A Little Perspective
[Guest post by DRJ]
I was alarmed to read this headline in yesterday’s edition of the online El Paso (Texas) newspaper: “KKK in El Paso due to immigration issue.”
The article was based on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project that showed a KKK chapter was started in El Paso last year. As the headline indicates, the Intelligence Project believes the KKK’s presence was fueled by the argument over illegal immigration.
Good thing I read more than headlines and the first paragraph. From the article:
“A chapter of the Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is shown in El Paso in a map of hate groups recently published by the Intelligence Project. “We know from their Web site that there was a Bayou Knights chapter created there (in El Paso) last year,” said Intelligence Project director Mark Potok. He said the KKK branch might have been as small as one member.
The Bayou Knights listed a headquarters in Smackover, Ark., and 14 chapters, mostly in Texas and Louisiana. “Somewhere toward the end of 2007, they (the Bayou Knights) joined a new group, the United White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, just another small Klan faction,” Potok said in a telephone interview from the center offices in Montgomery, Ala.
The United White Knights do not show a chapter in El Paso, Potok said. “It very likely disappeared. It’s perfectly possible it just went out of business. Maybe this guy moved away,” he said.
Sgt. Reginald Moton of the El Paso police Gang Unit said there was no known Klan chapter in the city.”
An entire story devoted to a white bigot and wannabe Klansman who probably moved away. I don’t blame the El Paso Times for covering this story — the Southern Poverty Law Center is a respected group — but I think both overreacted in this case. I would have written this as a Good News! story and had a little talk with the headline writer.
However, to its credit, the El Paso Times has done an excellent job recording the litany of violence across the border. In response to the violence, the Mexican government recently sent 2,000-2,500 soldiers into Juarez, El Paso’s neighboring city, in a surge to stem drug violence and “take the city back from feuding drug traffickers”:
“Top-level federal Mexican officials said Thursday that the soldiers would patrol the streets in 180 heavily armed military vehicles and three aircraft, including a helicopter gunship, and that federal police officers and investigators would operate checkpoints on main arteries entering the city.
The deployment is expected to spark more violence, but officials said they were prepared to meet any threat or attack. Officials did not say what kinds of weapons the soldiers would carry.”
Residents are concerned that the violence in Juarez will continue to spill over into El Paso and, as noted in the article, the El Paso assistant police chief shares their concerns. (See related posts on Mexican violence here and here.)
– DRJ
I take it Mexico lacks the equivalent of Posse Comitatus?
Comment by Techie — 3/28/2008 @ 11:37 am
This isn’t the first time Morris Dees cried wolf. The guy just hates anyone to the right of himself.
Comment by PCD — 3/28/2008 @ 11:38 am
DRJ,
I’ll dissent from your take on the SPLC. Rather, the organization seems like a shadow of its formerly honorable self. Two weeks ago at Protein Wisdom, Darleen wrote about the SPLC’s hate list. It seems more like a cottage industry for fund raising than a vehicle for advancing the cause of social justice.
At least if the term is written without qualifying sneer quotes.
Comment by AMac — 3/28/2008 @ 12:20 pm
Morris Dees is a lawyer in search of a client. He is no different than the research scientists who come up with outlandish threats to ? so they can get publicity and gin up some funding.
If Mexico wants to regain control of Juarez, perhaps they could start by finding the serial murderer(s) who have killed and/or disappeared over 100 women in the past 10+ years.
That city’s reputation for unsolved crime should be a national disgrace (that is if the govt in Mexico City can dredge up any shame at all).
Comment by Another Drew — 3/28/2008 @ 1:21 pm
I don’t believe that the SPLC is a “respected” group, certainly not by me. They’ve a history of exaggerating their claims and labeling groups as hate groups that are not.
Comment by SPQR — 3/28/2008 @ 2:08 pm
the Southern Poverty Law Center is a respected group
Who are they respected by DRJ? Have you read much of their output recently? It’s really supermarket tabloid quality.
Comment by daleyrocks — 3/28/2008 @ 3:10 pm
the SPLC has no choice but to follow the example of Rev. Jackson and commit racial extortion if it wants to stay relevant and remain on the frontlines of the civil rights struggle.
Jackson and Sharpton have done more to set back racial relations than can described.
Comment by chas — 3/28/2008 @ 5:27 pm
The southern poverty law group is just another liberal “human rights” group. Look at what they designate as hate symbols on their web site. Where is the hammer and sickle? Where is the Hamas or Hezbolla flag? How about “Black Power” symbols? The confederate flag is there, the Celtic Cross is there, but apparently other than Nazi’s (whom they and their media allies brand as right wing) and the KKK (again, branded as right, but historically they were started by Democrats and their support got many, many southern Democrats elected), there are no leftist groups that are apparently capable of hate to these guys. They are just another liberal front group.
Comment by martin — 3/28/2008 @ 6:39 pm
i agree with comments 1-8 inclusive. the fundraising junkmail i get from these folks…curl up and die!
Comment by assistant devil's advocate — 3/28/2008 @ 7:25 pm
It’s important that the artificial “racist” meme be propagandized everywhere regarding illegal immigration. Nevermind that an illegal immigrant population that has an incredibly high percentage of people from Mexico due to a shared land border isn’t referred to as racist or Mexican nationalist.
I’d love to see the “open borders” groups reaction to the prospect of real open borders. I’m talking 300 million Chinese, 250 million Indians, 40 million Pakistanis, and on and on.
Somehow I think their preference for “open” borders is in reality a preference of one open border only. An open border that gives an unfair advantage to Mexico in the immigration arena.
Comment by Apogee — 3/28/2008 @ 8:16 pm
“Respected by whom?” is my reaction as well. While the SPLC’s state-by-state list of haters does include the Nation of Islam (using the oddly mild term “black separatist”), there doesn’t seem to be anything else that is not (presumptively) “right wing.” Certainly not the left-wing pro-Palestinian Jew-haters. Back when I followed network news more closely and Morris Dees was more often in it, it was obvious that anyone who didn’t meet his personal definition of “tolerant” was a righty hater.
And what is one to make of the SPLC’s current lawsuit over what they call a “botched immigration raid in southeast Georgia,” which “charges that ICE agents illegally detained, searched and harassed Latinos solely because of their appearance — a violation of their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights — during an extensive campaign to drive them out of the area”? An “extensive campaign to drive [Latinos] out of the area”? “[S]olely because of their appearance”? Whose “extensive campaign”? And would that mean any Latino ICE employees living in the area were engaged in this “extensive campaign” in the hopes of driving themselves out of the area? The sheer nuttiness of the necessary underlying elements of this “extensive campaign” boggle the mind.
I do not doubt for a moment that Morris honestly believes that he is doing the Lord’s work. Even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut, and a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the SPLC’s anti-Hate activity is commendable (if somewhat [!] one-sided). But really: when it comes to “the right,” Morris is just bugf***!
Comment by porkopolitan — 3/28/2008 @ 9:27 pm
Add me to the list of those who think the SPLC is a crusade in search of a cause.
Comment by Foxfier — 3/29/2008 @ 12:36 am
A very persuasive trashing of the SPLC in general and Morris Dees in particular can be found in The Church of Morris Dees by Ken Silverstein in Harper’s Magazine for November, 2000.
Comment by dchamil — 3/29/2008 @ 6:33 am