It is astonishing that this evisceration of the SPLC would appear in the Washington Post, and it indicates that even the Leftist media is finding the SPLC too partisan, too unfair, and too biased to continue to defend. We can only hope that this article will prove to be a bellwether, and that the groups that rely on the SPLC’s “hate” designation — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Patreon, GoFundMe, and the rest — will reconsider their reliance on this dishonest, hate-filled group, and begin to treat all organizations fairly.
Washington Post writer David Montgomery likes the SPLC, and wants to admire it, but finds it difficult to do so. One telling passage in this extremely lengthy piece:
I left Gaffney’s office with a tote bag full of 14 books buttressing his worldview. A 15th came later in the mail. In thinking about my interview, I was struck by just how little he had disputed the SPLC’s claims about the frankly disquieting positions he has taken. To some extent, it was similar to my experience at the FRC and ADF. They simply saw those positions as admirable, or at the very least defensible, expressions of truth — whereas, to the SPLC, they were expressions of hate.
“Frankly disquieting”? That shouldn’t be the criterion. The criteria should be: are those positions based on fact or not? Are they reasonable or not? There is a massive problem with the SPLC demonizing as “hate” what are indeed “at the very least defensible, expressions of truth.” It’s the same in my case. I’m on the SPLC’s “hate” list, and their rap sheet on me is a mixture of falsehood, smear propaganda, and demonstrably true statements presented as if they were self-evidently false and hateful. Here is an overview of the SPLC’s main charges against me, with responses:
“Robert Spencer,” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/robert-spencer
- “Spencer is one of the most prolific anti-Muslim figures in the United States.”
I am not “anti-Muslim.” I oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women, non-Muslims, and others. I am no more “anti-Muslim” than foes of the Nazis were “anti-German.”
- “A career anti-Muslim figure, Spencer has devoted much of his life to writing books, countless articles, and producing other content all with the goal of vilifying and maligning Muslims and the Islamic faith.”
My goal is not now and has never been “vilifying and maligning Muslims and the Islamic faith.” My goal is to convey Islamic doctrines and beliefs accurately in order to help people understand the phenomenon of Islamic jihad terror.
- “He considers these texts to be innately extremist and violent, and refuses to acknowledge nonviolent passages and centuries of adapted interpretations.”
Actually, I’ve published online a commentary on the entire Qur’an, including the nonviolent passages, and written extensively within it about nonviolent interpretations of various passages. That’s here: https://www.jihadwatch.org/quran-commentary
- “Spencer argues that extremists, like Osama bin Laden and ISIS, are the most authentic interpretation and practice of Islam, despite being actively rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims. He brushes this fact off by bombastically claiming the majority of Muslims, either do not understand their own holy book or are masking their extremism.”
I’ve never made such claims, and have in fact spoken of a spectrum of belief, knowledge, and fervor among Muslims that accounts for why most do not wage jihad.
- “By painting Rauf as an extremist who was striving to build a ‘victory mosque’ to celebrate the destruction of the World Trade Center, the two leaders of SIOA sought to block the project while portraying all Muslims as radical – an assertion simply not supported by facts.”
Rauf had links to the Muslim Brotherhood — see here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2010/07/raufs-dawa-world-trade-center-rubble-andrew-c-mccarthy/
We never stated or implied that “all Muslims” are “radical.”
- “Spencer also attacks individuals and organizations that claim to represent mainstream Muslims. This is most commonly done through accusations of those entities acting as secret operatives to destroy the West.”
In reality, I merely note the abundantly documented ties of groups such as CAIR to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. See, for example, here: https://www.investigativeproject.org/2340/federal-judge-agrees-cair-tied-to-hamas
- “Spencer is known to have associations with European racists and neo-fascists. However, he claims that his contact with them is merely incidental.”
I have no associations with European racists or neo-fascists, and never have. I have had some associations with people who were falsely accused of being racist and neo-fascist.
- “In Spencer’s 2017 book Confessions of an Islamophobe, a memoir that among other things dives into the nuances of being an anti-Muslim hate monger, he reveals he has no plans of slowing down.”
In reality, the book explains why opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression do not make one an anti-Muslim hate monger.
