SPLC is a politically driven organization that maliciously labels those it disagrees with “hate groups.” Whether from laziness or malevolence, journalists continue to parrot the slander, even as the mountain of evidence about SPLC’s real intentions grows.
In The Tablet, Liel Liebovitz is the latest to warn that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), although formerly a institution that targeted racism, is no longer the noble civil rights crusader it once was. Instead, the institute is raking in millions of dollars in donations while targeting people for disagreeing with Islam, identity politics, and the LGBTQ agenda.
Since the SPLC had placed such people as Sam Harris, Majid Nawaaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Christina Hoff Summers on its lists of extremists, Liebovitz argued that the SPLC has lost its original purpose in the world. The media (Liebovitz specifically calls out Vox’s Ezra Klein) has failed to notice SPLC’s dishonest extremism while innocent people suffered.
Liebovitz makes his case without even mentioning the SPLC’s notorious “hate-map,”which shows the location of targeted organizations such as the Family Research Council. On August 12, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins attacked the FRC and shot at the employees there.
CNN reported, “Corkins -- who had chosen the research council as his target after finding it listed as an anti-gay group on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center -- had planned to stride into the building and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many as possible, he told investigators, according to the court documents.”
“The SPLC applies the powerful language of civil rights to mark those with whom it disagrees as bigots or racists or white supremacists,” Liebovitz argues, “inviting likeminded journalists to use the organization’s sterling reputation as an unimpeachably credentialed reason to push political opponents outside the bounds of acceptable debate.”
It’s not just journalists though. Social media platforms use it too. YouTube announced that the SPLC would be a “trusted partner” in policing and censoring its videos that might have violated the dreaded hate speech rules.
Liebovitz condemns the SPLC as sleazy and partisan: “The SPLC has half a billion dollars and seemingly endless appetite for such character assassination campaigns, which should trouble anyone committed to unfettered inquiry, intellectual exchange, and the other old-fashioned values for which journalism, academia, and other high-minded pursuits once stood.”
