They've been exposed as the quintessential hate profiteering hate group they are -

'About 60 Organizations' Are Considering a Lawsuit Against the SPLC Following $3M Nawaz Settlement

[pjmedia.com]

No fewer than 60 organizations branded "hate groups" or otherwise attacked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are considering legal action against the left-wing smear factory, a Christian legal nonprofit leader confirmed to PJ Media on Tuesday. He suggested that the $3 million settlement and apology the SPLC gave to Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation on Monday would encourage further legal action.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the charity navigation organization GuideStar for defamation after GuideStar adopted the SPLC's "hate group" list. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In 2016, the SPLC published its "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists," listing Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, a practicing Muslim, as one such extremist. The left-wing group listed various reasons for including him, changing the reasons every so often, and even at one point mentioning that he had gone to a strip club for his bachelor party.

On Monday, SPLC President Richard Cohen extended his group's "sincerest apologies to Mr. Nawaz, Quilliam, and our readers for the error, and we wish Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam all the best." In settling the suit, the SPLC paid Nawaz's organization $3.375 million.

"This is a significant settlement," Staver told PJ Media. "3.375 million dollars, and it did not even go to litigation; it was a result of a demand letter."

Importantly, "the allegations that were at issue here were very similar to the allegations against the other groups," the Liberty Counsel chairman explained. "The SPLC promotes false propaganda, demonizes and labels groups they disagree with, and that labeling has economic as well as physical consequences."

The SPLC started as a group to oppose racist terrorism, and its first legal action targeted the Ku Klux Klan. In recent decades, the organization has begun marking mainstream organizations as "hate groups" on par with the KKK. Last year, 47 nonprofit leaders denounced the SPLC's "hate list" in an open letter to the media. The SPLC has admitted that its "hate group" list is based on "opinion."

IT'S ON: Christian Group Sues SPLC and Amazon Over 'Hate Group' Designation
Staver insisted that the settlement with Nawaz "will encourage further legal action." He suggested that the settlement "helps our lawsuit against GuideStar" and may encourage organizations that were considering suing the SPLC to actually file the paperwork.

"There are probably about 60 organizations that we're talking to — there's at least 60," Staver told PJ Media. He mentioned the group of 47 nonprofit leaders who denounced the SPLC last year, and said "that group has grown since then."

Furthermore, many of the "hate groups" attacked by the SPLC do not encourage hate or violence, but merely disagree with the left-wing organization's political views. Many — like the Family Research Council (FRC), the Ruth Institute, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — merely stand for marriage as between one man and one woman. The SPLC has twisted 30-year-old arguments to smear these groups, and in one egregious case the group actually quoted as hateful the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Other organizations attacked by the SPLC also told PJ Media they are "considering their options" regarding a lawsuit.

A spokesman for Prager University, another organization attacked by the SPLC, said that "at this point" the group had "no intention to sue," but they "reserve the right to change their mind as the situation evolves."

Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), echoed this trend, saying his organization is "evaluating all our options," including a potential lawsuit.

"It's appalling and offensive for the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare peaceful organizations which condemn violence and racism with violent and racist groups just because it disagrees with their views," Tedesco told PJ Media. "That's what SPLC did in the case of Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz, and that's what it has done with ADF and numerous other organizations and individuals."

"This situation confirms once again what commentators across the political spectrum have been saying for decades: SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as 'haters' and 'extremists' and has lost all credibility as a civil rights watchdog," the ADF senior counsel added.

Tedesco defended the good name of Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC falsely maligns as a "hate group." "With eight wins in the last seven years at the U.S. Supreme Court and hundreds of victories for free speech at America's public universities, ADF is one of the nation's most respected and successful legal advocates, working to preserve our fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and conscience for people from all walks of life," he said.

It is hard to predict how a 60-party lawsuit against the SPLC's "hate group" labeling would play out. D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Christian nonprofit that sued Amazon and the SPLC over the "hate group" defamation last year, reported in late May that a preliminary hearing on its case was a "positive development."

