Tag Archive for: SPLC

Conservative Groups Respond to Getting Left Off SPLC ‘Hate Map’

The Southern Poverty Law Center released its annual list of “hate groups” and “antigovernment extremist groups” Tuesday, and many conservatives say they are disappointed to be left out.

As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has squandered its credibility on hate. It gained its reputation by suing the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy, but it took the program it used to monitor the Klan and weaponized it to smear conservative and Christian groups as “hate groups,” placing them on a map with Klan chapters.

The SPLC is currently facing a defamation lawsuit that has made it to the discovery process. A former employee called this a “highly profitable scam,” and some conservatives consider landing on the SPLC’s “hate map” to be a badge of honor.

The “hate map” includes many prominent organizations, such as Alliance Defending Freedom, which has won multiple Supreme Court cases; Moms for Liberty, which has mobilized a parental rights movement across the country; prominent immigration groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies; and many more.

Some of these organizations advised Donald Trump when he was president, a fact the SPLC uses to smear Trump while still suggesting these are fringe “hate” and “antigovernment” groups—because they oppose the SPLC’s agenda on education, LGBTQ issues, immigration, or other causes.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents more than 2,000 Orthodox Jewish rabbis in American public policy, quipped that he was crestfallen to see the latest “hate map.”

“I called it last year — in a speech before Moms for Liberty, I mentioned they were added, and I said I’m very offended,” Menken told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. “CJV also supports parental rights, traditional values, and religious liberty, so why won’t they list us as a hate group?”

The New Tolerance Campaign, a group that calls for equal standards of tolerance in opposition to the woke agenda, is also conspicuously absent from the SPLC’s “hate map.”

“The SPLC’s hate and extremist lists have included a group that argued cases before the Supreme Court, an Irving Kristol Award winner, and a brain surgeon who later became a Cabinet secretary,” New Tolerance Campaign President Gregory Angelo told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “It’s clear the New Tolerance Campaign needs to step up our game if we have any hope of making the cut next year.”

Angelo was referring to Alliance Defending Freedom, the scholar Charles Murray, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who became secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2017. Although Murray and Carson don’t appear on the “hate map,” the SPLC had put both men on its “extremist list.” (The SPLC removed Carson from the list in 2015.)

While Angelo noted the prominence of SPLC targets, others mentioned the fact that the organization’s “hate map” inspired an act of domestic terrorism.

“Southern Poverty Law Center’s actions have resulted in acts of domestic terrorism, yet this extremist group sanctimoniously claims to know what ‘hate’ is? What a pathetic joke,” Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday.

“CWA has been in SPLC’s crosshairs in the past but it seems they are incapable of keeping track of all the Americans who believe in God, faith, family and in our constitutional principles,” Nance said. “We are still the majority in the country, no matter how hard SPLC tries to slander and shame us.”

Nance was referring to a shooting in 2012. A terrorist targeted Family Research Council, a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., for a mass shooting after finding the group on the SPLC “hate map.” The building manager foiled the terrorist’s plan, but was shot and wounded in the process. The SPLC condemned the attack but has kept Family Research Council on its “hate map” ever since.

The SPLC repeatedly has attacked Concerned Women for America as “anti-gay” since 2010, but has never put the group on the “hate map.”

Jennifer Lahl, founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, noted that prominent critics of gender ideology such as herself have landed on the “hate map.”

The SPLC’s 2023 “hate map,” released Tuesday, includes organizations of doctors who oppose experimental transgender medical interventions euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.” The doctor groups Do No Harm, Genspect, Partners for Ethical Care, and the Society for Evidence-Based Medicine, or SEGM, appear on the “hate map.”

“It is very confusing to me who the SPLC selects to be targeted as hate groups on their map,” Lahl told The Daily Signal. “What is their exact selection criteria?”

“Our organization has produced three documentaries focused on the debate around medicalizing those who feel as if they might have been born in the wrong body,” Lahl said. “Our book ‘The Detransition Diaries’ highlights the history of the scandal of ‘gender affirmation therapy’ and dares to allow those who have detransitioned to have a platform to speak and tell their stories.”

“Perhaps we have flown under the radar and need to make much more noise calling medical professionals to account so we can get our badge of honor,” she added. “I would be happy to be included within the ranks of SEGM, Genspect, and Do No Harm.”

These conservatives consider the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” to be a joke and inclusion on it to be something like a badge of honor, but the Biden administration doesn’t appear to be laughing. SPLC leaders and staff have visited the White House at least 18 times under President Joe Biden, and multiple federal agencies—including the Justice Department and the Department of Education—have taken briefings on “hate” from the smear group.

The Biden administration should realize what these conservatives have long known — the SPLC’s “hate map” is little more than a partisan tool of defamation and fundraising. It is a laughingstock, and it became worse when the SPLC put an openly gay group on the list of “anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.”

Sadly, it seems the administration has no sense of humor.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Tyler O’Neil

Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Should SPLC List Its Own Employee Union as a Hate Group?

