The Republican National Committee (RNC) recently approved a resolution “refuting the legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify hate groups.”
The New American has published many articles about the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) over the years, (see “Related articles” below) variously describing the far-left organization as “an extremist anti-Christian hate group,” a “smear machine,” a “money-making scam,” and as “aggressively anti-Christian and morally bankrupt.”
The resolution adopted by the RNC supplemented The New American’s descriptions with damning charges of its own. A partial list includes:
• The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a far-left organization with an obvious bias;
• The SPLC makes a practice of incorrectly labeling persons and organizations as “hate groups”;
• The actions of the SPLC have served to mobilize persons to act in hate and violence towards those on its “hate group” list;
• The Family Research Council suffered a violent attack due to its support of the traditional family, which the SPLC has deemed as hateful;
• Legitimizing the SPLC puts conservative groups or voices at risk of attack.
The resolution concluded: “RESOLVED, That the SPLC is a radical organization, and that the federal government should not view this organization as a legitimate foundation equipped to provide actionable information to DHS or any other government agency.”
Back in 2013, the SPLC released a so-called Intelligence Report warning of an alleged surge in right-of-center organizations concerned about an out-of-control federal government. Among the groups the SPLC attacked was The John Birch Society (with which this magazine is affiliated). An entire article was devoted largely to complaining about the JBS’s supposed growing influence in the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
In a published rebuttal to the RNC resolution, the SPLC described it as “an attack on the SPLC’s definition of hate groups in order to excuse the Trump administration’s history of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people — such as Black Lives Matter advocates, immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community — with dehumanizing rhetoric.”
The SPLC continued, “From the moment that Donald Trump ran for president, he welcomed the support of hate groups like the Family Research Council and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).”
As noted above, the Family Research Council (FRC) was specifically cited in the RNC’s resolution. On August 15, 2012, a man armed with a 9mm handgun, 50 rounds of ammunition, and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches arrived at FRC headquarters in Washington with the intent to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.”
Later, the man told the FBI that he was targeting “anti-gay” organizations, as designated by the SPLC.
FAIR seeks a moratorium on net immigration by anyone other than refugees and the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens because it believes that the economic and social growth in the United States are no longer sustainable at the current rate of immigration. That, according to SPLC, makes it a “hate group.”
Photo: AP Images
Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
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Judge Tosses Center for Immigration Studies’ Lawsuit Against SPLC
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