SPLC Wagging the FBI Dog

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) enjoys a certain cachet for identifying so-called "hate" groups. But in its eagerness to be a useful tool to the left, it has over recent years increasingly identified as "hate groups" organizations and people simply for not agreeing with woke ideology pushed by the left or for not kowtowing to the Democrats. 

    How did they arrive at this juncture? According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, it was because of money. Per the Alliance: 

    The Southern Poverty Law Center is a discredited and scandal-ridden group that one of its own employees described as “a highly profitable scam,” and which has been lambasted by progressives as “everything that’s wrong with liberalism.”

    In the mid-1980s, the SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear mongering, money-raising machine, resulting in the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985.

    In time, the SPLC’s infamous “hate map” was born. The SPLC realized that the more “hate” they could gin up, the more money they could raise. Eventually, their definition of hate included huge swaths of well-respected, mainstream, conservative America. In truth, the only reason SPLC considers many of these groups to be “hate groups” is that they disagree with the SPLC on hot-button cultural issues.  

    For example, in 2023, the New Post editorial board, in an op-ed entitled "Southern Poverty Law Center should include itself on its ‘hate’ list," noted how the SPLC had labeled a group called Florida-based Moms for Liberty for their opposition to government trying to indoctrinate their kids with LGBT and BLM propaganda, even going so far as to speak school board meetings. As the editorial board noted, the Moms for Liberty group "contest radical agendas surrounding these issues — the lie that America was founded to protect slavery; that we need to teach toddlers about masturbation and anal sex; that life-altering surgery is the best medicine for sexually confused kids, and so on." And for this, the SPLC characterized the Moms group as "terrorists" and labeled them a "hate group". 

    If the SPLC was just another group out there screaming at the clouds it would not matter. But the modern left uses the SPLC to legitimize its attacks on conservatives. That is why it is so often cited by the news outlets as an authoritative source. But because of this, the SPLC is relied on by law enforcement, including the FBI, to identify enemies of the state. 

    The Daily Signal reports: "‘Apparently, We Are at the Behest of the SPLC,’ FBI Staffer Wrote in Response to Anti-Catholic Memo." The article deals with an FBI memo that was leaked which identified conservative Catholics as hate groups. The article points out:

    The memo urged FBI agents to develop sources and surveil Catholic churches, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “radical traditional Catholic hate groups.” The SPLC’s “hate map” plots conservative and Christian groups alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters. While the SPLC claims to be exposing “the infrastructure upholding white supremacy,” critics say it uses the map to silence political opponents.

Even some FBI agents were appalled at the memo: 

    "Is anyone really asking for a product like this?" an FBI employee in Phoenix, Arizona, wrote in a February 2023 email responding to the memo. "Apparently we are at the behest of the SPLC…"

    An FBI employee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, responded, “And yeah, our overreliance on the SPLC for hate designations is … problematic.”

 But this was probably not a one-off incident. The article relates:

In January 2024, The Daily Signal exclusively reported that SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged to donors that “we’ve had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat.” 

And, circling back to the New York Post op-ed cited above, the Daily Signal article adds: "Justice Department staff met with the SPLC shortly after the center added the parental rights nonprofit Moms for Liberty to its 'hate map.'" Now that is power. 

Additional reading:

• "What Went Wrong with the Southern Poverty Law Center?"--The Heritage Foundation. 
• "Focus on the Family added to SPLC's anti-LGBT 'hate group' list"--The Christian Post.
• "RESOLUTION REFUTING THE LEGITIMACY OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER TO IDENTIFY HATE GROUPS"--Republican National Committee. 
• "The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Its So-Called 'Hate Groups'"--Family Research Council. 
• "John Stossel: The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group itself"--Orange Country Register. 
• "Defame and Punish"--City Journal.  Discussing how both the SPLC and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) use their influence to shut down political and ideological opponents. 
• "The Southern Poverty Law Center Is the Real Hate Machine"--American Spectator.