Family Research Council's newest symbol of SPLC persecution is yet another fraud

Carol Swain, FRC's fake symbol of 'SPLC persecution'

In the mind of the Family Research Council, there is a huge rebellion of credibility against the Southern Poverty Law Center, For those who don't know, FRC has been feuding with SPLC ever since the organization called out its deliberate lies about the LGBTQ community by giving it the label of a hate group in 2010.

Since then, FRC has been taking potshots at SPLC, even falsely connecting it with a near shooting at  FRC headquarters in 2012 and the shooting in DC earlier this year which saw member of the House of Representatives hospitalized.

But try as it may, and even with the help of other anti-LGBTQ hate groups and like minded conservative groups, the only thing FRC is doing is making a complete fool of itself.

Take today's Washington Update for example:.

Retired Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain explains "What It's Like to Be Smeared by the Southern Poverty Law Center" in a strong column for the Journal, which hasn't exactly been holding back its skepticism of Richard Cohen's group. For Dr. Swain, institutionalized prejudice is nothing new. As an African-American woman, she's been threatened, protested, and verbally abused for exposing students to other views in one of academia's elite laboratories of radicalism. Now, she can add "targeted by the SPLC" to her long list of distinctions, which among other things, accuses Carol of expressing hatred toward minorities – which is ridiculous since she is a minority! 

Still, Swain insists, she "wears the SPLC's mud as a badge of honor because I know I am in the company of many good men and women who have been similarly vilified for standing for righteousness and truth." But, Carol writes soberly, the SPLC's labeling has had "has had a lasting impact on my life and career. Offers from other universities ended and speaking opportunities declined. Once you've been smeared in this way, mainstream news outlets are less likely to cite you as an expert of any kind." 

But, she continues, "Some of those vilified by the SPLC have been subjected to even worse treatment. The Family Research Council and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise have been violently attacked by individuals inspired by the propaganda the SPLC regularly dishes out -- which is often accepted without criticism and passed on by media, law-enforcement agencies and universities." Like others at the Wall Street Journal who think SPLC's "hate list" feeds the polarization it claims to be fighting, Carol knows Cohen's group has one goal (articulated, conveniently, by former staffer Mark Potok): "destroying" the groups it opposes.

First of all, the man who shot Scalise, James Hodgkinson, was not inspired by SPLC. He once "liked" SPLC's facebook page, a far cry from being inspired. So, pardon me for saying so, but Swain is a liar.


FRC makes a big deal about the fact that Swain is an African-American conservative. In other words - knowing the vast majority of black conservatives who follow the same path - she is famous for telling white conservatives the things they want to hear about black people.

Furthermore, she wasn't targeted, she was called out for actions she took publicly and on the record. According to SPLC in 2011:

Swain has some very odd views for someone selected to lecture Congress on immigration and minorities. In her 2002 book, The New White Nationalism in America, Swain argued, in essence, that America doesn’t need to reject white nationalists — people who want the U.S. to be run by and for whites. Rather, it needs to start talking to them, and taking their ideas seriously, particularly when it comes to immigration and racial preferences. In the book, Swain says that white people have been muzzled by political correctness, while African Americans are allowed “to verbally assault and slander whites with racial epithets and false charges without suffering any serious loss of respect or any financial or social damage in the public arena.” 

In 2009, Swain endorsed a slick 58-minute documentary, “A Conversation About Race,” devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites. In a blurb that was posted on the documentary’s website, Swain called the film “outstanding” and “meticulously done.” “[I]t offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue,” she wrote. “I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.” When it turned out that Swain’s much-lauded filmmaker had long posted regular comments on YouTube and a number of other websites, repeatedly describing blacks as “monkeys” and black men in particular as “EVIL monkeys [who] are DESTROYING” America, and even suggesting that a black former White House adviser be lynched, “[p]ossibly with the aid of a noose,” Swain continued to heartily recommend the film, with its “poignant” scenes, to “multicultural forums across the country.” 

Lately, Swain’s big bugaboo has been immigration. In 2007, Swain published Debating Immigration, which included an essay by prominent white nationalist Peter Brimelow, who runs that anti-immigrant hate site, VDARE.com, named for the first English baby born in America. Swain later served as a paid commentator on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” before he was pushed off the air by CNN for repeatedly demonizing immigrants. 

It comes as no surprise that Swain’s written testimony is harsh on immigrants. She accuses “millions of foreign-born persons” of having “openly stolen jobs, goods, and opportunities from law-abiding American citizens.” Dismissing the idea that some of the undocumented might be “good people,” Swain says, “What matters is their choice to enter the country unlawfully and thumb their noses at the laws and regulations that Congress has enacted to protect the people.” Undocumented immigrants, according to Swain, “damage our national sovereignty and standing in the world.”

In 2012, SPLC  called McSwain out for allegedly mischaracterizing a public debate she had with a member of the group.

In 2015, she called for the monitoring of Islamic organizations:

“Islam has absolutely nothing in common with Christianity, nor is it a worthy part of the brotherhood of man.”

And surprise, surprise, she calls Black Lives Matter "pure Marxism:

 “It’s not really addressing the real problems affecting African Americans,” Carol Swain, a prominent Christian conservative, told CNN, Campus Reform reported. “It’s misleading black people. It needs to go.” She urged CNN viewers to go to the official Black Lives Matter organization’s website to read “what they’re really about.” “It’s pure Marxism; it talks about state violence, genocide; all of those are buzzwords that are quite destructive,” she said.

It's not accidental that Swain's nonsense  about SPLC is running in big right-wing circles. My guess is that mainstream media hardly gives a damn about yet another black conservative more busy making a name for herself than actually helping the African-American community. Generally speaking, Swain is the newest "why can't all black people be decent like this person" model of white conservatives. Expect her to enjoy prominence in white conservative circles and partake of that "wingnut welfare" that so many conservative pundits, black and white, enjoy.

But it seems to me that if FRC really want credibility for its attack on  SPLC, maybe the group should pick a better symbol than a black conservative who endorses racist documentaries, expresses sympathy for white nationalists, slanders Islam, and aligns herself with groups who smear gay men as pedophiles.

Swain, like so many like her, is a mere novelty and a bad one.