I ran across this Canadian blogger on a search for recent info about Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute which uses the tactics of harassment to anger and infuriate those on the left. I was looking it up because there seems to be a pattern lately of the right wing doing outrageous things, making outrageous statements.
The blogger is pointing out how Blackwell's group is joining with Canadian groups to disrupt college campuses there. She mentions a college group I had not heard about, but which has been very much in the news lately...especially in NC. The SPLC puts the Youth for Western Civilization on it's list of hate groups.
A Culture Of DefianceI've been writing a series of articles on the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, who have joined forces to attack Canadian universities, partly through student associations.
It first came to my attention after reading the blog of an American woman who had been covering this phenomenon in the U.S. and in particular a group called Youth for Western Civilization. This "youth" group is funded by Blackwell's Leadership Institute, and engage in something he teaches called "controlled controversy".
Budding journalist Jeff Horwitz went undercover, I guess you'd say, attending one of their seminars and wrote an article My Right-wing Degree: How I learned to convert liberal campuses into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, Alma Mater of Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas. (1)
Ah, yes, that was a great article. Here is the link from Salon from 2005. Their tactics are not going away.
My Right Wing DegreeThere is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign. Recently, he's been fighting to save Tom DeLay's job.
Yet Blackwell's foundation, the Leadership Institute, is not a Republican organization. It's a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) charity, drawing the overwhelming majority of its $9.1 million annual budget from tax-deductible donations. Despite its legally required "neutrality," the institute is one of the best investments the conservative movement has ever made. Its walls are plastered with framed headshots of former students -- hundreds of state and local legislators sprinkled with smiling members of the U.S. Congress, and even the perky faces of two recently crowned Miss Americas. Thirty-five years ago, Blackwell dispatched a particularly promising 17-year-old pupil named Karl Rove to run a youth campaign in Illinois; Jeff Gannon, a far less impressive student, attended the Leadership Institute's Broadcast Journalism School.
Remember James O'Keefe? The Leadership Institute backed him.
The Rutgers Centurion is a conservative monthly that got off the ground this fall with institute help. Rutgers student James O'Keefe founded the magazine after coming across a conservative publication at Tufts. "I said, why don't we have this?" O'Keefe remembers. He taught himself a page-layout program and got in touch with the Leadership Institute, which dispatched a staffer to take him and his coeditors to dinner at an upscale local brewery. The institute gave O'Keefe books on starting a publication, awarded him a $500 "Balance in Media Grant," and suggested never-fail places on campus to ferret out liberal excess. "They were really excited," O'Keefe recalls.
And then he went after ACORN...
Here is more about the Institute which is funding groups to spread anger on campuses across our northern border now.
The structure of Blackwell's Campus Leadership Program is simple. The Leadership Institute trains promising conservative college graduates over the summer and dispatches them to campuses in the fall with a mandate to start conservative student organizations. Need $500 and some ideas to start a combative right-wing campus publication? The institute would love to help you. Is the campus administration discriminating against your Second Amendment club? The institute will help you take your cause to the Internet. No one on campus at your Christian college has ever heard of the institute? Staffers will be glad to drive down, take you to a steakhouse, and talk it up. Last year, the CLP doubled in size, to 418 clubs and counting. By the end of 2006, Blackwell is confident he will have created 1,000 conservative campus organizations.
The article mentions that Campus Leadership Programs can get away with ridiculous stuff that College Republicans can't do.
...."The Leadership Institute teaches the same principle. Controlled controversy -- making your point in a manner so bombastic that your opponents blow their cool -- is a Blackwell specialty. Before the 2004 Republican Convention, the conservative elder personally went to a drugstore and bought little pink heart stickers, bandages and purple nail polish. At home, he made the "Purple Heart Band-Aids" that he later distributed in Madison Square Garden to mock John Kerry's war wounds. From Blackwell's perspective, the Kerry camp's outrage at the gag was a tactical disaster. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, Blackwell says, kept the story alive for days by "running around like a chicken with its head cut off."
Salon covered this year's YWC appearance at CPAC. In the video by one of the founders, Kevin DeAnna, he admits they are also working in Canada.
Fighting Multiculturism on campusDo not miss the video.
Today I spoke with Kevin DeAnna, who was manning the booth for the group he founded, Youth for Western Civilization. (He defines Western civilization as "a cultural compound of Christian, classical, and the folk traditions of Europe.") His group represents the youth wing of the Tom Tancredo wing of the Republican Party.
