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A surprise announcement by FBI Director Kash Patel is being praised by people who say the Southern Poverty Law Center painted a target on them that attracted the attention of left-wing crazies.
Be informed, not misled.
The FBI announced on Friday that it has severed all ties with the SPLC because of its “Hate Map” that targets right-leaning conservative organizations.
One of those organizations labeled as a "hate group" is Turning Point USA, formerly led by founder Charlie Kirk, until he was assassinated on Sept. 10 at Utah State University.
Kirk’s murder, which has been celebrated and justified by Democrats, is likely a reason Patel took action this week to distance the FBI from the SPLC. He also announced the same action against the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, which had also targeted Kirk.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Director Patel told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Their so-called hate map has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.”
Before President Trump took office in January, the SPLC was enjoying a close and cozy partnership with the Biden administration. A detailed New York Post article describes how the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice shared crime data with the SPLC and relied on the SPLC for training its attorneys on racial issues and hate crimes, elections and election law, and LGBT rights.
Who is the SPLC? Where did they come from?
The New York Post said this:
The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center helped train Department of Justice prosecutors and was given exclusive access to federal hate crime databases to help draft talking points during President Joe Biden’s administration, The Post has learned.
The partnership was one of several that the Biden DOJ’s Civil Rights Division cultivated with left-wing organizations to help shape its approach on issues such as “election security,” “racial profiling guidance,” “anti-LGBTQ violence,” and other hate crimes, according to internal emails, memos, schedules, and records.
Thousands of documents detailing the association were obtained by the conservative group America First Legal (AFL) as part of a years-long inquiry into the Biden administration’s law enforcement priorities, beginning with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that resulted in litigation.
By 2022, members of the Civil Rights Division were directly soliciting SPLC for civil rights issues they should be “tracking” and inviting the group to attend quarterly departmental meetings.
The Alabama-based SPLC was founded in the 1970s by attorney Morris Dees to help blacks fight for their legal rights in the post-Jim Crow South. At the same time, the SPLC said it is fighting “white supremacy” and inequality; however, Dees was forced out in 2019 amid complaints that black employees were mistreated and went underpaid, and females were sexually harassed and punished for speaking out.
Long before his departure, the non-profit had transformed into a neo-Marxist watchdog best known for its nationwide “Hate Map” that documents dangerous far-right groups, such as Neo-Nazi groups. Mirroring the Far Left’s view that conservatives are Nazis and fascists, prominent right-leaning people and organizations are on the “Hate Map” listed alongside literal Klansmen.
American Family Association, the parent organization of American Family News, has been listed on the SPLC website for decades.
The SPLC has been doing this for years in misrepresenting the views of Christian groups.
Sandy Rios is a former AFR radio host and now a part-time podcaster. She is mentioned by name in the SPLC’s complaints about AFA, but also recalls an SPLC article that targeted her and other right-leaning female conservatives.
“They had a list for women, which I was on with Judge Janine and Laura Ingram, about 10 of us,” she says. “We were ‘Women Against Islam,’ and they used our photos and they put our geographical location.”
The SPLC’s most-famous pushback over its “Hate Map” came in 2012 after gunman Floyd Corkins attacked the Family Research Council’s office in Washington, D.C. In a recorded FBI interview, Corkins was asked by agents how he targeted FRC.
“It was, uh, Southern Poverty Law,” he answered. “It lists, uh, anti-gay groups. I found them online.”
In an X post reacting to Patel’s announcement, FRC president Tony Perkins praised the decision in light of the FRC attack. He called the SPLC “a hate group of the worst kind” for comparing FRC to the KKK.
“No credible law enforcement agencies should be associated with them,” he wrote.
The impact of SPLC has been far-reaching.
Via the Daily Signal:
The SPLC has a tremendous impact inside and outside of law enforcement.
For example:
- Then-SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged in a 2021 donor meeting that “many agencies in the new Biden administration” reached out to “solicit our expertise” to “help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat.” That wasn’t hyperbole. The Justice Department received a briefing from the SPLC shortly after it added Moms for Liberty to the “hate map” in June 2023.
- Big Tech companies like Amazon have used the “hate map” to screen recipients for its former AmazonSmile program, where customers could designate a portion of their purchases go to support certain charities and other nonprofits. Companies like Eventbrite, PayPal, and Hyatt Hotels have relied on the SPLC’s “hate” accusations to decide who they will allow to use their platforms and facilities. Donor networks worth billions have pledged to keep charitable funds from going to SPLC-labeled “hate groups.”
- The SPLC enjoys this impact despite multiple scandals. The center fired its co-founder and saw its president resign in a 2019 racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. Amid that scandal, SPLC staff created a union that is part of a union organization that represents the radical anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace. And amid a round of layoffs last year, the SPLC Union accused the center of engaging in “union-busting.”
- Despite its penurious name, the SPLC has an endowment of more than $700 million, compensates its leaders handsomely, and possesses more than $30 million in offshore accounts, according to IRS filings.
- Finally, the SPLC has troubling ties to Antifa, the loosely organized movement of far-left agitators that President Donald Trump recently declared a domestic terrorist group.
Takeaway
Thank the Lord. And thank Kash Patel.
Psalm 138:7 says, "Though I walk in the midst of trouble thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me."
Many Christian individuals and organizations have been hurt in some way by the SPLC's war against Christianity.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Bold. Be Prayerful.