**********

12 Ways The Southern Poverty Law Center Is A Scam To Profit From Hate-Mongering

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate List’ has all the authority of a mean girl’s burn book. Yet it is dangerously provocative.

[thefederalist.com]

What makes the hate list of the Southern Poverty Law Center different from the “burn book” a high school queen bee keeps in the 2004 movie “Mean Girls”? Answer: not much. The burn book was a compilation of insults, gossip, and rumors intended to repel the diva’s “enemies,” label everybody, and keep herself on top of the heap.

The SPLC uses its list of designated hate groups in much the same way: to manipulate the lives of others, smear reputations, control personal relationships, and reap the spoils. The dynamic is the same, whether played on the adolescent scene or in the political arena. Both lists serve mostly as power-mongering tools.

In civilized societies, we supposedly grow out of that sort of tribalism. But look around and you’ll see such behaviors proliferating in every sphere: politics, journalism, education. A recent headline in the Washington Examiner nailed it: “The Bret Stephens Freak Out is a Reminder that the Media Is Basically a Massive High School Clique.”

Why do so many folks treat the SPLC with undeserved reverence, the way too many high school kids treat a self-appointed nasty queen bee? Why do they accept the Southern Poverty Law Center as the nation’s Grand Inquisitor dictating who may speak and who must shut up? And why are its smears and caricatures so often blindly accepted at face value? What qualifies the SPLC to act as judge, jury, and social executioner of any human being who is not their blind supporter?

Those questions have been hanging in the air for decades. As with all vilification campaigns, the SPLC plays a dangerous and cruel game under the guise of defending victims. So let’s take a closer look at some of the SPLC’s history and behavior. Let’s count some ways it’s a con game.

1. It’s a Big-Money Smear Machine

The SPLC’s main role is as a massively funded propaganda smear machine. The following information on the SPLC, provided by Karl Zinsmeister of Philanthropy Roundtable, is an eye-opener: “Its two largest expenses are propaganda operations: creating its annual lists of ‘haters’ and ‘extremists,’ and running a big effort that pushes ‘tolerance education’ through more than 400,000 public-school teachers. And the single biggest effort undertaken by the SPLC? Fundraising. On the organization’s 2015 IRS 990 form it declared $10 million of direct fundraising expenses, far more than it has ever spent on legal services.”

2. The Center’s Work Has Incited Violence

The SPLC’s agitation and propaganda have proven to incite violence. Any person or organization of note who doesn’t get with the SPLC’s political agendas—whether they promote family integrity, religious freedom, U.S. immigration law, or anything else—is liable to end up smeared as an SPLC-certified agent of hate.

The SPLC website keeps tabs on designated bad guys with a Hate Map of the United States and an invitation for readers to #reporthate. The SPLC’s hate list includes the Family Research Council in Washington DC, and the 2012 shooting at FRC headquarters was inspired through the influence of SPLC agitprop, according to the gunman himself. He would have committed mass murder if he wasn’t stopped.

The recent mob violence in response to social scientist Charles Murray’s talk at Middlebury College, and the assault of a faculty member there, were products of the SPLC’s smear of Murray as an “extremist.” The list goes on.

3. SLPC Uses Emotion-Laden Images to Spread Innuendo

SPLC uses emotion-laden images with nary any evidence to “spread stigma just by innuendo.” Zinsmeister from Philanthropy Roundtable notes: “Over the years, numerous investigators have pointed out that most of the scary KKK and Nazi and militia groups that the SPLC insists are lurking under our beds are actually ghost entities, with no employees, no address, hardly any followers, and little or no footprint.”

But “hate groups” and “extremist organizations” are great copy, especially for fundraising. So the SPLC list of storm-troopers-in-our-midst is catnip for journalists looking for dramatic stories. SPLC’s lack of reasonable criteria for who goes on its list of crazies combines effortlessly with careless reporting, and spreads stigma just by innuendo. Mere proximity to SPLC’s arbitrary “hate” list is enough to tar even the worthiest group.

