For quite sometime now we have been pointing out that the SPLC should add SIOA as an anti-Muslim hate group to its list of hate groups. Now they have done that and it is official, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are in the same league as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. Check out our piece: SIOA is an anti-Muslim Hate Group
Update: I forgot to add, I request all you to go to NY Daily News and vote, they have a poll asking whether SIOA is a hate group.
Southern Poverty Law Center lists anti-Islamic NYC blogger Pamela Geller, followers a hate group
Manhattan blogger Pamela Geller and her posse of anti-Islamic protesters have been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Stop the Islamization of America was included in the civil rights organization’s annual roundup of extremist groups – a rogue’s gallery that includes everything from the Ku Klux Klan to white supremacists and Nazis.
Geller’s group was one of the most vocal opponents of the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero.
The group was also behind ads that were placed on city buses urging Muslims to leave “the falsity of Islam.”
Geller, who runs a blog called Atlas Shrugs, dismissed the Law Center as an “uber left” group that has “failed to address the greatest threat to our national security.”
“My group is a human rights group,” she said. “And these people are taken seriously? This is the morally inverted state of the world.”
An Islamic organization that has been a frequent target of Geller’s barbs said it was not surprised she made the bigot list.
“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,” said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Bill Keller, a fire-and-brimstone Florida preacher who led a crusade against the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan, also made the Law Center’s list.
February 25th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
“Now they have done that and it is official, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are in the same league as the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis”
According to the SPLC’s definition only and I don’t think it’s a good idea at all to think of this in that way. There is no way you can compare their looniness with the Nazis.
A good move from SPLC, by the way. Geller and Spencer will respond with the usual “Leftist-Mooslim” alliance rubbish.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Of course its an ultra-leftist plot to smear them! Pam geller is a well know human rights activist you know. After all she and her fat friend spenser tirelessly advocate for the rights of every facist theyve ever met.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
i meant “neo-Nazis” above.
February 25th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
@Crow…
Hey, fascists need love too!
February 25th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
thats great news and about time too
February 25th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Well now they are OFFICIAL A-holes
February 25th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Philosophically, they ARE Neo-Nazis. True, they have not committed an atrocity like the Holocaust.
Yet.
Remember, the Nazi’s too were once just a lunatic fringe that didn’t even hide their hatred for the Jews. No one would have believed something like the Holocaust was possible in a progressive nation like Germany. Too many thought they couldn’t be taken seriously, until it was too late.
February 25th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Did Geller just say she fights for “human rights”? LOL–does she have amnesia? It hasn’t been a month since she voiced support for Stalin’s anti-Chechen pogroms, and don’t even get me started on all the other genocidal fantasies she’s indulged in.
http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/02/pamela-geller-watch-5-israel-should-nuke-tehran-mecca-and-medina/
February 25th, 2011 at 5:47 pm
It has been a long time coming…
February 25th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
Thank you for a wonderful piece Garibaldi. I shall be voting at the NY Daily News.
Of course SIOA is a hate group. Is ACT on the list too? The equally repulsive odious charlatan, Brigette Gabriel, runs that. It’s hard to think that anyone could rank lower than Geller in the hate stakes, but Brigette Gabriel is one of the few that do.
February 25th, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Can anyone tell us what the practical consequences of being on the SPLC hate list signifies? I mean does it bar the groups from any public place or official activity?
I ask, because according to the “First Amendment”, groups like SIOA, Ku Klux, Neo Nazi’s, all have freedom to say what they want. Not so in places like Canada or Europe, where there are limits…so what does being on the SPLC hate list mean if they still have freedom to propogate hate material?
February 25th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
The poll and comments on that article are disturbing, when I just checked, 70% voted “No, that’s just another attack from the left.”. I think she may have got her drones to go over there, it’s the usual stuff and junk…
BMD, it doesn’t mean much but suffice to say, these people are pretty much experts when it comes to hate groups. They were originally set up to fight for civil rights for blacks but have expanded into fighting all hate groups. I quite like them and they seem to be effective at bringing court cases against hate groups but they are not a government body and have no sway in law other than in bringing court cases.
February 25th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Oh, and just to say, in 2003 they identified David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now called David Horowitz Freedom Center) as one of 17 organizations which, according to author Chip Berlet, take racist and bigoted ideas that originated with the hard right or with conspiracy theorists and try to make them socially acceptable. Berlet accused Horowitz of blaming slavery on “‘black Africans … abetted by dark-skinned Arabs’” and of “attack[ing] minority ‘demands for special treatment’ as ‘only necessary because some blacks can’t seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others,’ rejecting the idea that they could be the victims of lingering racism. The report is here:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/into-the-mainstream
In my opinion, this is probably why the usual gang are so against the SPLC, there was a whole running argument over the above report on Horowitz and I think he lost. They also have made the blindingly obvious statement that people like Beck should take some responsibility for hate crimes since they give ammo to extremists. And again, they thus get slammed by them as well. I think they are quite effective if they can get that sort of reaction…
February 25th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
“i meant “neo-Nazis” above.”