“Muslim Basher Robert Spencer Shows White Nationalist Colors,” https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/11/09/muslim-basher-robert-spencer-shows-white-nationalist-colors
- “Proving yet again that nothing is beneath him, anti-Muslim propagandist Robert Spencer has put himself firmly in the camp of open white nationalists with an article published yesterday in Crisis magazine, a conservative Catholic publication.”
I am not a white nationalist, openly or secretly, and that article simply criticized multiculturalism. It did not discuss race at all.
- “Spencer’s piece is punctuated with a recommended reading list that might have been taken from the bookshelf of John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern nativist movement.”
I had nothing to do with the compilation of that reading list, and did not see it before the piece was published. None of the books on it are genuinely racist; they’re simply against mass migration of non-Europeans into Europe, the devastating effects of which we are seeing now.
- “Anthony M. Esolen’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, which was published by the white nationalist Regnery Press…”
Regnery Publishing is not “white nationalist.” It is a leading mainstream conservative publishing house that has published books by numerous mainstream conservative figures, including David Horowitz, Dinesh D’Souza, Ann Coulter, etc.
What I write is based on the facts of Islamic theology and history. I’d be glad to send Richard Cohen and Heidi Beirich copies of these two books (free of charge, of course, although they could afford to wallpaper the entire earth’s surface with copies of each one), and then would travel to the SPLC headquarters to discuss their contents and accuracy, and whether they really constitute “hate.” They will, of course, ignore this offer.
“The State of Hate: Researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center have set themselves up as the ultimate judges of hate in America. But are they judging fairly?,” by David Montgomery, Washington Post, November 8, 2018:
See that speck there?” retired Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin says, directing my gaze to the ceiling of the Family Research Council’s lobby in Washington. I spy a belly-button-size opening in the plaster. “That’s a bullet hole.”The blemish has been preserved for six years. “See that?” he asks, now indicating a cratered fire alarm panel near the reception desk. “That’s a bullet hole. That’s the first round. The second went through the arm of the building manager. The third round hit the ceiling. … Fired on August 15th, 2012, by Floyd Lee Corkins.”
The hero of that day was the building manager, Leo Johnson, who tackled Corkins and was shot in the arm as they scuffled. Asked by an FBI agent how he came to single out the FRC, Corkins replied: “Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups.” The gunman, who was found to be mentally ill, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“He came in here to kill as many of us as possible because he found us listed as a hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center website,” continues Boykin, FRC’s executive vice president, who is dressed today in a leather vest over a shirt and tie. “We and others like us who are on this ‘hate map’ believe that this is very reckless behavior. … The only thing that we have in common is that we are all conservative organizations. … You know, it would be okay if they just criticized us. … If they wrote op-eds about us and all that. But listing us as a hate group is just a step too far because they put us in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan. And who are they to have a hate-group list anyhow?”
Eight hundred miles south, the modernist, glass-and-concrete headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center etches the skyline of Montgomery, Ala., just up a hill from Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach. On display in the SPLC’s lobby is a melted clock. It marks the time at 3:47 a.m., July 28, 1983, when Klansmen torched a previous SPLC headquarters. Over the years, according to the organization, more than two dozen extremists have been jailed for plots to kill its employees or damage its offices.
Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC, decries Corkins’s assault on the FRC when I ask him about it in his office, with its view of King’s church. But he says the SPLC’s hate list — which doesn’t include the FRC’s address or any call for violence — shouldn’t be held responsible. “Labeling people hate groups is an effort to hold them accountable for their rhetoric and the ideas they are pushing,” says Cohen, who is dressed in a polo shirt, khakis and running shoes.
“Obviously the hate label is a blunt one,” Cohen concedes when I ask whether advocates like the FRC, or proponents of less immigration like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or conservative legal stalwarts like the Alliance Defending Freedom, really have so much in common with neo-Nazis and the Klan that they belong in the same bucket of shame. “It’s one of the things that gives it power, and it’s one of the things that can make it controversial. Someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s without nuance.’ … But we’ve always thought that hate in the mainstream is much more dangerous than hate outside of it. The fact that a group like the FRC or a group like FAIR can have congressional allies and can testify before congressional committees, the fact that a group like ADF can get in front of the Supreme Court — to me that makes them more dangerous, not less so. … It’s the hate in the business suit that is a greater danger to our country than the hate in a Klan robe.”
