The hate business may not be what it used to be – at least on the government level.

The Defense Department has become the latest federal agency to sever ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based, hard-left group whose “hate map” is being used against Christian groups.

Well, bully for the Pentagon for showing that bully to the door.

The DOD’s pullback from the SPLC was reported by the Daily Caller, which said that a Justice Department attorney stated in an email that the DOD “removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).”

In 2014, the FBI dropped the SPLC from its resources page after congressional staff, acting on behalf of the Family Research Council (FRC) and other Christian groups on the “hate map,” met with FBI officials to discuss their concerns, according to the Daily Caller.

Once hailed for tracking the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists, the SPLC has in recent years been wielded against mainstream Christian organizations over their defense of Biblical sexual morality and marriage.

If you say out loud that men are different from women, you just took a big step toward the “hate map.”  If you say that marriage necessarily involves both sexes, bingo.  And if you say that it’s not loving to steer boys into identifying as girls, you might earn an SPLC mention alongside skinheads and Neo-Nazis.

The SPLC also targets those who oppose illegal immigration and those who believe Islamic expansionism is a threat to freedom.  All in all, the SPLC might want to consider changing its name to Hate, Inc.

In 2015, the SPLC placed presidential candidate Ben Carson, who now heads the Department of Housing and Urban Development, on an “extremist” hate watch list.  After taking considerable flak, the SPLC removed the citation and apologized to Dr. Carson.

But this guilt-by-association ploy is having a huge effect in Silicon Valley, where cyber giants who fancy themselves do-gooders look to the SPLC for guidance.

“Right now, [the SPLC is] cutting off hate groups from sources of financing by pushing digital companies like Amazon not to allow hate groups to use their services,” said SPLC’s founder, direct-mail wizard Morris Dees.

Google, Facebook and Twitter are under congressional scrutiny for allegedly “shadow banning” conservative and religious postings.

“The most dangerous aspect of this high-tech offensive on pro-faith groups and individuals is buried deep in the algorithms of these gatekeepers for the new economy,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Google now supports a “hate news” database that links to articles referencing Liberty Counsel and other Christian groups on the SPLC “hate” list.  The SPLC’s smears have led Amazon Smile, a charity donation program run by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon company, to ban pro-family Christian groups.

Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a $1 million Apple donation to the SPLC and added a portal so iTunes buyers could donate directly. Big Tech, meet Big Hate.

The SPLC’s perfidy has led to “hate” labels on Christian groups listed in GuideStar, the charity group database, which removed some labels after a public outcry.  Discover/Diners Club is now blocking transactions with some pro-family groups, according to Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver.

Making false accusations of hate is profoundly hateful, but it’s also lucrative. The SPLC, which has raised millions since its 1971 founding, has fattened its endowment to more than $477 million, according to its latest Form 990.

In August 2017, D. James Kennedy Ministries, for which I have written several books, finally had had enough and filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC in Alabama and also sued GuideStar and Amazon.com, Inc.  The ministry withdrew the GuideStar suit but continued the other litigation.  Liberty Counsel also sued GuideStar, but that suit was thrown out last January by U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson, a Bill Clinton appointee.

In August 2012, Leo Johnson, the building manager at FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., was shot while preventing an attempted mass murder by a man who said he was inspired by FRC’s presence on the SPLC’s “hate map.”

The shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins II, planned to kill as many people as possible and jam Chick-fil-A sandwiches into their faces to protest Chick-fil-A’s and FRC’s support for natural marriage.  He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in September 2013 for committing an act of terrorism while armed and other offenses.

Apparently, the SPLC did not find this compelling enough to remove FRC from its “hate map,” where it remained until very recently.  However, FRC – along with D. James Kennedy Ministries, the American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Ruth Institute, the American College of Pediatricians and many other reputable Christian groups, along with the Jewish-led parents group MassResistance – is still listed on the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” page.

For pro-family activists, it’s become a badge of honor.

Written by Carol Swain, PhD

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice. These are noble goals for most Americans, but this is not a noble organization. It is the exact opposite. Given the SPLC’s power and influence over the media and members of Congress, this once highly-regarded civil rights organization deserves fresh scrutiny. Here are seven reasons why the SPLC fails to serve the public interest:

The SPLC ignores basic standards of scientific research in selecting and classifying hate groups and extremists. 