And that’s absolutely correct. Comparing Geller to Nazis is stupid, obviously. The real Nazis, of course, the ones who exterminated millions of human beings.
But Neo-Nazis? Geller belongs with them, absolutely.
February 26th, 2011 at 1:46 am
I quite like them and they seem to be effective at bringing court cases against hate groups but they are not a government body and have no sway in law other than in bringing court cases.
Can you imagine if they ever had to bring a court case against SIOA? If that ever happened, SIOA would evaporate in a heart beat.
February 26th, 2011 at 3:07 am
The hilarious official statement. I always choke at the introduction of SOIA:
—————–
” Human Rights Organization SIOA Vows to Fight Far-Left Propaganda Group’s “Hate Group” Designation
NEW YORK, February 25, 2011 – A prominent national human rights and advocacy organization has vowed to fight against its designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hard-Left propaganda group, as a “hate group.”
The day after yet another deadly Islamic jihad terror plot involving weapons of mass destruction was thwarted in Texas, the SPLC issued its latest list of hate groups, including Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).
SIOA Executive Director Pamela Geller declared in a statement: “It’s outrageous that the SPLC designates a group dedicated to protecting the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and legal equality for all Americans as a ‘hate group.’ The SPLC, instead of standing for those freedoms, is carrying water for the real haters, the real neo-Nazi Jew-haters: the forces of Islamic supremacism and jihad. The SPLC doesn’t even have a category for Islamic jihadi groups. The greatest threat facing our nation, our people, our world, and they are shilling for them.”
SIOA Associate Director Robert Spencer pointed out that the Islamic supremacist hate group known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which the Justice Department designated an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case and has had several of its officials convicted of jihad terror activity, is not listed by the SPLC as a hate group. “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 said.
The Washington Times reported in November 2010 that “the SPLC is a small, hard-left political activist outfit known for promoting a panoply of radical liberal causes. The Center holds itself out as an objective monitor of potentially violent or subversive hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and other white supremacists. But in recent years – and with increasing abandon – the SPLC has leveraged (abused, really) its rapidly decreasing political capital and waning credibility to target and undermine organizations that, rather than dealing in the business of genuine ‘hate,’ instead pose a direct threat to the advancement of postmodern secular-socialism generally – and to the Democratic Party specifically….In sum, the SPLC has become an extremist wolf in ‘watchdog’ clothing.”
“My group is a human rights group,” Geller said. “And these people are taken seriously? This is the morally inverted state of the world.”
Geller added: “The SPLC is getting well-paid to defame freedom fighters. According to the SPLC’s 990 Form for 2008, the SPLC’s Chief Trial Counsel Morris Dees made a generous $348,420 that year. SPLC President and CEO Richard Cohen was right behind him at $344,490. General Counsel Joseph Levin made $189,166. Legal director Rhonda Brownstein brought in $179,806; CFO Teenie Hutchinson, $155,414. Potok pulled in $143,099. Former Chief Operating Officer Jeff Blancett made $159,301 — that’s right, the former COO. Who is funding this anti-America, anti-Jewish group of subversives?”
“We are going to fight this libelous designation,” Geller said, “and continue our struggle to protect human rights for all people. The SPLC has made itself the servant of the most radically intolerant ideology on earth. They’re on the wrong side of history.”
SIOA is one of America’s foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.”
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I wonder, if the SPLC is such a “small, hard-left political activist” with “rapidly decreasing political capital and waning credibility” why the vow to fight it? It shouldn’t matter.
February 26th, 2011 at 3:18 am
Geller honestly shouldn’t be harping about how much money they make as her partner-in-crime Spencer’s 990 form showed that he makes over $130,000 for running a shirt hate blog. Pot calling the kettle black methinks.
February 26th, 2011 at 5:33 am
SIOA isn’t just a hate site, it’s where all the racists and bigots/neo-nazis get together to get gratification. Halal Pork is one of them.
It is deeply disturbing to have nutjobs like Pamela Geller in this day and age condoning genocide in Muslim countries. It is sad, but without Loonwatch, I didn’t know they existed.
February 26th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
What took the SPLC so long in labeling SIOA a hate group. Just a little bit too slow.
February 27th, 2011 at 8:07 am
The SPLC is the real hate group.
February 28th, 2011 at 2:53 am
The SPLC is the real hate group.
If you think a group is a “hate group” for calling a hate group a “hate group”, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?