SPLC’s Supposed “Post-Election Hate Incidents”

UPDATE: As noted below, on November 11, 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center claimed on its website that it “had counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation across the country as of Friday, November 11.”

On November 14, Watching the Watchdogs noted that the SPLC’s “count” included “reports” from a web page it had set up where people could report alleged incidents anonymously, with no verification whatsoever.

The very next day, on November 15, the SPLC updated its “count” to 437, this time adding the interesting note that:

“These incidents, aside from news reports, are largely anecdotal.”

This disclaimer is conveniently absent from the November 11 post.

Was the disclaimer a result of our reporting or simply coincidence? You be the judge.

The SPLC followed up its “anecdotal” admission with the claim that “The SPLC did follow up with a majority of user submissions in an effort to confirm reports.”

Really? Okay. Prove it. Show us your proof, SPLC. You didn’t simply include “a majority” of the alleged claims that no one but you have seen in your count; you counted all of them. If you’ve confirmed any of them, just show your proof on your website. Your word alone isn’t good enough.

It’s not like you lack publicity. In fact, it will be interesting to see how many media outlets regurgitating your “437 incidents” claim will include your “they’re largely anecdotal” disclaimer.

You can read our original post below:

IN THE WAKE of Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the November 8 election, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been ramping up the fear-mongering rhetoric, and, right on cue, the media has been regurgitating the SPLC’s claims without performing even the most rudimentary fact checks.

Dozens upon dozens of mainstream and local newspapers, magazines and blogs have been quoting an unvetted USA Today claim that: “Since Election Day, there have been more than 200 incidents of hateful harassment and intimidation across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

The claim has been picked up and repeated by such publications as Fortune, Time and the New York Times, all of whom should know better. As with most SPLC fundraising copy, it makes for lurid reading which is guaranteed to agitate certain sectors of the population, (donors), and, as with most SPLC fundraising copy, even the slightest investigation of the company’s claims ring hollow.

According to the breathless “Hatewatch” special report on the SPLC website the company has counted “Over 200 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since Election Day.” And how did the SPLC come up with these “incidents”? “By pulling from news reports, social media, and direct submissions at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.”

Let’s parse that out a little, shall we? Sadly, there have been a number of very real incidents reported in the media, which, as of this writing, are still under investigation. It is sincerely hoped that the perpetrators of these mindless acts are identified, charged and punished.

Until the police have finished their work on these cases, it is worth noting that some of them may be hoaxes perpetrated in the name of “advocacy” as we have reported in the past, here, here and here. If this turns out to be the case in any instance, it is even more sincerely hoped that the perpetrators of these mindless acts are identified, charged and punished. History has shown, however, that hate crime hoaxers are given far more leeway than your average idiot.

So what we’re left with, after the ongoing investigations listed in the media are social media accounts, meaning that anyone on the planet can submit whatever they want, and even more stringent, the “direct submissions” to the SPLC website.

If you click the “direct submissions” link above you will be taken to an SPLC web page where you can report any instances of allegedly election-related “harassment,” which the SPLC conveniently fails to define. How do we know these accounts are rock-solid true? Because the SPLC insists that you include your first name, the date of the alleged incident and check off one of several locations for the event, such as school, place of worship, business, etc.

That’s all it takes, sports fans. An anonymous post from anyone on the planet and a new “election-related hate incident” is born.

Ironically, when the SPLC was running its spurious “Erasing Hate” campaign against symbols of the Confederacy last year if you wanted to report a school named for Robert E. Lee or a Stonewall Jackson street in your town, (all information the SPLC could easily get through Google or government websites), you had to give your full name and email address.

Of course, the point of that exercise was to get your contact information into the company’s fundraising apparatus.

Granted, even this form doesn’t provide any conclusive identification, but it’s a minor step up from absolutely anonymous “reporting.”

The company even has the chutzpah to cite its previous garbage statistics on the same web page, the so-called “Trump Effect” report it issued last April to even larger unvetted regurgitation that claimed that “hate incidents” were spiking in grade schools because of the negativity in the US Presidential debates.

That “report,” which the company itself labeled as “not scientific” because the “survey” underpinning it was not distributed randomly and the company had no idea if the people responding to it were even teachers to begin with.

“Our survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers was not scientific. Our email subscribers and those who visit our website are not a random sample of teachers nationally, and those who chose to respond to our survey are likely to be those who are most concerned about the impact of the presidential campaign on their students and schools.”

Even more telling was the fact that that same “report” claimed that Teaching Tolerance, the wing of the SPLC that created the “survey,” reaches more than 400,000 teachers a month, and yet the entire “report” was built on only 2,000 anonymous responses. Really?

Either 398,000 teachers ignored the email survey or the SPLC cherry-picked 2,000 reliable operatives who would give the “right” answers that would allow the company to agitate its mostly-Progressive donor base by invoking Trump’s name while narrowly skirting the strict IRS regulations that prohibit all 501(c)(3) non-profits from endorsing or denouncing political candidates.

And once again, the media and the Blogosphere cannot regurgitate SPLC fundraising tripe fast enough, even when the company itself comes out and says that their data is crap. …

God bless America, people.

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Source: Watching the Watchdogs