by Tyler O’Neil in The Daily Signal
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.
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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?
See the full article in The Daily Signal
Photo Credit: Ian Abbott on Flickr