4. The FBI Stopped Citing SPLC as a Resource

Two years ago, the FBI deleted the SPLC from its website’s list of legitimate resources on hate crimes. This is a promising sign of growing clarity that the SPLC’s designations for hate groups lack legitimacy. There also seems to be growing boldness in calling out the SPLC for its tactics intended to shut down serious scholarship.

5. People On Its Political Team See the Problems, Too

Even some self-identified progressives are taking issue with SPLC vilification campaigns after the 2012 SPLC-inspired shooting at the Family Research Council. The SPLC’s emotionally charged rhetoric ignites divisions among people rather than healing anything. And there’s no telling where that can end up. So even leftist Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that the SPLC’s labeling of the Family Research Center as a hate group was a reckless act.

6. Its Nonprofit Status Masks Highly Political Fundraising THIS IS ILLEGAL!

The SPLC operates far more as a political action committee than as the nonprofit it claims to be. The hyper-partisan nature of the SPLC’s operations makes its nonprofit status seem like a joke. In a recent letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the Federation for Immigration Reform argued that the SPLC’s tax-exempt 501(c)3 status should be revoked because in the 2016 elections, the SPLC clearly violated the Internal Revenue Service requirement that prohibits “participating in or intervening (including the publishing or distributing of statements), in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

7. Its Public Activities Are a Ruse for Fundraising

The SPLC is little more than a “cash collecting machine” rooted more deeply in fund-raising opportunism than in any do-gooder impulse. The SPLC was founded in 1971, after much of the heroic heavy lifting of the civil rights era was already over and the Ku Klux Klan was pretty much beyond its death throes. But invoking the imagery of pointy white hoods still seems to be an irresistible fund-raising ploy for the SPLC.

Again, Zinsmeister at Philanthropy Roundtable calls it out: “The SPLC is a cash-collecting machine. In 2015 it vacuumed up $50 million in contributions and foundation grants, a tidy addition to its $334 million holdings of cash and securities and its headquarters worth $34 million. ‘They’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs,’ noted Jim Tharpe, managing editor of the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, the Montgomery ­Advertiser, in a talk at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.”

Zinsmeister adds: “Though it styles itself as a public-interest law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center does shockingly little litigation, and only small amounts of that on behalf of any aggrieved individuals.”

8. Its Founder Is a Direct Marketing Guru

SPLC founder Morris Dees was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in 1998. That should tell you a lot. Dees’ experience as an ultra-successful direct mail marketer well precedes his SPLC days. Perhaps he employed those skills while working on George Wallace’s 1958 gubernatorial campaign in Alabama and as finance director for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid, as well as campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy.

But critics say he got especially wealthy while at the SPLC, building what they’ve called his “poverty palaces,” by guilt-tripping and virtue-signaling a load of affluent white donors who identify as progressives.

9. Civil Rights Activists Say Its Founder Is ‘A Con Man’

Bona fide civil rights activists have described the SPLC founder as “a con man and a fraud.” A 2000 Harper’s Magazine article by Ken Silverstein quotes anti-death penalty activist Millard Farmer on Dees’ apparent fund-raising monomania: “He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker [notorious televangelists] of the civil rights movement, though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.”

Take note also of the sentiment expressed (also cited in Harper’s) by civil rights lawyer Stephen Bright in a letter to the dean of the University of Alabama law school in 2007: “Thank you very much for the invitation to speak at the law school’s commencement in May. I am honored by the invitation, but regret that I am not able to accept it due to other commitments at that time.

“I also received the law school’s invitation to the presentation of the ‘Morris Dees Justice Award,’ which you also mentioned in your letter as one of the ‘great things’ happening at the law school. I decline that invitation for another reason. Morris Dees is a con man and fraud, as I and others, such as U.S. Circuit Judge Cecil Poole, have observed and as has been documented by John Egerton, Harper’s, the Montgomery Advertiser in its ‘Charity of Riches’ series, and others. . . . Both the law school and Skadden are diminished by being a part of another Dees scam.”

