The SPLC's Fall From Grace - Making Hate Pay
Article subtitle:
ow a Civil Rights Group Became a Threat to Free Speech
Article publisher:
PJ Media
Article date:
11 February 2020
Article category:
National News
Medium
Article Body:
In 1971, direct-mail salesman Morris Dees got religion. He made his fortune teaming up with Millard Fuller — the man who would go on to found Habitat for Humanity — and Fuller had given away his fortune to become a missionary. Dees, who regretted not getting involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, sold his lucrative cookbook business and started a civil rights nonprofit, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
This same Southern Poverty Law Center would go on to become a notoriously wealthy and corrupt organization. Dees would find himself fired after a scandal involving claims of racial discrimination and sexual harassment. All this would be damning enough, but amid the scandal, former employees spilled the beans on an even bigger scandal — a "hate for pay" scheme exaggerating the number of "hate groups" in order to scare donors into cutting big checks. My new book, Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, tells the story of how the SPLC fell so far from its noble intentions....
The SPLC, originally founded to provide legal representation to poor people on death row, became a nefarious threat to America's free speech culture. Politicians, the media, Big Tech, and corporate America consider the SPLC's "hate group" list to be the gold standard in monitoring dangerous organizations that foment home-grown American terror. Just last month, an SPLC representative testified before Congress, asking Big Tech and the government to target "hate groups" for censorship....
Acting on the SPLC's supposed credibility, Amazon has excluded mainstream conservative Christian nonprofits from its charity program, Amazon Smile. The event managing site Eventbrite blacklisted a mainstream conservative national security nonprofit, ACT for America, citing the SPLC's accusation that it is an "anti-Muslim hate group," because it warns against radical Islamist terrorism. Hyatt Hotels did the same. ...
Google has even worked with liberal groups like ProPublica to try to shut down conservative websites targeted by the SPLC. Credit card companies like Mastercard and Discover have refused to process donations to "hate groups" targeted by the SPLC.
Yet government officials have also endorsed the SPLC's accusations against conservatives, weaponizing the law enforcement apparatus of the state of Michigan to monitor organizations based on their political positions....
... How did the Southern Poverty Law Center rack up a half-a-billion-dollar endowment and open offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands? How did an organization founded to help people become a cudgel to silence conservatives?
My book tells the inside story, and it details how brave Americans wrongly targeted by this corrupt organization are fighting back. Check it out on Amazon today, before the SPLC labels me a "hate group" and Amazon takes it down.
CAIRCO Research