#southern poverty law center

[intersectionalpraxis]

To the anons telling me I'm endangering Jewish people with my posts, despite being VERY clear zionists are not a reflection of those practing Judaism (and also the fact I have shared the solidarity and direct action protests from anti-zionist Jewish people multiple times on my posts), I am here to remind you that the REAL danger (which has been researched and documented by organizations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center), is that white supremacists are the hugest threat to the safety of Jewish people and many communities around the world who aren't white and Christian. Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim people and allies like me are NOT threats to your safety, so please stop it.

And saying that it's bad to say that a genocide should end -that settler violence needs to end because over 30,000 Palestinian people are being slaughtered and bombed to death... maybe think a bit more critically before sending me your messages. Here's a video to help you start unpacking your biases, but it surely is only a start:

Stop living in an echo chamber and do more research. Watch Palestinian content creator's and people with lived experiences in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. There are a ton of resources available. And if you don't, you're just as complicit in this ongoing mass genocide against Palestinian people.

[zeroar]

An Open Letter to the People Who Support Autism Speaks

Autism Speaks is eighteen years old. The age they should start dismissing themselves as being an authority on autism like they do with autistic adults if they cared about consistency at all.

They were founded in 2005 by a couple of Hollywood executives who grieved the diagnosis of their grandchild. This was a full dozen years after the seminal "Don't Mourn For Us" by Jim Sinclair was penned and presented.

From the beginning, Autism Speaks was anti-autism. They sought a "cure" they could use to erase our existence from the planet, they fomented anti-vax conspiracies which are still plaguing our society today, and they fostered and continue to foster an environment supportive and understanding of child-murder.

But. They were connected to celebrity. And they had the endowment and reach to become the largest anti-autism group in the nation and world.

The primary method of advertising which Autism Speaks used from the beginning is known as "fear appeal".

Typically, they frame autistic children as changeling-like creatures which replace the allistic or neurotypical child you had with one which will never love you and will tear apart your family.

Autism Speaks spotlights the worst of having an autistic family member and pulls the drapes on any mitigating circumstances or assistance. They emphasize the burden we are and the harm caused to our families by our existence.

Autism Speaks then goes on to frame themselves as being the solution and the experts on everything autism. They say, don't listen to autistic people, listen to their parents and other people who have been negatively affected by their existence. Listen to these cherry-picked examples.

They talk vaguely about support for autistic children and families while they campaign ceaselessly to find the genes which contributed to making us... so they can unmake us.

As you might expect for people who frame themselves as being the victim of their children's existences, they have been easily taken in by snake-oil salesmen and conspiracy theorists.

To this day, Autism Speaks continues to emphasize the "environmental causes of autism" even while fully knowing (from the millions of dollars of research they put in pursuing a debunked study) that autism appears to be primarily genetic and our environment really only affects our presentations as autistic, not our realities as autistic.

"Environmental causes" is a dog whistle for vaccines because they no longer feel it is profitable for them to explicitly encourage widespread death and alternative disabilities of children, so they have started only alluding to it and finally, years after the study was debunked and retracted, agree that vaccines do not cause autism.

"Environmental causes" is also a dog whistle for things like heavy metal poisoning causing autism and various other external things that can be "taken care of" via chelation therapy and bleaching our insides. Yes, Autism Speaks is at least partially responsible for spreading bleach "cures".

I believe they've taken it down since I first started advocating for SPLC to recognize Autism Speaks as a hate group—something autistic persons have recognized for years—but as recently as a year ago they were still directing people to seek out these "cures".

They worded it in such a way that it was, "These 'cures' do not work and can cause harm, but you should talk to people who tried them for their children and see for yourself."

It's cruelty for cruelty's sake. Or it's believing scientifically disproven things in a way that promotes the torture of children.

Which brings us to arguably their biggest crime against humanity and against autistic people specifically thus far: the advancement of behaviorism or behavioral conditioning as the "treatment" for autism.