10.The Center Is Advertising For New Revenue-Raisers

SPLC is now advertising for help in “developing theories” to support its litigation projects. The following is from a current appeal to recent law school graduates at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania: “Penn Law and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have created a new, two-year, post-graduate fellowship for a new or recent graduate to work with the SPLC’s Special Litigation Practice Group. . .The Penn Law Civil Rights Fellow will serve as an integral member of the SPLC’s legal group, conducting legal research and analysis and developing theories to support new litigation projects and advocacy campaigns …” (emphasis mine). If you need to develop a “theory” to support an argument intended to condemn those you’ve labelled as haters, there probably isn’t any there there.

11. SPLC Propaganda Seems to Encourage Hoax Hate Crimes

SPLC propaganda seems to encourage hoax hate crimes. There has been a recent surge of hoax hate crimes. In part, I believe this is due to the far reach of the SPLC’s propaganda and agitation machine, which has maligned legitimate think tanks and advocacy centers like the Family Research Center, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Center for Security Policy. It also has smeared eminent scholars like Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as well as pediatric neurosurgeon (now secretary of Housing and Urban Development) Ben Carson.

This indiscriminate free-for-all creates an easy climate in which hoaxes can thrive. (For some background on fake hate crimes, check Laird Wilcox’s publication “Crying Wolf” or his database.)

12. Its Blacklist Foments the Campus Anti-Speech Movement

The SPLC is no doubt heavily invested in the campus anti-speech movement. It stands to reason that to control “hate speech,” one must control all speech. That’s a major reason any speaker on a college campus who is unapproved by the SPLC can end up shut down in riotous fashion as Murray at Middlebury or Milo Yiannopoulos at Cal Berkeley or Gavin McInnes at New York University. If you plan to attend such an event, you’ll notice that even lesser-known speakers often need police escorts after the SPLC has blacklisted them.

A society of people who can reason isn’t good for direct mail marketers.
Anti-speech activists on campus will often cite even an association the speaker might have with someone on the SPLC list. They will also direct students to attend another event deliberately scheduled to conflict with it. This happened to me at Georgetown University when I went to hear Nonie Darwish speak about her conversion from Islam to Christianity. She had at least three police escorts, and endured a lot of slurs and hostility from audience members. The flyer I was handed before going into the talk warned that Darwish was an “Islamophobe” unapproved by the SPLC, as though that actually meant something.

Now, why would the SPLC want to demean good people who take views contrary to its own?

A society of people who can reason isn’t good for direct mail marketers. A society of people who have serious concerns about the erosion of religious liberties or free speech is not good for propagandists of any stripe. The term “hate” has been remarkably effective at suppressing independent thought and speech. Nobody wants to be labeled a bigot, and if faced with that prospect will tend to flee from “offending” views. This is the behavior modification propaganda aims for. It contributes to the noxious effects of groupthink.

The flip side is that the SPLC’s abuse of the term “hate” will attract support from a certain segment of the population that wants to suppress the views of those who disagree with them. That is good for direct mail marketers who are interested in generous contributions from the fatuously self-righteous.

Sadly, history has revealed time and again that organized vilification campaigns endanger human dignity and freedom. The SPLC treads perilous ground, trading in explosively hostile language in return for what else but money and power?

So glad they've been exposed for the fraud and scam artist they are...

'Red Flag' Report: Media's Favorite 'Hate Group' Watchdog SPLC Transfers MILLIONS To Offshore Investments

Report comes as Southern Poverty Law Center sued for defamation, slammed for new controversial "turmoil and blood" map.

[www.dailywire.com]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has come under increased scrutiny in recent years for the overtly partisan nature of its "hate" and "extremist" listings as well as its sketchy financial dealings. The Washington Free Beacon's Joe Schoffstall has dug deeper into the latter and, according to a new report, discovered what tax experts and non-profit consultants are describing as a "huge red flag": the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization "pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings."

