Twitter Drops Hateful SPLC, Coalition Asks Others to Dump It Too

Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

As the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center implodes amid scandals involving racism, sexism, and discrimination, a powerful coalition of conservative and Christian organizations is urging Big Tech and Big Media to dump the group as well. An ad in the Wall Street Journal this week quotes former SPLC employees exposing the group. And it recently emerged that Twitter has already dropped the SPLC, widely regarded as an anti-Christian hate group, as a “Safety Partner.” Last summer, the Department of Justice also severed all remaining ties with the fringe group. But now, as new reports of rampant racism and bigotry at the SPLC take down the group’s top leadership, the pressure is mounting on all respectable organizations, companies, and agencies to formally sever ties with it or be tainted with its stench.

This month, the Daily Caller reported that Twitter, facing reports that SPLC was scamming liberals out of money and was rife with racism, quietly distanced itself from the radical left-wing group. “The SPLC is not a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council or a partner the company has worked with recently,” a source within the blatantly liberal social-media behemoth told the online publication. However, as recently as last year, Twitter formally had SPLC listed as a “Safety Partner” that was supposedly helping the social-media company fight “hateful conduct and harassment” on its platform. The company also relied on the SPLC to provide “input on our safety products, policies, and programs.” But that appears to have ended as well.

As of right now, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and other Internet giants reportedly continue to rely on the SPLC’s designations for various programs. Last year, Amazon even admitted that SPLC was allowed to determine which organizations would be allowed to participate in its Smile charitable program. The increasingly discredited anti-Trump CNN has also relied on the SPLC and trumpeted its widely ridiculed claims. However, now, as a barrage of libel and racketeering lawsuits threaten to put the SPLC’s $500 million war chest at the disposal of its victims, and with former employees blowing the whistle on the shady inner workings of the outfit, victims of the hate group are calling on other Big Tech and Big Media giants to cut all remaining ties with the SPLC.

To advance that mission, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association — two mainstream Christian groups smeared as “hate groups” by the SPLC for supporting marriage — just bought an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal. “Will these companies and media outlets continue to use the hypocritical Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority on hate and extremism?” reads the ad, headlined “Hypocrisy about Hate.” The ad, done in cooperation with SPLCExposed.com, shows logos for YouTube, MSNBC, PaylPal, CNN, Spotify, and Amazon, all of which are known to have collaborated with the far-left group. It also notes that the “bigotry and discrimination” exposed by former SPLC employees reveals the group’s hypocrisy.

Perhaps most strikingly, the ad uses the words of former SPLC employees to expose the group. “There was not a single black employee with whom I spoke who was happy to be working there,” explained Christine Lee, a Harvard Law School graduate and 1989 SPLC legal intern, adding that the organization had “a way of talking about black people as jesters that hasn’t — I don’t think — been done in 30 or 40 years.” Former SPLC attorney Gloria Browne echoed those concerns. “I was surprised at some of the things I saw, because it was a civil rights organization,” she said. “I’ve heard racial slurs in the place.”

Also quoted in the ad was a former SPLC employee who spoke with the left-wing publication the New Yorker. “You will never step foot in a more contradictory place as long as you live,” the staffer said. Another former employee who spoke out said, “It could be racial, sexual, financial — that place was a virtual buffet of injustices.” And former SPLC writer Bob Moser went even further. “We were part of the con, and we knew it,” said Moser in remarks that were included in the WSJ ad. And finally, former SPLC “senior fellow” Mark Potok, who made a fool of himself on CNN for claiming most whites had anti-black views, was quoted as saying that the hate group’s ultimate aim in life was “to destroy these groups, completely destroy them.”

In a statement about the ad, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called on media and technology companies to do the right thing. “Now that employees of SPLC have pulled back the curtain on the organization’s hypocrisy, what will members of the media and big tech who aligned themselves with SPLC do?” he wondered. “To continue to use SPLC’s politically driven labeling will be an endorsement of SPLC’s blatant racism and bigotry.” Of course, the FRC, a highly influential pro-family group, has been the victim of the SPLC’s hatred of Christians in more ways than one. Indeed, in 2012, a homosexual activist turned terrorist cited the SPLC’s hate propaganda as his inspiration to massacre FRC employees and then rub Chik-Fil-A sandwiches in their faces. Fortunately, the terrorist’s plot was foiled by a brave security officer.