Behaviorism, that is, conversion therapy torture. When done on autistic people, it is commonly called ABA or PBS.

This is another reason why they cling to "environmental causes", because behaviorism is entirely consumed with external presentation.

Autism is a pervasive neurological state which colors every aspect of our lives. Their "solution" is to deny our reality, break us to their will, and have us pretend to be "normal".

Through their efforts, they have ensured conversion therapy is not just used, but frequently the only choice for covered treatment of autistic children.

I say "choice", but the torture is sometimes court-mandated (and this is more common when the parents are marginalized-by-society in some way themselves).

Autism Speaks is so very proud of their government influence. Shortly before I started the petition, I watched in horror as their testimony scuttled a bill at the state level intended to help autistic children which had the support of their parents because not enough torture was included in the "help".

People say they've "changed", yet it's not like their institution is so hallowed and sacrosanct that it is necessary to keep around even as it is continues to encourage harm and death to autistic children and autistic adults.

Autism Speaks is the multi-headed hydra of anti-autism rhetoric and hate in the world today. They have so many branches and have infiltrated so deeply that many of their supporters ( I hope ) are not even aware of the hateful rhetoric and active harm they spread.

People tend not to even question the premise that autistic humans are better off dead than alive, people have for ages not even thought of us as human. Autism Speaks recommends starting behavioral conditioning as early as possible in children as young as two. The least intensive programs they recommend are for dozens of hours a week.

This is what they recommend, push, and lobby for with *all* autistic children.

If they become able to accurately recognize autism in a fetus, then their genocide and eugenics will only accelerate. I am pro-abortion, but no one should be coerced into an abortion with lies and one-sided propaganda.

Showing hateful rhetoric and catastrophizing about our existence to a newly pregnant person is similarly abominable as the sort of thing anti-choice people do.

Autism Speaks has not changed, though they have gotten better at pretending normality. Maybe they put themselves through conversion therapy torture to learn how to pretend to be a force of good while being sympathetic of child murderers?

Or, you know, they've hired publicists and PR people.

If you were duped by them, I'm sorry that their hate is not more well-known. Can you imagine if the first place you felt supported you and understood your struggles was the bad guy? Who would think that by default?

But they are the bad guy. And they're using you. Preying on your isolation and desire for community and support.

They start early. Constant public outreach. Working with cops. University chapters. There may even be entire branches under their umbrella that are actively dedicated to good. But they support the hate and harm by supporting Autism Speaks.

If you support Autism Speaks, then you support the elimination of autism.

If you believe their fear-driven propaganda designed to earn more money for themselves, that may sound like a good thing to you.

But you cannot eliminate autism without eliminating the autistic person, too.

We cannot turn off our autism, some of us can pretend normality—frequently to our great misfortune—but others can't do that either. It's similar to what happens when you force queer people through conversion therapy torture / behaviorism regimes.

There is not some hidden switch in our brains to "fix" us. Even if there was, we would not be ourselves, we would be different people. You cannot separate autism from the autistic.

If this letter spoke to you, I hope you will consider signing my petition to get the Southern Poverty Law Center to track anti-disability hate and to recognize Autism Speaks as an anti-autism group.

You can find the petition here:

Thank you for reading, Zero Richardson

[geeky-politics-46]

As if you needed another reason not to vote for Trump, here it is... all the stories here that you enjoy reading could be subject to new laws that could put your favorite writers in prison or at the very least subject to criminal action.

Project 2025 is by a conservative think tank & it is literally all the most dystopian ideas you can think. Like there are literally plans in it to suspend or get rid of parts of the US Constitution & The Bill of Rights. It is also what they are pushing to pass if Trump is elected in November. These are the plans they want to put in place and are already at work writing so Trump can rubber stamp.

There have been many articles about other horrifying parts of Project 2025, but a new revelation that strikes close to home as a smut writer is their plan to redefine & criminalize pornography. Including artwork that depicts nudity (think Michaelangelo's David) and books that depict sexual physical contact. That would put many of us on this site & others like AO3 at risk.