SPLC has been in the news a lot lately, not only because it has been cited repeatedly by mainstream media outlets for its supposedly nonpartisan "hate group" and "extremist" lists (which once included Ben Carson), but also because it has been sued by some of those "hate groups" for defamation, recently dropped a town unfairly listed from its reckless "hate map," and created a brand new Confederate map that includes names of elementary and middle schools and entire counties as supposedly promoting "turmoil and bloodshed."

Now, the Free Beacon's Schoffstall has presented some very intriguing findings after looking more closely into the non-profits' tax records:

The SPLC has turned into a fundraising powerhouse, recording more than $50 million in contributions and $328 million in net assets on its 2015 Form 990, the most recently available tax form from the nonprofit. SPLC's Form 990-T, its business income tax return, from the same year shows that they have "financial interests" in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. No information is available beyond the acknowledgment of the interests at the bottom of the form.

However, the Washington Free Beacon discovered forms from 2014 that shed light on some of the Southern Poverty Law Center's transfers to foreign entities.

After examining the group's 2014 and 2015 records, WFB found that the partisan group was sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to multiple entities with accounts in the Cayman Islands, including a $2.2 million transfer in 2015:

SPLC lists Tiger Global Management LLC, a New York-based private equity financial firm, as an agent on its [2014 form]. The form shows a foreign partnership between the SPLC and Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P., a pooled investment fund in the Cayman Islands. SPLC transferred $960,000 in cash on Nov. 24, 2014 to Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P, its records show. [...]

The SPLC reported a $102,007 cash transfer on Dec. 24, 2014 to BPV-III Cayman X Limited, a foreign entity located in the Cayman Islands. The group then sent $157,574 in cash to BPV-III Cayman XI Limited on Dec. 31, 2014, an entity that lists the same PO Box address in Grand Cayman as the previous transfer. [...]

On March 1, 2015, SPLC sent $2,200,000 to an entity incorporated in Canana Bay, Cayman Islands, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records and run by a firm firm based in Greenwich, Ct. Another $2,200,000 cash transfer was made on the same day to another fund whose business is located at the same address as the previous fund in the Cayman Islands, according to SEC records.

When the Free Beacon reached out to SPLC's public accounting firm, they were told they wouldn't share client information. When the outlet asked tax and non-profit experts about the SPLC's offshore transfers, they got responses that featured phrases like "huge red flag," "unethical," and "extremely unusual."

"I've never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts," said Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of Pacific Human Capital, a California-based nonprofit consulting firm. "My impression based on prior interactions is that they have a small, modestly paid staff, and were regarded by most in the industry as frugal and reliable. I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with."

"It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas," said Casil. "I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based nonprofit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts."

Here's another response expressing just how "unusual" the SPLC's business dealings are for a non-profit:

"It seems extremely unusual for a ‘501(c)(3)' concentrating upon reducing poverty in the American South to have multiple bank accounts in tax haven nations," Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street analyst and financial advisor who helped uncover a 2009 financial scandal at General Electric, told the Free Beacon.

Fox News' Tucker Carlson broke this story on his show -

REPORT: FBI HAS ‘ONGOING’ RELATIONSHIP WITH LEFT-WING SPLC, WHICH ONCE PUT BEN CARSON ON AN ‘EXTREMIST WATCH LIST’

[dailycaller.com]

* The FBI has an ongoing relationship with the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported.

* The SPLC once placed HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson on an “extremist watch list,” before backing down and removing him four months later.

* The SPLC also works with Amazon, Twitter, Google and Facebook in their efforts to police their platforms.

* The SPLC’s work has been plagued by inaccuracies and the group paid out a $3.3 million settlement in April.

The FBI has an “ongoing” relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing nonprofit that once placed Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson on an “extremist watch list.”

That’s according to an exclusive report from Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson, who broke the news on his show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Friday.