The SPLC’s definition of “hate” is vague. It defines a hate group as one with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” SPLC President Richard Cohen testified in December 2017 that its assessment of hate is based on opinion, not objective criteria. (See minutes 43-48 of his testimony.)

George Yancy, a University of North Texas sociologist, documented the SPLC’s subjective nature in a 2014 study, “Watching the Watchers.” Yancy said the group’s methodology seemed more geared to mobilizing liberals than cataloguing hate groups.

The SPLC uses guilt by association to engage in ad hominem attacks against individuals.

Hannah Scherlacher, a Campus Reform worker, found her name listed in the SPLC’s “Anti-LGBT Roundup of Events and Activities” after the conservative Family Research Council interviewed her. Surprisingly, Scherlacher’s interview had nothing to do with LGBT issues. In 2009, soon after I criticized the SPLC for having mission creep, it labeled me “an apologist for white supremacy.”

I committed the crime of endorsing a film produced by a man the SPLC considers a racist.

The SPLC ignores threats posed by leftist, anti-American groups such as ANTIFA, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Despite the growing threat of jihadist violence, the SPLC has been reluctant to add Islamic groups with terrorist ties to its list of extremists. It also ignored how, in 2004, the FBI found plans for a “grand jihad” in America within the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. Yet, the SPLC has applied the hate label to Muslim critics of Islam, such as Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both are listed in its Field Guide to Muslim Extremists.

The SPLC attacks and smears mainstream public service organizations, including churches, ministries, and various pro-family entities.

Targeted organizations include the American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Act for America, the Center for Immigration Studies, Center for Security Policy, D. James Kennedy Ministries, Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel and the Traditional Values Coalition*. These groups are lumped together by the SPLC with the Aryan Nations, KKK, and neo-Nazis. Preposterous.

Note: labelling an organization as a hate group hurts its fundraising and hinders access to credit card-processing vendors, search engine rankings, and ministry partners.

The SPLC bashes conservatives while pushing a liberal agenda that empowers and supports leftists, communists, and anarchists.

The SPLC regularly bashes President Donald Trump, blaming him for the growth of white nationalism. Their analysis fails to acknowledge that the rise of white nationalism predates the election of Trump by more than two decades. Much of what the president says or does is framed as an attack on civil rights.

Curiously, after violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, the SPLC republished a map detailing the location of more than 1,500 Confederate monuments and symbols. Consider the map a field guide for anarchists.

The SPLC’s labeling of groups and individuals has inspired acts of violence against its targets.

The SPLC is the common thread in two violent hate crimes against conservatives. After the SPLC listed the Family Research Council (FRC) on its hate map, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered FRC headquarters in August 2012 intending to commit mass murder. He was subdued by a security guard who was shot in the process. Likewise, James T. Hodgkinson, who in 2017 shot U.S. House Majority Whip Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.), was an SPLC social media fan.

The SPLC is an irresponsible public charity.

The SPLC has violated the public trust. Nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations are expected to operate in a nonpartisan manner with the public interest at heart. The SPLC, however, is a radical activist group dedicated to suppressing political dissent.

As of 2016, the SPLC had $319 million in net assets with $69 million parked in offshore accounts. Despite its name, the SPLC does not fight poverty. Its salaries are bloated, and only a fraction of its annual contributions are used to support its programs. Writing for Philanthropy Roundtable, a nonprofit group informing the public on philanthropic activity and groups, executive director Karl Zinsmeister wrote:

The SPLC is a cash-collecting machine. In 2015 it vacuumed up $50 million in contributions and foundation grants, a tidy addition to its $334 million holdings of cash and securities and its headquarters worth $34 million. 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.

A strong case can be made to strip the SPLC of its nonprofit, tax-exempt status.

Congress and the media need to take a fresh look at the SPLC. It no longer serves the public interest.

****

[*Editor’s note: The Illinois Family Institute is also on the SPLC “hate groups” list. Read more here and here.]

Carol Swain is a former associate professor of politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and former professor of both political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She holds a master of studies in law from Yale University and a Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This article was originally posted at AmericanThinker.com

Written by Katrina Trinko

So much for taking America’s “fake news” problem seriously.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, there’s been an abundance of hand-wringing over the “fake news” that supposedly is rampant on social media.