This is just the tip of the iceberg & there are plenty more heinous & inhumane things in Project 2025, including making homosexuality and being transgender illegal & providing gender affirming support punishable by incarceration. The people behind Project 2025 & The Heritage Foundation are telling you exactly what they plan to do. Believe them.

If you care about the people on this site and their work, please take them into consideration in Nov. Is Joe Biden my favorite person? No. Do I think some of his policies are wrong? Yes. Will I still be voting for him in November? Absolutely, because democracy is literally on the line this fall.

[benandstevesposts]

Federal Agency Rejects Developer’s Report That Massive Grain Elevator Won’t Harm Black Heritage Sites

For the second time in six months, a federal agency reprimanded a Louisiana developer for failing to adequately assess the harm that its proposed $400 million agricultural development would cause to neighboring Black communities and historic sites.

In a forceful letter dated Dec. 23, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected claims by the developer, Greenfield LLC, that its massive grain transfer facility in St. John the Baptist Parish upriver from New Orleans will have “no adverse effects.” The Corps is considering a permit application by Greenfield to build on federally protected waters and has the power to halt the project.

That new report, which the Corps received in November, did not address the agency’s demand that the developer conducts a more complete assessment of how the project could damage historic sites and harm residents of nearby towns, according to the Corps’ December letter.

“The report,” the letter reads, “just doesn’t demonstrate adequate engagement, and that must be rectified.”

A Greenfield spokesperson said our team of respected expert consultants and have done thorough evaluations to consider any and all potential impacts. The statement said Greenfield takes seriously its responsibility to provide regulatory agencies with accurate and complete information consistent with the regulatory requirements.

The Corps’ letter criticizes Greenfield and its contractors for failing to meaningfully consult with people whose lives would be impacted by the dozens of looming grain silos, new rail, truck, and shipping traffic, and pollutants from the facility. It says Greenfield and its consultants have not done enough to account for how the development project might harm communities of color, a requirement under federal environmental justice standards.

“It’s very disappointing that they would continue to double down on the report, that they are still saying there will not be any detrimental effects,” Erin Edwards, who blew the whistle on the earlier report, told ProPublica in a recent interview.

“It’s very disappointing that they would continue to double down on the report, that they are still saying there will not be any detrimental effects,” Erin Edwards, who blew the whistle on the earlier report, told ProPublica in a recent interview. Edwards co-authored the first version of the information when she worked as an architectural historian for Gulf South Research Corporation, the for-profit cultural resources, and archaeological consulting firm hired by another of Greenfield’s consultants to conduct a federally required assessment of historical sites.

Edwards resigned in late 2021 after her report was stripped of every mention of possible harm to communities or cultural properties, including her conclusion that the area surrounding the development should be listed as a historic district because of its connection to histories of slavery. In internal Gulf South emails obtained by ProPublica, a company manager wrote that it would lose its contract for the report — and could lose future work — if it didn't change the findings.

“Gulf South knew all along that the project would harm the historic plantations there, and they knew that it would hurt the area as a whole,” Edwards said. “There’s no way to look at the evidence and not see that it’s going to be detrimental.”

The Greenfield grain facility has been the target of sustained pushback from nearby communities, civil and human rights groups, and historic preservation organizations, as well as from other federal agencies, including the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which oversees national preservation policy. The land where the development is planned sits beside the Whitney Plantation Museum, which serves as a memorial to enslaved people in Louisiana. One plot of land down the river is another unusually well preserved plantation designated as a National Historic Landmark.

To read the ProPublica Report, you can find the complete publication by clicking here and going directly to the information by visiting their site.

[whenweallvote]

Happy heavenly birthday to U.S. legislator and civil rights leader Julian Bond (1940-2015)!

Bond led a long career of public service: He served on the Georgia House of Representatives and Georgia Senate; became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center; and then served as chairman of the NAACP for over 20 years.