“Well as you already know if you’ve been paying any attention at all, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a fraudulent enterprise,” said Carlson. “It’s a left-wing political group that uses ‘hate crime’ designations to target its ideological enemies and to crush people.”

“The SPLC has repeatedly been allowed to brief the FBI on alleged domestic terrorist threats to this country,” Carlson reported. “Disturbingly though, the relationship is ongoing, if you can believe it.” (RELATED: Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter All Work With Left-Wing SPLC)

“Despite multiple requests from this program, the FBI has refused to describe the extent of its collaboration with the SPLC, we’ve asked repeatedly, or even to explain why it continues to work with a group like that,” Carlson said, noting the agency would only offer bland statements.

(Watch the video here)

“For many years, the FBI has engaged with various organizations, both formally and informally,” FBI spokeswoman Jacqueline Maguire said in a statement to Carlson’s show.

“Such outreach is a critical component of the FBI’s mission, and we welcome information from these organizations on any possible violations of civil rights, hate crimes, or other potential crimes or threats.”

“The Attorney General has directed the FBI to reevaluate their relationships with groups like this to ensure the FBI does not partner with any group that discriminates,” Department of Justice spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told Fox News.

The SPLC’s lists of “extremists” and “hate groups” have consistently courted controversy and the nonprofit’s work has been plagued by inaccuracies.

Floyd Lee Corkins, who opened fire at the Family Research Center (FRC) in 2012, said he chose the FRC for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a “hate group.”

Carson was surprised to find out in February 2015 that the SPLC placed him on an “extremist watch list” for his conservative beliefs.

The SPLC cited as proof of Carson’s “extremism” a quote in which he said: “Marriage is between a man and a woman; it’s a well-established pillar of society.”

Following a backlash, the SPLC apologized and removed him from its list. Carson was on the list for four months before the SPLC removed the “extremist” label.

The SPLC deleted three Russia-related articles this March after challenges to their accuracy followed by legal threats.

The SPLC removed a controversial “anti-Muslim extremist” list in April, after British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz announced plans to sue the SPLC for defamation. The left-wing group ending up paying Nawaz a $3.375-million settlement.

Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also on the list.

Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation who now advocates against the practice, is an award-winning human rights activist. For the last decade, her nonprofit, the AHA Foundation, has worked to protect women from honor violence, forced marriage and genital mutilation.

But according to the SPLC’s since-deleted list, Ali is an “anti-Muslim extremist.” The SPLC has yet to apologize or officially retract its “extremist” label for Ali.

Ali criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook in August 2017 for donating to the SPLC, which she described as “an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism.”

The SPLC’s influence extends beyond its work with federal law enforcement. The SPLC has working partnerships with Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google.

The four tech companies all work with or consult the SPLC in policing their platforms for “hate speech” or “hate groups.”

The SPLC has faced tough criticisms not just from conservatives, but from establishment publications, as well.

“At a time when the line between ‘hate group’ and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation,” Ben Schreckinger, now with GQ, wrote in a June 2017 piece for Politico.

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, while still writing for Bloomberg, similarly criticized the SPLC’s flimsy definition of “hate group” in September 2017. Media outlets who trust the SPLC’s labels, McArdle warned, “will discredit themselves with conservative readers and donors.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility

[www.washingtonpost.com]

After years of smearing good people with false charges of bigotry, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has finally been held to account. A former Islamic radical named Maajid Nawaz sued the center for including him in its bogus “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” and this week the SPLC agreed to pay him a $3.375 million settlement and issued a public apology.

The SPLC is a once-storied organization that did important work filing civil rights lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. But it has become a caricature of itself, labeling virtually anyone who does not fall in line with its left-wing ideology an “extremist” or “hate group.”

Nawaz is a case in point. Since abandoning Islamic radicalism, he has advised three British prime ministers and created the Quilliam Foundation, to fight extremism. He is not anti-Muslim. He is a Muslim and has argued that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

So how did he end up in the SPLC’s pseudo-guide to anti-Muslim bigots? His crime, apparently, is that he has become a leading critic of the radical Islamist ideology he once embraced. Thanks to his courage, the SPLC has been forced to pay a multimillion-dollar penalty and acknowledge in a statement that it was “wrong” and that Nawaz has “made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.”

