comments were so incendiary, in fact, that several neo-Nazi organizations even ignored the fact that she is Jewish and published her diatribes."

Even if neo-Nazis published anything I wrote, it doesn't matter, since they did it without my knowledge or consent. In reality, neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations are generally pro-Islam and pro-jihad, because they hate Jews above all. SPLC in engaging in more Goebbels-style smear tactics by trying to connect me to neo-Nazis.

This is an obvious ploy to keep politicians away from opposing Ground Zero mega-mosque and taking a firm stand on any jihad-related issue. Trust me, the folks at Stormfront, whom I've monitored for years (they were the very first hate site to hit the web back in 1994), can't stand Jews or Israel or me, and it would be obvious to anyone that if there are posts there supporting my work, then this is a manifestation of Sun Tzu's strategy from The Art of War (deliberately planting misinformation from the "other side"). White supremacists and neo-Nazis actually hate Jews and Israel, and love Islam and jihad. The idea of neo-Nazis who love Israel and hate Islamic jihad is a figment of the left's imagination.

SPLC: "She in turn commented favorably on the South African, apartheid-defending terrorist Eugene Terre'Blanche after he was murdered, blaming his death on ‘black supremacism.'"

I never commented favorably on Terre'Blanche. I know little about him. But he was murdered, hacked to death at his home. I do not sanction cold-blooded murder.

In reality, I wrote this about Terre'Blanche: "Insofar as my sanctioning of white supremacists in South Africa -- that is a blatant libel....I vehemently disagree with Terre'blanche's ideas..."

The SPLC also points out that a Leftist/Islamic supremacist counter-demo held during our 9/11 Freedom Rally against the Ground Zero Mosque featured a sign saying, "The attack on Islam is racism." What race is Islam? The Islamic supremacist ideology is at war against freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equal rights for women. People of all races hold to this ideology.

And the SPLC, instead of standing for those freedoms, is carrying water for the real haters, the real neo-Nazi Jew-haters: the forces of Islamic supremacism and jihad.

An earlier SPLC attack on me was entitled "Hatewatch." Actually, I consider my work more like "Lovewatch! Keeping the world safe for lovers and other strangers."

I equate the Southern Poverty Law Center coming out for Islamic supremacists with them coming out for Nazis. What's the difference, and why doesn't the SPLC even have a category for Islamic jihadi groups? Not one. The greatest threat facing our nation, our people, our world, and they are shilling for them.

Here is proof: recently a reader sent me an exchange he had with the SPLC's Mark Potok. Reader Bob wrote, "I started out by looking on their website for a definition of the term ‘hate group' fully expecting that Islam would fit any reasonable definition. When I couldn't find such a definition (still can't today) I inquired." In the course of the exchange, Potok wrote back: "With regard to monitoring radical jihadists, we have made a pragmatic decision to leave that mainly to the major Jewish NGOs, which do a good job and have some real expertise that would likely take us years to develop." In other words, the real hate just doesn't matter to the SPLC. "Still," Potok continued, "we do cover black Muslim extremists and have written about such matters as the connections between radical Muslims and neo-Nazis."

Except when they're pretending that the neo-Nazis are connected to me, that is.

But consider what they have admitted to here. They refuse to cover, evaluate, or report on the single greatest threat to free men here and across the world. The jihad is exempt from the prying, dishonest leadership of the SLPC, but those who are standing up against these tremendous odds are being smeared, defamed and destroyed.

And the SPLC is getting well paid to do this. According to the SPLC's 990 Form for 2008, the SPLC's Chief Trial Counsel Morris Dees made a generous $348,420 that year. SPLC President and CEO, Richard Cohen, was right behind him, at $344,490. General Counsel Joseph Levin made $189,166. Legal director Rhonda Brownstein brought in $179,806; CFO Teenie Hutchinson, $155,414. Potok pulled in $143,099. Former Chief Operating Officer Jeff Blancett made $159,301 - that's right, the former COO.

Who is funding this subversive and dangerous organization?

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer.  She is the author of The Post-American Presidency.

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