After weeks of silence from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Hamas’s October 7 terror attack that killed more Jews than any event since the Holocaust, the SPLC employee’s union released its own statement via X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming to stand “strongly in solidarity with the Palestinian people.” The statement may cause the SPLC union to meet SPLC’s own criteria for an anti-Semitic hate group.

“What we see in Gaza is the violent imperialist desecration of a people — the beginnings of a genocide,” alleged the SPLC union, which claimed to stand for “anti-oppression and decolonization” and accused Israel of “occupation” and “apartheid.”

“How is Israel occupying Gaza? They’ve turned the keys over to them. There aren’t any Jewish people living in Gaza,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch.” “They were forced out. They had to leave their homes, their businesses, and they gave complete control lock, stock, and barrel to Hamas — well, to the Palestinians, who elected Hamas as their leaders.”

“They’re simply rewriting history,” responded Jewish Rabbi Yaakov Menken on “Washington Watch.” “There are no Jews in Gaza except for [dozens of] hostages, right? Those are the only Jews allowed in the country.” The SPLC union made no mention of the hostages taken captive by Hamas.

While no Jews are allowed in Gaza, Arabs are allowed in the rest of Israel. In fact, Arabs comprise approximately 20% of Israel’s population, and they enjoy full rights as citizens. The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip “had their own government [Hamas], and they’re the ones that have facilitated this terror that is now running Gaza and has spilled over into Israel, attacking innocent civilians,” said Perkins. If there is a system of “apartheid” — race-based segregation — it isn’t carried out by Israel.

“Palestinian Lives Matter. Palestinian families matter. Palestinian histories matter,” the SPLC union protested.

“Just calling Arabs Palestinians is racist and exclusionary,” Menken replied. “It says that Jews are not Palestinians, where that’s kind of inverting 2,000 years of world history. Ever since the Romans applied that European, colonialist name [‘Palestine’] to the Land of Israel, it was primarily Jews who were known by that title. So, the whole thing is fiction from beginning to end.”

“We support the ongoing call for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation,” continued the SPLC union. “We hope to move toward peace and freedom.”

“Exactly what does a cease fire mean in this context?” asked Menken. “It means allowing Hamas to regroup and rearm without releasing the hostages — so that further atrocities can happen. It’s very clear that what they’re after is not peace, but actual barbarism.”

In a speech Friday, President Biden stated, “Hamas — its stated purpose for existing is the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.” A note found on the body of Hamas terrorist encouraged him that “the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except beheading and removing the hearts and livers.” Since Hamas will never accept peace, the SPLC union’s call for a ceasefire implicitly applies only to the nation of Israel.

By denying Israel the right to self-defense against an adversary devoted to their destruction, the only peace the SPLC union can “hope to move toward” would be one succeeding the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also implied in their use of the word “freedom,” evoking the chant at pro-Palestinian rallies, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” National Review Online Editor Philip Klein argued that anyone who utters this phrase “is advocating genocide,” as it implies the elimination of Israel and the killing of millions of Jews — half the world’s Jewish population, in fact.

Biden went further, “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, and innocent Palestinian families are suffering greatly because of them.” Yet when the SPLC union chanted, “Palestinian Lives Matter,” “Palestinian families matter,” they were blaming the nation of Israel, not Hamas.

“Anybody who really cares about Palestinian Arabs would not want them under totalitarian rule,” urged Menken. “In Gaza, they can’t choose what to believe. They can’t choose what to say. They can’t choose whom to marry. Everything is controlled for them by Gaza’s rulers.” He said Hamas is “not promoting the rights of Palestinian Arabs or anything good for them. They’re just promoting further killing of Jews and Christians.”

The SPLC union added one final absurdity to their statement, “Already, the horrors of Gaza have fueled aggression in our own country in the forms of attacks against Muslims and Sikhs, and outbursts of antisemitism.”

The cause-and-effect hypothesized here is pure fantasy. The triggering event for increased threats against Jews and Muslims was not “the horrors of Gaza” but “the Hamas attack on Oct. 7,” as the left-wing New York Times said earlier this month. (Sikhs, meanwhile, are a religious group based in India, with no connection to the land of Israel, and recent anti-Sikh attacks bear no particular relation to the events in Palestine.)

A review of recent anti-Semitic incidents further undermines the SPLC’s theory. Left-wing activists glorified Hamas’s terrorist paratroopers. Activists tore down posters showing the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. Mainstream media immediately accused Israel of bombing a hospital, when the U.S. intelligence community now assesses “with high confidence that Israel was not responsible for the explosion at the hospital and that Palestinian militants were responsible.” Most anti-Semitic incidents seem to be inspired by radical Islamic militants, including a former Hamas chief who called for a worldwide “Day of Jihad [Holy War].”

Much of the anti-Semitism was expressed on university campuses.