Let’s hope this settlement is the first of many, because this is not the first time the SPLC has done this. In 2010, it placed the Family Research Council (FRC) — a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage — on its “hate map.” Two years later, a gunman walked into the FRC headquarters with the intention to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.” He told the FBI that he had used the SPLC website to pick his target.

Unfortunately, many in the media still take the SPLC seriously. Last year, ABC News ran a story headlined: “Jeff Sessions addresses ‘anti-LGBT hate group,’ ” in which it reported that “Sessions addressed members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was designated an ‘anti-LGBT hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016.” The Alliance Defending Freedom is a respected organization of conservative lawyers dedicated to defending religious liberty, and it just argued a case before the Supreme Court, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. It won, 7 to 2. It is not a “hate group.” If anything, it is fighting anti-Christian hate.

In 2014, the SPLC placed Ben Carson — later a Republican presidential candidate and now the current secretary of housing and urban development — on its “extremist watch list,” alongside neo-Nazis and white supremacists. After an uproar, the group removed him and apologized.

The SPLC also lists Charles Murray, a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the most respected conservative intellectuals in the United States, on its website as a “White Nationalist.” Last year, an angry mob of students, many citing the SPLC’s designation, physically attacked Murray during a speech at Middlebury College. He escaped unharmed, but the liberal professor who invited him ended up in the hospital.

Little wonder that Nawaz was not just angry but also afraid about being designated an extremist by the SPLC. He told the Atlantic in 2016, “They put a target on my head. The kind of work that I do, if you tell the wrong kind of Muslims that I’m an extremist, then that means I’m a target.”

Unfortunately, the settlement that the SPLC reached with Nawaz is not likely to deter it from smearing others — $3.4 million is a drop in the bucket for the center, which raised $132 million between November 2016 and October 2017 and has a $477 million endowment, including a reported $92 million in offshore accounts. Sliming conservatives is big business.

The only way to stop the SPLC is if people stop giving it money and the media stop quoting it or taking it seriously. The SPLC once did important work fighting the Ku Klux Klan. But when it declares Maajid Nawaz, the Family Research Council, Ben Carson and Charles Murray as moral equivalents of the Klan, it loses all integrity and credibility.

EXCLUSIVE: FACEBOOK, AMAZON, GOOGLE AND TWITTER ALL WORK WITH LEFT-WING SPLC

[dailycaller.com]

* The Southern Poverty Law Center helps Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter determine what organizations are “hate groups”

* Amazon gave the SPLC the most direct authority while pretending to remain unbiased

* The SPLC has been plagued by inaccuracies

Four of the world’s biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for “hate speech” or “hate groups,” a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

The SPLC is on a list of “external experts and organizations” that Facebook works with “to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in an interview.

Facebook consults the outside organizations when developing changes to hate speech policies, Budhraja said, noting that Facebook representatives will typically hold between one and three meetings with the groups.

Citing privacy concerns, the Facebook spokeswoman declined to name all the outside groups working with Facebook, but confirmed the SPLC’s participation.

Budhraja emphasized that Facebook’s definition of “hate group” is distinct from the SPLC’s definition and said that Facebook consults with groups across the political spectrum.

The SPLC accused Facebook in a May 8 article of not doing enough to censor “anti-Muslim hate” on the platform. That article did not disclose the SPLC’s working partnership with Facebook.

“We have our own process and our processes are different and I think that’s why we get the criticism [from the SPLC], because organizations that are hate organizations by their standards don’t match ours,” Budhraja said.

“That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a process in place, and that definitely doesn’t mean we want the platform to be a place for hate but we aren’t going to map to the SPLC’s list or process,” she said.

