THE ENEMY OF OUR ENEMY
The Southern Poverty Law Center "Bad Jackets" Anarchists
By P. Milstein
"Bad-jacketing" is a term used to describe the misrepresentation
of a group as something it is not; presumably the false description
is bad and discrediting in some way. Bad-jacketing is similar to
"red-baiting," where progressives are sometimes labeled as "communists."
Are anarchists now the allies and recruits for the latest trend
in white neo-fascism? That is the amazing Big Lie being put out
by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), on its popular civil
rights website, in the Winter 2000 issue of their "Klanwatch" Intelligence
Report. This attack on revolutionary anarchism is more than a simple
mistake, more even than just pro-government propaganda that needs
to be shot down. It's a slipping of the mask, exposing the contradiction
of pro-capitalist "anti-racism" in America.
This dramatic SPLC report, "Neither Left nor Right," is nominally
about third position neo-fascism (the tendency that advocates both
anti-capitalism and racism, first made prominent by the Strasser
wing of the 1920-30s German Nazi Party). But the SPLC surprisingly
uses the events of the Anti-WTO Battle of Seattle as its starting
point and focus --and targets the anarchist Black Bloc. The report
says right at the start: "As the streets of Seattle exploded into
1960s-style violence last November, stunned Americans were told
that 'anarchists' and other left-wingers were leading a huge riot
aimed at protesting capitalist globalism ...And these reports were
true--but only to a point.
"Right alongside the 'progressive' groups that demonstrated in
Seattle --mostly peaceful defenders of labor, the envi-ronment,
animal rights and similar causes--were the hard-edged soldiers of
neo-fascism. They carried signs decrying 'The New World Order Agenda,'
bitterly denounced 'Jewish media plus big capital' and in at least
one case, fought it out with black youths amidst the tear gas. The
'Battle of Seattle' brought erstwhile antagonists together to face
a common enemy in the streets.
"What was behind this truly remarkable mix? How was it that members
of the far 'left' and 'right' found themselves facing down police
together? ..."
And at the conclusion it comes back to this theme: "Still, it seems
clear that the hard right will draw increasingly from the ranks
of its former enemies."
What is so damaging about these lies, of course, is that the Southern
Poverty Law Center --recently in the headlines for its winning civil
suit against the Aryan Nations in Idaho --is probably the leading
mainstream source for information on white racist and far right
organizations. Continually quoted in the media, the SPLC is widely
used by schools and those concerned about racism.
If the Seattle PD or the f.b.i. had tried such a crude smear--like,
"Many of those black-masked anarchists who attacked corporations
at Seattle were really from the Ku Klux Klan!"--everyone would have
laughed it off. But the Southern Poverty Law Center slipping a "bad-jacket"
on anarchists in the name of anti-racism is much more disarming.
The truth here is not in doubt. "Neither Left nor Right" is conveniently
vague throughout about numbers, about how large the neo-fascist
presence was at Seattle. But its dramatic language would mislead
an innocent reader to assume some significant far right presence
in the street clashes. Of the hundreds in the anarchist Black Bloc
who trashed Starbucks and Niketown, the provable number of neo-fascists
was exactly zero. Of the roughly 20, 000 Anti-WTO protest marchers,
the few neo-fascists were certainly less than the number of various
police, f.b.i., and military infiltrators and observers. The white
neo-fascists could probably have fit into a van. They did not play
any role on the historic events at Seattle (except for buying postcards,
getting themselves photographed, and gazing at the action with envy).
It isn't just the Black Bloc and its supporters who have confirmed
this. We can refer to Chip Berlet, a well-known progressive researcher
and author on repression issues. Berlet has been a consultant for
US government agencies and has defended the SPLC's contribution
to anti-racist education (we mention this to emphasize that Berlet
is neither an "extremist" nor someone with a bias against the SPLC).