The SPLC was founded in 1971 to take on legal cases related to racial injustice, poverty and the death penalty. Then, in the early 1980s, it launched Klanwatch, a project to monitor Klan groups, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. Their hate seemed self-evident. But eventually the SPLC began tracking — and labeling — a wider swath of extremism. And that’s when things became more complicated.
Today the SPLC’s list of 953 “Active Hate Groups” is an elaborate taxonomy of ill will. There are many of the usual suspects: Ku Klux Klan (72 groups), Neo-Nazi (121), White Nationalist (100), Racist Skinhead (71), Christian Identity (20), Neo-Confederate (31), Black Nationalist (233) and Holocaust Denial (10). There are also more exotic strains familiar only to connoisseurs: Neo-Volkisch (28; “spirituality premised on the survival of white Europeans”) and Radical Traditional Catholicism (11; groups that allegedly “routinely pillory Jews as ‘the perpetual enemy of Christ’ ”). Then there are the more controversial additions of the last decade-and-a-half or so: Anti-LGBT (51), Anti-Muslim (113), Anti-Immigrant (22), Hate Music (15), Male Supremacy (2). Finally, the tally is rounded out by a general category called Other (53) — “a hodge-podge of hate doctrines.”
For decades, the hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists. But in recent years, as the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists — mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories — those conservatives have been fighting back. Boykin, of the FRC, recently sent a letter to about 100 media outlets (including The Washington Post) and corporate donors on behalf of four dozen groups and individuals “who have been targeted, defamed, or otherwise harmed” by the SPLC, warning that the hate list is no longer to be trusted. Mathew Staver, chairman of the Christian legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel, told me 60 organizations are interested in suing the SPLC.
There are signs the campaign is having an impact. Last year GuideStar, a widely consulted directory of charitable organizations, flagged 46 charities that were listed by the SPLC as hate groups. Within months, under pressure from critics, GuideStar announced it was removing the flags. The FBI has worked with the SPLC in the past on outreach programs, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled a very different attitude. At a meeting of the Alliance Defending Freedom in August, Sessions said, “You are not a hate group,” and condemned the SPLC for using the label “to bully and to intimidate groups like yours which fight for religious freedom.”
Along the way, the SPLC undermined its own credibility with a couple of blunders. In 2015, it apologized for listing Ben Carson as an extremist (though not on the hate list), saying the characterization was inaccurate. Then, this past June, the group paid $3.4 million to Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization to settle a threatened lawsuit. The SPLC had listed them in a “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” (again, not on the main hate list). The SPLC apologized for misunderstanding Nawaz’s work to counter Islamist extremism….
The Georgia office has about 10 researchers working on the hate list and other hate monitoring. They are paired with writers and editors working mostly out of Montgomery. My visit in September came as the researchers were preparing the list of hate groups for 2018, which will be published early next year. Clustered at desks according to their specialties — anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-government and so forth — they were trying to determine who still belongs and prospecting for new entries….
Back in Washington, I paid a visit to the Center for Security Policy, four blocks from the White House. Founder Frank Gaffney greeted me warmly. Coincidentally, the date was Sept. 11. “Perhaps it’s not accidental,” Gaffney said. The SPLC calls the former Reagan administration Pentagon official an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, and even some conservatives in town want nothing to do with him. But the Center for Security Policy’s allies include Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the United States, who in a 2016 speech to Gaffney’s group said: “If you have enemies, Frank, it’s because you have stood up for something, many times in your life. … The SPLC and others who asked me not to come here tonight claim to support free and open debate. But in reality, they seem to want to stifle debate.”
Gaffney’s concern about Islam, he explained to me, is sharia, or Islam’s legal framework. Sharia is a “totalitarian ideology,” he said, and “sharia supremacists” including the Muslim Brotherhood want to make it the law of this land.
