The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.
“The column, published Friday, was written by Jerry Kammer, ‘a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,’ according to the biography listed under his byline.
“CIS, which calls itself ‘an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,’ is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.
“’I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,’ Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with . . . how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims ‘many liberal Democrats’ want illegal immigration to run rampant. . . . ‘
”That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist’ Kammer, a former journalist, writes. ‘I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.’ . . .
“The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science ‘research’ papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, ‘longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.’” Do better, New York Times. — New York Times Runs Anti-Immigration Op-Ed by Noted Hate Group, Sebastian Murdock, Huffington Post, 1/17/20 [Link]
Fact check on Quote Above: This article cites one of those exceedingly rare cases when The New York Times actually permitted a column defending immigration restriction. But this scant concession to evenhandness was too much for Huffington Post’s Sebastian Murdock. Rather than deal with facts and arguments, such as the statement by Jerry Krammer that immigration harms American workers, Murdock resorts to lambasting Krammer’s organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
According to Murdoch, CIS is a totally disreputable. This must certainly be news to the congressmen and their staffers who regularly seek information and testimony from CIS to help them set immigration policy. CIS provides sober and reasoned analysis, typically relying on Census Bureau statistics to make its case.
So what is the source of Murdock’s assessment that CIS is “a known hate group?” It’s the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a truly disreputable organization. The SPLC is a radical-left slander machine that maliciously slaps the “hate” label on conservative and patriotic groups it happens to hate. It is particularly hostile to immigration restriction because unending mass immigration is a key component of the radical left’s strategy to destabilize American society—a strategy exposed by William Hawkins’ book Importing Revolution.
The SPLC presents itself up as a moral authority to judge “racism” and “sexism,” but a major scandal at the organization last year exposed its long-running hypocrisy. At that time two of its top leaders, Morris Dees and Richard Cohen, left the SPLC amid charges that staffers were subjected to racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Throughout its history, critics have maintained that the SPLC enriches itself by soliciting contributions to fight nonexistent “hate.”
Bob Moser, a former SPLC staffer, had the following to say about his experience: “[A]ll the time, dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well.”
The neo-communist affinities of the SPLC were quite apparent last year when Lecia Brooks, the SPLC’s chief of staff addressed a group of armed militants at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia. Members of the group prominently displayed communist hammer-and-sickle banners. During her speech, Brooks referred to herself and the militants as “we.”
Unfortunately, many corporate media journalists, like Murdock, regard the SPLC as a legitimate source of information. Is the reason for most simple ignorance, or do they share the SPLC’s sinister and subversive agenda? It’s a reasonable question to ask.