Like the ’50s red baiters who exploited the country’s legitimate fears of communism to attack democrats, Morris Dees exploits our legitimate fears of racism to smear anyone who owns guns, opposes racial preferences, dislikes homosexuality, fears excessive federal government, or opposes excessive immigration in short, anyone who has any conservative tendencies.

After gaining his audience’s trust by showing he has gone after genuine racist groups like Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan, Dees will try to lump in conservative non-racist, non-violent anti-government patriot groups, such as the old-line anti-communist John Birch Society and militia groups loosely affiliated with the National Rifle Association as a legitimate part of his broad anti-hate campaign. Dees derides those who believe the federal government has grown too large and far beyond its constitutional mandate as dangerous psychos.

One need not read Dees’ material long to realize that a hate group can include any group Dees disagrees with. Dees creates blacklists of conservatives that are circulated among government and private employers. Obviously Dees can’t put every Republican in the country on such blacklists, his goal is to create a chilling effect. A man who cries wolf every time he sees a conservative will desensitize his neighbors (especially his Republican neighbors) to cries of alarm when real wolves show up.

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Dees continually blames the nation’s militia groups for the Oklahoma City bombing despite the fact federal prosecutors concluded there is no evidence that Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols were ever members of a militia group. Dees has actively campaigned for laws in which associations of two or more persons who train in the use of forearms for defensive purposes are declared illegal militias. The NRA believes such groups have a constitutional right to exist for lawful purposes and the United States Department of Civilian Marksmanship (part of the U.S. Defense Department) encourages civilians to train with military semi-automatic rifles.