The brutal beheading of photojournalist Jim Foley at the hands of an Islamic group has focused the world’s attention on their brutality and may have awoken the Obama administration to what they are up against. But, largely overlooked by most media in 2013 was a FOIA mandated release of certain documents which detail the cooperation between the Department of Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The DOJ has adopted the SPLC’s definitions of “hate groups” operating in the United States. If you happen to be affiliated with or share beliefs with these groups, then chances are you’re a “hater.”
According to the SLPC website, there are the following “hate group” categories: Anti-Immigrant, Anti-LGBT, Anti-Muslim, Black Separatist, Christian Identity, Holocaust Denial, the KKK, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Nazi, Patriot Movement, Radical Traditional Catholicism, Sovereign Citizens Movement, and White Nationalist. Thus, if you happen to believe that the United States should control its borders, if you happen to believe that gay marriage and homosexuality are wrong, if you happen to believe that some Muslims are brutal savages, if you happen to believe that the United States has strayed from it traditional values- in short, if you happen to disagree with a Leftist secular agenda, you are a “hater.” Because you are a “hater” and because the Justice Department has a close working relationship with the SPLC, you are a suspect and potentially dangerous.
The e-mails obtained by Judicial Watch also indicate that the SPLC has a working relationship with the Department of Homeland Security. Under Obama it has designated domestic “terrorist” groups more a threat to “security” than foreign groups. By “foreign,” I refer to Islamic groups.
Despite its continued presence and influence in the past, the KKK is no more a threat to domestic security than the Family Research Council, but the SPLC (and thus the DOJ and DHS) lump them in as a hate group worthy of federal monitoring. Just looking at the list of Christian groups on these lists, one would think there is a vast Christian conspiracy to tear down the United States government.
Rhetoric is one thing and admittedly rhetoric sometimes leads to illegal actions by those on the fringes. But, rhetoric consistently backed up by action is certainly more prevalent among Islamic groups than Christian groups. The Obama administration treats Islamic terrorism as if it is a very small fringe element that carries out attacks. But, the action and the numbers tell a different story. Although figures are hard to come by, it is unmistakable that more Christians have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists than Muslims killed at the hands of Christians. Christians do not use videos of beheadings as a recruitment tool. To the SPLC, ironically, every illegal act at an abortion clinic is considered an act of “terrorism,” while the actions of radical environmental and animal-rights groups are not.
Perhaps this relationship between the government and the SPLC explains why the Obama administration has been reluctant to address true terrorist threats domestically and internationally. According to some websites that document Muslim attacks on Christians worldwide, almost 2,600 Christians have been specifically targeted and killed this year alone. Most of the atrocities have occurred in Nigeria where the Obama response has been Twitter pictures of people holding signs.
So while Christians die the world over, Eric Holder revived, at the insistence of the SPLC, the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee. They are charged with the task of sharing information with all law enforcement agencies regarding alleged domestic terrorists, many of whom are allegedly “Christian” in nature. While attacks on Christians at the hands of Muslims are ignored worldwide, the DOJ monitors people and groups domestically because of their beliefs. Ironically, very few of those words have translated into actions involving deaths. And why was this necessary according to the SPLC?
According to their response at the time, this was necessary in response to the following: the murder of three people near a Jewish center in Kansas City, an attack on a Sikh temple in 2012, and (this is a doozy) the Boston Marathon bombing. So we have two documented incidents of domestic terrorism resulting in deaths (I leave out the Boston Marathon as it now appears this was an act of Islamic terrorism) necessitating the formation of some Orwellian “committee” within the Department of Justice. If the Obama administration had paid as much attention to Islamic terrorist groups as the DOJ is paying to domestic Christian groups, perhaps he would have realized in January that ISIL was not a “JV team.” The true JV “team” is the extreme fringe of these domestic groups which sometimes hide behind Christianity.
There is a pattern here. In his bizarre attempt to woo the Muslim world- a policy that thus far is a huge failure and has only made the problem worse- priorities are askew. The real threat- actual Islamic terrorism- which includes actual deaths is minimized in the minds of Obama officials while fake threats which include mostly words are blown out of proportion. Many of the cases cited by the SPLC were attacks or thwarted attacks on police and government officials by Neo-Nazi, not Christian, groups and when actual violence ensued it was in response to something else. For example, in one case a person shot at police while they responded to a domestic disturbance call. It was later discovered he made racist rants on a website. To the DOJ and SPLC, this qualifies as an act of domestic terrorism.
No one denies that some members of these Christian groups are nut cases who will take words out of context and in their twisted minds convert them into actions. But given the lack of evidence of actual attacks resulting in deaths or wounded people, it is obvious that it is the extreme, probably mentally disturbed element that follows through on these impulses. If it wasn’t rhetoric, it would have been some other justification. Conversely, the same cannot be said of the Islamic threat. Over 6,000 foreign fighters- mainly European and some Americans- are in Syria and Iraq fighting on the side of ISIL with swords, knives and guns- not words.
As for the SPLC which brands any group that brings attention to the very real threat of Islamic terrorism a “hate group” whether they have any tangential relationship to Christianity or not, they need to get their priorities straight. What can be a more anti-LGBT group, for example, than Islam in general. Christian groups that oppose the gay agenda, who support a smaller and more limited federal government, and who believe that immigration laws should be enforced and our borders secured have committed few, if any, crimes resulting in deaths in the name of Jesus than deaths that can laid at the feet of Islam in the name of Allah. I am not excusing those who hide behind “Christianity” to carry out violent acts, but to suggest or state it is more of a problem than the threat of Islamic terrorism is a dangerously silly policy position. You tell me which is misunderstood and which is dangerous.
QUICK EDIT: I am not suggesting that the KKK or that other groups listed by the SPLC are not necessarily hate groups. Many of them are. The point is that too many times, other groups get lumped in with the true hate groups. Further, the SPLC treats the actions of fringe actors in many groups as being indicative of the entire group when that is not always the case. The ultimate point of this article is that fundamentalist Islamic groups are the greater threat to America than so-called domestic terrorism. And if one dare say that (that is, speak the truth) you are called Islamaphobic and a “hater.”
