Elon Musk is right about the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League
The world’s second-richest man doesn’t have any use for the SPLC or the ADL.
Neither do I.
Musk even called for the Southern Poverty Law Center to be shut down, accusing it of spreading hate. These two organizations – one famous for fighting the Klan and the other for fighting antisemitism — have both rotted from the head down.
They like to post listings of “hate groups” on their websites, and left-wing media likes to cite them as reputable authorities.
The ADL included Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA in its glossary on extremism. The SPLC listed Turning Point in its annual “Hate and Extremism Report.” Thanks to Elon Musk and FBI Director Kash Patel, America now knows that these two organizations are the ones spreading hate.
AUDIO: Random Samplings of a Logical Mind (to come)
When good organizations go bad.
The initial missions of these organizations were fine. But over the years, both have transmogrified into self-righteous caricatures of what they used to be. Now, they falsely and without evidence, decide which people and groups they think ought to labeled as hate groups. I made their lists a time or two. That’s how I first began to suspect they were (as Elon Musk said) evil.
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My presence on the radio talk show circuit, whether in my former syndicated “Lynn Woolley Show” or now with “Cardle & Woolley” on Talk 1370 in Austin, has always been about traditional values, love for country, respecting Christianity and the Judeo-Christian ethic, supporting the family, and being logical. No one from the SPLC or the ADL called me to talk about what was wrong with my thoughts and opinions.
In recent weeks, the late Charlie Kirk and his amazing organization, Turning Point USA made the “hate group” list of both the ADL and the SPLC. How is that possible?
After Kirk was assassinated, I spent hours watching his debates.
Charlie Kirk, after a left-wing loon blew away his neck, was immediately disparaged by many on the Left, including the odious Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “White Supremacist” screamed many on the Left. I wanted to see for myself.
I went to You Tube and watched dozens of Charlie Kirk videos – almost all of them debates with left-wing college students who had been brought to the front of the line, and who lost their debates with him. I watched each debate in its entirety to get full context. After watching dozens of them, I gave up on the idea of finding the white supremacism in Charlie Kirk. It’s not there. The accusations seem to arise from truth-telling by Kirk that’s uncomfortable if you’re a young grievance aficionado.
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What follows is paraphrased, but you can find it online if you search – and in more than one video. A young black student approaches Charlie and intimates that Charlie may have some racist leanings. Charlie always insisted, as do I, that America is not a systemic racist nation. The student invariably sets up the question and then challenges Charlie to dispute it. His answer:
Please tell me something I, as a white man, can do that you, as a black man, cannot do in America.
The answer is obviously nothing. Racism exists (on both sides) because you can’t legislate it away. But America is inherently tolerant in the 21st Century to a point unheard of even in the seventies. It is a fact that minorities have advantages in college admissions and employment that white people don’t enjoy.
Video: Charlie debates on race: What can I do that you can’t do?”
So, Kirk won those debates. Every single one of them. And, he won them for the simple reason that he was right.
From what I could tell, Charlie Kirk treated all people the same. How many times on Cardle & Woolley have I wished that we could all just be people again? On college campuses, it seems we’re people but of different colors, and that’s what Charlie wanted to move beyond, even if it meant killing the entire grievance industry.
The ADL and SPLC apparently never watched his videos, or they decided that telling the truth was hate speech. Either way, labeling him as a white supremacist was libelous and he could have sued.
Who is Vernellia R. Randall?
Glad you asked. She is the founder and editor and Professor Emerita of Law at The University of Dayton School of Law. After Charlie’s brutal murder, she wrote this headline:
Charlie Kirk, White Supremacist, Dead at 31
His most apparent transgression appears to have been failing to agree with Vernellia. She wrote this about him:
Charlie Kirk built himself into the face of a conservative youth movement through Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Behind the branding of “patriotism” and “freedom,” the record shows a pattern of rhetoric, organizational culture, and alliances that echoed white supremacist and Christian nationalist ideologies.
No. He didn’t. So, where did she get her information? From the Southern Poverty Law Center, of course. Note that Charlie did not approve of LGBTQ ideology. Neither do I. I never met Charlie, but I would suspect that he agrees with me that people can do or be what they want if they break no laws, but a man cannot change into a woman. Interesting enough, it may have been that point of view that motivated the shooter, who is said to have a transitioning lover.
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My message to Vernellia is this: You have every right to disagree with Charlie Kirk or with me. You do not have the right to make up your own facts. Also, please find better sources than the SPLC.
The FBI cuts ties with the ADL.
Yes, the FBI has been in bed with the Anti-Defamation League. Former FBI Director (now under indictment) James Comey worked with them on, of all things, hate crime training. Current FBI Director Kash Patel has cut those ties and for good reason. By the way, After Musk and others blasted the ADL for including TPUSA in its Glossary of Extremist and Hate, the ADL removed the list from its website.
Even Wikipedia spills the beans on the ADL and the SPLC.
Hopefully, they won’t remove some of the language. Here are some samples.
On the Southern Poverty Law Center:
- In their 2015 book Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices, Roger Chapman and James Ciment cited the criticism of SPLC by journalist Ken Silverstein, who said that the SPLC’s fundraising appeals and finances were deceptive.
- Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen, in a June 2018 column for The Washington Post, said that the SPLC had lost its credibility and “become a caricature of itself”.
- In the wake of Morris Dees’ dismissal in March 2019, former SPLC staffer Bob Moser published an article in The New Yorker, “The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center”, in which he described his disappointment with what the SPLC had become.
- The English Wikipedia community considers the Southern Poverty Law Center to be “generally reliable on topics related to hate groups and extremism in the United States”, but notes that it is “biased” and should be attributed.
On the Anti-Defamation League:
- The ADL has repeatedly criticized Trump for what they view as antisemitic tropes and engagement in apologetics for white supremacists.
- In 2018, the ADL criticized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for Islamophobia, which Sohrab Ahmari suggested was evidence of bias against conservatives.
- In 2019, alongside at least eight other Jewish advocacy organizations, dozens of civil rights organizations, and more than one hundred members of congress, the ADL called on the Trump administration to fire administration executive Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration policies on immigration, condemning Miller as a white supremacist.
There’s more on the Wikipedia entry, some good and some bad. Read it all and make up your own mind. Be sure and read the entry on SPLC co-founder Morris Dees and his sordid history that led the organization to fire him.
Elon Musk got it right.
Musk said on X, as reported in the article in Newsmax:
The SPLC is an evil organization that spreads hate propaganda relentlessly. It needs to be shut down.
Criticism from Musk is also credited with influencing Kash Patel to tell the ADL to take a hike. I could not be happier that after all these years that I’ve worked to expose these two organizations, the time has finally come.
People who follow the news now know precisely what they represent. They may wonder why professors like Vernellia R. Randall or news organizations like the Associated Press cite the SPLC and ADL as fact-based. When they are obviously not.
Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I know far more about Turning Point USA that I ever did before. I can tell you that the SPLC and the ADL are no Turning Point USA. Not even close.
Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster, and songwriter. Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us. Check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley.
Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Email Lynn at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.
No one is labeled as a white supremacist in this book. But there is a really evil villain!
