bjbj Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com. David: Welcome back to the show. Joining us
on the phone is Mark Potok, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They've of
course just listed their newest list of 18 anti-gay hate groups and also have their very
popular hate map, if you want to see a visual representation of where the hate is across
the country. Hey, Mark, thanks for joining us. Mark Potok: Well, thank you so much for
having me. David: What trends are you seeing in hate groups? I mean, is the trend towards
the political, the anti-gay, racism, Barack Obama being in office certainly must have
affected it, what are you seeing right now? Potok: Well, I would say in the biggest picture
what we've seen over the last couple of years is a really remarkable and, at least in my
experience, unprecedented kind of explosion in the radical right in general. And that
goes fairly across the board, that means, you know, we've seen a huge increase in the
number of so-called "patriot groups" or militia groups, but at the same time, a very steep
rise in sort of more traditional hate groups, Klan and neo-Nazi groups and so on, and also
the extreme nativist groups, the anti-immigration groups like various Minute Men formations.
And this I think is clearly related really to two or to three main factors, I would say.
I would say the number one driver of all of this is the changing demographics of this
country, the changing racial makeup of this country. David: Yeah. You know, we've been
talking for a couple of years now about the increase in the right-wing terrorism or violence
that we've been seeing, and how I believe it is underreported in the media. And you
know, we've been getting the same criticism that, if you do a basic Google search about
your group, you receive, which is that the reason we're seeing that is because you and
I are looking only for right-wing terror and are choosing to avoid the so-called left-wing
terror. I mean, can you address that? Does the SPLC want to only expose this type of
stuff on the right? Potok: No. I mean, look, I think it's... you know, I think as you're
really suggesting, I mean, it's a ridiculous criticism. There is, you know, there are a
few scraps of kind of a radical left out there, mainly in the form of kind of animal rights
extremists and, you know, people who burn down SUV dealerships and, you know, blow up
laboratories where they do animal testing and that sort of thing. David: The Discovery
Center guy, for example. Potok: Yeah. But I mean, these... this is tiny, you know, the
number of people involved in that are very, very small. And at the end of the day, although
they certainly will one of these days, they have never killed anyone at all. You know,
one single person in recent years on the radical right in this country, Tim McVeigh, murdered
168 people at one fell swoop, and you know, enormous numbers of others. I mean, you know,
I know 30 or 40 different plots from the right in the last 15 years of people who tried to
kill 1000 people, 5000 people, in one case, 30,000 people in Texas. So you know, without
suggesting that, you know, animal rights extremists are, you know, should be ignored and are totally
meaningless, the size and threat posed by that movement is really infinitesimal compared
to what we're seeing on the radical right. David: You were on with Chris Matthews and
Tony Perkins recently, and I watched that with great interest, and of course, Tony Perkins
denied the alleged hate-group status of the Family Research Council, and he is one of
those 18 groups on your list. How do you define a hate group, first of all, I think is the
best way to start? Potok: Well, it's not a... well, let me say, you know, as a general matter,
hate groups are groups which say in their platform statements, on their websites, in
the writings or speeches of their leaders, that an entire group of human beings based
on their class characteristics are somehow less. So at least our evaluation of hate groups
has nothing to do with criminality or some kind of estimate we're making of their potential
for violence. David: Right. Potok: It's if you say all white people are blue-eyed devils
or all black people are, you know, wicked criminals or whatever it may be, that's hate-group
status for us. In the case of the religious right groups that we wrote about in the last
issue, you know, we're really looking at the specific sort of defamation of gay people,
gays and lesbians. And so in those cases, we got a little more specific withour criteria
and said, you know, our main basis for listing these groups, let me say first of all what
it isn't, you know, we do not list religious right-wing groups or religious groups of any
kind because they think that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin or that they think
that homosexuality's not OK. You know, that's a religious belief, and it's sort of, you
know, one could argue one way or another about what the Bible says or doesn't say or the
Quran or the Torah. David: So that alone would not get them on your list. Potok: That wouldn't
even get them close. David: OK. Potok: I mean, we wouldn't even look at a group for that.