DeAnna's big issues are opposition to "mass immigration" and "multiculturalism." (Sample headline from his group's website: "The costs of diversity.") Asked who in the 2012 field best represents Western values, he said: "We'll see if Tancredo runs again." Calling Obama an "overt leftist," DeAnna said, "If anything, I'm actually kind of glad that he's in office because people recognize it a bit more" than when a Republican is president.
It's conservatives like DeAnna who killed immigration reform in 2006 and 2007 and will probably try again in the future.
His definition of Western Civilization: "
(He defines Western civilization as "a cultural compound of Christian, classical, and the folk traditions of Europe.") Whatever that all means.
Here is the
link to their website.Southern Poverty Law Center tells about their debut at CPAC. From February 2009.
‘Right-Wing Youth’ Group Debuts At CPACIn the past, CPAC organizers have shielded the reputation of their mainstream conservative enterprise by forbidding racist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens from participating. They may want to take a closer look at Youth for Western Civilization (YWC).
One of the group’s founders, Marcus Epstein, is a frequent contributor to the white nationalist hate website VDARE.com. (Editor’s Note: In Sept. 2009, Hatewatch was informed that Epstein now claims he was not a founder of the group, even though he had said so earlier.)
“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable,” Epstein wrote in one VDARE.com essay. “Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”
..."Another Youth for Western Civilization founder, Kevin DeAnna, has posted several times in recent years to the Spartan Spectator, the website of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, or MSU-YAF. (My note: YAF is also listed as a hate group by SPLC)
In September 2009 the SPLC wrote more of this group, about how the University of North Carolina chancellor shut it down on campus.
UNC Chancellor Shuts Down Right-Wing Youth GroupThe chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has shut down the UNC chapter of the anti-immigrant group Youth for Western Civilization after its faculty adviser joked about his proficiency with a Colt .45 handgun.
..."The adviser, professor of psychology Elliot Cramer, was responding to an E-mail alerting him that fliers bearing his photograph and home address had been distributed on campus. The fliers were captioned, “Why is your professor supporting white supremacy?” They urged students and faculty members to pressure Cramer to withdraw his support of Youth for Western Civilization, a national organization with direct ties to hate groups and white nationalist websites.
“Thanks for your concern,” Cramer replied in a Sept. 19 E-mail that he copied to Chancellor Holden Thorp. “I have a Colt .45, and I know how to use it. I used to be able to hit a quarter at 50 feet seven times out of ten.”
Thorp ordered Cramer to step down as the group’s faculty adviser the following day, effectively freezing the group’s activities.
He was the 2nd adviser to step down.
Trying to anger people is a strange political tactic. I don't see what it accomplishes except making people mad at you and furious with your group.
For some reason Morton Blackwell laughed when he drew anger for getting James Gannon into the WH press group. From My Right Wing Degree:
In the meantime, the Leadership Institute will continue its work. Blackwell has found plenty of humor in his recent vilification as the evil genius that smoothed fake reporter Jeff Gannon's path to White House press briefings. "If they want to believe that there's a vast conspiracy, and they want to waste their time trying to decide who gives all the orders to the conservative movement, well, let 'em spend their time on that," he says, laughing.
Then he uses the example of clipping the puppy's tail.
"Everyone knows that for certain breeds of dogs it is customary to cut their tails short when they are a few weeks old," begins Blackwell's lecture to us on the importance of releasing negative information on your opponent incrementally. "Every time you clip the puppy's tail it hurts. It hurts. You might traumatize the puppy for life....The moral is that if it's your tail that's being clipped, you want it clipped once," concludes Blackwell. "But if you get a chance to clip your opponent's tail, clip that puppy as often as you can."
It may be hardball, but it isn't cheating, and it would be far less effective if it were. "These are powerful techniques," Blackwell tells the class at the end of his marathon lecture. "So I don't want anyone going out of here and acting unethically. It's not necessary."
Sounds like he is as much as saying that you are not being unethical if you are doing things to hurt others....like clipping that puppy's tail so to speak.
The right wing has their media in place to twist and turn every issue into something ugly enough to cause anger.
That does not bode well for this country. And it is unfortunate that they are joining with Canadians in the effort.
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