How I Became A Hate Group
By Daniel Greenfield
SUltanKnish.Blogspot.com
When I went to sleep last night, little did I
know that while outside sirens competed with car
alarms in the symphony that is New York City, I had
already been declared a hate group.
Being declared a hate group wasn't in my plans
for the day, but like winning the lottery, it seems
to be one of those things that happens when you
least expect it. Except that as the little bald man
in front of the bodega tells you, you have to play
to win, but you don't even have to buy a ticket to
be declared an official hate group.
My first response on finding out that I was now a
hate group was to look around to see where everyone
else was. A hate group needs the group part and one
man and a cat don't seem to be enough. Even when the
cat is a well known bigot who hates mice, birds, car
alarms that go off in the middle of the night, the
plumber and sudden noises.
Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed,
"Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield" as one of
their Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups, alongside such
other vast organizations as "Faith Freedom", a
website for ex-Muslims, and "Casa D'Ice Signs", the
signs on a bar located on K-Mart Plaza in Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania.
Someone with less faith in the fact checking
abilities of the Southern Poverty Law Center might
have thought that whoever had made up this list had
no clue that "Casa D'Ice" was a lounge with signs
outside, that there was no such group as "Casa D'Ice
Signs" and that signs are pieces of plastic and not
a hate group. But I had faith that the Center knew
more than I did. Perhaps its crack team of
researchers had learned that the signs had come
alive and formed their own hate group, somehow
arranging their own letters to form messages about
illegal immigration and the need to get out of Iraq.
My first thought was to wonder whether some mistake
had been made in my own case, but the Southern
Poverty Law Center people are experts on hate
groups, even if they don't seem to know what the
definitions of "hate" or "groups" or "hate groups"
might be. Even if they seem to have copied their
list off a forum somewhere at the last minute to
have something to show the donors. Clearly I was now
a hate group and with tax season upon us, I called
my accountant to find out if there was a tax
deduction for that. There wasn't.
As a consolation though, I was listed as "active",
which I took as a compliment because I had jogged a
few miles yesterday and clearly the Southern Poverty
Law Center had noticed. They also listed me as being
in New York, which showed that the Center was well
aware that it was aggressively trespassing above its
jurisdiction below the Mason-Dixon Line and invading
the north.
The Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hate Map" (TM),
which is either a map of hate groups or a map of
groups that the center hates, had me floating
somewhere in the East River next to the National
Black Foot Soldier Network and the National
Socialist Movement in Long Island. Say what you
will, but I think it's a real tribute to the
broadminded diversity of the city that there's room
for all of us there, from Catholic Family News to
the Nation of Islam to the newest massively
organized hate group-- me.
I had fewer members, especially if you don't count
the cat, and no uniforms or jackboots, but I had to
soldier on. The Southern Poverty Law Center was in
desperate need of more hate groups to fight and I
couldn't let them down. It's not easy running a 216
million dollar organization which has been described
as the country's richest civil rights organization
with misleading fundraising practices.
Having succeeded in such diverse areas as being
George McGovern's national finance director,
Carter's national finance director and national
finance chairman for Ted Kennedy's presidential
campaign, SPLC head honcho Morris Dees doesn't have
many options except to collect his 0.95 percent
compensation and solicit more donations to fight
active hate groups like me and that guy who puts up
signs on his bar. I knew that I couldn't let him
down.
Every time the Southern Poverty Law Center sent out
another begging letter asking donors to help an
organization with a mere 216 million dollar
endowment fight an impossible uphill battle against
Bare Naked Islam, Atlas Shrugs and Concerned
Citizens for the First Amendment, I had to do my
part so that all the poor employees of the Southern
Poverty Law Center would have enough to eat that
night.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center,
which seems to have expanded beyond its core mission
of using the law to impoverish people in the south,
to qualify as an Anti-Muslim hate group, you had to
believe such outrageous filthy things as the notion
that Islam might be, "sanctioning pedophilia,
marital rape and child marriage".
People who believe such Islamophobic nonsense
include the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Grand Mufti of
Australia and whoever wrote the Koran, which says,
"marry of women as may be agreeable to you, two, or
three, or four".
Quickly I understood that I was now part of a much
bigger Anti-Muslim hate group than I had realized.
This Islamophobic group included all of Islam. Was
it possible for Islam itself to be an Anti-Muslim
hate group? It seemed mind-boggling, but there could
be no other answer.
Pakistan, which had legalized the marriage of 12
year olds, was surely the base for a major
Anti-Islamic hate group which was doing its best to
demean Islam. It also appeared to be conspiring to
depict Muslims as "irrational, intolerant and
violent", which was another check box on the SPLC
list. But the story didn't end there.
"These groups also typically hold conspiratorial
views regarding the inherent danger to America posed
by its Muslim-American community." Now it appeared
that Anti-Islam hate groups included the FBI and the
NYPD, which were notorious for suspecting that
Muslim-Americans might be terrorists and arresting
them and detaining them for doing nothing more than
practicing some aspects of their religion.
Suddenly it wasn't just one man and a cat-- it was
the entire Muslim world, the FBI, the NYPD and it
didn't end there. The Southern Poverty Law Center's
own website had a list of Top 10 Jihadists, slurring
the names of such respectable practitioners of
traditional Islam as Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Muslim
cleric who appeared on PBS, NPR and many other
outlets to explain the peaceful nature of Islam and
Abdullah Muhammad, whom the Center outrageously
suggests was conspiring to terrorize South Park for
mocking the other Muhammad, the one who in a bid to
make Islam look bad practiced pedophilia, marital
rape and child marriage.
Even the Southern Poverty Law Center had exposed
itself as an Anti-Islam hate group, and how could I
or anyone else trust it to assemble a reliable
Anti-Islam hate group list, when it had left itself
off that list.
It was hard for me to accept that a group of
intrepid researchers who had cluelessly listed Ann
Barnhardt twice, listed Silver Bullet Gun Oil, a
weapons lubricant, as a hate group, listed single-
author blogs like mine, Pamela Geller's and Bonni
Intall's as "hate groups" could possibly be wrong.
How could an organization which wrote down "Casa
D'Ice Signs" as a hate group without realizing that
Casa D'Ice was a bar, make a mistake?
But there was no way around it. The SPLC had proven
to be Islamophobes and couldn't be trusted anymore.
And so I could no longer take their word that I and
my cat were a Hate Group. Though Morris Dees may
have to go hungry to bed tonight, I must decline the
honor of posing as a hate group in order to help him
defraud his donors. But I will always remember the
brief four hours when I had my own hate group.