Paratrooping
Vienna, Virginia (2010)
From FB:
“According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), this is the headquarters of a “white nationalist” organization called the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. It’s about 2 blocks from my house at 713 Park Street, S.E.
For those who don’t know, the SPLC is considered to be the preeminent group for tracking extremist groups in the United States. This is what the SPLC has to say about the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation:
“The foundation is headed by Fran Griffin, who runs a public relations firm, Griffin Communications, that also publishes Sobran’s, a newsletter by columnist Joe Sobran. Sobran is an anti-Semite who has written for a Holocaust denial journal.”
If you do any type of research about the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, you won’t find too much about them being a “hate group”. They hardly exist on the Internet. And from what I can tell, the “foundation” is actually only one person – Fran Griffin.
Yet the SPLC has elevated them to national prominence by listing them on a U.S. map of “hate groups”. Further, they’re listed on the SPLC’s website as an “Active White Nationalist Group”.
I first started looking into this kind of thing when I saw that the SPLC was labeling anyone who happened to disagree with their stance on illegal immigration as a “nativist” or a “white nationalist”. Wanting to know which Ku Klux Klan chapter was getting their whites starched at my local cleaner, I decided to check out the SPLC’s map. Imagine my surprise when I found that there was allegedly a genuine “hate group” not a quarter mile from my local Whole Foods.
(I can only imagine what the Birkenstock wearing hippie cashiers would think of that bit of business….)
Though any information about why specifically the SPLC considers the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation to be a “hate group” is hard to find, they did mention that someone whom they consider to be a “white nationalist” was a “resident scholar” at the “foundation”.
That is to say, he was a “resident scholar” at this house…
From what I can tell, the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation is run by a lady who is a traditionalist Catholic. (There’s an anti-abortion bumper sticker on that car parked out front, complete with a picture of the Pope.) And while some of what I’ve seen of what Griffin Communications publishes could be considered anti-Semitic, I would more correctly label it as “Woe Is The White Man. Why Is Everyone Always Picking On Us?”
Regardless, it’s certainly not the kind of thing that I would waste my time reading.
Mind you, the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation apparently publishes the works of others. They themselves apparently do not put out any of their own original material. They also apparently have sponsored forums in which some apparently unsavory people have said apparently unsavory things, though there was no information that Fran Griffin or anyone from her “foundation” ever said anything controversial.
For all of this, the SPLC has labeled them a “hate group”.
In actuality, what they appear to be most guilty of in the eyes of the SPLC is that they promote a very right wing, traditionalist Catholic perspective. Their website says, “The Foundation’s mission is to engage in projects aimed at instructing the public on the great heritage of our nation.” That heritage, according to the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, is primarily a white European heritage, though I didn’t see any virulent anti-semitic or racist material on their website.
Folks, I’m all about egalitarianism and equal justice for all, and don’t believe in discriminating against anyone, but when you start playing fast and loose with your labels and calling everyone with whom you happen to disagree a “white nationalist” or a “hate group”, then in my opinion you’re deliberately trying to stifle debate in this country.
Maybe Fran Griffin is a Grand Exalted Cyclops and plays Lynyrd Skynyrd while drinking moonshine and talking about how the South will rise again right after we ship all the “darkies” and “Jews” back to where they came from. But I’m afraid I don’t see that. She probably publishes a lot of things that I don’t agree with and that are not politically correct, but does that really justify the SPLC saying that she runs a “hate group”?
These are loaded terms that the SPLC is throwing around, and people who don’t know better will come away thinking that anyone who the SPLC labels as a “hate group” is the equivalent of the KKK. There are too many people in this country who have no problem calling someone the worst thing that they can think of simply because they happen to disagree with what the other person believes.
Again, I’m not defending Fran Griffin or her foundation or what she publishes. I’m just a big believer in objectivism and truth in advertising.
From the looks of it, this is not the headquarters of a “hate group”. It’s the private residence of a lady who publishes the kooky ideas of others.
And I’m sorry, but a ramshackle single-family house with a statue of Mary and a handwritten sign on the front door that says “Deliveries In The Back” is hardly the kind of “foundation” that is capable of supporting a “resident scholar”.
On the other hand, maybe I just have higher standards for what I want in my friendly neighborhood hate group.”
Houston, Texas (2013)
From FB:
“I stepped out of the muggy Houston night heat into the air conditioned splendor of a practically empty locals bar.
There were two or three regulars sidled up inside with an ex-hippie from San Francisco putting quarters into the red-topped candy machine in the corner that held the salted peanuts.
A black and white movie with subtitles played over my shoulder as I ordered a cold Lone Star.
For $2 on the best jukebox I’ve seen shy of Greensboro, here’s what I played.
When it got to Dylan, the bartender looked up, smiled, and said, “Who played John Wesley Harding?”
Song Of Ajax 