The Southern Poverty Law Center “Hate Watch” series has run several stories on the case, in every one of them misconstruing facts and painting Cliven Bundy as a “patriot threat”. The stories are mostly inaccurate and some are just plain dumb.
Notice the SPLC header is “keeping an eye on the radical right”. Funny, they don’t have a category for the “radical left”. Just the right. Perhaps because if they had to keep a list of the radical left, they might find themselves on it…
The Bundys have been receiving support from other right-wing sources, including the Koch-sponsored Americans For Prosperity, which has acted as public boosters for the family’s activities. AFP’s Nevada chapters have been actively promoting anti-Bureau of Land Management stories through social media.
The further to the right the outlet reporting the case, the more extreme the coverage has been.
It’s hilarious how they have “Koch on the brain” disease on the Left.
Today, after the BLM said it would be pulling out and leaving, Bundy wanted to know what would be happening with the cattle. Bundy said, well we’ll give them an hour to tell us, then we’ll go down to the pens and get the cattle.
This was the SPLC’s “interpretation” of the event:
Flanked by militia members equipped like soldiers, Bundy gave the BLM a one hour ultimatum to disarm its agents, dismantle BLM equipment and end what he has described as a tyrannical campaign of harassment against his family, which has raised cattle on about 600,000 acres of federal land dubbed The Gold Butte for generations.
“You report back to these people, we the people, in one hour,” Bundy ordered. “They [our demands] are not done and we’ll decide what we are going to do from this point on,” Bundy told about 1,000 supporters.
Implicit within the SPLC article, Bundy and his buddies were threats, about to go in with guns blazing against the poor unarmed BLM folks. Why didn’t that happen then? Because it wasn’t reality, just a hate screed by the SPLC against people with whom they disagree.
The “Hate Watchers” being the haters.