> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Nathan, I don't understand your reasoning at all. Dees is a phony.
> His enterprise is a big direct mail machine that does almost nothing
> with the $100m it's managed to raise except fund more direct mail
> campaigns. We're supposed to say nothing about this because some hack
> in the Washington Times might put it to bad use?
Frankly, I am not a fan of SPLC, either their general political centrism or even their tactic of using civil lawsuits to bankrupt Klan organizations. I think it is the privatization of law enforcement that like NOW's RICO attacks on anti-abortion folks is a misguided use of courts that will come back to bite the left in the future. Crimes should be treated as such with normal due process; using civil suits is an end-run around normal due process, which should not be denied to anyone, whether accused of communism or racism.
That said, it is ridiculous to say the SPLC has done nothing. They have done lots of education around Klan activities, which I do believe are real and nasty. And like a lot of folks, SPLC education was the first materials I ever saw detailing the problems in depth. Once I came across Chip Bertlet's stuff, I infinitely preferred his take on the problem and the solutions, but that was based on first hearing about similar issues through SPLC.
Even direct mail is a form of education. Hell, the average four to five page fundraising letter may be more information on an issue than many people may see in a local paper. And many local papers that write about an issue may be getting their info from groups like SPLC. Just running a quick WestNews search pulled up 429 references to Dees lecturing and filing lawsuits against various hate groups with 1769 references to the SPLC overall, all just in the last year-and-a-half. Just that amount of media work would take up plenty of staff time.
And I may not like the lawsuit approach to dealing with the Klans, but the SPLC did use them, so saying that they've done "nothing" is exactly the kind of invective I am not that thrilled at.
Just roundhouse dismissal of other people usually a substitute for political critique where accusations of bad faith, racism, "evil" or other character assassination is the main tool. Maybe those are at work, but since most peoples' moral acts are not always perfect, such pissing matches usually get you very little unless you have pretty clear proof.
White supremacists have been spreading much of this nasty info about Dees since the early 1990s that Cockburn writes about. He is recyclying racist right attacks on Dees that they can then turn around and use from a "left source" again in their own propaganda. It takes his participation in "Beyond Left and Right" efforts to a new level of cooperation.
As to SPLC creating a large endowment fund, well the point was to raise money not to spend but put in the bank, so the organization could live off the interest. Is it better for an organization to live off its own endowment or subsist by year-to-year begging from the leftover endowments of dead robber barons, as many progressive organizations do?
Yeah, Morris Dees is one of the best liberal fundraisers of the last generation. So what? He was a multi-millionaire by the time he was 30, sold his business and then helped McGovern raise the funds needed for him to take over the Dem nomination. He's good at getting guilty liberals to cough up money. And he condemns racists using the money. I can think of a lot worse things liberals could spend their cappucino money on.
If I am pissed off at the personal attacks on Dees, it is because Counterpunch (Cockburn and Sinclair) seem to have raised attacking other activists, from radicals to liberals, to a new art form. And the rightwing recycling such attacks is not a random effect but an inevitable result. If there was some useful positive result from the invectives, I might see a counterbalancing gain, but I don't see it.
-- Nathan Newman