Yet on the accuracy of this report, Berlet wrote in an upcoming
book he has co-authored that only "a handful of rightwing activists,
including some third position neo-nazis and fans of David Icke,
took part in the large and dramatic Seattle protests against globalization
..." When asked for clarification on what he meant by "a handful,"
Berlet answered: "Several Icke supporters were openly holding signs
promoting Icke and handing out pamphlets. There are photographs
of this, including one in the SPLC report. The reports about the
Buchananites, other Patriot types, and the Third Positionists are
from people who were there and know the distinctions. Apparently
a few dozen at best."
Less noticed, the SPLC report has another pattern: it follows the
government and police script about the Battle of Seattle. What we
find isn't one error of fact but an entire scenario of lies and
pro-law enforcement propaganda.
* The anarchist Black Bloc, which startled America with up-front
anti-capitalism, is conveniently smeared as haters who join with
the "hard-edged soldiers of neo-fascism."
* The considerable street violence at Seattle, with tear gas and
"rubber bullet-firing police," is implied to be between the police
and violently attacking anarchists and neo-fascists. This, too,
is pure fiction. As we know, the mass street violence was initiated
by the police and aimed at the thousands of "peaceful" protesters
blocking the downtown streets with CD. The police shot at, chased
for blocks, and beat up these nonviolent protesters, filling whole
neighborhoods with tear gas.
* In the SPLC's concocted scenario, the real racism in Seattle
is covered up. There was no fighting between anarchists (and neo-fascists)
and Black youths, as the SPLC report hints. Fighting with Black
youths was done by the self-appointed "peace police," the liberal
white protest monitors who tried to physically stop Black youth
from liberating capitalist property--and even tried to get the police
to arrest them.
The major white racist move at Seattle --the prominent appearance
of far right presidential candidate Pat Buchanan as a speaker at
the main protest rally, as arranged by the AFL-CIO and the Ralph
Nader lobby--isn't even mentioned by the report. It's the most "respectable"
pro-capitalist elements in the anti-globalization struggle that
have been knowingly allying with white racism--not anarchists. So
the reader isn't so much getting important intelligence about racists
but rather is being misdirected in an actual cover-up of racism.
Ironically, the far right itself is using this SPLC report. At
least one neo-fascist group has put the entire SPLC report up on
its website. This is a curious unity, but we can understand it.
The far right has been trying to recruit white youth with boasts
that it has been on the front lines against corporate Globalization.
Now, like a gift dropping into their laps, the Southern Poverty
Law Center has endorsed these neo-fascist lies in this report on
Seattle.
What kind of "anti-racist" organization would do all this? The
Southern Poverty Law Center itself and its founder-director, Morris
Dees, while a public relations and fund-raising powerhouse, has
for years been viewed by many activists with misgivings. This was
especially true after John Egerton's expose in Progressive magazine
took the lid off "Poverty Palace." It appears that SPLC is the model
of capitalist "anti-racism"--that is, it functions like a business
with government connections using anti-racism as a commodity. And
far from being a critic of the racist system, it is a small gear
in the machinery of capitalist hegemony and institutional repression.
Morris Dees was a white segregationist businessman in Alabama during
the civil rights battles of the 1960s, which he didn't support (although,
like many millions of other white people, he afterwards claimed
that he was secretly sympathetic to Black people all along). He
first became a millionaire as a genius at direct mail marketing,
although in at least one instance he worked for the Klan as an attorney
defending white men who had attacked civil rights demonstrators.
According to Dees, in 1967 at an airport he received an epiphany,
and decided to dedicate his life to social justice. He starting
doing civil rights law. After he profitably cashed out of his business,
in the early 1970s he turned to liberal politics and founded SPLC.
