It’s time to put the final nail in the coffin of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In a rather eyebrow-raising move last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s union, ever the bastion of moral authority, declared its “strong solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
How ironic is that?
Here’s a group that has made a hobby out of branding conservative organizations as “extremists” and is now throwing their weight behind people who celebrate cutting heads off babies.
For over twenty years, my Christian Action Network has been stamped by the SPLC as an extremist, right-wing hate group. While many dismiss these labels as baseless rhetoric, the implications of such accusations are very real – derailing everything from financial support to insurance coverage to crucial outreach programs.
You would think the SPLC coming out in defense of people randomly killing men, women, and children – while at play or cooking – would be the final spike in their hypocritical coffin.
But they’re still at it. And sadly, they probably won’t face consequences.
There is no way the mainstream media, which drools over every sordid story that labels a conservative organization as an extremist hate group, will dig their grave.
Besides, the media has its own hypocrisy to worry about.
Just look at how they frame Hillary Clinton, with her Russiagate antics and refusal to accept the 2016 election results. She’s a champion of democracy. But President Trump, questioning the 2020 election? He’s a rogue villain deserving of jail.
The media’s selective outrage couldn’t be clearer.
While the SPLC whimsically places “extremist, right-wing hate group” identifiers on conservative organizations – from Moms for Liberty to the Family Research Council to yours truly – few know the internal impact these malicious accusations carry.
Behind closed doors, these SPLC labels serve as a wrecking ball, dismantling relationships, drying up funding sources, and sullying reputations that took years to build.
For many groups, the ‘extremist’ label is a scarlet letter, one that’s near-impossible to shake off, no matter how baseless the accusation may be. Many supporters and partners, fearing a potential backlash, distance themselves from these labeled organizations, even if they had previously worked closely for years.
Financial institutions, ever wary of negative publicity, often hesitate to facilitate transactions or offer services to these so-called ‘extremists.’ As a result, donation streams, which many of these groups rely on, start to thin out, hindering their capacity to function and serve their communities.
The complicity between the SPLC’s labeling and the subsequent real-world consequences is, to put it mildly, alarming. While they might not have pulled the trigger or directly planned any assaults, their heavy-handed labels serve as catalysts, inspiring individuals with evil intentions to act.
The 2012 Corkins case is a tragic testament to this.
Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the Family Research Council (FRC) office building in Washington, D.C., on August 15 and shot and wounded a security guard. The guard and other staff members later subdued Corkins.
During the investigation, it was revealed that Corkins came up with the idea after learning FRC was listed as a “hate group” by the SPLC due to its opposition to same-sex marriage. He had planned to kill as many people as possible and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in the faces of his victims, referencing the fast-food chain’s owner’s public opposition to same-sex marriage.
While SPLC might wash its hands of direct responsibility, one cannot help but question the ethical implications of its labels potentially being weaponized in this manner.
How many more are out there who’ve been indirectly influenced by the SPLC’s sweeping classifications? And how many organizations have suffered, not from actual bullets, but from a thousand smaller cuts, courtesy of the SPLC’s campaign?
I can only honestly speak for Christian Action Network, but we’ve seen more than our fair share of these crippling attacks where common sense points to a roadmap leading back to SPLC.
This past week, our website suffered a “Negative SEO Attack.” What’s that? Well, that’s when someone (or group) sends bots to your website to attack a single article with phantom “readers” that quickly leap from your page like a frog spotting a snake.
By manipulating metrics, these attackers attempt to bury your site’s visibility, further muffling the organization’s voice.
While we can’t directly pin this on the SPLC, the timing and the nature of the attack is suspiciously convenient. When the SPLC already marks you, it seems all too easy for others to pile on and further the damage.
A few years ago, our BB&T Bank of nearly three decades kicked us to the sidewalk for unexplained reasons. Shortly prior, our company insurance policy was canceled because we were a “reputational risk.”
Discover Card quickly followed suit by forbidding card holders from donating to Christian Action Network due to our being a “reputational risk.”
That was followed by a rogue IRS agent that shut down our tax-exempt status (which has since been restored).
Even Zazzle got in the action when the custom product company suspended our account without explanation.
What followed next was mindboggling.
Someone from New Jersey took ownership of our website, allowing them to sell our website and completely shut it down.
It took nearly six agonizing months to convince our domain registrar, Network Solutions, to return ChristianAction.org to its rightful owners – us!
Mercenaries of SPLC can get TV appearances and speaking engagements canceled. I’ve been the victim of both.
One could muse and hope that the latest hatemongering of the SPLC would finally be the Jim Jones Kool-Aid that would lead to their long overdue demise.
But that would be too much to hope for. The media is ever ready to provide them with life-saving antidotes regardless of their outrage.
In 2019, former SPLC employees signed a letter alleging that the organization had a “culture of racism and sexism.” Aren’t these the very same accusations the SPLC often smears conservative groups with?
Also in 2019, SPLC fired its then President, Richard Cohen, over reports about his mistreatment of minority and female staff members. Again, isn’t this why conservative groups are supposedly on the SPLC “hate” list?
Workers have gone as far as to accuse the SPLC of being “a highly profitable scam.”
And only a few months ago, in March 2023, SPLC lawyer Thomas Webb Jurgens was arrested on domestic terrorism charges during an attack against a police safety training center being constructed in Atlanta, Georgia.
The SPLC issued a press release defending him.
The sheer weight of hypocrisy displayed by the SPLC over the years is staggering.
Maybe the SPLC’s years of hypocrisy have made them immune after sipping so much of that Jim Jones Kool-Aid.
But when an organization that parades itself as the beacon against hate seemingly turns a blind eye to the mass murder of Jews, you’d think this batch of Kool-Aid was a tad too poisonous.
Wouldn’t you?