He listened patiently as I read to him from the SPLC’s five-page dossier on him and its seven-page dossier justifying his group’s listing as an anti-Muslim hate group. The SPLC claims this statement comes from a 10-part video course hosted by Gaffney: “America faces in addition to the threat of violent jihad another, even more toxic danger — a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society. The Muslim Brotherhood is the prime-mover behind this seditious campaign, which it calls ‘civilization jihad.’ ”
“Accurate quote,” Gaffney said. “But that has nothing to do with hatred. That has to do with intelligence analysis of the threat. It is a straightforward exploration based on the factual evidence of a peril to our country, as I say. And the only thing that I think you can conclude from the insistence [of SPLC] that nobody can say anything like that — and anybody who does say anything like that is not just a national security professional with whom they disagree, but is a racist and a bigot and a hater and an Islamophobe — is they’re trying maybe to get me killed. … I’m quite sure that if a jihadist decides to kill me, part of the inspiration will come from the hateful things they’ve said about me.”
Another quote, by a colleague of Gaffney’s at the center: “When people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people — Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists.”
Gaffney nodded. Even peaceful forms of jihad can undermine the United States, he said, and not all are peaceful. “It’s not that we’re trying to offend Muslims by pointing this out. That, unfortunately, is the doctrine they follow.”
I left Gaffney’s office with a tote bag full of 14 books buttressing his worldview. A 15th came later in the mail. In thinking about my interview, I was struck by just how little he had disputed the SPLC’s claims about the frankly disquieting positions he has taken. To some extent, it was similar to my experience at the FRC and ADF. They simply saw those positions as admirable, or at the very least defensible, expressions of truth — whereas, to the SPLC, they were expressions of hate.
Next, I visited the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. The CIS supports reduced legal immigration and tougher border security. The lobby is decorated with executive director Mark Krikorian’s collection of kitsch renderings of the Statue of Liberty — Barbie, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, covers of the New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post, Eddie Murphy in the movie poster for “Coming to America,” even a vintage Peace Corps recruiting poster that says: “Make America a better place. Leave the Country.”
The CIS has testified before Congress 100 times and publishes studies purporting to show the burden of immigration. The center supports a policy “that admits fewer people but does a better job of welcoming and incorporating those people,” Krikorian said. Among the factors that got CIS added to the SPLC’s hate list: the center’s habit of circulating links to articles from arguably noxious sources in its regular email roundup. Also, a series of harsh-sounding quotes about immigrants by Krikorian and some of his colleagues.
Krikorian indulged my desire to go deep into the SPLC’s 14-page hate dossier. The SPLC (with research help from the civil rights group Center for New Community) found that in 450 emails over 10 years, the CIS circulated 2,012 pieces from what the SPLC deems white nationalist websites. The total includes more than 1,700 from Vdare.com, an anti-immigration site that promotes white-identity politics. Popular article tags on Vdare include “minority occupation government,” “anti-white hate crimes,” “immigrant mass murder” and “white guy loses his job.”
“If they had just sent around one Vdare piece, for example, that wouldn’t matter at all,” Beirich had told me back in Georgia. “But we documented 2,000 hate-group things. … When you get into the thousands, it’s like, ‘How come you’re always on these hate sites and you’re sending it to your membership?’ You’re telling people to read hate material over and over and over again. At some point you have some responsibility for that relationship.”
The dossier leaves unclear how many of the 2,012 articles themselves were hateful, as opposed to having been published on platforms that the SPLC deems hateful. It offers only a handful of examples of the actual articles, and Krikorian maintains that most were legitimate immigration commentary. “The point is to cast a wide net,” he said. “There’s all kinds of stuff on Vdare that I have problems with. … But you know it is one of the main sources of commentary on immigration, and I’d be doing a disservice to readers not including immigration-related stuff that appears at Vdare.”
Beirich countered that readers who clicked on the links still found themselves on hateful websites, and the center’s aggregation helps legitimize those sites. Moreover, according to the SPLC, dozens of the pieces the CIS circulated were by authors whose work elsewhere is hateful.
“Providing links to immigration articles written by people who in other venues wrote things on other topics that are objectionable, and that I myself almost certainly would object to — so what?” Krikorian says. “You’ve got to admire the Inspector Javert-like obsession to go through hundreds of these links and find out who the author was and then Google the author and see what he — I mean it’s just, get a life, people!”…
Halal Bacon says
when the splc got political, it needed charitable status bye bye
Andy says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdUKwIerJ2I
Andy says
Trump outraged, Notley silent over activist judge’s Keystone ruling | Sheila Gunn Reid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMdEUxNc2-8
Andy says
The credibility of Jim Acosta and his fake news network.