The one unique thing is that his role in liberal politics continued
to be very profitable direct marketing. Dees ran nationwide mail
solicitations for the McGovern, Carter, Kennedy and Hart presidential
campaigns (he was national finance director, for example, of the
successful Carter campaign). Out of these he amassed a Northern
white liberal contributors list of hundreds of thousands, which
his Center has used to raise millions of dollars every year. Along
the way the SPLC has taken on worthy civil rights lawsuits, of course,
but the occasional high profile lawsuits seem to exist mostly to
be sold in the multi-million dollar fundraising solicitations that
each year result in surpluses that the SPLC invests in its Wall
Street accounts.
They have also become a national information resource for many
police departments and government agencies--and now a propaganda
resource as well.
Randall Williams, who set up the "Klanwatch" project for the SPLC,
said after he resigned: "We were sharing information with the FBI,
the police, undercover agents. Instead of defending clients and
victims, we were more of a super snoop outfit, an arm of law enforcement
... but Morris was still writing donors about the Klan menace, and
the money was still flowing in."
The Southern Poverty Law Center has quietly gone about filling
a special role in government monitoring. As a private organization
wrapped in the banner of Civil Rights, it carries out political
surveillance that current u.s. law forbids the f.b.i., a.t.f. and
other police agencies from doing. For example, the SPLC records
license plate numbers of vehicles near extremist demonstrations,
then runs them through state DMV records to compile names and addresses
of participants. Extensive computer files with thousands of photographs
are kept on those with extremist political views, using not only
monitoring of news sources and political journals but paid informers
and tips from police. All this political information is then available
to government agencies and corporations.
Pro-government propaganda "bad-jacketing" anarchists just fits
in with the SPLC's role as an informal "arm of law enforcement."
The question that immediately comes up is what else has the SPLC
been distorting or covering up?
Nor are they the only ones at this dirty work: after Seattle, the
Anti Defamation League of B'nai Brith, another major source of mainstream
information about racism, added the anarchist circled "A" symbol
to their "Hate on Display" internet webpage along with the nazi
swastika and other "Extremist Symbols." After anarchists protested,
the ADL changed their webpage to admit (buried in the text) that
"the majority of people who identify with this movement consider
themselves non-racist or anti-racist," but still kept the symbol
up and the description right underneath it--"General Racist Symbol."
The ADL itself has a stunning history of covert white supremacy
and general sleaziness, but that would be a whole further story
in itself.
As the hegemonic culture, capitalism keeps replicating itself over
and over. It keeps assaulting, co-opting, counterfeiting, and doing
leveraged buyouts of new threatening developments--like today's
anti-racism. Which is why anti-racism can't just be against the
most obvious racist crimes, but has to be part of creating an oppositional
culture on the deepest level.
Sidebar: Ottawa Citizen April 23, 2001--Warren Kinsella (former
campaign adviser to Prime Minister Jean Chritien) "... But a more
salient question, unaddressed in the avalanche of media coverage
surrounding Quebec City, is this: how is it that the extremists
found on both sides of the ideological continuum--far-left and far-right--have
joined forces to oppose liberalized trading rules? ... Either way,
the far right and far left have come together to oppose international
co-operation in trade. And, increasingly, they do so violently,
or by making use of rhetoric that legitimizes violence ... I suspect
that if it has succeeded in unifying so many lunatics, left and
right, globalization can't be such a bad thing after all."
____________________________________________________________________
FUTURE ISSUES:
Future Issues of the ARA Research Bulletin will feature articles
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an infiltrator moving through Earth First! and anarchist circles,
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ARA RESEARCH BULLETIN
Anti-Fascist Research, Analysis and Debate
____________________________________________________________________
First Issue out now!
A project of Chicago Anti-Racist Action, with support from the ARA
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ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This bulletin is part of ARA's research and anti-repression project.
One aspect of it will be research and distribution of information
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We want this bulletin to be an arena where ARA activists can report
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FIRST ISSUE TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Editorial on McVeigh, Las Vegas and the Death Penalty
The Enemy of Our Enemy
The Third Position
The New Face of Resistance
Hale and Brimstone
Editorial on Repression
News From the Front Lines
last updated: February 6, 2006
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