[never-was-has-been]

[sophieinwonderland]

So are you classifying endogenic systems as a race, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/nationality? Based on the definition you’re using.

To be honest, I think arguing the semantics of whether it's acceptable for a group to dedicate itself to hating people for having uncommon neurotypes because it's not technically considered a disability has major "Trump can't be racist against Mexicans because Mexican isn't a race" vibes. If you're only defense for bigotry is weird technicalities, you've already lost.

"We've decided it's okay to be hateful and bigoted towards this specific marginalized group of neurodivergents because it's technically not a disability" isn't the slam dunk argument you think it is.

Regardless, I'll refer back to the SPLC definition.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as an organization or collection of individuals that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. An organization does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.

This definition doesn't use specific categories to be applicable.

There also is a point worth noting that anti-endos regularly malign spiritual plurality and associated religions. There is also a ton of hate and vitriol directed at religions and spiritualities that incorporate what might be described as hallucinatory or dissociative experiences as part of their spiritual practices.

[saywhat-politics]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday appeared to agree it is a “blatant falsehood” that a far-right Christian ministry that has claimed “homosexuals say yes” to pedophilia and promotes anti-LGBTQ lies is a “hate group” that deserves to be placed on the same map and the KKK and neo-Nazis.

Justice Thomas’ rant appears as the only opposition to the Court’s decision Monday to not take up a case that would effectively revisit the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan, which requires a plaintiff suing for defamation to prove “actual malice.”

Coral Ridge Ministries asked the Supreme Court to review its case, which it lost, against the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating it an anti-LGBTQ hate group. The case is not about whether or not the church is a hate group, but whether or not the Southern Poverty Law Center has the First Amendment right to say so. The court refused, but Thomas in an angry dissent wrote:

“SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation lumped Coral Ridge’s Christian ministry with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis. It placed Coral Ridge on an interactive, online ‘Hate Map’ and caused Coral Ridge concrete financial injury by excluding it from the AmazonSmile donation program. Nonetheless, unable to satisfy the ‘almost impossible’ actual-malice standard this Court has imposed, Coral Ridge could not hold SPLC to account for what it maintains is a blatant falsehood.”

[commiepinkofag]

'3 Days'

Five members of a white supremacist hate group [Patriot Front] convicted of plotting to riot at a gay pride event will spend three days in jail, a court has ruled.

US white supremacists found guilty of gay pride riot plot

On Friday, a judge ordered all five men to spend three days in jail, on top of the two they have already served. They were also given one year of unsupervised probation, in which they are allowed to leave the state, and were banned from coming within two miles (3.2km) of city parks. The judge ordered their judgement to be withheld, meaning that they can ask the court to retroactively dismiss the case after they complete their punishment.

… Patriot Front was formed in 2017 after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group's manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country," the SPLC said of the group. The anti-racism organisation ADL says Patriot Front belongs to the alt-right segment of white supremacists, but claims to be "patriotic". It has called for "American Fascism", describing it as a "return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers", ADL says. The group's manifesto claims that non-whites are not "Americans" and its symbols include the fasces - a Roman bundle of sticks representing authority and used last century by Mussolini's Italian Fascists, ADL says.

Mattea Bubalo / BBC

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: The Quillette Editorial Board

Published: Dec 23, 2023

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally. 

Another form of expertise the organization developed was in the area of marketing—especially when the market in question consisted of deep-pocketed urban liberals. As former SPLC staffer Bob Moser reported in a 2019 New Yorker article, the group has consistently taken on attention-grabbing urgent-seeming causes that its leaders knew could be leveraged as a means to gain publicity and—more importantly—donations. It’s no coincidence that the SPLC’s co-founder and long-time fundraising guru, Morris Dees, had previously operated a direct-mail business that sold cookbooks and tchotchkes. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees told a journalist in 1988.

