The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which uses a vague and malleable definition of “hate group” in order to smear mainstream conservative and Christian organizations and place them on a list — and a “hate map” — with the Ku Klux Klan. This inspired an attempted terrorist attack in 2012 (which the SPLC rightly condemned, but which did not lead the SPLC to remove the targeted organization).
The SPLC defines a “hate group” as “an organization or collection of individuals that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. An organization does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.”
The SPLC twists this definition, using it as a cudgel to defame its ideological opponents and to shame them into silence. A former spokesman explained that the organization’s “aim in life is to destroy these groups.” The SPLC accuses organizations that advocate for religious freedom or against the threat of radical Islamist terror of spreading “anti-LGBT” or “anti-Muslim” propaganda. In fact, the “hate group” definition is so malleable that the SPLC uses it to brand organizations that advocate against illegal immigration “anti-immigrant hate groups,” even though migration status is most certainly not an “immutable characteristic.”
FTA
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which uses a vague and malleable definition of “hate group” in order to smear mainstream conservative and Christian organizations and place them on a list — and a “hate map” — with the Ku Klux Klan. This inspired an attempted terrorist attack in 2012 (which the SPLC rightly condemned, but which did not lead the SPLC to remove the targeted organization).
The SPLC defines a “hate group” as “an organization or collection of individuals that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. An organization does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.”
The SPLC twists this definition, using it as a cudgel to defame its ideological opponents and to shame them into silence. A former spokesman explained that the organization’s “aim in life is to destroy these groups.” The SPLC accuses organizations that advocate for religious freedom or against the threat of radical Islamist terror of spreading “anti-LGBT” or “anti-Muslim” propaganda. In fact, the “hate group” definition is so malleable that the SPLC uses it to brand organizations that advocate against illegal immigration “anti-immigrant hate groups,” even though migration status is most certainly not an “immutable characteristic.”