💬 The Rubin Recap: The Sunday return to normalcy

Fake normal exposed this week as Southern Poverty Law Center is indicted

Before I get into this week’s newsletter I want to conduct a quick thought experiment. Think for a moment about all the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other racist hate-mongers in your life. You know — the klansmen you hang out with, have over to your house for dinner, etc.

Did you see what I did there?

I created a fake normal, and, for a second, you might’ve believed it, and tried to think about whether or not you know a white supremacist. The answer, obviously, is that you don’t. White supremacy largely doesn’t exist in American society anymore. And hate groups like the KKK have virtually no relevance in modern America.

But the Southern Poverty Law Center has worked very hard for more than a decade to make it look like it does, and they have convinced a lot of people that racism, hatred and white supremacy are the norm in America. That fake normal was exposed this week when a grand jury handed down an 11-count indictment accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of funding the racism and hate-mongering it claims to police.

Of course, myself and many others have blown the whistle on the SPLC because we have been targeted by them, which, in turn has led to us being targeted by the mainstream media, which portrayed people like me, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, as extremists.

On Monday’s show, I had no idea the SPLC indictment was coming, but I was discussing how the left chooses to decide who in the national discourse is portrayed as a Nazi, racist or an alt-right (remember that term?) member. To underscore my point, I got out my framed copy of a 2019 issue of The New York Times, which accused me and many others of radicalizing young men, making them alt-right.

I’ve tangled with the SPLC on social media as well, notably, four years ago when they attacked me. As I mentioned, though, this wasn’t just about me. Many people I consider friends were smeared also. Ben Shapiro. The late Charlie Kirk — Turning Point was labeled a hate group by the SPLC just a few months before Kirk was assassinated.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another person I consider a friend and who’s been on the show many times, was smeared as an extremist for speaking out about the excesses of radical Islam. Ayaan fled Somalia after surviving female genital mutilation, and since escaping Somalia has been vocal about exposing the threat radical Islam poses to the West. For that, the SPLC put her name on a blacklist about 10 years ago.

Ayaan has a great piece in The Free Press chronicling her experience and what the indictment means going forward.

“What makes this case special is that, for the first time, we have evidence — bank records, fake company names, field-source receipts — to show that the inversion was operational,” Ayaan writes. “And if it was operational inside the SPLC, there is no reason to assume the deception stopped at the SPLC’s doors. Every major civic institution that traded its founding mission for the prestige of enforcing multiculturalist orthodoxy deserves the same scrutiny, the same audit and, when warranted, the same indictment.”

Prior to this indictment, this fake version of normal was pervasive. Think of all of the corporations in the U.S. that based decisions on information from the SPLC. People were debanked because the SLPC labeled them extremists or associated with hate groups. Real lives were impacted, some ruined.

Joe Biden said his entire motivation to run for president in 2020 was the “Very Fine People” hoax, which grew out of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. We learned this week the SPLC was allegedly behind that event, secretly paying an accomplice $270,000 to organize the event, and foment racial tensions around it.

What’s really interesting is that the investigation into the SPLC was started by the FBI under the Biden administration, but it was mysteriously shut down during Biden’s single term in office, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week.

Just how far does this rot run in American society? It’s a question worth asking, and a question that we would never get an answer to without Donald Trump as president. As I’ve pointed out in this space many times, Trump is creating the conditions to allow for normalcy to return in America, and hopefully flourish. Bravo to him and his administration for doing so.

Throwback to my interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali from January

Ayaan has been appearing on The Rubin Report periodically for a decade now, so I thought given this week’s news about the SPLC, it was worth revisiting this interview from a couple months ago. Also, check out the first interview I did with Ayaan, in which she describes her experience surviving female genital mutilation as a child in Somalia. It’s amazing how much has changed — a decade ago even people on the left would listen to Ayaan’s warnings. And in the intervening time, the left somehow became unable to define what a woman is, and smeared Ayaan as a hate-monger. Exactly what I mean by the idea of a fake normal.