Dees’ big fundraising break at the SPLC came when he got access to the direct-mail list from the 1972 presidential campaign of Democrat George McGovern. The SPLC co-founder went on to maximize the SPLC’s revenues through what would now be known as targeted methods. According to one former legal colleague, for instance, Dees rarely used his middle name—Seligman—in SPLC mailings, except when it came to “Jewish zip codes.”

Thanks to Dees’ slick marketing expertise, the SPLC was eventually taking in more money than it paid out in operational expenses. (As of October 2022, its endowment fund was valued at almost US$640 million.) But over time, his hard-sell tactics began to alienate co-workers, as there was an obvious disconnect between the real class-based problems they observed in society and the fixations of the naïve northern donors whose wallets Dees was seeking to pry open.

“I felt that [Dees] was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on,” former SPLC attorney Deborah Ellis told Progressive writer John Egerton. “The Klan is no longer one of the South’s biggest problems—not because racism has gone away, but because the racists simply can’t get away with terrorism any more.”

On March 14, 2019, Dees—by now 82 years old, but still listed as the SPLC’s chief trial lawyer—was fired amid widespread rumors that he’d been the subject of internal sexual-harassment accusations. His affiliation was scrubbed from the group’s web site; and the organization’s president, Richard Cohen, cryptically (but damningly) declared that, “when one of our own fails to meet [SPLC] standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” (Less than two weeks later, Cohen himself left the organization, casting his resignation as part of a transition “to a new generation of leaders.”)

In describing his tenure at the SPLC during the early 2000s, Moser argued that the very structure of the organization betrayed its hypocrisy: Here was an entity dedicated to social justice (as we would now call it), yet which was run by an extremely well-paid, almost exclusively white, corps of lawyers, administrators, and fund-raisers who ruled over a mixed-race corps of junior staff. As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the “P” in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the “Poverty Palace.”

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC’s tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.” (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, “CAPTAIN.”)

The report purports to demonstrate “the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” and “anti-trans narratives and extremism.” Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it’s marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” the “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” uncovered by the SPLC has “real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people.”

At this point, it should be stressed that there is certainly nothing wrong with the SPLC—or anyone else—campaigning for the legitimate rights of people who are transgender. Such a campaign would be entirely in keeping with the SPLC’s original liberal ethos. Just as no one should be denied, say, an apartment, a marriage license, or the right to vote based on his or her race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation, no trans person should be denied these rights and amenities simply because he or she experiences gender dysphoria.

But the SPLC’s report hardly confines itself to such unassailable liberal principles. The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who’ve expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists—specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be “affirmed” in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women’s spaces and sports leagues.

The SPLC’s authors seek to cast their ideological enemies as hate-addled reactionaries whose nefarious activities must “be understood as part of the historical legacy of white supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.” And it is absolutely true that some of the organizations they name-check are hard-right, socially conservative outfits that endorse truly transphobic (and homophobic) beliefs.

But many of the supposed transphobes targeted by the report aren’t even conservative—let alone members of the religious right. In a multitude of cases, they’re simply parents, therapists, and activists who argue the obvious fact that human sexual biology doesn’t evanesce into rainbow dust the moment that a child—or middle-aged man—asserts that he or she was “born in the wrong body.”

It’s also interesting to note who gets left out of the SPLC’s analysis. The most influential figures leading the backlash against (what some call) “gender ideology” are women such as author J.K. Rowling and tennis legend Martina Navratilova, both of whom come at the issue from explicitly feminist perspectives. Being successful public figures, neither woman needs a cent from the conservative think tanks that the SPLC presents as being back-office puppet-masters of the alleged anti-trans conspiracy outlined in the CAPTAIN report.

