I bet you people constantly contact SPLC saying that the things they publish about them are lies. [/QU0TE]
But we know that in one case at least the challenger was actually correct. This would be like saying we have to accept that cops will use excessive violence because so many of the people they come in contact with are not average everyday people.
Those are often lies in and of themselves so it's not at all surprising that SPLC does not take their word for it.
Not only is it not a surprise that we fall into stereotyping others based on past experience, but it seems to me your giving the SPLC some sort of pass for it is irrelevant because it's exactly, or apparently to me at least, that IS what they did. They only listened when arguments of their error was pointed out by others.
If you have some information on what process SPLC used (or didn't use!) in order to examine the truth or falsity of those counter claims that would be helpful. Without knowledge of that, saying they published lies could potentially be a defamatory statement by you of them, haha.
But we have such evidence aplenty, it seems to me:
"But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the
Field Guide in the first place. Among those who contacted us were human rights advocates affiliated with the United Nations who emphasized that Mr. Nawaz’s work combatting extremism “is actually analogous to that of the SPLC over the years in the South.”
The ticket to refutation to what they have published seems to be the established esteem in which they hold the source. In such cases they take a second look.
Looking at the human context in which this all plays out, we have a war of good vs evil, a struggle of the left vs the right, each of which claims the moral high ground, all taking place in a competitive culture where being wrong is an anathema that has emotional consequences for the ego and what the ego attaches to as a place to hang ones hat of self respect. In this war to win comes in two forms. To be right, or to believe you are right. A third way, one requiring freedom from context, competition, would be not to need to be either. That would require the abandonment of ego attachment and the hat rack, the abandonment of good and evil at a different level of understanding.
I do think, though, that to be able to admit error, to desire real truth over self deception, is a road down which one can come to see that one is wrong, not just here and there, but about everything one has previously believed. I leave you to decide where that might lead.
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