by MARK KRIKORIAN
November 9, 2015 @MARKSKRIKORIAN
The Southern Poverty Law Center is rightly seen as a pernicious and loathsome racket. It warns that terrorists lurk among veterans and Tea Partiers; its labeling of the Family Research Council as a “hate group” inspired a gay activist to attempt a murderous attack on the FRC’s Washington offices; and it beat Politico to the smear by putting Ben Carson on a list of “extremists,” on par with David Duke and Fred Phelps (for which is was forced to apologize [1]).
But sometimes the SPLC’s righteous fanaticism leads to comical errors. An example of that arose last month at a conference of immigration skeptics outside Washington. Heidi Beirich, one of the SPLC’s chief propagandists, wrote a blog post [2] to help mainstream a posting from an even more extreme group than hers. The upshot was that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (sometime National Review contributor [3]) is evil because he spoke at a “white nationalist” conference. And her tactic succeeded; Beirich’s posting was the basis of an editorial [4]last week by the Kansas City Star criticizing Kobach’s “despicable behavior” for hobnobbing with the wicked.
Here’s the funny part: Beirich’s posting was illustrated with a photo of Kobach speaking at the conference, the caption of which notes that it was taken from the Twitter feed of one @Hunter7Taylor. What do you find when you go to @hunter7taylor [5]’s profile? This:
Inger Eberhart a ‘white nationalist’, according to the SPLC
White nationalist? Turns out her name is Inger Eberhart. I was at the conference too and, though I don’t know her, the photo is definitely her.
So, the SPLC chose to illustrate a menacing warning about a “white nationalist” conference with a photo taken and tweeted by a black woman. And not a plant, but a participant who’s on the board of the Dustin Inman Society, Georgia’s immigration-control citizens’ group led by the indefatigable D.A. King.
As she wrote [6], “I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia in the years immediately following the civil rights era. I would spot a real white nationalist a lot faster than you ever could.” Eberhart wasn’t the only improbable “white nationalist.” Maria Espinoza, daughter of a Mexican immigrant and past president of Houston Eagle Forum, heads the Remembrance Project, [7] which honors Americans killed by illegal aliens.
Two other speakers were also Hispanic Americans. This gathering of “white nationalists” also featured a panel featuring me, Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation (a Cuban immigrant who spoke on promoting assimilation and fighting multiculturalism) and George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan (who made a forthright argument for open borders). As Caplan noted afterward [8] on his blog, “the audience was polite, with little of the vitriol that so sullies cyberspace.”
Yes, yes, I know, I shouldn’t expect anything different from leftist goons. And I don’t really; Beirich is clearly an end-justifies-the-means Alinskyite. But I had expected a certain level of competence, which is apparently lacking. As the great Londo Mollari said, “Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/426770/splc-part-karl-part-groucho [9]
