A WashingtonFreeBeacon.com headline today certainly does get one's attention: Justice Department Studying ‘Far-Right’ Social Media Use.
The article is about a single DOJ grant, in particular a half million dollars to Michigan State University, which FreeBeacon says is directed at far-right groups. And sure enough, the award detail says this:
NIJ Award Detail: An Assessment of Extremist Groups Use of Web Forums, Social Media, and Technology to Enculturate and Radicalize Individuals to Violence
...
We will collect posts made in four active forums used by members of the far-right and three from the Islamic Extremist community, as well as posts made in Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter, YouTube, and Pastebin accounts used by members of each movement. ...
The original grant application request lamented that too much attention has been focused on al-Qaida and Islamic-inspired extremists but not enough on others. So the applicants sought to correct that.
Freebeacon has noted one such grant. But the largest grant went to Research Triangle Institute to the tune of $700,000. Their application said this:
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported that the number of hate groups has increased by 56 percent since 2000 and that the number of right wing antigovernment or Patriot groups has increased more than 800 percent since 2008.
Now there's a waste of taxpayer money. Anyone who cites the Southern Poverty Law Center is obviously so steeped in lefty ideological bias against conservatives that their conclusions should be dismissed outright.
On the other hand, if the objective is to smear political opponents and their guidance comes from Saul Alinsky then they're on the right track.
Comments