Ironically, the SPLC defines anti-Semitism as a feature that “undergirds much of the far right,” although university campuses are often hotbeds of radical leftism. “The same people who are oppressing Jews on campus are the ones pushing Christian organizations off of campus,” said Menken. Perkins agreed, “Anti-Semitic behavior is the canary in the coal mine … when it comes to religious freedom.”

Speaking of the SPLC, their definition of “anti-Semitism” includes “efforts to subvert and misconstrue the collective suffering of Jewish people,” as well as “racialize” and “vilify” them. Surely their employee union qualifies under this definition.

The SPLC union’s Palestinian solidarity statement made no mention of a brutal terrorist attack against Jewish people in Israel that involved more than 1,400 lives lost, more than 200 hostages captured, and untold amounts of burning, rape, destruction, and suffering. “Over here you have people justifying rape on a mass scale that also included crimes like beheading, not only beheading soldiers, but beheading babies,” said Menken. That sounds like subverting and misconstruing Jewish suffering.

Adding insult to injury, the SPLC brands Israel as oppressors, imperialists, and occupiers — not to mention committing genocide — all because they dared to respond to this unprovoked barbarity and fought back against an extremist group pledged to annihilate them. That sounds like a vilification campaign.

Why did the SPLC union side with Palestine — actually, Hamas — instead of Israel, when any honest observer knows Israel is the aggrieved party? According to their statement, because “SPLC Union is and will always be rooted in the legacy of anti-oppression and decolonization led by Black and Indigenous leaders.” (On a side note, do Jews not count as indigenous to Palestine, having been there 3,500 years?) In other words, it comes down to skin color, and Arabs have a slightly darker tint. That sounds like an effort to “racialize” the Jewish people.

Elsewhere, SPLC defines a “hate group” as an “organization that … has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” It sounds like their employee’s labor union attacks and maligns the nation of Israel solely for being Jewish.

Not that the SPLC’s hate group definitions or designations should be taken too seriously. It’s notorious “hate map,” which lists mainstream conservative organizations and just about anybody it hates, has been linked to at least one anti-religious terrorist attack of its own — against Family Research Council in 2012. And the organization lost even more credibility in 2019 when its founder Morris Dees faced “complaints of workplace mistreatment of women and people of color” — a discrimination scandal which led to the ousting of all its (predominantly white) top leadership.

“Logically, a ‘hate group’ should be defined as one whose members 1) actually say that they hate a particular group of people; and/or 2) engage in or condone violence or other illegal activity toward such a group,” an FRC issue brief explained in 2012. “The SPLC, however, uses much broader criteria,” acknowledging that “alleged ‘hate group’ activities include constitutionally protected activities such as ‘marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.’” Furthermore, SPLC “do[es] not distinguish between racist or violent groups and legitimate organizations that participate peacefully in the political process — tarring all with the same label.”

The SPLC union’s Palestine solidarity statement was constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. In America, people have the right to be wrong, and to let others know how wrong they are. The fact that the SPLC union’s constitutionally protected statement could conceivably be grounds for putting the organization on their employers’ own “hate group” list — if they were so inclined — only serves to further undermine the organization’s credibility and expose its bizarre definition of “hate” for the fraud that it is.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Protests at Moms for Liberty Summit Fueled by SPLC ‘Hate Map’

Moms from across the country have gathered in Philadelphia this weekend for a jam packed Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors National Summit. The event will be headlined by former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), and other political luminaries — but the real stars are the moms in attendance.

They are the moms who chaperone school field trips and wait with and for kids at the school bus stop. They are the moms who volunteer to run school fundraisers, wipe down lunch tables, tie shoes, read stories, and drive carpool. They are the moms who object to dirty and divisive books in the school library. They are the moms who donate backpacks full of food for the kids who might not get a good meal at home over the weekend. They are the moms you know from your neighborhood, your church, and your school.

They are the moms Southern Poverty Law Center put on their “Hate Map” this year, putting a target on the backs of all moms across the country.

They are the moms who endure being threatened by government officials who demanded that the Museum of the American Revolution kick moms out of the venue. Naturally, Young Communist League, ACT UP Philly, and other radicals heard the dog whistle and sprang into action.

Moms for Liberty attendees must walk through a gauntlet of threats and vile chants just to gather in fellowship at a national summit. This is the real reason for their inclusion on SPLC’s Hate Map. This designation is a signal to radical activists to target their fellow Americans. And don’t forget the SPLC’s radical protest insurance policy: Learning for Justice. Just in case the Hate Map is not enough, SPLC seeks to infiltrate schools across the country with polarizing radical sexual and social justice messages in an attempt to warp the minds of the nation’s children. Moms at the Joyful Warriors Summit are onto them, and insist: we don’t co-parent with the government or progressive political groups.

The rights to speak, to gather, and to protest are basic rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Polarized politics in America today means citizens don’t protest the government’s abuse of our rights as often as we protest our fellow citizens. This kind of division is dangerous when it is based on hate fueled by groups like SPLC and the shock troops they activate. I mean, what national parents conference is complete without protestors tearing up a Bible?

