Southern Poverty Law Center Pushes Twisted Definition of 'Hate'

Human Events, Dec 11, 2006 by Vadum, Matthew

Dees's former legal associate, Millard Farmer, describes the crusading lawyer as "the Jim and Tammy Pave Bakker of the civil rights movement," adding, "though I don't mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye." Former associates say Dees is obsessed with making money.

Criticism and Scandal

The media generally accord Dees roughly the same level of respect as the late Mother Teresa. He has been the subject of a made-for-television movie, along with countless articles, and worshipful magazine profiles. Yet a rare, scathing portrait of Dees titled "The Church of Morris Dees" by leftwing author Ken Silverstein appeared in the November 2000 Harper's magazine. Under the leadership of Dees, SPLC "spends most of its time-and money-on a relentless fundraising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate," wrote Silverstein.

The SPLC took another hit in 2001 when JoAnn Wypijewski wrote in the leftist Nation magazine that the center was preoccupied with making money. "In 1999. it spent $2.4 million on litigation and $5.7 million on fundraising, meanwhile taking in more than $44 million-$27 million from fundraising, the rest from investments," she wrote.

Wypijewski also criticized the center's work on hate groups. "No one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of [hate] groups than the center's millionaire huckster, Morris Dees, who, in 1999, began a begging letter, 'Dear Friend, The danger presented by the Klan is greater now than at any time in the past 10 years,'" she wrote. Of course, the Ku Klux Klan is a genuine hate group. It had about four million members 80 years ago when it held sway over several state legislatures. Today, however, it has withered away to maybe 3,000 members.

The SPLC seems to have steered clear of scandal in recent years, but it received plenty of bad press in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Montgomery Advertiser published a series of investigative articles alleging improprieties, including financial mismanagement and institutionalized racism. Black former employees of the center complained that white supervisors ran it "like a plantation." The series was a nominated finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995, but Dees orchestrated a lobbying campaign to stop publication and prevent it from being considered by the Pulitzer board.

Jim Tharpe. then managing editor of the Advertiser, described his SPLC-related adventures at a Nieman Foundation for Journalism panel discussion held at Harvard University in May 1999. According to Tharpe. SPLC deployed what is typically considered a corporate public relations weapon to prevent the investigation. It threatened what has come in recent years to be known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP action. Such suits are calculated to intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense unless they withdraw their criticism.

"These guys threatened us with a lawsuit from the moment we asked to look at their financial records," Tharpe said, according to a transcript of the talk provided on the Nieman Foundation's website.