Berlet enacts a version of the move neatly described some years ago by Walter Benn Michaels in "The Trouble with Diversity." Those calling for equality outside the liberal consensus are fobbed off as threats to diversity. The real concerns (recognized by Chomsky et al.) of those sympathetic to the tea-partiers - a majority, apparently, of the US population - are dismissed as fulminations of racists.
Green's reference to the SPLC is probably appropriate. A year and a half ago, Alex Cockburn wrote
"What is the arch-salesman of hate-mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center doing now? He’s saying that the election of a black president proves his point. Hate is on the rise! Send money!
"Without skipping a beat, the mailshot moguls, who year after year make money selling the notion there’s been a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, have used the election of a black president to say that, yes, hate is on the rise and America ready to burst apart at the seams, with millions of extremists primed to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other, available for sneak photographs from minions of Chip Berlet, another salesman of the Christian menace, ripely endowed with millions to battle the legions of the cross.
"Ever since 1971 US Postal Service mailbags have bulged with Dees’ fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. Nine years ago Ken Silverstein wrote a devastating commentary on Dees and the SPLC in Harpers, dissecting a typical swatch of Dees’ solicitations. At that time, as Silverstein pointed out, the SPLC was “the wealthiest civil rights group in America,” with $120 million in assets..."
The rest at <http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05152009.html>.
On 1/12/11 10:58 AM, David Green wrote:
> I've read the transcript of Chip Berlet's interview with Amy Goodman.
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/10/chip_berlet_on_the_becking_of
>
> I must say that I do not understand or agree with Berlet's approach to
> understanding the behavior of the assassin. I think that Alexander Cockburn has
> been correct all along about the self-aggrandisement of the SPLC and Potok. I
> also find Berlet's comment on American Renaissance passing strange. Berlet seems
> to be defensive that they might be thought of as anti-Semitic, when in fact--as
> one would predict--they're the kind of racists that are pro-Israel. So Berlet
> seems to give them a pass on this basis.
>
> A former University of Illinois (Urbana) political science professor, Robert
> Weissberg, has written some horrible stuff on the AR website. But he's a tenured
> academic--why not ask how it is that a "respectable" individual like this, who
> taught PS to our children for 25 years, belongs to a hate group? But of course,
> that might lead to those more respectable forms of hatred that Berlet wants to
> sort out from his particular obsessions. Moreover, I find it reprehensible that
> Berlet has lumped in Ron Paul with his analysis of hate groups.
>
> I believe that we should be fundamentally concerned about the state and those
> who have the power to employ its capabilities for violence. It doesn't appear to
> me that Berlet understands that, or cares.
>
>
> David Green
>
>
>
>
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