The Southern Poverty Law Center - A Demagogic Bully
... According to the SPLC, America is rife with dangerous “hate groups”: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, anti-government militia groups, radical-right terrorists, and many more....
Reality is different. In fact, racial tolerance is at an all-time high, diversity is universally promoted as a civic virtue, and “hate crimes,” as defined and reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have declined over the past decade to fewer than 6,000 incidents a year, a modest number in a country with 326 million people. The principal threats of radical extremism in the United States today are jihadist attacks (radical Islam), militant anti-police rioters (such as Black Lives Matter), and masked Antifa (so-called “anti-fascist”) mobs...
Ironically, the SPLC not only overlooks most of the real hate groups in operation today, along with overtly race-based organizations, such as the pro-Latino National Council of La Raza and MEChA...
Its executives are richly compensated, some in excess of $400,000 annually. Operating from palatial six-story quarters in Montgomery, Alabama (sometimes called the “Poverty Palace”), it enjoys a $300 million endowment, including more than $23 million in cash...
Despite numerous exposés over the years in publications spanning the political spectrum—including Harper’s, The Progressive, The Weekly Standard, Reason, the Baltimore Sun, and even the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser—the liberal establishment continues to treat the group as credible, largely because its preoccupation with right-wing bigotry aligns with the stereotypical view of liberals who dominate newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times. In our polarized culture, the epithet “hate group” is the ultimate slander of political opponents...
This fluid and subjective definition allows the SPLC to lump together—along with the KKK, neo-Nazis, and racist skinheads—such varied groups as religious-liberty advocates Alliance Defending Freedom and Liberty Counsel; pro-family groups such as the World Congress of Families; Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy; the David Horowitz Freedom Center and, separately, its Jihad Watch program; Ann Corcoran’s Refugee Resettlement Watch; and many immigration-reform groups, including CIS and FAIR...
The SPLC’s investment portfolio ... has steadily grown to over $300 million, and includes offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands...
Accordingly, the nonprofit rating group CharityWatch (formerly known as the American Institute of Philanthropy) gives SPLC an “F” rating, its lowest grade...
Another monitor of nonprofits, Philanthropy Roundtable, is also critical of the SPLC, calling it “a notoriously partisan attack group,” “tendentious,” “irresponsible,” and “a cash-collecting machine.”...
The SPLC’s latest campaign is to seek the removal of more than 700 Confederate-themed statues and monuments from public areas and to eliminate all “publicly sponsored symbols” of Confederate leaders....
The SPLC’s principal function currently is to provide an aura of respectability to liberal journalists wishing to disparage conservative groups and to provide cover for political battles...
The cumulative weight of the SPLC’s excesses may be turning the tide against it, however. Conservatives have intensified their criticism of the group recently, with Jeryl Bier and former attorney general Edwin Meese in the Wall Street Journal, Stella Morabito in The Federalist, and David French in National Review all calling out the organization’s polarizing tactics and fraudulent moral authority. Even left-leaning Politico has become skeptical; Ben Schreckinger’s recent article “Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?” notes longstanding charges “that the SPLC is overplaying its hand, becoming more of a partisan progressive hit operation than a civil rights watchdog.”...
The SPLC is entitled to advocate its positions, of course, but it does not deserve to be regarded as a dispassionate authority—and certainly should not be cited as such... The SPLC’s efforts are not needed—though it sure is good at raising money.