David: Yeah. Potok: And you know, I mean, many millions of people believe that, and
who's to say? You know, our thinking on this, though, is that if a group uses repeatedly,
and knowingly as well, falsehoods to attack and defame people, that really does qualify
them. So, you know, when you look at something like the Family Research Council, I mean,
one of the worst things they do, have done and continue to do to this day, is to associate
gay men with pedophilia. David: Right. Potok: And this is, you know, probably the biggest
charge that's made by the extreme anti-gay right in this country, it's been made going
all the way back to Anita Bryant some 30 years ago in Florida. But you know, the reality
is is that since Anita Bryant was around, there's been a great deal of real scientific
work done, scholarly work done, and it's simply a falsehood. You know, gay men, homosexual
men, do not molest children at any higher rates at all than heterosexual men. So it's
a complete falsehood, and yet, you know, when I was up against Perkins on this show, you
know, he hauled out a bogus study, and at the very end of the show, you know, tried
to, you know, he said basically, 'You're full of it, Mark. You need to go back and do more
research,' he said, you know, and then he went on to cite something called the American
College of Pediatricians, that had definitively shown that, you know, homosexuals were dangerous,
gay people were dangerous to children. David: And that's a complete sham group which their
name itself is actually meant to sound like a legitimate counterpart which supports gay
rights and the reality. Potok: That's right. It's a fake job. I mean, Perkins rather cleverly
did this at the very last moment of the show. David: Yeah. Potok: I mean, we were out of
time, so no response was possible. Well, the reality is is that this group is a faux group
that is, it's a breakaway group from the real professional association of pediatricians
in this country, which is called the American Academy of Pediatrics, not the American College
of Pediatricians. David: Right. Potok: The American Academy is 60,000 serious pediatricians.
The American College is between 100 and 200 people who specifically broke away from the
larger professional body because the larger body said there is nothing wrong, there are
no bad effects from gay parenting, same-sex couple parenting, or foster parenting. So
as a matter of fact, this group has as a condition of membership, you have to believe that foster
parenting by gay parents is a very bad thing. David: Right. Potok: So in other words, it's
a complete fake. It's like, you know, an energy company that sets up a fake environmental
group to say, you know, "We've done the research, and there is no global warming," or, "Man
has nothing to do with it." David: Yeah, no, I mean, it's funny, I just finished reading
Wendell Potter's new book "Deadly Spin", and he details the creation of these front groups
paid for through a PR agency by the companies that have an interest in that being the public
opinion. It's identical. Potok: That's right. That's right, and this wasn't, you know, at
least to my knowledge, set up by any big fund or anything like that, but you know, the point
is is these groups are created... I mean, we see it in the immigration world as well.
David: Sure. Potok: You know, they create organizations that are presented as "think
tanks", but they don't do much thinking in these think tanks. You know, there are groups,
think tanks, the so-called think tanks, that put out study after study after study after
study on the evils of immigration, but there is no study on, you know, any possible benefit
of immigration. And you know, so it's very similar. We have a group here that we can
cite that sounds authoritative, and I don't doubt that many hundreds of thousands of people
who were watching me and Perkins debate thought, you know, Tony Perkins had, you know, sort
of ended the argument, right? David: Right. Yeah, yeah. Potok: With his scientific citations.
David: Hey, in the last minute we have left here, you're personally being demonized, everything
from Jewish Mark Potok is out to attack white Americans through the SPLC and everything
else under the sun. What do you make of the fact that increasingly, those who seek to
expose hate are actually becoming the focus of the attack? Potok: Well I, you know, what
can you do? I mean, it very much goes with the territory. I will tell you that, you know,
we live in a building, we work in a building that has, you know, more security than the
U.S. Embassy in Beirut, I mean, it's really quite amazing. So, you know, in fact, this
has been our life for some time. I mean, 1983, the Klan burned our building to the ground.
David: Yeah. Potok: So now it's coming from more, quote-unquote, "mainstream" groups , but
they don't seem to be terribly swift about it. I mean, I see some of the religious right-wing
groups are saying they're going to take away all our government funding, which would be
a terrible thing except that we have never accepted and won't accept government funding,
so I guess that's not going to be a terribly effective counterattack on their part. David:
I should say. We've been speaking with Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law
Center. Mark, thanks so much for joining us today Potok: And thank you so much for having
me. I really do appreciate it. David: All right, let's take a break, Louis, we'll be
back, we'll talk about the latest connections between rhetoric and real-life violence, and
plenty more. Stay tuned. Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com. Transcript
provided by Alex Wickersham. For transcription, translation, captions, and subtitles, contact
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