Who the heck is Karishma Manzur? I’d never heard of her until the Union Leader published an op-ed titled ‘Let’s Stop the Rise of Granite State Hate.’ In it, she lists a handful of local groups flagged on the Southern Poverty Law Center hate map, but she doesn’t have time to research them.
She lumps them together as hate and anti-government groups, but the word hate shows up quite a bit more often. Her focus is hate and immigration (or anti-immigration, the way she spins it). We’re all a bunch of haters for thinking immigrants should come here legally and those who break the law should be removed and told to do it the right way.
Manzur does not point out that this is how it happens in just about every other nation on earth, especially in the ones emptying their third-world prisons into America. They jail and deport with extreme prejudice. Are they hate groups, too?
There are also some historical hate crimes to pad the narrative that happened before progressive prosecutors invented the term hate crime to jack up the number of charges they could list.
GraniteGrok is listed among the groups she named, and while we are honored that the corrupt SPLC labeled us anti-government (several years ago—we’ve fundraised on that), the SPLC does not list us as a hate group. We are neither antigovernment nor a hate group, but you can’t tell from how her op-ed reads. So Manzur has lied about us twice in a public op-ed, and the best part is she likely has no clue.
I’m sure that this is true of other groups on the list.
GraniteGrok (if it matters) is a privately run operation managed by a privately owned LLC that is no longer based in Gilford, NH (fact-checking issues abound). And to be honest, I could care less about that or the accusations or inferences we are a hate group or an anti-government group (even though both are demonstrable lies). We have been called worse by better, and I have more useful things to do than pick such nits with the likes of Manzur. (Jan Schmidt, by the way, used the word hate to describe us more times than we can count, which puts Manzur in some intellectually dysfunctional company). But this isn’t just about the Grok. Others may not feel so gracious, and I’m a bit surprised the UL let this run the way it did.
Others may decide to take issue and should.
For our part, we might—if the urge strikes—feel the need to search Manzur’s publication history*, comments, and social media for what we expect to be the usual insane left-wing nonsense so everyone on our side can get to know her better.
Unlike Manzur, we will fact-check and confirm before publication, and no—relying on the alleged integrity of the SPLC does not excuse errors; it exacerbates them. Your mistake was citing hucksters and hate pimps as a source you thought was credible.
Alternately, we have, for nearly twenty years, demonstrated how if there is any hate rising (a better word would be institutionalized) in New Hampshire, it comes from the Left. Many thousands of examples await your consideration at GraniteGrok.com.
*By the way. The UL Op-Ed is a retread of her Oct 16th article at NH Bulletin.
Here is her bio: Karishma Manzur, Ph.D., is a science writer who volunteers with several organizations in her community. These include supporting voter education with New Hampshire Ranked Choice Voting and advancing peace efforts through the New Hampshire Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East (comprising New Hampshire Veterans for Peace, Vermont/New Hampshire Jewish Voice for Peace, New Hampshire Conference of United Church of Christ, and New Hampshire Peace Action).
In case you forgot, NH Bulletin is owned and managed by States Newsroom.
States Newsroom is a U.S. tax-exempt organization that serves as an umbrella organization for state-focused news outlets with progressive editorial outlooks. Launched in 2019, it began as a sponsored project of the Hopewell Fund, a left-leaning nonprofit that does not disclose its donors.[1][2] It grew out of NC Policy Watch, a progressive think tank in North Carolina founded by Chris Fitzsimon. Fitzsimon is States Newsroom’s director and publisher.[3]
Would it have been helpful for Union Leader readers to know they were reading a reprinted article by a (probably paid) contributor from a partisan progressive website? Hmm.
