I remember one of my student teachers who taught further down the coast of New Jersey who had a student who did a show and tell by bringing in his uncle’s collection of KKK and Nazi symbols.  I get updates from the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and Teaching Tolerance publication that lists their work and the number and kinds of hate groups that operate openly.  Tracing these with their ups and downs with changes of leadership and forming new coalitions trying to get a bigger foothold in the American political structure is interesting and informative.

This is one small but hugely important organization that has weathered years of combat against White Hate Groups that exist and work amidst us in every state of the Union. There are sites on the internet specifically targeting the Southern Poverty Law Center as their enemy – an enemy of the White Hate Groups.

The Intelligence Project has an enviable record of success in stalking these groups, their leaders and their publications that rarely hold back the most virulent and explicit hate and abuse directed against non-whites, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics and Liberals.  Mainstream Ultra Right Organizations and the “Christian” organizations such as the Moral Majority have been embarrassed by the Whites Only people who profess Christianity. Some of the Nazi recrudescence is involved and this seems to be troublesome for some leaders who wish to become the new Hitler. Such “leaders” epitomize the Fascist State that some believe lurks in the methodology employed by the Republican leaders who have a lock on our country and who have led us into a war we are not winning.

Teaching Tolerance is a tool that is made available to schools.  It is important to note that the hate groups have publications that are made available for schools and libraries. We have freedom of speech and the press but we know garbage when we see and smell it.  Or, do we?  The fight for the minds of our children and their children goes on all the time and your neighbor and mine has unplumbed depths of beliefs that will astound you if you care to ask questions and seek clarification of exactly what they mean when they say something that was too carefully couched to be ordinary give and take in conversation.

Professional sounding ordinary people regurgitate the belief system of the White Supremacists and Nazis. Some of your neighbors and mine believe that America should be White and Christian. We have been supporting SPLC for years and have cheered when they used the law against groups that would like to change laws to make second class citizens of those who have color or disbelieve Jesus is Lord. Their current outrage is against “Happy Holidays” and they want to put Christ back into Christmas. They have a point. But what about profits?