When we see social media posts about this event, they are likely to capture the antics of protestors outside or the much-admired speakers addressing the summit. But I want to make sure you hear from the moms who are there to be together in solidarity. Because at this event, as in life, the moms making things happen in your corner of the world are not necessarily the ones in front of the camera.

A great example of this is my friend Amy Snead, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair from Bedford, Virginia. She shared pictures and described the energy. “The interactions inside this building are joyful and positive. People are networking, getting to know each other, and there is a lot of excitement. There is a unified effort among people who believe the United States is the greatest country in the world and want to work to maintain that. We are laser focused on our mission to defend parental rights at all levels of government. This is truly a nationwide movement with moms leading the charge.”

Meanwhile, outside, there is blaring music and Bible shredding — to “defend democracy.”

California mom Kelly Schenkoske, a presenter at the conference, said, “Being at the Moms for Liberty conference is an honor and an encouragement. I have met wonderful people who care about families and children. What an honor to meet people from all over the country who, despite the hostility they face, continue to stand and lovingly speak up for the protection of children and teens. Outside the conference, I was met with screaming and hostility. These individuals do not know us, and they do not know me. But I was taught to love them and so … despite their words, I have nothing but compassion for the protestors. I am grateful that we live in a nation where we get to speak freely. They have a right to protest, and we have a right to gather and speak as well. What a beautiful gift it is to have freedom.”

Rhode Island mom and Education Center Fellow Nicole Solas shared this: “Don’t be fooled by the woke mob raging outside the Moms For Liberty Summit 2023. Inside the Moms For Liberty Summit the atmosphere is rejuvenating. Mothers like myself eagerly share our stories about advocating for our children’s education and the retaliation that invariably followed. We offer advice and support, laughs and hugs. We don’t all know each other but we know we are all fighting the same war on children and that makes us the same. We stand bravely in front of bright lights and cameras knowing the media will spin our straightforward words into a web of lies. We sit somberly in breakout rooms learning the horrific extent to which our children are sexualized by comprehensive sex education, dehumanized by racialized curriculum, and propagandized to hate America. And then we brainstorm ways to collaborate and defend the liberty of our children and our country. At the end of the day, the hate mob outside is just noise. Inside the summit, we hear very clearly what we have to do, and we remain steadfast.”

America owes a debt of gratitude to Moms for Liberty founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich and they moms they lead. We pray for your safety, the success of this event, and the continued faith-filled work of the Moms for Liberty convening this weekend in Philadelphia. Next week moms will be back at work in our schools, churches, and neighborhoods, doing the things moms do best, with love, faith, and determination.

AUTHOR

Meg Kilgannon

Meg Kilgannon is Senior Fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme

Supreme Court Issues Landmark Religious Liberty Ruling

Congressman: Biden Is ‘Hijacking’ AIDS Relief Program to Push Abortion on Africa

RELATED VIDEO: Donald J. Trump Speaks At Moms For Liberty summit in Philadelphia | US News

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘We Will Not Be Silenced’: Mom Strikes Back at SPLC ‘Hate Group’ Report

Just hours after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) targeted parental rights organizations as “extremists,” a U.S. senator renewed his call to strip the SPLC of its tax-exempt status, concerned parents refused to back down, and evidence emerged that the organization may have coordinated its results with the Biden administration.

The latest actions came as the SPLC’s annual “Year in Hate and Extremism” designated small bands of parents who object to public schools promoting pornographic books, critical race theory, and transgender ideology to their children as “antigovernment extremist groups.” The report targets anywhere from one to several hundred chapters of Parents Defending Education, Parental Rights in Education, Parents Involved in Education, Moms for Liberty, and No Left Turn in Education. The number of groups lumped into the newly minted category of publicly threatening extremists now far outnumber the SPLC’s list of so-called “hate groups,” with 702 compared to 523.

“We’re talking about moms and dads doing what God created them to do: protect their children. And they’re being labeled extremist, put on a hate map, and potentially being targeted by the loony Left,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

The president and founder of one of the groups on the list told Perkins their being labeled an “antigovernment extremist group” and listed alongside the Ku Klux Klan turned reality on its head. “We’ve actually gotten taxpayer-funded public school districts to cease racial segregation programs” enacted under “the guise of ‘affinity groups’ or ‘healing circles,’” Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Wednesday night. “There are schools in 2022, 2023 that are segregating children on the basis of skin color. We have ended that practice, and that is apparently ‘hateful.’”

Neily noted that her group does not harbor an anarchic disdain for the proper role of government. “We have worked through the government to submit comments to the Federal Register, to file complaints with the Office of Civil Rights, to testify before Congress,” activity she noted that remains protected by the First Amendment’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Government schools, she said, have progressively overstepped their constitutional role to instruct children on controversial moral and scientific issues.

