The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Wheel Turns on SPLC’s Heidi Beirich

Posted on | January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on The Wheel Turns on SPLC’s Heidi Beirich

 

Exclusive news from PJMedia’s Tyler O’Neil:

In December 2018, a Baltimore lawyer filed a devastating lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and two of its employees. The SPLC targeted Glen Keith Allen over his former ties to the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group. In doing so, the liberal group allegedly violated laws and legal codes of conduct by receiving and then paying for stolen documents in violation of confidentiality agreements. The group went after Allen with the intent of getting him fired by the city of Baltimore and permanently destroying his future prospects. Allen’s suit claims that the SPLC should have its 501c3 tax-exempt status revoked, that it owes him restitution for racketeering, and that it should pay $6.5 million in damages. It also references Allen’s pro bono work on behalf of African-Americans and his mentorship of an African-American teen, powerfully rebutting claims that he is a racist. Allen told PJ Media he now regrets his NA support, and an African-American friend of his laughed at the idea of this lawyer being branded a racist.
Perhaps most importantly, the suit attacks the liberal group for undermining America’s tradition of free expression. In an August 2016 interview with The Washington Post cited in the lawsuit, SPLC Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich (a defendant in the case) claimed to have watched Allen “like a hawk” because he had “the worst ideas ever created.”
“This East Europe Communist thought-crime surveillance mentality is antithetical to fundamental American cultural and Constitutional principles protecting freedom of expression and association,” Allen wrote in the suit, which can be found on his website. His lawsuit uses concrete claims of lawbreaking and defamation to expose the SPLC’s Orwellian strategy of branding its opponents “hate groups” and orchestrating campaigns against them.
In August 2016, the SPLC published an article branding Allen a “neo-Nazi lawyer” and insinuating that this lawyer’s work for the city of Baltimore was racist. Beirich, the article’s author, smeared a small political party as racist and then published allegedly stolen documents protected by confidentiality agreements connecting Allen to the National Alliance.

(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

This makes me smile because it was Heidi Beirich who first falsely labeled me a “white supremacist” in a failed effort to get me fired from my job at The Washington Times. Have I ever told that story in its entirety? No, and I’ve never sued them, either (just the same as I turned down the opportunity to sue Twitter for banning me three years ago).

Over the years, the SPLC’s smear against me has been endlessly recycled, despite its self-evident falsehood. Anyone who actually knows me knows that I am not a “white supremacist,” and if I were concealing a crypto-Nazi agenda, you might think there would be substantial evidence of this. The paucity of evidence — beyond guilt-by-association smears and what I’ve called the “Ransom Note Method” of assembling parts of disparate statements to create a sort of word-collage — is particularly remarkable, given that I’ve been an independent blogger for 11 years now. How can anyone believe that it is my desire to incite hatred or advocate racial oppression, when I’ve published so many thousands of posts here, with no editor to filter my entirely candid expressions, but never once written anything that would justify the “white supremacist” label?

You see that my silence was strategic. The First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment are highly related. Just as I have the right to free speech, I also have the right to remain silent, and cannot be compelled to answer my accusers. During my 2009 blog war against LGF’s Charles Johnson, I used this to my advantage, following the advice someone once gave me: “Don’t get down in the tall grass with them.” That is to say, if you are innocent, there is no need to make a point-by-point rebuttal of every bit of “evidence” put forward by your self-appointed prosecutors in the court of public opinion. Did you say this “offensive” thing or did you associate with this notorious person? “Objection your honor — irrelevant.”

The so-called “evidence” cited by these Thought Police apparatchiks doesn’t matter, because the actual accusation is that you are somehow a menace to public safety, that you harbor sentiments that make you dangerous, and that you advocate wrongful treatment of others.

 

It is not illegal to express opinions with which Heidi Beirich disagrees, nor is it illegal to befriend people Heidi Beirich dislikes. And yet, as an employee of the SPLC, Dr. Beirich seemed to believe that she was authorized to determine the limits of our personal liberty. Because no one has ever offered to pay me to write the full story of my career as a Thought Criminal, and because I have not (yet) felt any need to share every detail of that saga, Dr. Beirich never understood my jocular good cheer in response to being defamed and, on advice of my close personal friend Bert the Samoan Lawyer, I have been content to watch patiently as she has proceeded down her chosen path to her inevitable destruction.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Two words for you, Dr. Beirich: Deo Vindice.



 

Category: Culture, Racism

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