Bye Bye little Jimmy! You won’t be missed!!! Please take your commie news network with you, along with the rest of the leftie/liberal traitors!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4qGtEiEh4A
Andy says
Good Riddance to BAD RUBBISH, Right little Jimmy.
LIBERALISM FIND A CURE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxeaz4uX73s
mortimer says
The Southern Fried Neo-Marxist Center practices the vilification of the Straw Man Fallacy. They misrepresent the position of the advocates and then condemn their intentionally distorted portraits.
The Southern Fried Neo-Marxist Center sees nothing wrong with DISINFORMATION nor will they ever come to a debate wherein their distortions can be exposed and refuted.
Why would Marxists debate? They would always lose in a debate.
Eventually, most people will see what the Southern Fried Neo-Marxist Center is doing:
DEZINPHORMATSIYA.
gravenimage says
Washington Post: SPLC has “undermined its own credibility with a couple of blunders”
……………………
This is true enough…
Lydia Church says
A couple of bleeps???
More like a million slanders and lies!
The slander, propaganda, and lies creation factory ~ splc
********By the way…
another UPDATE!!!
David Horowitz has been shouted out from Dartmuth college, (okay, I know that’s spelled wrong, but can’t stop and worry about it now)… see RATHER EXPOSE THEM BLOG, first page for today when you scroll down.
jewdog says
Now that race relations are much better, it seems like the SPLC is on the hunt for new crusades, jumping on to the bogus Islamophobia bandwagon. They should have quit while they were ahead, instead of making a nuisance and sorry spectacle of themselves. SPLC = S.tupid P.utz L.oser C.enter.
Charlie says
“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. The SPLC is way over-capitalized, and way overpowered. They have taken it upon themselves to be the arbiter of righteousness and if you oppose them you will be smeared and de-platformed regardless of veracity. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Anni Cyrus made their list of “anti-muslim” extremists I almost dropped my jaw. These tow icons of freedom and advocates of civil liberties are critics of the Sharia based law that caused Ayaan’s genitals to be mutilated, and Anni to escape a child-bride marriage. The Southern Poverty Law Center is receiving big donations in offshore accounts, and I am suspicious that the foreign generosity has censorial strings attached.
Next, David Montgomery needs to take a look into the Post-Modern ACLU. Again, they are receiving millions in suspicious donations. They are suddenly against due process and the presumption of innocence when it comes to Republicans. They renounced Kavanaugh after he was accused of unproven allegations of multiple gang rapes 35 years ago. Their spokesman Faiz Shakir said on Tucker Carlson’s show, of Kavanaugh, “…he is not entitled to the presumption of innocence…”.
TruthHonestReality says
Christian groups = hate groups. Anti Christian groups = not hate groups
“Anti” muslimes groups = hate groups. Muslimes groups= not hate groups
Anti straight and anti white people = not hate groups or people.
Anti lgbt = hate group
Just continue on that same thought process for everything and everyone when it come to the biggest hate group of them all THE SPLC.
Michael Woodman says
Pointing out the hateful nature of an ideology such as Islam does not make one a hateful person or organisation. If pointing out “hatred” was itself “hate”, this would make the SPLC a hate group.
Kepha says
This day is much weirder than most!
Sanity from the Washington Post
On the SPLC!
Is this what I see?
It’s more fun than a good bratwurst roast!
Norger says
The headline says it all: the SPLC has set themselves up as the ultimate judges of “hate” in America; who the hell appointed them? The SPLC is not an elected body, it’s set up as a “charitable” corporation. The SPLC should hold no sway whatsoever over government officials or law enforcement.
The SPLC are fairly open about the fact that they are highly partisan and are out to destroy anyone who who advances what the SPLC deems to be an “Islamophobic”agenda, truth be damned. When it comes to Islam, the SPLC is not at all interested in having an open discussion about things that are “at the very least defensible expressions of the truth.” You can’t talk about the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans for America; the SPLC wants to shut the discussion down. As Frank Gaffney quite accurately states, the SPLC’s stance is that no one should be allowed to say certain things, whether true or not.