Upon the report’s release, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) renewed his call for the controversial SPLC to lose its status as a 501(c)3 organization. “The SPLC is a corrupt slush fund devoted to defamation,” said Cotton, adding that the parental rights organizations in the report “should be proud of the work they do for families and kids” in public schools. “I’ve long argued that the SPLC should lose its tax exempt status. Engaging in systematic defamation is not a tax-exempt purpose,” he added. (Emphasis in original.)

In 2019, Cotton asked the IRS commissioner to explore whether the Southern Poverty Law Center had fully complied with federal laws certifying nonprofit groups. “The SPLC’s defining characteristic is to fundraise off of defamation,” he wrote.

The SPLC’s fundraising activities and generous compensation policies have long raised eyebrows in the nonprofit world. The SPLC has amassed more than $614 million in assets, reporting more than $30 million in excess revenue on its 2020 IRS filings alone. After a reported “house cleaning” that expelled founder Morris Dees, little seems to have changed in their finances.

“According to its most recent tax return, SPLC paid $44 million in total compensation to its employees and over $444,000 to its CEO, Margaret Huang.” Michael Watson, research director at the Capital Research Center, told The Washington Stand.

Watson said stripping the SPLC of its tax-exempt status would amount to “a nuclear option.”

“SPLC’s habit of disparaging conservatives who disagree with the organization’s ideology of exposing young children to inappropriate sexualization and critical race theory can be exposed and countered in the public sphere,” Watson told TWS. Due to its “ideological bias, government agencies and corporations must not rely on SPLC to judge organizations’ activities.”

Others believe, at a minimum, the SPLC is overdue for a thorough investigation. “Senator Cotton is correct to wonder about the SPLC’s benefiting from 501(c)3 status while defaming a broad swath of the American public,” Chris Gacek, FRC senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs, told TWS. “That is not an activity in the public interest, and the IRS should have opened an investigation back in 2019 when they originally asked [for it].” Four years of IRS inaction contrasts with its heavy-handed treatment of Tea Party, pro-life, and other conservative organizations during the Obama-Biden administration.

Numerous U.S. senators joined Cotton’s call to disregard the SPLC’s opinions. “The SPLC is a left-wing activist group masquerading as a civil rights organization. Its disgusting attacks on parental rights groups is only this sham organization’s latest effort to try to delegitimize the conservative movement,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the SPLC “a hateful, bigoted, and despicable organization” for “attacking and labeling parents who want to have a say in their own kids’ education” as radicals, a designation he branded “asinine.”

“The SPLC is a garbage organization now dedicated to harassing groups that advocate for parents,” said Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). “In the future, their pronouncements must be met with scorn.”

The SPLC has for years designated groups committed to spreading Christian love as “hate groups,” including the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and D. James Kennedy Ministries. The group also lumped in with neo-Nazi skinheads groups advocating for limiting legal or illegal immigration — a position shared by a plurality of Americans, according to the most recent Gallup poll — such as the Center for Immigration Studies, the Dustin Inman Society, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Broadening its category of purported radicalism casts a wider net of aspersions, said Perkins. “I think this is an act of desperation,” aimed at stifling political opposition — a move that evidence shows may have been coordinated with the Biden administration.

“I’m wondering if the White House reached out to” the SPLC for the letter, said Perkins on Wednesday afternoon, much as it approached the National School Boards Association to complain about parents. “We know that the Democrats in this administration work with the SPLC.”

As he spoke, news broke that the SPLC employee who designated the parental rights groups as extremists conferred with the Biden administration five months ago. White House visitor logs show that Susan Corke, the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, met with National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli on January 26, though their specific conversation is not reported.

“Of course. This is a corrupt racket,” said Jay Richards, a senior research fellow in religious liberty and civil society at The Heritage Foundation.

Records show Biden administration officials met with members of the National School Boards Association, courting them to issue a letter bashing the concerned parents who turned up at school board meetings as potentially deadly. On the basis of that letter, the FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessment” investigations of parents attending school board meetings, including six run by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, the House Weaponization of Government Subcommittee revealed in March.

“This is just an attempt to chill [speech] and silence parents,” Neily told Perkins. “But at the end of the day, we will not be silenced. These are our children.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Idaho MassResistance residents thwart vulgar “Pride Month” Drag Queen event with city-wide outrage.

RELATED VIDEO: Peachy Keenan: We Will Win if We Fulfill Our Duty to Defend Our Kids

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

AmazonSmile Program Prevents Customer Donations to Pro-Israel Organization

Here’s the disturbing tale:

Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), a Tennessee-based non-profit evangelical Christian organization committed towards standing with Israel and fighting antisemitism, has been removed from the AmazonSmile program, which enables Amazon customers to donate a percentage of their purchase to their favorite charity.

PJTN President Laurie Cardoza-Moore told JNS that “all of a sudden, we began being inundated with e-mails from supporters whose AmazonSmile donations to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations had been repeatedly rejected. They were being instructed to choose another charity, despite wanting to support PJTN.” After reaching out to Amazon for an explanation—assuming it was a technical glitch—the retail giant informed PJTN that customers would no longer be able to donate towards the organization using the AmazonSmile platform, following the listing of PJTN as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The SPLC, whose website says that part of its mission is to monitor domestic hate groups in the United States, has PJTN listed on its “hate map” as being one of 36 Tennessee-based hate groups. SPLC specifically accuses PJTN of being “anti-Muslim.”

