One of the most enduring lines in the seminal graphic novel Watchmen is a simple question: “Who will watch the Watchmen?” (Watchmen effectively repurposed the more-known Latin quote Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
Even for those who grew up reading books without pictures in them (or who are unfamiliar with Latin), the question is self-explanatory: How do you hold the truly powerful in society accountable?
While America doesn’t have masked vigilantes fighting crime alongside traditional law enforcement, it’s still a pertinent question to ask, especially today. That’s because there are powerful, influential groups masquerading as arbiters of justice, like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So what happens when the SPLC blatantly abuses its influence and power for years? Thankfully, the FBI was finally willing to hold the SPLC accountable and cut ties with them.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s long history of ideological favoritism
The SPLC, founded in 1971, describes itself as “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.”
The group accomplishes this noble-sounding goal through legal advocacy, campaigning, and networking with various law enforcement groups. The organization also expends quite a bit of resources on researching alleged “hate” in the country.
However, in reality, the SPLC is a discredited and scandal-ridden group that one of its own employees once described as “a highly profitable scam.”
Perhaps most tragically, this “scam” once had honorable beginnings. But in the mid-1980s, the SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear-mongering, money-raising machine, resulting in the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985.
Since then, the organization has only become more and more corrupt and ideologically slanted. It eventually culminated in 2000 with the introduction of the organization’s so-called “Hate Map.”
The SPLC’s “hate group” labels have real-world consequences
Simply put, these “hate” labels and “Hate Map” are little more than a smear tactic from the SPLC to reputationally harm anyone who dares to oppose its radical ideology.
That alone is bad enough, but it’s made so much worse when you realize just how influential—both to law enforcement and to everyday people—these labels turned out to be, the FBI included. Since 2007, the FBI used the SPLC “Hate Map” and other data to inform its analysis of domestic extremism and hate crimes. That analysis, in turn, could then be used for purposes of training and intelligence gathering.
It’s also worth pointing out the other issue with this “hate map”: Many media outlets would often uncritically malign any group that ends up in the SPLC crosshairs.
Perhaps one of the clearest and most egregious examples of the SPLC’s reckless labeling came just months before the heartless assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“Turning Point USA’s primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists,” the SPLC wrote about TPUSA.
For anyone who’s spent five honest minutes reviewing Charlie’s work on college campuses, that statement is lacking much-needed context, at best, and is a flat-out lie, at worst. Of course, TPUSA and Charlie are hardly the only ones who the SPLC maliciously labeled as a “hate group” or as “extremists.”
In 2012, a man with a gun “planned to stride into the [Family Research Council’s office in Washington, D.C.] and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many people as possible.” The would-be mass murderer claimed he was motivated by the SPLC’s labeling of the FRC as a “hate group.”
The SPLC hate designation was also cited as the reason for the riot and assault of a female professor at Middlebury College in 2017.
More recently, an SPLC staff attorney was arrested and charged in 2023 with domestic terrorism for his involvement in a violent riot against Atlanta police officers.
Tellingly, the SPLC has also been forced to publicly disavow several of its erroneous “hate” and “extremist” labels. In 2018, the SPLC issued a retraction that cost them over $3 million.
More to the point, not one, but two federal courts have dismissed the SPLC’s labeling system. The courts used words like “entirely subjective” and “not one ‘of fact,’” respectively, to describe the SPLC’s labels
These labels should be patently absurd, and yet this sort of “data” from groups like the SPLC had found its way into the highest echelons of U.S. law enforcement.
Given that the Biden administration took guidance from these biased outlets, it is no wonder that conservatives have felt like the law had been weaponized against them.
A call to action falls on listening ears
The fact that the FBI had worked with such a biased group since 2007 was unacceptable. Fortunately, a number of conservative organizations and the Trump administration are working hard to fix that.
These organizations (including ADF) penned a letter to the White House, decrying and denouncing the use of SPLC “data” for anything government-related.
“The most stunning fact about the SPLC’s Hate Map, however, is neither its rank dishonesty nor its transparent bias against SPLC’s conservative political enemies, but the fact that anyone would ever rely upon it to make significant policy decisions,” the joint letter reads.
“The SPLC has now become so biased, politicized, and unmoored from its original mission that it has begun placing traditional value and faith-based organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, Liberty Counsel, and the Family Research Council on its Hate Map,” the letter added.
“Enough is enough. The SPLC’s defamatory Hate Map should no longer be used by federal agencies as a fig leaf to mask discrimination against conservatives.”
The same day the letter was sent, FBI Director Kash Patel made an announcement to begin rectifying that letter’s concerns.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel wrote. “Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”
But in case there was any confusion, Patel flatly stated: “Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated.”
And it’s about time.
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