And exactly what does the WaPo writer mean when he says that Gaffney’s views are “disquieting?” That it’s disturbing to realize that Gaffney’s views ARE “at the very least defensible expressions of the truth” (but the WaPo is still on the fence as to whether anyone should be allowed to say these things)?
Brian hoff says
The SPLC willnot be effect in any way by this at all. Most people know Islam is the religion of peace. People like Jay Smith Daniel Pike. Robert Spencer David Wood are all Islamoprobic racist. The mayor of Deerborn Mi have to explain to people who write to him or e-mail him that Deerborn isnot under Islamist law and muslim fit into america life and many are born in america and are lawful america citizen. He said David Wood came to the Arab America festival to destory it as racist David Wood doesnot believe that arb csnnot be america citizen.
gravenimage says
“Brian hoff”–really, “DefenderofIslam”–wrote:
The SPLC willnot be effect in any way by this at all.
…………………….
Of course not. They haven’t been honest for a long time.
More:
Most people know Islam is the religion of peace.
…………………….
What could possibly be more peaceful than over 34,000 Jihad terror attacks just since 9/11?
More:
People like Jay Smith Daniel Pike. Robert Spencer David Wood are all Islamoprobic racist.
…………………….
What race is Islam again?
And we’ve heard before that Infidels who don’t to be raped and murdered by Muslims are all “Islamophobes”–or “Islamoprobic”, in this case…
More:
The mayor of Deerborn Mi have to explain to people who write to him or e-mail him that Deerborn isnot under Islamist law and muslim fit into america life and many are born in america and are lawful america citizen.
…………………….
What could be greater proof than this?
“Dearborn: Muslim at city council meeting calls for Sharia patrols, restriction on free speech”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/02/dearborn-muslim-at-city-council-meeting-calls-for-sharia-patrols-restriction-on-free-speech
More:
He said David Wood came to the Arab America festival to destory it as racist David Wood doesnot believe that arb csnnot be america citizen.
…………………….
David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi–who, incidentally, was not white–came to the festival and were attacked by a Muslim mob:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID1_Sc7lZ2w
Arabs can be good American citizens–many are.
But Muslims–who believe in the violent overthrow of American democracy and its replacement with brutal Shari’ah law–is another issue.
“DefenderofIslam” himself has said that when there are enough Muslims here they will vote to replace the Constitution with Shari’ah law.
Jennifer V says
Finally: A decent mainstream news article about the Southern Poverty Law Center
Fox News: Nawaz: Southern Poverty Law Center put a target on my head
Well. Finally someone wrote a realistic, balanced piece about the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Washington Post Magazine staff writer David Montgomery put together a (roughly) 6,700-word piece that asks whether the SPLC is what it pretends to be — the ultimate (and accurate) judges of hate in America.
It gave ample voice to several of the SPLC’s most prominent critics, including one mainstream evangelical Christian organization that narrowly missed being in a bloodbath because of being labeled a hate organization.
See that speck there?” retired Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin says, directing my gaze to the ceiling of the Family Research Council’s lobby in Washington. I spy a belly-button-size opening in the plaster. “That’s a bullet hole.” … Fired on August 15th, 2012, by Floyd Lee Corkins.” …
Asked by an FBI agent how he came to single out the FRC, Corkins replied: “Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups.” The gunman, who was found to be mentally ill, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“He came in here to kill as many of us as possible because he found us listed as a hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center website,” continues Boykin, FRC’s executive vice president, who is dressed today in a leather vest over a shirt and tie. “We and others like us who are on this ‘hate map’ believe that this is very reckless behavior. … The only thing that we have in common is that we are all conservative organizations. … You know, it would be okay if they just criticized us. … If they wrote op-eds about us and all that. But listing us as a hate group is just a step too far because they put us in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan. And who are they to have a hate-group list anyhow?”
The piece then switches venues to Montgomery, Ala., headquarters of the SPLC, which began in 1971 as a legal aid group, then expanded in the 1980s to monitor Klan groups.
Then the SPLC began widening its definition of hate and extremism.
For decades, the hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists. But in recent years, as the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists — mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories — those conservatives have been fighting back.