Yet missing has been any kind of serious searching among the mainstream media about whether it could learn any lessons from this election—and whether reporters and editors are holding themselves accountable to their supposed values of objectivity and rigorous reporting.

And a new “study” presents Exhibit A as to why the mainstream media should reconsider its own practices.

The Southern Poverty Law Center—an organization that calls the Family Research Council an “extremist group” because of its socially conservative views on LGBT matters—reported Nov. 29 that “in the 10 days following the election, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation from across the nation.”

“Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults,” the report continued, “making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.”

Cue the widespread coverage:

• “Nationwide, there have been more than 867 incidents of ‘hateful harassment’ in the first days following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center says,” reported CNN.

• “In the 10 days following the November election, SPLC said it collected 867 hate-related incidents on its website and through the media from almost every state,” wrote the Associated Press.

• NBC News headlined its piece on the study “Southern Poverty Law Center Reports ‘Outbreak of Hate’ After Election.”

• The Washington Post’s headline blared, “Civil rights group documents nearly 900 hate incidents after presidential election.”

There’s just one issue: The Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t confirm these “nearly 900” incidents actually happened.

“The 867 hate incidents described here come from two sources—submissions to the #ReportHate page on the SPLC website and media accounts,” the SPLC report states. “We have excluded incidents that authorities have determined to be hoaxes; however, it was not possible to confirm the veracity of all reports.”

In other words, who has any idea if these incidents actually happened or not?

Yet, the fact that there was no verification of these incidents didn’t stop the media from covering this “study.”

And let’s not pretend there’s no to very little chance that a Trump opponent would make up a hate crime story.

Just consider this reported hate incident in November: “The men used a racial slur, made a reference to lynching, and warned him this is Donald ‘Trump country now,’ according to the report he gave police,” reported the Boston Herald.

Yet the man wasn’t telling the truth. The Herald reported that Kevin Molis, police chief of Malden, Massachusetts, said “it has been determined that the story was completely fabricated.”

“’The alleged victim admitted that he had made up the entire story,’ saying he wanted to ‘raise awareness about things that are going on around the country,’” the newspaper added, continuing to quote Molis.

So maybe 867 hate crimes happened in the first 10 days after the election. Or maybe 5,000 did. Or maybe five did.

Maybe 10,000 did—and most of them were directed at Trump supporters, not opponents. (Let’s not forget the man beaten in Chicago while someone said, “You voted Trump.”) Who knows?

The SPLC should realize that playing around with facts is no laughing matter.

In 2012, a gunman entered the headquarters of the Family Research Council “with the intent to kill as many employees as possible, he told officers after the incident,” reported Politico. The 29-year-old man, identified as Floyd Lee Corkins II, did shoot and wound a security guard. His motivation?

“Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a ‘hate group’ due to their traditional marriage views,” the Washington Examiner reported.

Ultimately, regardless of what the Southern Poverty Law Center does, the media shouldn’t be giving a platform to faux studies like this.

But maybe it’s not surprising, given attitudes like President Barack Obama’s. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine published Tuesday, the president griped about the reach of Fox News Channel—and then complimented Rolling Stone: “Good journalism continues to this day. There’s great work done in Rolling Stone.”

Yes, that Rolling Stone—the news outlet that published the completely discredited University of Virginia gang rape story. In early November, “jurors awarded a University of Virginia administrator $3 million … for her portrayal in a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about the school’s handling of a brutal gang rape [at] a fraternity house,” the Associated Press reported.

It’s tough to hold the media accountable when even the president seems willing to brush aside true instances of fake news.

Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

This article was originally posted at The DailySignal.com

The magnitude of this Obama administration’s “progressive” radicalism becomes more evident with each passing day. In recent months, there has been a drastic spike in acts of both anti-Christian and anti-conservative discrimination and intimidation on military bases across the country. This mounting harassment is not being carried out at the hands of regular enlisted folk but, rather, at the hands of high-ranking officials who, in their official capacity, are targeting Christian and conservative organizations and individuals in an effort to silence them.

