Southern Poverty Law Center Is a Hate Group

Written by Josh Goldstein

Like many leftist organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, started out with good intentions. It was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees and Joseph Levin and is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama.  The Southern Poverty Law Center rightly condemned, as did conservatives such as the great William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan, the American Nazi Party and the Democrat-affiliated Ku Klux Klan.

A favorite SPLC tactic was suing Klan affiliated organizations for their crimes and then distributing the money to the victims.  This strategy has been effective in financially hurting many Klan related organizations.  SPLC, though always leftist in nature, bravely stood strong through attacks on its headquarters and threats against its leaders by Klansman.  That is to be commended.

Sadly, the Southern Poverty Law Center has more than lost its way.  The going astray from the original mission can be traced back to 1986, when most of the organization resigned, except founder Morris Dees, when Dees turned the focus of the group to strictly monitoring hate groups.

The list of hate groups has kept getting longer and longer while our nation has become more tolerant of those who are different.  In March 2013, the publication Foreign Policy ran an expose on the methodology of SPLC’s listing of hate groups, noting that SPLC counted many groups several times.

The overall impression from SPLC’s list is designed to make Americans believe that America is a nation filled with racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and every other form of hatred that the conservative cause specifically disavows.

SPLC’s senior leadership is shameful.  It uses its past legacy of fighting against racism to add legitimacy to their evolving agenda of hatred towards the large number of Americans who hold conservative and religious values.

In 2010, SPLC added the conservative Family Research Council to its list of hate groups.

In early 2015, SPLC added Dr. Ben Carson to its list of hate groups.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an atheist, feminist, and former Muslim who speaks out against female genital mutilation, was added to the SPLC hate list in recent years.  Ali has many death threats on her life by Islamic radicals but SPLC labels her, and not those who have made the threats, on the hate watch list.

The most recent SPLC controversy involves labeling the Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a speech to ADF … and was immediately vilified by the left wing media such as ABC for associating with an alleged hate group.  How ridiculous.

Alliance Defending Freedom was founded to “advocate for the rights of people to peacefully and freely speak, live and work according to their faith and conscience without threat of government punishment.”