In keeping with the conspiracist motif that runs through the document, the authors have provided spider-web diagrams that set out the connections binding this (apparently) shadowy cabal. In this regard, it seems that Quillette itself served as one of the SPLC’s sources: In a section titled, “Group Dynamics and Division of Labor within the Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network,” the authors footnote “an August 23, 2023 podcast for Quillette,” wherein

it was revealed that [Colin] Wright is in a relationsihp [sic] with journalist Christina Buttons, who is an advisoary [sic] board member of [the Gender Dysphoria Alliance] with Drs. Lisa Littman and Ray Blanchard, an editoral [sic] board member of Springer’s Archives of Sexual Research [a mistaken reference to the Archives of Sexual Behavior] with J. Michael Bailey. Notably, Buttons and Wright are interviewed by host Jonathan Kay. In addition to hosting Quillette’s podcast, Kay serves on FAIR’s board of advisors.

We’ve chosen to highlight this particular (typo-riddled) text from the report not just because of the absurd suggestion that our publication has enlisted in an imaginary “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network,” but also because the above-quoted roll call of supposed gender villains illustrates the intellectual dishonesty that suffuses the whole report.

Let’s go through the references one by one, in the order in which they are presented. The Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) is a group led by people who are themselves transgender, and who are “concerned about the direction that gender medicine and activism has taken.” Are we to imagine that its members are directing transphobia—against themselves? Lisa Littman, formerly of Brown University, is a respected academic who’s published a peer-reviewed analysis of Rapid Onset Gender Disorder. Ray Blanchard is a well-known University of Toronto psychiatrist. The Archives of Sexual Behavior is a peer-reviewed academic journal in sexology. Michael Bailey is a specialist in sexual orientation and gender nonconformity at Northwestern University. Colin Wright is a widely published writer (including at Quillette) with a PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara. (The SPLC’s claim that he is in a relationship with journalist Christina Buttons, who also writes about gender issues, is completely true. But the fact that the group saw fit to report this fact as if it were evidence of sinister machinations says far more about the report’s authors than it does about either Wright or Buttons.) FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, is a classically liberal group led by a Harvard Law School graduate named Monica Harris. Do any of these people or groups sound like extremists?

The fact that the SPLC is attempting to market its report as a blow against the “anti-LGBTQ+” movement, writ large, is itself quite laughable, since many of the activists who’ve been arguing for a more balanced approach to gender rights are themselves either gay (as with Navratilova and Julie Bindel) or (as with the founders of the GDA) transgender.

Others on the SPLC gender-enemies list are author Abigail Shrier, and therapists Sasha Ayad, and Stella O’Malley. These women openly broadcast their views in best-selling books, as well as mainstream magazines and newspapers. The idea that the SPLC has successfully “exposed” these women through some kind of investigation, as suggested by the title that’s been slapped on the CAPTAIN report, would be ludicrous even if they’d said anything scandalous (which they haven’t).

And what course of future action does the SPLC endorse? For one, it concludes that educators should stigmatize gender-critical views as analogous to “racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.” The report's authors also want academic journals to sniff out groups that “espouse an anti-LGBTQ+ ideology” (as that latter term is speciously defined by the SPLC). And in a final flourish, the group urges reporters to “be aware of the narrative manipulation strategies and the cooptation of scientific credentials and language by anti-trans researchers when sourcing stories about trans experiences.”

With this last point, we get to the real nub: The apparent goal is for this report to be read as a catalogue of people, ideas, and groups that must be shunned. Indeed, the authors explicitly cite the work of one Andrea James, a once-respected arts producer who, as Jesse Singal has documented, now runs a creepy (“stalker” is the word Singal uses) web site called Transgender Map, which lists personal details of anyone whom James deems a gender heretic. When it comes to one-on-one communication, James’ manner of dealing with critics is exemplified by an email sent to bioethicist Alice Dreger, in which James referred to Dreger’s then-five-year-old son as a “womb turd.”

One way to describe the CAPTAIN report is as an SPLC-branded rehash of the information contained on Transgender Map. And one can understand why the authors thought that such a gambit might work. The SPLC already publishes other curated lists of hatemongers—e.g., its “Hatewatch” service, “Hate Map,” and “Intelligence Report.” It wasn’t such a long shot to imagine that this new report might convince readers to treat the listed “Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network” acolytes as equally disreputable.

