Southern Poverty Law Center refuses to classify Antifa as a 'hate group'

Of course. The SPLC and Antifa have the same overall goal: to destroy the freedom of speech and allow only Leftists access to the public square. The SPLC demonizes and tries to destroy dissenters (including foes of jihad terror) by lumping them in with the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. Antifa, a genuinely violent and hateful group, doesn’t make the list because it doesn’t dissent from the Leftist agenda, it works to advance it.

Richard Cohen

“Southern Poverty Law Center condemns antifa, but won’t call hate group,” by Steven Nelson, Washington Examiner, September 3, 2017:

The leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the organization condemns the antifa movement but won’t brand it with the center’s often-cited “hate group” designation.

Richard Cohen, the president of the SPLC, told the Washington Examiner the loosely organized antifa movement, short for anti-fascism, is “wrongheaded” in opposing free speech and using violence.

“We oppose these groups and what they’re trying to do. We just don’t think anyone should be able to censor someone else’s speech,” Cohen said, echoing and endorsing recent statements from progressive scholar Noam Chomsky.

“We think they are contributing to the problem we are seeing,” Cohen said. “We think it’s likely to lead to other forms of retaliation. In Berkeley, antifa showed up and shut down speeches. The next time the white supremacists brought the Oath Keepers with them, they brought their own army.”

He said, however, the SPLC won’t label antifa a “hate group” because adherents do not discriminate against people on the basis of race, sexual orientation or other classes protected by antidiscrimination laws, such as religion.

“There might be forms of hate out there that you may consider hateful, but it’s not the type of hate we follow,” Cohen said.

Antifa activism generally but not always features black-clad activists confronting adversaries they deem fascist, such as neo-Nazis or white supremacists. The movement is decentralized, and Cohen notes in many cases it lacks discernible organization, though he said that’s not the reason against a hate-group designation.

Cohen said the SPLC does work to inform local police about the intentions of antifa activists and intends to speak out against the movement, adding “we follow them, but we don’t track them in the same way.”

The SPLC is controversial among some conservatives for its influential hate-group designations, which some on the list call unfair. The socially conservative Family Research Council was attacked in 2012 by a gunman who told investigators he saw the group listed on the center’s website….