It has long been suspected that the Obama administration is using propaganda circulated by the roundly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing extremist group that, in recent years, has adopted two primary goals: 1) raising truckloads of money and 2) smearing as “domestic hate groups” dozens of mainstream Christian ministries like the Family Research Council (FRC), the American Family Association (AFA), and local groups like Illinois Family Institute (IFI).

This suspicion has now been verified.

The problem on military bases has gotten so bad, in fact, that the U.S. Congress is demanding answers from the Pentagon. Recently, the AFA-affiliated OneNewsNow.com newsgroup reported that “Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-Mississippi) is 1 of 38 members of Congress signing off on a letter to the Secretary of the Army – especially about an incident last month at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, in which the Tupelo-based American Family Association was labeled in Army training material as a ‘hate group.’ The Army initially claimed it was an isolated incident.

“‘But as we looked into it, [we found] this is not an isolated incident,’ Nunnelee [told] OneNewsNow. ‘There are a number of cases where the Army has singled out the American Family Association and other Christian organizations as hate groups, and service men and women have been threatened with sanctions if they support these groups.”

After a tremendous public outcry – and in an embarrassing slap to the face of the SPLC – the Pentagon quickly backpedaled, later apologizing about the Camp Shelby incident and publicly admitting that, despite the SPLC’s absurd claims to the contrary, the AFA is not a “hate group.”

Still, rather than distancing itself from the anti-Christian SPLC as one might expect, the Obama administration has, instead, strengthened ties to the hard-left outfit. Even after this string of military scandals.

For instance, I recently learned that on its official website, the FBI lists as one of its primary “hate crimes resources,” the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is especially mysterious when you consider that the FBI’s own verified hate crimes statistics are completely at odds with numbers put out by the SPLC in its fundraising propaganda. Whereas the FBI indicates that there was a sharp 24.3 percent decrease in hate crimes from 1996 to 2010, with racial hate crimes dropping by 41.9 percent, the SPLC incongruously claims that since 2000, the number of “hate groups” has somehow increased by 67.3 percent.

So send your money right away!

The FBI’s empirical data doesn’t track with the SPLC’s political propaganda. Consequently, by partnering so closely with this discredited organization, the Department of Justice significantly undermines its own credibility.

Still, while the SPLC has proven utterly unreliable in its actuarial acumen – as well as intentionally dishonest – it has also proven demonstrably dangerous in its prolonged campaign of anti-Christian agitation.

You may recall that it was the Southern Poverty Law Center’s somewhat clever, yet patently dishonest and reprehensible strategy of juxtaposing, as fellow “hate groups,” mainstream Christian organizations like the FRC and the AFA alongside violent extremist groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Skin Heads that, on Aug. 15, 2012, led to an actual act of domestic terrorism.

On that date, “gay” activist Floyd Lee Corkins II – who later confessed in court that he was spurred-on by the SPLC’s anti-Christian materials – entered the lobby of the Washington-based Family Research Council intending to kill every Christian within.

Corkins was armed with both a gun and a backpack full of ammunition. He also had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches that he intended to rub in the faces of his would-be victims. (FRC had recently defended the food chain’s COO Dan Cathy for pro-natural marriage statements he made.)

The only thing standing between Corkins and mass murder was FRC facilities manager and security specialist Leo Johnson. As Corkins shouted disapproval for FRC’s “politics,” he shot Johnson who, despite a severely wounded arm, managed to tackle Corkins and disarm him.

Of Johnson’s actions, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said, “The security guard here is a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”

I agree.

Upon hearing of Leo’s selfless act of heroism, I was reminded of John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But according to both the SPLC and the FBI (by virtue of its close ties to the group), Leo’s heart is, instead, full of hate. Everyone at FRC is hateful.

In fact, if you happen to be a Bible-believing Christian, you too are hateful.

You get the drill.

The Obama administration has absolutely no business partnering with this extremist organization – and it’s an outrage that it does. If this troubles you as much as it does me, please contact the FBI at (202) 324-3000 and respectfully voice your concern. Then call or email your local FBI office. (Click here to find that location.) It’s critical that freedom-loving Americans light-up the FBI’s phone lines and demand that all facets of government completely disassociate from the SPLC and disavow any further use of its anti-Christian propaganda.

The Southern Poverty Law Center must be held accountable for its inflammatory and potentially deadly anti-Christian bigotry.