The only way to understand it is to accept that they never thought that they were wrong. They just couldn’t see it.
They spent 18 months thinking there was no way a defamation claim could stick. Then the lawyers presented the case to them, and two months later they utterly surrendered.
They did not realize that they had defamed Nawaz so blatantly that no lawyer could protect them.
They still don’t get it. Their defenders still don’t get it. The SPLC is now being criticized for caving when they were factually, demonstrably, harmfully, and clearly wrong. They cannot get it, and they never will get it.
You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. While one can never be 100% confident about the outcome of a court case, the legal hurdles to make a defamation case in the United States are pretty damn high, and Nawaz would have had an incredibly difficult time winning his case had it proceeded to trial.
Being wrong in their opinion isn’t the same as being legally liable for defamation.
And on a more positive note concerning the SPLC, they did partner with Steve Earle in producing a lovely song urging Mississippi to remove the confederae battle flag from the State flag. I can’t get *too *down on a group like that. Cool song. Mississippi It’s Time:
You’d have to ask them. As we’ve seen from some of the links provided in recent posts, there are quite a few other people wondering the same thing.
If I had to guess, I’d imagine there was some calculus regarding the cost of fighting the suit, the negative publicity that would result, and the consequent (further) damage to their public image.
I don’t defend her as staunchly as Sam does, because she has endorsed the Israeli right wing. Not sure that qualifies her as an “extremist” but it’s certainly closer.
It’s hard to win a defamation suit, but not impossible. Otherwise there would be no such thing as a defamation suit.
The SPLC tried to claim that an avowed Muslim with a documented history as a devout Muslim was an anti-Muslim extremist. They did so because they did not agree with the tone of his rhetoric. That is blatant defamation that could be easily demonstrated in court.
The SPLC has also defamed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but because she is an atheist they don’t have to apologize.
I believe there’s a lot of rot in the human rights industry, because it can easily shield itself from scrutiny on the basis that they are the Good Guys ™; so it attracts a certain type of people who are kind of awful but want to be seen as saints.
I know of a case here in Thailand, an NGO that advocates for Burmese workers that waxes poetically about Human Rights and the Rule of Law while some of its members are part of the group that instigated and carried out the Rohingya ethnic cleansing campaign not long ago.
These things are left to fester, in part, because bringing them to light would hurt the overall cause of pro Human Rights work, at least that’s what I think the rationale is; but leaving bad people to do the Good Work for the benefit of keeping up the appearances doesn’t seem to be a good strategy
Most importantly, as in this case, the person running the show clearly treated the position as a money making business, with the commodity being the struggle against bigotry, racism and the like, more of that means more profits so there’s an incentive to not fix the problems but to keep them going for as long as possible.
