Every Story Needs a Villain

Turns out you can farm your opposition and call it a win.

News last week that the sainted left-wing American advocacy group, the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), has been charged by the US government with manufacturing right-wing false flag operations, came as a shock to many.

SPLC raised money from donors, ostensibly to dismantle violence extremist groups, but the charges are that they purportedly used donor money to fund groups such as:

• the Klu Klux Klan,

• Unite the Right (the group linked to the Charlottesville terrorist attack against counter-protesters),

• the National Socialist Movement and

• the Aryan Movement biker group.

Allegations are that over $3m was used not to combat right-wing extremism as intended, but to fund further extremist crimes, for over a decade, using shell companies and other entities.

Such allegations will not come as a total shock to anyone who is in touch with reality, that is, anyone gender critical. Among the ‘extremist’ groups the SPLC opposed were sane sex realists such as:

• Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM)

• Genspect

• Gays Against Groomers

• Them Before Us

• the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and

• Do No Harm

All were highlighted in SPLC reports for opposing gender-affirming healthcare and participating in what they called the ‘pseudoscience network.’ The SPLC placed them on its hate map/extremist files alongside far-right groups and tied them to “hard-right” or white Christian nationalist influences, even when some (like SEGM) included rainbow members and emphasised evidence-based medicine over political advocacy.

SPLC also actively supported and promoted gender-affirming policies and care through litigation, education, and partnerships. It described gender-affirming care as “life-saving” and filed lawsuits to block state bans on it for minors.

Lessons to be taken from this sorry state of affairs are many. First, that any individual or group supporting gender ideology has so taken leave of their senses that it is reasonable to expect further deranged political stances or actions. Faith in gender ideology is not a sign of good intellectual or mental health. Think pro-gender affirmation groups like Gender Minorities Aotearoa, InsideOUT, PATHA, Rainbow YOUTH and the famously litigious Paul Thistoll of Rights Aotearoa.

Second, any group or individual dedicated to ‘calling out racism’ or claiming to hold the moral high ground on other issues should be greeted with enormous skepticism. In 2023 trans activist Shaneel Lal framed women’s rights’ activist Posie Parker’s supporters and her visit to New Zealand as emboldening ‘anti-queer/trans hatred,’ often linking them to far-right extremism, Nazis, and bigotry.

The real world consequences of such bogus posturing can be dangerous. Women were mobbed and assaulted at Albert Park in Auckland by a hopped-up crowd of ill-informed youth.

Remember too the now defunct Disinformation Project that made a short career of condemning gender criticals. Researchers (Kate Hannah, Dr. Sanjana Hattotuwa) reported a dramatic, measurable increase in “extraordinarily violent,” “genocidal”-level anti-trans content online post the Posie Parker visit— worse than anything previously studied, if they are to be believed.

Third, when a sizable incentive such as funding is present, don’t be surprised if organisations and individuals are incentivised to foster the necessary victims. It appears the demand for racism by the SPLC was greater than the supply. So what to do? Promote the demand and then shriek ‘racism.’

The 2017 Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville turned violent, and Trump was accused of emboldening white nationalists, the alt-right and white supremacists by groups like the SPLC (that are accused of actually funding some of those groups). The rally became a cultural/political shorthand for Trump-era “white supremacy” debates, often decoupled from the full context of Trump’s condemnations.

Allegations about the SPLC’s underhand actions should be a wake-up call to anyone supporting moral projects of all persuasions. Never underestimate the power of perverse incentives and the human capacity for skullduggery.

For instance, the devious tactics of the SPLC echo those I’d read about in Isabelle Boemeke’s excellent book on the case for nuclear energy, Rad Future, except that, in this case, the malefactor was the fossil fuel industry. In the USA the fossil fuel industry funded environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club. These groups oppose fossil fuels, but they also oppose nuclear power, an energy source the fossil fuel industry sees as the greater threat. A case of my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

In New Zealand we have an entire charity industrial complex dedicated to the faux villain of gender. Worse, mostly funded by the taxpayer. These should all be defunded pronto.

Also we need to cast a critical eye over charities whose raison d’etre has long gone. For instance, the Burnett Foundation, originally formed at the height of the AIDS epidemic to support the afflicted, found itself minus victims once treatment and education had largely vanquished the AIDs demon. Instead of celebrating this success and packing up their tent, the Burnett Foundation pivoted to become the HQ of kink. Why not? Money and jobs depended on the organisation’s continued existence.

The uncomfortable truth is that we should measure the success of any charity by the diminution of the problem they set out to tackle, not their continued existence.