(Disclosure: I’ve written about a dozen pieces for the Post magazine since 2010. And my former employer, the Washington Times, was continually pilloried by the SPLC in a 2003 piece that focused on one editor and one reporter. Several of us on staff were beyond annoyed that the organization painted us with “neo-Confederate” brush. The SPLC trashed us other times as well so after awhile, we ignored the place.)
Along the way, the SPLC undermined its own credibility with a couple of blunders. In 2015, it apologized for listing Ben Carson as an extremist (though not on the hate list), saying the characterization was inaccurate. Then, this past June, the group paid $3.4 million to Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization to settle a threatened lawsuit. The SPLC had listed them in a “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” (again, not on the main hate list). The SPLC apologized for misunderstanding Nawaz’s work to counter Islamist extremism.
Yes, that Nawaz affair was quite the blooper. I wish Montgomery had quoted these Muslims nor Ben Carson, nor Muslim-turned-atheist-feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has also been labeled a hater by the SPLC.
The next paragraph is the key to the article.
Ironically, the assault on the SPLC comes at a time when, by other measures, it has reached a new peak of public regard. Last year the group raised a whopping $132 million through its famously relentless direct-mail appeals and other giving. … That’s a 164 percent increase over the $50 million it took in a year before. The SPLC’s endowment is up to $433 million. SPLC leaders explain the jump as a reaction to the tone unleashed by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and continued by the Trump administration.
There’s more further down in the piece about all the money pouring into the SPLC. You’ve got major players such as Apple Inc. throwing money at it. The SPLC advises Facebook on which groups practice hate and which ones do not. For an advocacy group, the SPLC wields a lot of power.
So what does this have to do with religion? A lot of religious groups defend traditional, even ancient, doctrines on many subjects (abortion, homosexuality among others) and the people who do them. The SPLC’s hate trackers label these religious beliefs as “hate.” The group’s willingness to go after religious groups has earned it the sobriquet as “the Left’s pit bull.”
The article addresses the SPLC’s ongoing campaign against the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal think tank that takes on many religious freedom cases and has won nine Supreme Court cases in the past seven years.
… a major strike against the group was its decision to file an amicus brief in the 2003 landmark Supreme Court case that struck down a Texas law criminalizing gay sex. The ADF wanted to uphold the state’s right to decide whether “it is reasonable to believe that same-sex sodomy is a distinct public health problem,” according to the ADF’s brief. “It clearly is.”
“It’s really bad that you want these people thrown in jail for consensual activity,” Beirich told me. “It’s literally barbaric in our opinion. And that was the thing that really pushed ADF over the top to us.”
Getting blacklisted by the SPLC isn’t bad in itself, its opponents claim.
What is harmful is how mainstream media echo its claims and how AmazonSmile, a fundraising mechanism for non-profits owned by Amazon.com, shut off all access to ADF after it was called a hate group.
“It’s a stranglehold on conservative and religious groups that is just hovering over us and that can continue to constrict and limit our ability to simply voice our opinion,” (ADF senior counsel Jeremy) Tedesco told me. “This hate label shuts down debate. … It creates enmity towards people that are just on the other side of an issue from you. That’s not something we need in our culture.”
The reporter realizes that the SPLC and its adversaries live in different conceptual universes. What sounds like logic to one group (i.e. saying pure Muslim doctrine ultimately leads to jihad) sounds like hate to another.
The reporter delves into a few other organizations that the SPLC has labeled hateful and notes that the majority of the groups SPLC labels as hateful belong on the right side of the ideological spectrum.
Just for fun, I clicked on the SPLC website and looked into what they had for my former stomping grounds in Fairbanks. What should be mentioned but the Asatrú Folk Assembly, which must be a small group, as none of my journalism students in my religion reporting class at the University of Alaska had ever heard of it. It’s a proudly heathen group but the SPLC labels it as “neo-völkisch” in that it prizes the spirituality of white Europeans based on Norse or Germanic gods.
Asatrú is pretty big in Iceland, too. So now it’s a hate group?
I’ve complained before in this blog that everyone loves to quote the SPLC — but when Muslims and Christians alike sue the organization, no one covers it.
Well, someone finally has, so definitely give this piece a read.