Laird Wilcox

[1] He was the founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, housed in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.

[4] In 1965, after Wilcox had accumulated four file drawers of literature about radical political movements, some since his teens, the University of Kansas library bought a portion of it for $1,000.

The bulk of the collection covers 1960 to the present and comprises nearly 10,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals, 800 audio tapes, 73 feet (22 m) of manuscript materials and more than 100,000 pieces of ephemera including flyers, brochures, mailings, clippings and bumper stickers.

[8] In his 1997 self-published book The Watchdogs, Wilcox criticized an "anti-racist industry" of groups monitoring extremism, writing that their "identity and livelihood depend upon growth and expansion of their particular kind of victimization".

[9] Wilcox accused groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and Political Research Associates of a "massive extortion racket" to exaggerate threats from right-wing extremists, whom he estimated at 10,000 in a total US population of 270 million.