![]() A common refrain on the right is that the groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are illegitimate because of their overly broad use of the term "hate". Many feel these groups have loosened their standards to the point where anything on the right is labeled hate, and thus conservative organizations that are not promoting hate are getting classified as hate groups. This is part of a broader trend on the right to ever more heightened reactionary sensitivities. The current ultra-popular phrase on the right is to term almost any generally left wing concept as "woke". While the term originated in the black community to refer to someone with an awakened political consciousness as "woke". While I would say this was generally left politics, there is a long history of more right-wing political consciousness movements in the black community - the Nation of Islam being a prime example, with its authoritarian, sexist, homophobia and anti-semitic conspiracy theorizing, not to mention a black nationalist capitalist orientation. But the common core is an awakened consciousness of political struggle in general militating towards black liberation. In the late 2010's it became increasingly a multi-ethnic descriptor of militancy within left wing politics. The right caught on to this and took the term up as a pejorative. The criticism was nothing new, having to do with the old claim that progressivism is prone to "groupthink", often specifically found on college campuses, and has a tendency to sort of burble out from there into government, newsrooms, Hollywood, and eventually the workplace. The dark version of this has roots in very old anti-semitic conspiracy theories about "Cultural Marxism". From Wikipedia: Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which misrepresents the Frankfurt School as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness. The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values. Like all conspiracy theories, there is kernel of truth to it. Critical theory was developed at the Frankfurt school, and it does call into question traditional power structures, such as those of the hegemonic West, Christianity, Patriarchy, Heteronormativity, Class and Race. But there is no conspiracy among professors to subvert any specific power structure. Unless by "conspiracy" you mean publishing books and academic papers with peer review. By that standard, a "conspiracy" exists just as much on the right to uphold these power structures (maybe without many peer reviewed papers because the right has never had enough to say or been that interested in having robust academic expert debates on its core theories, preferring instead to rely on appeals to tradition). Yet, as today the conspiratorial far-right has taken over the mainstream of conservatism, what was seen as silly is now taken as common sense, promoted on vast propaganda networks from Fox on down the line. And since conspiratorial ideas become incoherent and fall apart under even basic scrutiny, measures have been taken to sort of mass-wash the ideas into hand-wavy stories that only need to feel right, as longer as they are never questioned. Terms like Political Correctness, the short-lived early-Oughts "Social Justice Warrior", and now "Woke" serve as catch-all thought-terminating cliches. From Wikipedia again: A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.Its function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, ending the debate with a cliché rather than a point. The usefulness of this type of TTC against is twofold. It plants a sort of signifier of a larger, vague story about dangerous, mindless leftism (see Woke Mind Virus) , as well as a sort of dismissive flag-planting that says to the audience "I'm not going to give your ideas the benefit of doubt or even consideration". It is thus powerful both at reinforcing in-group right wing identities and their sense of grievance/persecution by "defining" (although ironically doing anything but) a common enemy, as well as shutting down discussion. In this way there is a fascism to it - ultimately the time for cooperation and debate is over and power will now only be established by brute force via either vapid propaganda or violence if necessary. And so Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are dismissed as woke. Discussions of climate Change are woke. Discussion of human rights for gays and transgender individuals is woke. So too, now, is the SPLC and the ADL. The SPLC, like any organization, isn't above criticism. But it deserves its fair share. In a New Yorker article by Bob Moser, the SPLC is portrayed hypocritical in its lavish spending(its headquarters dubbed the "poverty palace" and papering over of racial and sex discrimination within the workplace - especially troubling considering its supposed anti-poverty and anti-racism posture. Moser writes: For those of us who’ve worked in the Poverty Palace, putting it all into perspective isn’t easy, even to ourselves. We were working with a group of dedicated and talented people, fighting all kinds of good fights, making life miserable for the bad guys. And yet, all the time, dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. That's not good at all. But the claim conservatives seem to make the most - that many groups identified by the SPLC as hate groups, is harder to justify. The SLPC has been challenged in court for its designation of anti-LGBT groups as purveying hate. It has labeled the Family Research Council (FRC) , and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) as hate groups. The SLPC classifies hate groups as having "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics." The FRC, vice president Rob Schwarzwalder, in 2013 stated, "The reality is, homosexuals have entered the Scouts in the past for predatory purposes." Its current president, Tony Perkins, recently said, "I know they’ll mock at that idea, but look, if you are a male – genetically you are a male, biologically you’re a male – and you say, ‘Well, I’m not a male. I’m a female.’ I mean, what’s to keep you from saying that you’re an animal?” If a group is anti-LGBT, then that definition certainly fits. Groups opposed to illegal immigration is a bit trickier, as citizenship status is not an immutable characteristic. However, hate is not always explicit, and a tendency towards inflammatory rhetoric - especially if it demonizes or dehumanizes a group with slurs that have a history rooted in bigotry - is a pretty good indication of hate. The CIS was founded by the White nationalist John Tanton, who once said "I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." Another classification the SPLC is gives is to "Antigovernmental Groups". These it considers "part of the antidemocratic hard-right movement. They believe the federal government is tyrannical, and they traffic in conspiracy theories about an illegitimate government of leftist elites seeking a “New World Order.” I couldn't tell from the website if the SLPC also categorizes these has hate groups, however there is often considerable overlap between them and overtly bigoted groups. I could make a case that groups with anti-government attitudes this extreme are indeed taking part in a type of hatred, but I'm open to the idea that this may be pushing the term too far. Despite considerable legitimate criticisms of the SLPC, I see no issue with their current designations. The ADL is considerably more above-board, and their hate classifications seem even less questionable. The question conservatives are asking is, "What is hate? But how many really want to know the answer to that question? I've often said that if you don't want to understand where racism comes from, or how it is perpetuates, how can you possibly define it? Hate is a complex force in social relations, involving historical treatment, attitudes and assumptions. It can be explicit, but is usually implicit in actions and words that amount to treating a member of a marginalized class differently. A group is assumed to be more violent, more lazy, more cunning, more prone to immoral acts. A group is given less of the benefit of the doubt. If one's behavior or ideas would change positively based on the group in question, then it is likely there is a form of hatred involved.
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