SPLC's INTOLERANCE BREAKS NEW GROUND

SPLC's Intolerance Breaks News Ground

September 06, 2017 - FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL

While the rest of the country looked on with horror at the events unfolding in Charlottesville, there was one group who managed to turn quite a profit from the tragedies of that August day: Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

Still reeling from their latest public relations crisis when a second gunman, congressional baseball shooter James T. Hodgkinson, was identified by investigators as a fan of Morris Dees's group.

Desperate for a way back into the media's good graces after five years of trying to explain away the FRC shooting that its "hate map" inspired, the tensions in Virginia were exactly the opening Dees was looking for. 

Pouncing on the opportunity to regain credibility, SPLC, who'd been skating by on a civil rights reputation that expired decades ago, fired up the old propaganda machine -- earning millions of dollars in the process. Apple's Tim Cook, celebrity George Clooney, and J.P. Morgan pumped millions into the group after Charlottesville, putting a temporary hold on the media's questions about the group's shady dealings and controversial methods.

For Dees and lieutenant Richard Cohen, it was a welcome reprieve from the skepticism that was starting to take hold in the mainstream press, where outlets like Politico and the Wall Street Journal were beginning to expose the organization's dangerous mission. 

The dominos that started to fall when the FBI, U.S. Army, and Obama Justice Department distanced themselves from SPLC was beginning to threaten the viability to the Left's favorite arbiters of "hate." 

After years as the media's darling, Dees's group was suddenly staring down headlines like "The Insidious Influence of the SPLC" and damaging reports about its suspicious offshore accounts and partnerships.

Charlottesville put a stop to all of that, thanks to media liberals who are all-too-willing to help SPLC grind its political ax. Several media organizations used the opportunity to expand the platform of the liberal activist group helping to resurrect SPLC's sham of neutrality.

That has to stop, FRC and 46 other organizations declared today in an open letter to the press. The events of Charlottesville don't negate -- or in any way excuse -- SPLC's track record of inciting the very violence it condemns. 

"The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its opponents with a 'hate group' label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it," dozens of conservative leaders explain.

"We are writing to you as individuals or as representatives of organizations who are deeply troubled by several recent examples of the media's use of data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)" -- which, by its own admission, is completely fabricated and devoid of any methodological standard. 

"Our criteria for a 'hate group,' first of all, have nothing to do with criminality or violence..." SPLC's Mark Potok confessed. 

"It's strictly ideological." Hence, why the group lumps true extremists -- like the Ku Klux Klan -- in with mainstream conservatives whose only fault is not sharing SPLC's radical ideology. 

"We're not trying to change anyone's minds," SPLC's Potok said plainly. 

"We're trying to wreck the groups. We're trying to destroy them." Does that sound like the gospel of peace and tolerance? Or the words of a neutral party?

Noting the five-year anniversary of the shooting in FRC's lobby (prompted, gunman Floyd Corkins told the FBI, by SPLC), the letter goes on:

"We believe the media outlets that have cited the SPLC in recent days have not intended to target mainstream political groups for violent attack, but by recklessly linking the Charlottesville melee to the mainstream groups named on the SPLC website -- those that advocate in the courts, the halls of Congress, and the press for the protection of conventional, Judeo-Christian values -- we are left to wonder if another Floyd Lee Corkins will soon be incited to violence by this incendiary information."

"To associate public interest law firms and think tanks with the neo-Nazis and the KKK is unconscionable, and it represents the height of irresponsible journalism to do so. All reputable news organizations should immediately stop using the SPLC descriptions of individuals and organizations based on SPLC's obvious political prejudices."

SPLC isn't the answer to America's racial divide or its deep political rifts, it's the accelerant that is driving the divide. 

The only thing SPLC has been an answer to is the problem liberals have combatting the factual arguments of conservatives. 

"As the Left calls for a clampdown on 'hate groups' and uses the SPLC to buttress its claims, it is working actively toward bringing about a situation in which only hard-Left voices can be heard in the public square," Robert Spencer warns. 

"We're already well on the way."

The media is an industry built on reliable sources. It should stop treating SPLC as one of them.

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Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.