Amazon employs 566,000 people worldwide. The company clearly does not lack for personnel to study non-profit groups and to  advise Amazon as to which ones qualify for its customers to use the AmazonSmile platform, which allows them to donate part of their purchase to a favorite charity.

But Amazon chose not to do that work itself. Instead, it handed over the decision making as to which groups are to be considered “hate groups” to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a grand total of 254 employees. That means that for every employee of the SPLC, Amazon has more than 2,000 of its own. Is the SPLC so very good at its job that mighty Amazon, with its 566,000 employees, is right to rely on the 254 employees of that outside group? For years, the SPLC presented itself as beyond reproach, an organization of selfless do-gooders at a non-profit. But in recent years, defectors from the group have painted a grim picture of an organization run by scam artists – its head a “flimflam man” — who have arranged colossal salaries for themselves, in some cases have been guilty of sexual harassment of fellow employees, have exhibited racist attitudes, and have been thoroughly unmasked for these and other offenses in numerous damning reports.

Here is some of what Jessica Prol Smith, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, discovered about the SPLC:

For years, former employees revealed, local journalists reported and commentators have lamented: The Southern Poverty Law Center is not what it claims to be. Not a pure-hearted, clear-headed legal advocate for the vulnerable, but rather an obscenely wealthy marketing scheme. For years, the left-wing interest group has used its “hate group” list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox beliefs about marriage and sex are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.

These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap. The SPLC dismissed its co-founder in March, and its president has resigned amidst numerous claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism within the organization — a parade of disgraces that vividly force the conclusion: The SPLC is hollow, rotten and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.

Morris Dees, co-founder of SPLC, was dismissed for many reasons. A multimillionaire from his work as a direct-mail marketer before founding SPLC, Dees was reportedly more concerned with fund-raising than with litigating; he had not tried a case in more than a decade, and other than raising money for himself and others, took little part in the SPLC’s day-to-day operations. During his tenure, there were accusations of gender discrimination and racism in hiring and promotions, as well as sexual harassment. The SPLC’s president, Richard Cohen, apparently resigned for much the same reasons — charges of race and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and other, unspecified offenses. Both Cohen and Dees had been receiving very large salaries, way out of whack with non-profits of similar size.

The criticism comes from many corners. There’s the Current Affairs editor who seems sympathetic to the center’s progressive mission but decries its “hate group” list as an “outright fraud” and a “willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC.”

There’s the retired investigative journalist who helped research and write an eight-part series on the center’s “litany of problems and questionable practices” in the mid-1990s. His Washington Post opinion piece reads with a thinly veiled message: We nearly got a Pulitzer Prize for TELLING YOU SO.

But perhaps most damning of all are the indictments leveled by former employee Bob Moser in The New Yorker. He remembers being welcomed to the “Poverty Palace” and recounts the heart-sinking reality of it all — being “pawns” in a “highly profitable scam.”

Stephen Bright, a Yale law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, has long questioned what he calls the center’s “fraudulent” fundraising.

“The chickens have had a very long trip, but they finally came home to roost,” Bright said.

Morris is a flimflam man and he’s managed to flimflam his way along for many years raising money by telling people about the Ku Klux Klan and hate groups,” he said. “He sort of goes to whatever will sell and has, of course, brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars.

While the SPLC funded some good work, Bright said, he had long heard complaints about race discrimination and sexual harassment from the center’s former attorneys and interns.

The SPLC has been thoroughly discredited during this last year, yet Bezos has not said a word. Could it be he still doesn’t know about the scandalous goings-on at SPLC, or is that he doesn’t care? Perhaps he’s been busy, swallowing up yet another industry, but he really ought to give Amazon’s reliance on SPLC for deciding which are the “hate groups” to be banned from AmazonSmile more of his attention. And then he might decide to cut the cord.

Given all this, here’s what Jeff Bezos ought to do to spare himself further embarrassment. He ought to read what Tim Moser, the former employee of SPLC, wrote about the organization in The New Yorker. He should read the eight-part series by an investigative journalist on the “problems and questionable practices” at SPLC. He ought to find out what The New York TimesPolitico, and NPR have reported about SPLC, which has led many to conclude, with Ms. Smith, that the SPLC “is hollow, rotten, and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.” And he ought to interview Yale Law Professor Stephen Bright, to find out why he calls Morris Dees a “flimflam man.”

What were the charges, not specified at the time, that forced SPLC co-founder Morris Dees to resign in disgrace?  What were the charges that led President Richard Cohen to quit the SPLC? What have close observers of the SPLC discovered about how it has been run, to their dismay and horror?

