SPLC Loses Witch Hunter-In-Chief Heidi Beirich

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), claiming that SPLC operators Richard Cohen and Heidi Beirich have violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by “falsely designating CIS as a hate group.”

A refreshing and much-needed take-down of the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its avaricious founder Morris Dees inspired me to recount IFI’s true story about our interaction with the blackguards who maintain the SPLC’s “hate groups” list....

In early March, 2009, about six months after I started working for IFI, we learned that IFI had been put on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate” groups list....

For clarification I called the SPLC and spoke with Heidi Beirich. Our conversation was troubling in that Ms. Beirich revealed that even a tenuous, distant connection to statements the SPLC doesn’t like will land an organization on their hate groups list.

She told me that the only reason IFI had been included on the hate groups list was that in 2005, a former IFI executive director had posted a very short article by someone not affiliated with IFI....

Below is a recent exchange of e-mails between racism investigator Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center and me. It is not the first time that my gal Heidi, whom I affectionately refer to as Heidi Beria, has tried to smoke me out and I told her I had nothing to say to her.

Also on the subject of Heidi Beirich, here is an item about how she got Kevin Lamb fired from Human Events, and here is my article arguing that the only way immigration restrictionists can free themselves of the threat of the racism charge is to meet its underlying premises head on.

From: “Heidi Beirich”
To: Lawrence Auster
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 1:33.p.m.
Subject: John Tanton

Hi there, I have been wading through the extensive archives of John Tanton’s correspondence that he has lodged at the University of Michigan. Several of Tanton’s letters, some of them his most interesting, were written to you and I was wondering if you would be willing to talk with me about them. I’m writing a story for the Intelligence Report about the letters and I’d be much appreciative if you would be willing to comment.

Best,
Heidi Beirich, Ph.D.
Director of Research and Special Projects Intelligence Project
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36104
(334) 956-8309

From Lawrence Auster
On 9/1/08 12:44 PM,

May I ask you something?

Please tell me why it would be in my interest to discuss these matters with you, given that your interest is not in writing journalism or history, but purely in labeling me and others as racist haters?

From: “Heidi Beirich”
September 01, 2008 1:49.p.m.
Well, obviously I disagree heavily with your characterization about what my interest is. I thought you might want to comment in your own words with your own characterizations.

From: Lawrence Auster
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 1:58.p.m.

Then how would you characterize what your interest is? What does your organization do, other than expose purported racists?

From: Heidi Beirich
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 2:04.p.m.

Leaving aside our legal work on immigrant rights and juvenile justice and many other things that I assume you either don’t know about or don’t care about, and assuming that you are referring only to my department, we certainly do expose racists, anti-Semites, etc. We conduct work as journalists and our bailiwick is the radical right. In fact, we are the only publication that is wholesale dedicated to the topic of American extremism. And that extremism is not only in the form of white supremacists. Our current issue, which came out last week, is about an anti-Semitic and anti-white group, the Black Hebrew Israelites.

Please let me know if you want to comment, otherwise enjoy your Labor Day weekend and I won’t contact you again.