But if that was the authors’ goal, it doesn’t seem to have been achieved. The SPLC report landed with something of a thud—and has attracted little attention on social media except insofar as it was mocked by its intended targets.

This may have something to do with the report’s timing. For several years now, a backlash against this kind of gender agitprop has been building within many of the same liberal and progressive circles that the SPLC has traditionally targeted for donations. The trend is reflected by the rise of such groups as the LGB Alliance, a coalition of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are fed up with the ideological takeover of LGBT groups by a militant subset of trans activists.

The same trend is playing out internationally. While the SPLC does its best to heap blame on America’s conservative Christians, many of western Europe’s governments (none of which are in thrall to the Heritage Foundation or the Charles Koch Foundation) have been following a more gender-critical path for years.

Just a week after the SPLC put out its report, in fact, the UK government published new guidelines advising teachers that they have no duty to automatically “affirm” a child’s assertion that he or she is transgender; and that, in considering such situations, teachers should speak with a child’s parents and consider whether the child is under undue influence from social media or peers. Sweden, Finland, and Norway—hardly bastions of Christian conservatism—have also rolled back policies that rush children into transition. In Canada, several provinces have recently enacted rules that require parents to be notified when a child seeks to transition, even in the face of a sustained media campaign that repeats lurid claims to the effect that such policies will cause an epidemic of trans suicides. Are all of these foreign governments also complicit in the vast “junk-science and disinformation campaign” against trans people that the SPLC claims to have “exposed”?

The SPLC would hardly be the first progressive organization whose reputation has suffered by going all-in on the gender issue. The American Civil Liberties Union, which also was rooted in traditional liberal values before succumbing to more faddish progressive tendencies, has attracted ridicule due to its parroting of slogans such as “men who get their periods are men,” and the claim that males have no “unfair advantage” over females in sports.

These organizations have never been shy about angering conservatives and reactionaries; indeed, they wear such anger as a badge of pride. But their cultish refusal to engage with the reality of biological sex also antagonizes progressive feminists seeking to protect female spaces from biological men, and LGB activists who see the attempted erasure of sex-based attraction as a species of progressive homophobia.

Which is to say that the SPLC’s report seems not only intellectually dishonest, but also self-destructive. While the SPLC leaders who green-lit this project once may have been able to bank on the popularity of pronoun checks and esoteric gender identities among the wealthy white coastal progressives who comprise the bulk of their donors, this is an ideological movement that’s decidedly past its peak. It’s a marketing error that the savvy Dees likely never would have made.

The SPLC obviously does a lot more than lend its name to sloppily edited gender propaganda: A review of its press feed shows that it still has staff working traditional legal beats such as voters’ rights, police accountability, and humane treatment for prisoners. But when an organization publishes misleading materials in regard to one issue, the natural effect is to raise serious questions about the group’s values and credibility more generally—questions that SPLC supporters will want to think about the next time one of the group’s fundraisers hits them up for a donation.

==

This is what institutional capture looks like.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Ron DeSantis has appointed Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group Moms for Liberty, to the Florida Commission on Ethics.

DeSantis announced Descovich’s appointment to the prominent commission on Wednesday (6 September). The appointment is still subject to confirmation by Florida’s Republican-led Senate.

The nine-member panel is responsible for weighing complaints and investigating alleged breaches of public trust against elected and appointed officials as well as state employees.

Descovich wrote on X, formally known as Twitter, that it will be a “privilege to serve the state [she loves] as a member of this commission.”

However, Alejandra Caraballo, an LGBTQ+ rights advocate and civil rights attorney, warned that Descovich’s appointment was dangerous because she would “be able to investigate LGBTQ state employees and allies and systematically remove them from state government.”

DeSantis just appointed the co-founder of an SPLC designated hate group as part of the the Florida Ethics Commission.