Jeff Bezos should take a day or two out of his busy schedule of insensate empire-building in order to learn more about the SPLC, on which he has chosen to rely for the identification of “hate groups.” He needs to do more than read what Moser, Bright, and a dozen others who have either worked for SPLC or been close observers of the organization, have written. He needs to talk directly with them, so that he will realize the full extent of the SPLC’s transgressions, can ask them probing questions, and learn more about those “flimflam men” at the top, who have lately been exposed as being guilty of gender and race discrimination, among many other sins.

Bezos should also investigate SPLC’s readiness to label as “anti-Muslim hate groups” those who do not preach hate of any sort, but are simply islamocritics. The SPLC long ago consigned Jihad Watch to the outer darkness. When it included Maajid Nawaz, the founder of the Quilliam Foundation, on a 2016 list of “anti-Muslim extremists,” the SPLC was sued by Nawaz, who won a $3.4 million dollar judgment against the group. That has not stopped the SPLC from continuing to describe Jihad Watch, AFDI, and similar websites as being “hate groups.” SPLC describes, with its wonted tone of hysteria, Robert Spencer as that “notorious Muslim-basher and pretend expert on Islam.”

An email request by JNS [Jewish News Service] to SPLC asking for an explanation about their listing of PJTN went unanswered as of press time.

When asked by JNS what would cause the SPLC to label her organization as being anti-Muslim, Cardoza-Moore responded, “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations exists to fight the oldest hate on earth: antisemitism. We were given no explanation as to why we were blacklisted. If our work highlighting antisemites like [Reps.] Ilhan Omar [D-Minn.] and Rashida Tlaib [D-Mich.] got us on the list, we’ll wear it as a badge of honor. Despite the financial penalties that we are facing with AmazonSmile, will not be silenced for fulfilling our biblical responsibility to defend the State of Israel and Jewish people in the face of growing global antisemitism.”

She added that “sadly, the SPLC lost its way long ago, becoming a tool to shame any organization that doesn’t share their extremist agenda.”

Cardoza-Moore said that initially, she thought it was a joke that PJTN had been placed on the SPLC list of hate groups alongside the KKK. However, she said that “I have now learned that this political witch hunt against those who don’t share SPLC’s extremist liberal views has been adopted as a religious doctrine by Amazon. This could dramatically affect our ability to raise funds and function as a nonprofit organization.”

She added that it appears that Amazon “has become the nation’s new moral compass powered by the subversive Southern Poverty Law Center. Charities should not be persecuted in this way; this has to stop.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to JNS via email that PJTN had been dropped, saying in a general statement that according to their policy, “organizations that engage in, support, encourage or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering or other illegal activities are not eligible.”

Just as a matter of interest, perhaps Amazon would care to tell us if CAIR is eligible to receive donations through AmazonSmile. If it does, would Bezos be willing to consider the evidence that CAIR just might be an organization that “encourages or promotes intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence”? And while we’re at it, have any of the many pro-BDS groups that many of us believe encourage “intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence” been banned from participating in the AmazonSmile program?

The statement [from Amazon] mentioned that since 2013, Amazon has relied on the SPLC along with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (of the US Department of the Treasury) to make its determination on which organizations are eligible for the AmazonSmile program.

Cardoza-Moore says that as a result of being dropped, she is calling on her donors to bypass Amazon in order to help support Israel and combat antisemitism.

“We have asked our donors to continue supporting PJTN directly instead of through AmazonSmile. Nobody will silence us, even when we stand up against giants like Amazon; we know that we have truth and justice on our side,” she said.

“Our answer to this hateful blacklisting will be to continue building more PJTN chapters across the United States and beyond. We will continue to fight antisemitism and defend the State of Israel, wherever and whenever necessary,” she continued. “We will endeavor to reach more people than ever because our message is needed now, more than ever.”

A statement from PJTN said that in recent months, the organization has led the struggle against the BDS movement in the United States with a wave of state resolutions, and has exposed textbooks used in public schools that it says are indoctrinating children with inaccurate historical information and bias that do not reflect American values.

In 2016, JNS reported that PJTN drafted the state of Tennessee’s anti-BDS resolution, which passed in the General Assembly, making it one of the first states to pass such state-level legislation against BDS.

So PJTN, unbowed, continues to be active in its campaign against the BDS movement. And its donors will now simply find other, more direct ways to support it, now that PJTN has been banned, so absurdly, from the AmazonSmile program. Many people, as they find out more about Amazon, and its continuing reliance on the discredited SPLC for its determination of which groups promote “hatred” and “intolerance,” may want to express their own displeasure with that malevolent and powerful Amazon, and take their custom elsewhere.

COLUMN BY

RELATED VIDEO: Students for Justice in Palestine: “We are going to have an Intifada in every classroom”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Pamela Geller: Halt Refugee Resettlement Program — Southern Poverty Law Center a “smear machine”

Yesterday, Pamela Geller writing at World Net Daily urged readers to contact their members of Congress to support Rep. Brian Babin’s bill to suspend the UN/US State Department Refugee Resettlement Program until the costs were thoroughly analyzed and the security issues were fully addressed.