The latest news comes after a cascade of devastating blows to the SPLC. In March, the SPLC was forced to fire its co-founder, Morris Dees, who led the group for almost 50 years despite having been accused in court documents of sexually molesting his step-daughter, among other horrors. Less than two weeks later, the organization’s president, Richard Cohen, as well as SPLC legal director Rhonda Brownstein, also left the SPLC under a cloud of scandal. The leadership turmoil came amid widespread complaints by SPLC employees of workplace mistreatment of women and “people of color,” according to news reports. A senior black attorney at SPLC resigned, citing working conditions, only to have her concerns echoed by dozens of other employees. More than a few liberals and leftists have warned of this sort of behavior by the group for decades.

And those are just the internal scandals. More recently, the SPLC became the subject of international ridicule after it attacked a practicing Muslim as one of the top 10 “anti-Muslim extremists.” The outfit was forced to pay millions of dollars in damages and issue a humiliating formal apology. The group also attacked a prominent black law professor as an enabler of “white supremacy.” And in a screed claiming Indians were “weak,” the far-left outfit identified a Cherokee Indian married to a direct descendant of Sacajawea as the supposed leader of the “anti-Indian” movement in America. Seriously. Even the soft-spoken Ben Carson, now serving as the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was smeared by SPLC as an “extremist” for supporting marriage.

Aside from alleged “hate groups,” many of which are simply mainstream Christian organizations that support marriage, the SPLC also targets supposed “anti-government” groups, which it describes as “Patriot” organizations. One of its most frequent targets on this front is the John Birch Society, an affiliate of this magazine. The SPLC does not go so far as to smear the John Birch Society as a “hate group,” an allegation which would be self-evidently ludicrous, but it does claim that the JBS is the “chief” of the “Patriot” groups for supposedly adhering to “extreme anti-government” ideas. In reality, the JBS is very much in favor of (constitutional, limited) government, and regularly speaks out against both anti-government and pro-government extremism.

Last year, under the leadership of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice announced that it would cut all ties to the SPLC, too. “When I spoke to the Alliance Defending Freedom last year, I learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center had classified ADF as a ‘hate group,’” Sessions warned, adding that groups such as SPLC were responsible for growing hostility against people of faith. “Many in the media simply parroted it as fact. Amazon relied solely on the SPLC designation and removed ADF from its Smile program, which allows customers to donate to charities. They have used this designation as a weapon, and they have wielded it against conservative organizations that refuse to accept their orthodoxy and choose instead to speak their conscience. They use it to bully and intimidate groups like yours which fight for the religious freedom, the civil rights, and the constitutional rights of others.”

At the local level, the SPLC has long tried to dupe police and local government into terrorizing those who disagree with it. But those days are likely coming to an end, too. In recent years, local law-enforcement leaders all across America have received the Law Enforcement Intelligence Brief (LEIB) from the Law Enforcement Charitable Foundation. The intelligence bulletin, which is sent to every police chief and sheriff in America, has included two investigative pieces exposing the SPLC. The first highlighted the group’s ties to, and support of, radicals and even violent terrorists such as Bill Ayers. Ayers was the founder of the Castro-backed cop-killing terror group Weather Underground, which bombed targets across the United States, murdered multiple police officers, and hatched a plan to exterminate millions of Americans. The other investigative piece exposed blatant lies and misinformation by the SPLC that divert law-enforcement resources, violate the rights of innocent Americans, and put both officers and civilians in needless danger.

With the SPLC’s remaining credibility gone and its status as a politically toxic pariah now clear, organizations that continue to work with the far-left hate group are going to find themselves under increasing pressure, too. However, even if the remaining holdouts among Big Tech and Big Media formally sever their ties with the SPLC, Americans must never forget. The fact that these entities were willing to partner with a fringe organization that is openly bigoted against Christians, Orthodox Jews, and other people of faith offers a great deal of insight into the ideological leanings of the individuals running them. It is time for all Americans who value diversity, free speech, religious liberty, and America’s long tradition of tolerance to sever their ties with organizations that jumped into bed with the SPLC. There are plenty of emerging alternatives. And the stakes are too high to allow these bigoted individuals to control access to information.

Image: sebastianosecondi via iStock / Getty Images Plus

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American who covers a broad range of topics. He can be reached at [email protected] or through Liberty Sentinel Media. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.