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CSUSB professor discusses role of Southern Poverty Law Center and the definition of hateConnecticut PostNov. 8, 2018CSUSB Professor Brian Levin discusses the role of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and how “hate” is defined.For decades, the SPLC hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists. But in recent years, as the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists – mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories – those conservatives have been fighting back.Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said he supports the Southern Poverty Law Center’s approach; indeed, he used to work there in the 1990s. But he cautioned: “How much high-fructose corn syrup do you have to put into something until it's not juice anymore? How much bigotry do you have to put into a mainstream policy organization before it becomes a hate group?”“I think the Southern Poverty Law Center is a victim of its own success,” Levin continued. “The traditional violent hate groups that they've successfully sued have now yielded to a much more mottled landscape, where the defining line is more amorphous. We’re seeing a society that is changing with respect to” how it defines hate.Read the whole article at “Hate list gets pushback from conservatives.”
With waves of violent political messaging, CSUSB professor expects more attacks from white nationalistsMSN News UKNov. 8, 2018Brian Levin, CSUSB criminal justice professor and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed about white nationalism and the role of law enforcement.“This is what public demonstration looks like in an era when white nationalism isn’t on the fringes, but on the inside of the political mainstream,” says Levin, a former New York City police officer, about an incident where a law-enforcement official stationed at a rally in downtown Portland, Ore., turned to a member of a far-right militia group and asked for his assistance in cuffing a left-wing counter protester who had been tackled by a “Proud Boy.” During the run-up to some of last year’s major events in places like Charlottesville or Berkeley, he notes, “there was an unending stream of violent themed chatter and an almost choreographed exchange of web threats between antagonists across wide geographic expanses” that earned barely a nod from law enforcement.Levin believes that the Justice Department could be more flexible in pursuing these groups without violating First Amendment concerns. Just as they do with ISIS supporters, law-enforcement agencies would be within their legal rights to monitor, analyze and share any of the publicly available intelligence on white supremacists or hate groups that suggests violent confrontations. “The problem is not that we rightly scrutinize violent Salafist extremism,” Levin says, “but that we do so while materially ignoring domestic white nationalists or those on their fringes who also represent a violent threat.”In August, Levin noted the continued ascendance of the far right, even after many of its members went underground after Charlottesville. “The rocket ship is still twirling,” he said. Levin predicted that the next big wave of activity wouldn’t be around mega-rallies but around what he calls “aggressive maneuvers” by loners or small cells. A series of violent outbursts in a single week in October made his prediction seem prescient.Law enforcement’s inability to reckon with the far right is a problem that goes back generations in this country, and the roots of this current crisis can be traced back more than a decade. With violent political messaging emanating from the White House and echoed throughout the conservative media and social media landscapes, Levin only expects more attacks. “What we need to worry about is the guy who is riled up by this rhetoric and decides to go out and do something on his own,” he said in August. “We have people who are ticking time bombs.”Read the whole article at “U.S. law enforcement failed to see the threat of white nationalism. Now they don’t know how to stop it.”
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