Amazon has decided to pull the Alliance Defending Freedom from its Amazon Smile program, in which shoppers can send a portion of their Amazon purchases to charities. Because the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled ADF a hate group, Amazon yanked its opportunity to receive donations on an equal playing field with other Amazon Smile participants, which include highly political leftist organizations Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, Media Matters, and Oxfam-America.
ADF is a nonprofit, First Amendment-focused legal organization that has successfully argued in front of the Supreme Court seven times in the past seven years. It is not some Klu Klux Klan revival, and to suggest so is both false and deeply offensive. Yet slandering good-faith people is SPLC’s raison d’etre. Why? Because that’s how it rakes in millions of dollars a year, show its latest tax filings, to fund its astronomical $432,723,955 endowment and management’s $200,000-$350,000 annual salaries (plus perks!)....
Simply put, SPLC is not a legitimate arbiter of public discourse. It poisons public discourse for profit. Its business model is to target groups and people, sometimes with baseless smears, to gin up fear and anger so people send SPLC gobs of cash it largely doesn’t use to benefit the oppressed. Neither Amazon nor major media outlets — such as CNN, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, CBS, and PBS — should amplify or give any credence to SPLC’s highly partisan, highly personal, self-interested fear-mongering.
Here are a few reasons why.
1. SPLC’s Attacks Are Purposefully Personal
...At worst, they are designed to execute partisan vendettas, to wield financial and political power against legitimate opponents in public discourse....
2. The Southern Poverty Law Center Is a Scam
“They’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs,” noted Montgomery Advertiser Managing Editor Jim Tharpe in a talk for Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism....
Last year, a Washington Free Beacon investigation showed SPLC keeps millions in offshore accounts, which charity experts labeled “a huge red flag” and “completely unacceptable.”...
3. The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Deeply Biased
While listing among largely isolated and rare racist groups several constructive, nonviolent organizations that lean conservative such as ADF and the Ruth Institute, a small pro-family organization headed by a genial PhD who has taught at Yale University, SPLC’s hate list does not include violent leftist organizations such as Antifa....
4. The Southern Poverty Law Center Exploits Hate
... In its expose, Harper’s says former SPLC lawyer Gloria Browne, who resigned to protest its behavior, “told reporters that the Center’s programs were calculated to cash in on ‘black pain and white guilt.'” They are not targeted to need or effective social solutions. ...
5. The SPLC Foments Hatred, Fear, and Violence
...Treating SPLC as a good-faith arbiter of public discourse grants speech police power to an organization whose business model is to make money from poisoning public discourse....
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