Of the four companies, Amazon gives the SPLC the most direct authority over its platform, TheDCNF found.

While Facebook emphasizes its independence from the SPLC, Amazon does the opposite: Jeff Bezos’ company grants the SPLC broad policing power over the Amazon Smile charitable program, while claiming to remain unbiased.

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told TheDCNF.

Amazon grants the SPLC that power “because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever,” said the spokeswoman, who could not say whether Amazon considers the SPLC to be unbiased.

The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon.

Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.

Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom — which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the Supreme Court — are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, TheDCNF found in May. (RELATED: Christian Baker Prevails At Supreme Court In Same-Sex Wedding Cake Dispute)

One month later, the anti-Semitic groups — but not the Alliance Defending Freedom — are still able to participate in the program.

“Charitable organizations must meet the requirements outlined in our participation agreement to be eligible for AmazonSmile. Organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible. If at any point an organization violates this agreement, its eligibility will be revoked,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in an additional statement.

“Since 2013, Amazon has relied on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to help us make these determinations. While this system has worked well, we do listen to and consider the feedback of customers and other stakeholders, which we will do here as well,” the spokeswoman said.

Twitter lists the SPLC as a “safety partner” working with Twitter to combat “hateful conduct and harassment.”

The platform also includes the Trust and Safety Council, which “provides input on our safety products, policies, and programs,” according to Twitter. Free speech advocates have criticized it as Orwellian.

A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment on the SPLC specifically, but said the company is “in regular contact with a wide range of civil society organizations and [nongovernmental organizations].”

Google uses the SPLC to help police hate speech on YouTube as part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flagger” program, The Daily Caller reported in February, citing a source with knowledge of the agreement. Following that report, the SPLC confirmed they’re policing hate speech on YouTube.

The SPLC and other third-party groups in the “Trusted Flagger” program work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, according to YouTube.

First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing the video platform, but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.

The SPLC is one of over 300 government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in the YouTube program, the vast majority of which remain hidden behind confidentiality agreements.

The SPLC has consistently courted controversy in publishing lists of “extremists” and “hate groups.” The nonprofit has been plagued by inaccuracies this year, retracting four articles in March and April alone.

The well-funded nonprofit, which did not return a request for comment, deleted three Russia-related articles in March after challenges to their accuracy followed by legal threats.

All three articles focused on drawing conspiratorial connections between anti-establishment American political figures and Russian influence operations in the United States.

The SPLC removed a controversial “anti-Muslim extremist” list in April, after British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz threatened to sue over his inclusion on the list. The SPLC had accused the supposed-extremists of inciting anti-Muslim hate crimes. (RELATED: SPLC Pulls Controversial ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’ List After Legal Threats)

Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali also made the list.

Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation who now advocates against the practice, is an award-winning human rights activist. But according to the SPLC’s since-deleted list, she was an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

Ali criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook in August 2017 for donating to the SPLC, which she described as “an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism.”

Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who is now the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was surprised to find out in February 2015 that the SPLC had placed him on an “extremist watch list” for his conservative beliefs.

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong. It is important for us to once again advocate true tolerance,” Carson said in response.

“That means being respectful of those with whom we disagree and allowing people to live according to their values without harassment,” he continued. “It is nothing but projectionism when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters.”

Following a backlash, the SPLC apologized and removed him from their list. Carson was on the list for four months before the SPLC removed the “extremist” label.

Floyd Lee Corkins, who attempted a mass shooting at the conservative Family Research Center in 2012, said he chose the organization for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a “hate group.”

The SPLC has faced tough criticisms not just from conservatives, but from establishment publications, as well.

“At a time when the line between ‘hate group’ and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation,” Ben Schreckinger, now with GQ, wrote in a June 2017 piece for Politico.

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, while still writing for Bloomberg, similarly criticized the SPLC’s flimsy definition of “hate group” in September 2017. Media outlets who trust the SPLC’s labels, McArdle warned, “will discredit themselves with conservative readers and donors.”