SPLC: PAMELA GELLER/ROBERT SPENCER ORG. IS A HATE GROUP

Pam Geller’s literal screeching is unbearable to begin with, so we pity the folks who were within earshot of her when she found out about this! The Southern Poverty Law Center has been going after high-profile conservative groups as of late, which of course generates the usual response of they are engaging in smear tactics and what not, but let’s face it. You can’t ignore the positioning that a lot of these groups are putting themselves in. They have done the “I’m not a racist” routine to death in an effort to cover up their racism, and we allowed it so much that they have learned that they can be as racist as they want to be so long as they deny that they are racist. Even white supremacist groups are saying they are not racist these days. Well, that doesn’t mean the charge goes away, and in recent years it has been pretty much unavoidable that conservatives are called out on their BS. Pam Geller and Robert Spencer are the latest in that callng out. With their group Stop Islamization of America, that duo continued the demonization of Muslims they were already known for, only they had become better known for over the past few months. With their endorsement of groups connected to neo-Nazis, and for us a potentially dangerous situation created by Geller via her blog at Rutgers University in New Jersey last month, things have gone too far. So enjoy your designation as a hate group Pam and Rob. You have truly earned it, that and what comes out of it from here on. By the way, those groups and individuals in the mainstream that have been about SIOA, it’s best to cut those ties right about now. Rutgers Hillel, that means you.

One People’s Project

Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), the organization founded in 2009 as an affiliate of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) that under the leadership of by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer is best known for spearheading the protests against an Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center, has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The designation can be found in the SPLC’s annual report on hate groups in the Spring edition of its magazine Intelligence Report, which also notes that their list of hate groups tops 1000 for the first time ever.

Since Geller and Spencer took over SIOA in April 2010, it’s most succesful venture has been generating controversy against Park 51, the Islamic Center currently being built in Lower Manhattan, because of its proximity to the site of the World Trade Center that was brought down by Islamic extremists on Sept. 11, 2001. One of the two rallies SIOA organized was held on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, which not only featured anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders as a speaker, but brought out a number of dubious groups, among them the English Defence League and Youth for Western Civilization, two groups that SIOA supports that also have associations to white supremacist groups. Other Islamic Centers and instututions have also been attacked by SIOA as a conspiracy to bring jihad to America.

Robert Spencer is also the founder and director of the Islamophobic blog Jihad Watch, which is affiliated with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Formerly known as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Horowitz has had a history of working with dubious persons in the past. The Center’s website, FrontPageMag.com used to make available for download from its site, The Color of Crime, a discredited study authored by American Renaissance publisher and white supremacist Jared Taylor suggesting that race is a factor in criminal activity, and that Blacks are responsible for most if not all crime in America. Several contributors to the white supremacist American Renaissance, who recently saw their conference cancelled for the second year in a row after protests, have also been found on FrontPageMag.com. Both Geller and Spencer have spoken at Freedom Center events, and was recently brought to speak at Temple University in Philadelphia, courtesy of a student organization called Temple University Purpose, whose prior activity was to also bring Geert Wilders to the campus. Horowitz reportedly paid for the Wilder’s visit, and spoke at Philadelphia’s conservative Union League just days after Geller and Spencers’ visit to Temple with a number of TU Purpose associates in attendance.

In addition to attacks on Islam, whose worshippers Geller, who is Jewish refers to as “bloodsuckers” – a term often used as an anti-Semitic slur – has also leveled vicious, oftimes unintelligent attacks on groups and individuals ranging from Obama, whom she said was the actually the son of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, to President Ronald Reagan’s son Ron Reagan, Jr. to whom she said on a television broadcast. “You never knew your father”, to a transgender Obama appointee to the Commerce Department, who although Geller has attacked Islam as homophobic, opined on her blog about the appointment by declaring the Obama Administration as a freakshow and by asking, “Does he (Obama) chill with anyone who is normal?”

In January, Geller’s activities created a tense situation at Rutgers University when she learned that a group of pro-Palistinian Holocaust survivors along with survivors of Al Nekba, the displacement of Palestinians from what would be the State of Israel in 1948, were going to speak there. After she posted a blog entry calling for her supporters to go to the University to protest whom she called “Holocaust deniers”, a few hundred pro-Zionist activists organized by Rutgers Hillel attempted to storm the event. Rutgers Hillel President Sarah Morrison was seen in two videos thanking Geller for her help, noting also that she is looking forward to a proposed appearance at Rutgers being scheduled for March or April. That appearance is reportedly in limbo.

Thank You, Pamela Geller
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The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that anti-Muslim hate groups are a “relatively new phenomenon in the United States”, noting also that while there has always been an anti-Muslim presence in the nation, and that it tended to be religious in orientation, there was an increased level and different dynamic in the hatemongering after Sept. 11. Ibrahim Hooper, the National Communications Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was among those supporting the designation. “One need not go beyond the name of this hate group, Stop the Islamization of America, to recognize the validity of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation,” he said in a press release.

However, Geller and Sp
encer has vowed to fight that designation, charging SPLC in their own press release of carrying water for the “real haters”, because CAIR isn’t listed as a hate group instead of them. “That the SPLC would list SIOA and not CAIR as a hate group shows the hollowness and political motivation of the SPLC’s classifications,” Spencer was noted as saying in the release. But Geller and Spencers’ defense against the designation is only landing them in even more hot water. Spencer’s statement on the release was followed by a statement that in November 2010 the Washington Times described the SPLC as “a small, hard-left political activist outfit known for promoting a panoply of radical liberal causes.” That actually comes from a column in the right-wing newspaper named J. Matt Barber, a homophobic Christian Right bigot that serves as a dean at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and was once wrote, “The fact that we don’t have mandatory surgeon general warnings on the side of condom wrappers is a testament to the power and influence wielded by the radical homosexual lobby.” Ironically, while he has railed against sharia law being implemented in the United States, in a column titled “Time to Reunite Church and State”, “It’s time for men of the cloth — as they did during the first American Revolution — to exercise true leadership, return to the pulpit and call for national revival, both spiritual and political.” Geller’s response was even more damning. In an effort to defame SPLC founder Morris Dees as a rich pedophile – and to defend herself from the charge that her group promotes hate, she links to and borrows from the blog of white supremacist Steve Sailer, who through his Human Biodiversity Institute has long promoted the genetic inferiority of blacks to whites.

The SPLC will have a live audio webcast with SPLC President Richard Cohen and Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok on Wednesday, March 2 at 1 p.m. ET where they will discuss the latest report on hate groups. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has SIOA listed under “Extremism” on their website. Ironically it was the ADL that thrust the Park 51 controversy into the mainstream spotlight with their statement last July opposing the building of the center.