Farrakhan, the GOP and the Southern Poverty Law Center

By Jackie Muhammad -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Apr 16, 2013 - 5:01:40 PM

Let’s see if the SPLC will expose the lies of the GOP with the truth of Minister Farrakhan’s positions, which are the need for land, control of our own educational institutions, and the parental responsibility of communicating to our children the struggles of past generations.

The oddly named Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama, to combat White supremacist groups and to track organizations identified as “hate groups,” has labeled the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan a “racist” and an “anti-Semite.”

SPLC learned shortly after Minister Farrakhan’s invitation to address the Tuskegee University community that the Tuskegee-Macon County NAACP had passed a resolution welcoming the Minister to Tuskegee, that the president of Tuskegee University, Dr. Gilbert L. Rochon, delivered the opening remarks of the Minister’s lecture, and that Tuskegee Mayor Johnny Ford gave the Minister the key to the city and named him Honorary Mayor for Life. In addition, the Macon County Commissioners similarly honored the man whose legend is expanding among people of all ethnicities and who is arguably the best loved and respected leader in the Black community and throughout the world.

In a deliberate effort to mischaracterize the Minister just before he made his much-anticipated speech at the world-renowned Tuskegee University on March 22, the SPLC’s epithets were widely publicized and used as a strategic tactic to strike fear in the hearts of those hungry to absorb the truth of the Minister’s words, which has resonated throughout America and the world for almost six decades.

Just as the mainstream corporate media, in conjunction with the SPLC, began to spread the racist propaganda against the Nation of Islam minister, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, announced that he was launching a campaign to converge on the campuses of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to promote and market the GOP’s new “brand” of “Republican ideals.”

At the same time, the “Grand Old Party,” for almost the 40th time, sought to repeal “Obamacare.” A major component of the Republican Party’s repeal was a provision that called for cutting funds for HBCUs. So on the one hand the GOP hypocrites are seeking to sell their new “brand” to Black students attending the country’s 105 HBCUs, and at the same time they are attempting to cut the funds that would enable those very same students to obtain an HBCU education.

After the GOP’s presidential standard bearer Mitt Romney was soundly defeated by America’s first Black President, Barack Obama, the Republican brain trust spent millions of dollars holding focus groups and interviewing 50,000 Americans to ascertain why Mr. Romney and the Republican Party were so decisively beaten.

As the GOP follows close on the heels of Minister Farrakhan and deploys its propaganda machine on the campuses of the HBCUs, one is left to wonder if the racist tactics employed by the Republican Party, which largely contributed to its defeat at the polls, will inspire the leadership of the SPLC to label the GOP, its satellite organizations and its leaders as racist and launch a campaign to prevent them from spreading their racism on the Black college campuses and infecting the fertile minds of the students, who represent the leadership of our future generations.

The Republican Party is the same group that has sought to undermine democracy by suppressing the Black and Brown vote and by racially gerrymandering to gain political advantage at the polls. This is also the same party where all the competing presidential candidates vied with each other in their efforts to show their constituents who can be the more extreme bigot.

For example, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said that Black children and Black families were better off during slavery, when she spoke out against the multi-billion-dollar settlement to Black farmers for the decades of discrimination against them by the U.S. federal government. This is the same Michele Bachman who was publically challenged on television by a 10th grader because of her ignorance of American history.

Texas Governor Rick Perry was outed for using “Niggerhead” as the name of his Texas hunting camp. At the front of the gate of the grounds he used to host lawmakers and campaign donors the word was painted in large block letters on a flat rock at the entrance to the camp.

Presidential aspirant Rick Santorum was slammed by the NAACP for singling out Black people as being recipients of federal assistance programs. The former Pennsylvania senator told a predominately Caucasian audience in Sioux City, Iowa, that he doesn’t want to “make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a history of bigoted remarks. Among them is his labeling Barack Obama “the food-stamp president” and claiming that President Obama has put more people on food stamps than any other American president. Gingrich followed that statement up by referring to the President of the United States as an “anticolonial Kenyan,” which Republicans consider akin to a Mau Mau “terrorist.”

A cabal of White Republican members of Congress met on the night of President Obama’s first inauguration to plan his political downfall. Among them were the top Republican leaders in the House and the Senate. They plotted ways to win back political power and put the brakes on Obama’s legislative platform. The participants in the four-hour meeting, according to New York Times writer Robert Draper, included Newt Gingrich, former Romney running mate Paul Ryan, and House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

The top candidate himself, Mitt Romney, famously stated that he did not care about the poor: his now-infamous statement that shocked the political establishment claimed that 47 percent of the American populace are government leeches, whom he promptly dismissed and discarded because they were not going to vote for him anyway. Finally, in his book No Apology, Romney ignorantly delved into long-discredited theories about alleged Mexican and Palestinian cultural inferiority, never mentioning that it was European colonialism and American imperialism that precipitated the fall of the societies Mr. Romney excoriated.

Reince Priebus and the GOP leadership have not uttered one word of apology for the racially insensitive bile spewed by the party’s leading spokespersons. Now they want to take their show on the road to pander to the impressionable minds of tomorrow’s Black leaders. Minister Farrakhan has launched an effort to liberate the minds of young people; the GOP wants to maintain Black subservience to Whites.

Let’s see if the SPLC will use the same tactics deployed to undermine Minister Farrakhan to expose the racism of the GOP as it seeks to propagandize our youth. Let’s also see if the ill-informed new director of public affairs for the SPLC, Dana Vickers Shelley, will recant the position she adopted earlier when she said, “Farrakhan’s talk of separation does not move the nation forward.” It appears that the SPLC, which some say stands for the Southern Propaganda & Lies Center, is seeking to put a black face on white lies.

Now let’s see if the SPLC will expose the lies of the GOP with the truth of Minister Farrakhan’s positions, which are the need for land, control of our own educational institutions, and the parental responsibility of communicating to our children the struggles of past generations.

Jackie Muhammad is a former presidential appointee, member of the Oxford round table, educator, youth-trainer and businessman. He can be reached at [email protected].

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