Descovich, who previously served on Brevard’s school board from 2016 to 2020, founded Moms for Liberty with Tiffany Justice in 2021 to “stand up for parental rights at all levels of government”, according to the group’s website.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labelled Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” because of its opposition to LGBTQ+ issues, advocacy for book bans and work against racially inclusive curriculums in schools.

“Moms for Liberty activities make it clear that the group’s primary goals are to fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students – primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families,” the SPLC’s 2022 Year in Hate and Extremism report stated.

The Florida-based group – which has chapters around the US – helped develop the state’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law and publicly advocated in favour of the legislation, which bans discussions of LGBTQ+ topics in schools.

In July 2022, Moms for Liberty’s Twitter (now X) account was temporarily suspended for violating the social media platform’s rule against hateful conduct with a post criticising California’s gender-affirming healthcare bill.

The post claimed that gender dysphoria is a “mental health disorder” and that “California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults.”

Moms for Liberty also alleged on social media that “CRT” (critical race theory) and “gender ideology” are “toxic for children.” In another post, the group claimed that “gender identity indoctrination” is “one of the most dangerous threats facing children in America today.”

Moms for Liberty has also been tied to other far-right organisations, and members have allegedly waged campaigns of harassment against school boards or rival parent groups.

In one interview, a Moms for Liberty member said LGBTQ+ kids should be placed in separate classrooms “like children with autism or Down’s syndrome.”

The American Historical Association also has condemned Moms for Liberty’s ‘vigorous’ advocacy of “censorship and harassment of history teachers, banning history books from libraries and classrooms and legislation that renders it impossible for historians to teach with professional integrity without risking job loss and other penalties.”

The Committee on LGBTQ History said the right-wing group “consistently spreads harmful, hateful rhetoric about the LGBTQIA+ community, including popularising the use of the term ‘groomer’ to refer to queer people and attacking the mere existence of trans youth.”

[rustbeltjessie]

Yearly reminder that the Irish were never slaves here in the US, and that myth is frequently used by white supremacists to further their cause. Please don’t take the real, actual oppression the Irish/Irish-Americans have faced and twist it into something that fuels hate-group rhetoric. ☘️🇮🇪

[panicinthestudio]

New report looks at the changing face of extremist groups in America, June 17, 2023

As hate groups edge toward the political mainstream, experts say they’re employing new tactics and taking on new forms. In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center added 12 conservative “parents’ rights” groups to its list of extremist and anti-government organizations. SPLC’s Susan Corke joins John Yang to discuss why the center added organizations like Moms for Liberty to their list. PBS NewsHour

[cloudstrychnine]

Help us stay housed for my birthday and sue for trans rights!!

My fiance's job assignment ends Friday, I haven't been able to find work my disabled body can do, and we still owe LAST MONTH'S RENT. We're both middle aged and transgender, we do not have families we can lean on. We have Cashapp, Venmo, and a survival GoFundMe. I'll be making a separate GFM for any legal fees, transportation, and other expenses after getting in touch with legal aid.

Two years ago our transphobic landlord illegally evicted us. We were homeless and despite pandemic programs like hotel vouchers being available the only help the state would offer was to direct us to a Christian mission the state has partnered with. We did contact the mission but we were turned away because they told us "we're a church" and would have forced the trans women into men's dorms.

Every single program set up to help people during the pandemic failed us. Even turning to unemployment when my job illegally recorded my medical leave of absence (I was literally dying, hospitalized with acute pancreatitis after covid) as a voluntary termination on my part, they lost paperwork and I wasn't provided accommodations for my disabilities.

Yet our landlords claimed over $6000 in PPP two years ago and had it forgiven.

I'm contacting the ACLU, Transgender Law Center, a local tenant law group, the state bar association, and a few politicians. We need to fight for ourselves and ALL the trans people this state refuses to acknowledge. There are federal funds specifically set aside for LGBTQ+ people and my state has not accepted these funds because the politicians in charge claim we don't have a large enough trans and queer population. This is false, by the way, my state has one of the highest trans populations in the US and that's with extreme under-counting!