AFP’s front-page article of Issue 7&8 covers the good news that the world’s premier “hate arbiter” is being challenged in court yet again. If you’re an AFP Online subscriber, log in here to read your paper now. If you’re not yet a subscriber to American Free Press click here to review print and/or digital subscription options (and don’t miss this special offer for one-year subscriptions or renewals).
By John Friend
Gavin McInnes, the popular political pundit and cofounder of Vice Media who worked at the outlet until 2008, is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for maliciously targeting the outspoken and politically incorrect host and comedian for unspecified damages, it was recently reported.
McInnes, who also founded the Proud Boys, a pro-Western fraternal organization that has been hysterically demonized by the mass media and radical leftwing groups, has been a target of the SPLC for years.
The federal civil suit, filed in the Middle District of Alabama where the SPLC is headquartered, argues that the SPLC has targeted McInnes and his associates for “personal and professional destruction” in order to achieve “the SPLC’s own ideological, political, and financial (i.e., fundraising) ends.”
“The primary method SPLC uses to achieve its goals and those of its donors is by identifying activists, political figures, and groups as targets or enemies of society and designating its enemies ‘extremists,’ ‘white supremacists,’ ‘hate groups,’ and the like,” the lawsuit argues.
The SPLC designates its political and ideological enemies as “hate groups” in order to “cause its victims to be ‘deplatformed,’ or deprived of access to online and inperson venues in which they were, prior to being deplatformed, able to express their views to those who choose to listen, or ‘defunded,’ meaning blocked from access from both social-based-crowdfunding sources and payment processors,” according to the suit.
As a result of pressure from the SPLC and other leftwing media outlets, McInnes and the Proud Boys organization have been banned from a number of popular social media outlets, including Twitter and Facebook, as well as online payment processors such as PayPal.
The lawsuit correctly describes the SPLC as a “self-appointed enforcer” of cultural and political orthodoxy and argues that it uses its power and influence in society to maliciously target its political rivals.
In a letter to supporters, SPLC President Richard Cohen argues that McInnes’s suit is an attempt to “deny us our First Amendment rights” and that the suit “has no merit.”
“The fact that he’s upset tells us that we’re doing our job exposing hate and extremism,” Cohen states in the letter.
McInnes joins a growing list of individuals and organizations that have or are currently suing the SPLC, one of the most influential leftwing smear groups operating in America.
Last summer, the SPLC settled a lawsuit brought against the group by Maajid Nawaz and his anti-extremism organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for $3.375 million, a major setback for the radical, un-American organization. The SPLC is also currently being sued by attorney Glen Allen for maliciously targeting him, which resulted in Allen’s outrageous termination as an attorney for the City of Baltimore, a job he had performed in exemplary fashion—fighting for justice for people of all colors, creeds, and religions without a single complaint—for many years.
John Friend is a freelance author based in California.