We urge you to read her entire commentary here, but bring your attention to what she says about the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC) which has been called upon by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to expose this blog and anyone who questions the program as “racists.”   (See my previous post, LOL!, HIAS is obviously using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals for guidance!).

Here is what we said last summer about the HIAS report (Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities) siccing the SPLC on us.

And, before I get to what Ms. Geller says, I just saw yesterday that Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (author of the report!) is presently chairing the lobbying consortium for the refugee contractors (Refugee Council USA aka RCUSA) and some of their NO Borders friends in Washington.

Melanie Nezer

Melanie Nezer is author of the HIAS report calling on the SPLC to smear us and is presently chairing the refugee resettlement industry’s lobbying arm in Washington.

Longtime readers know that Ms. Nezer is one of the first to call for 15,000 Syrian Muslims a year to be admitted to the US.   Now, RCUSA (and the newly re-branded HIAS) have upped the ante and are behind the drive to admit 65,000 Syrians to your towns and cities by the time Obama leaves office!

We have also learned from inside sources that RCUSA put out an alert to their member resettlement contractors (and mentioning me by name!) to NOT give out any information to any of you calling your local contractor’s offices.  What are they hiding?

Back to World Net Daily and what Pamela Geller says about the SPLC (emphasis is mine):

The only thing more dangerous than the jihadists in our midst are their patrons and benefactors.

WND reported that “the refugee resettlement industry, which includes legions of immigrant rights advocates, lawyers and community organizing groups funded by George Soros, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, among others, churned out a document in 2013 on how to deal with so-called ‘pockets of resistance.’ The document, authored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of the nine government contractors doing resettlement work, advised refugee advocates to research the backgrounds of local people who oppose resettlements and turn them over to the Southern Poverty Law Center for public shaming as ‘racists’ and ‘anti-Muslim’ bigots.”

This is further proof that the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is nothing more than a smear machine designed to destroy the forces of good. These are the tactics of totalitarians and supremacists. And this is who the media turns to for comment on the work of my colleagues and me. There is not one mainstream media outlet that does not quote the SPLC libels when reporting on my work.

Freedom-loving Americans must understand that this is what every one of us, the individual, is up against: a billion-dollar machine of destruction and hate. Churchill said of Islam: “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” And I would add one thing.No stronger retrograde force exists in the America today than the left.

Continue reading here.

Alert!  The most important thing any of you could do right now is to get your member of Congress to co-sponsor the Babin bill.  Who supports Babin’s modest approach, and who doesn’t! is going to tell you all you need to know about your member of Congress!

RELATED ARTICLE: Bob Enos of Willmar, MN speaks, won’t be deterred!

More questionable social engineering comes to Hawaii’s public schools

News Release from Rep Bob McDermott, February 27, 2014

Representative Bob McDermott is in the process of reviewing the latest arrival from the mainland to be thrust upon the Hawaii public school system. This new program is called Teaching Tolerance.

On the heels of the controversial Pono Choice sex education curriculum, comes another, grant-funded program. This time it is for training teachers to impart the concept of “tolerance.” While everyone agrees with the principle of tolerance, it seems that Hawaii has historically already done a better job with it than those now purporting to show us what values we should adopt. Also, like Pono Choices, there is a disproportionate focus on normalizing homosexuality.

McDermott said, “I support tolerance. But there is a difference between tolerance and forced acceptance of sensitive and controversial issues that violate one’s faith, creed or moral code.”

One workbook example actually singles out, in a negative way, an “exclusionary fundamentalist Christian home.”

“Where’s the tolerance for people who hold faith-based morality?” asks McDermott.

The Teaching Tolerance Program is a product of the Southern Poverty Law Center based in Alabama. It is a K-12 teacher training for a “literacy-based anti-bias curriculum.” One of the problems is how it is being implemented. Teachers, who are required to develop this type of curriculum, can now get a turn-key solution for free. In fact, the promoters, with the full blessing of the Hawaii Department of Education, will pay teachers $250 for attending the pilot training. This raises all sorts of ethical issues. Are Hawaii teachers being bribed to promote a specific point of view in these materials to their students?

A preliminary review of the materials by McDermott’s staff shows that while tolerance of race, gender and physical disabilities are discussed, almost 25% of the example scenarios deal with gay acceptance. As he did during the Pono Choices debate, McDermott asks why the gay population (which is no more than 4% of the general population) is consistently disproportionately represented in these new teaching materials.

Rep. McDermott added: “There is something fundamentally wrong with the Department of Education imparting a version of ‘tolerance’ on our children, without first consulting the local and diverse families that already make Hawaii the most accepting and loving place in the world.”

REFERENCES:

TT: LGBT-inclusive Best Practices Now Available

TT: Toolkit for In Bounds

TT: Michael Sam, Masculinity and Teaching Tolerance

TT: LGBT