“Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune.” – Plato
The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of those ambiguous organizations that we hear about occasionally, that few people really know anything about. And even fewer people know what they do. Two attorneys named Morris Dees and Joe Levin founded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) over five decades ago. It was their stated intention to ensure equal rights for all Americans, particularly those considered racial minorities. Unfortunately, that claim never came to fruition.
Founded in 1971 in Montgomery, Alabama, years after the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, they are one of the wealthiest nonprofits in the United States. SPLC’s biggest accomplishment was winning a legal fight that put the last nails in the coffin of the Ku Klux Klan. And the tactics that they used to do that are questioned to this very day. Libertarians claim their tactics chilled free speech and decades later they use these tactics to arbitrarily silence any group whose politics they dislke.
Dees hired civil rights leader Julian Bond as president, which was an honorary position at best. By 1979, Bond realized the SPLC was not living up to its branding and resigned his presidency. But he was asked to remain on the board of directors until his death in 2015. According to the New York Times, Dees had the power and money to cripple any group by seizing their assets and property.
“Black reporters are as capable of racism as anyone else.” – Julian Bond
By the end of the 1980s SPLC had officially rebranded themselves into a group that purposely monitors “hate” in America. And that has become a huge problem for SPLC. There is no criteria used to put an organization or an individual on their hate list. It is up to their discretion who the good guys and the bad guys are. All conservatives are bad guys at the SPLC and on their list.
The SPLC hides behind its former legacy as Montgomery’s most famous nonprofit since 1971. They became the nation’s most prominent hate watchdog group. With large donations flowing in from wealthy liberals, it resides in glossy headquarters with a continual nine-figure endowment.
“Without public pressure from the people, our lawsuits will not do enough.” – Morris Dees
Author John Egerton wrote, “for Dees and the SPLC to succeed, Dees needed to go after a big organization that was a perfect target. He saw chinks in the Klan’s armor: poverty and disunity; poor education in its ranks, squabbling among leaders, unruly behavior and limited funding.”
In an article for The New Yorker, a former employee said that Dees turned SPLC into a hate group after finishing off the Klan, since it was easier to raise money from wealthy liberals in the north than beating groups like the KKK in the courts. SPLC has profited greatly from this moniker for years.
The SPLC’s problems are more than their intolerant ideology. In the first decade of its existence, there were very few minorities in management positions. They were so scarce you seldom knew there were any there. As one fed up Black woman was walking out the door, her supervisor asked her, “Do you have someone we can train to do your job?” She retorted, “Well, they told me I could do anything I wished because the 13th amendment gave me the right to do so.”
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King
Many former employees have exposed the SPLC’s internal culture as racist and sexist. Several leaders have been forced to resign in recent years, and even public relations experts brought in to repair the organization’s image have been mired in scandal. A former employee admitted that the group’s goal was not to productively engage with ideological opponents, but to only “destroy” them.
While the SPLC did some good work decades ago, today it is an unreliable, scandal-ridden, far-left activist organization that attacks anyone who disagrees with its narrow political docket. They found its always easier to bully and smear organizations than trying to comprehend the work that they do.
The SPLC regularly labels organizations as “hate groups” simply because they hold political views different than its own. Cornell Professor William Jacobson said he believes the SPLC is dishonest. “They use their past reputation to generate income by labeling ‘hate groups’ to shut down debate.”
Since 1981, the SPLC’s Intelligence Project has published an annual report that monitors extremist organizations and hate groups in the U.S. Fueled by progressive donors, the SPLC listed 1,020 hate groups on its 2018 list – an all-time high. After the Jan. 6 Capital protests, they issued a statement: “This political movement is one of the most sinister forces shaping U.S. politics today.”
The election of Donald Trump has vaulted the SPLC back into the national conversation, giving the SPLC the opportunity to grow its brand of leftist hate it hasn’t had since the Klan. Donald Trump stormed into the White House by telling blue collar America he would make America great again. Democrats reacted claiming Trump won the hearts of America with racism and white supremacy.
They used every legal and illegal tactic to impeach him. When that didn’t work, they used print and social media to discredit everything he did while he was president. Since they failed at that, they sent him to a kangaroo court that convicted him of 34 felonies that were junk only misdemeanors.
As Dees navigates the Trump era, he must dodge questions about the mission of the SPLC. The SPLC has become a partisan progressive hit squad. It is no longer a civil rights watchdog. They are abusing their mission by labeling legitimate organizations “hate groups” and “extremists.”
Khalil Gibran wrote, “The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it.” The SPLC has been shooting themselves in the foot for years masquerading as a cvil rights group on a mission to destroy every hate group in America to protect the rights of minorities. Yet they have proven to America, that they label anyone on the right or right of center who believes differently than they do, is immediately put on their hate group list for the purpose of trying to silence them.
On Aug. 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins entered Family Research Council’s lobby in Washington, DC intent on killing as many people as possible. A guard was wounded before he could harm anyone else. When asked why he planned on taking so many lives, he said: “Because the Southern Poverty Law Center listed them as a Christian anti-gay hate group that stood in the way of gay rights.”
A little knowledge is dangerous. The SPLC has proven this by putting anyone they disagree with on their hate list to keep the attention of their liberal donors and grind their political ax for them. It looks like the SPLC is about to embark on its biggest challenge in decades: Its ability to police the boundaries of American political discourse justifying why they put every conservative group on their hate list.
“The only thing worse than losing a fight is losing a fight that you started.” – Da Shanus
