Schadenfreude, they say, is a dish best served cold. If so, those slandered by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “hate groups,” “white supremacists,” and “anti-Muslim extremists” in recent decades, must be delighted by the SPLC’s recent overnight implosion.
The SPLC’s listings of “hate organizations” — its major activity in recent years — are guided by its progressive, identity politics. In 2015, for instance, the SPLC labeled Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an “extremist” — an evaluation for which the SPLC eventually apologized. Last June, the SPLC settled for $3.4 million in a lawsuit brought by Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization, and apologized for having included them in its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.” In fact, Nawaz, a former Islamist, and Quilliam combat Islamist extremism and promote a moderate Islam.
Professor Carol Swain, a black woman who grew up in a shack with no running water, with ten siblings sharing two beds, and without a pair of shoes to wear, was called an “apologist for white supremacists” by the SPLC. Her crime? She positively reviewed a documentary entitled “A Conversation about Race,” which included interviews with poor whites who express anger at being constantly accused of racism and lambasted for their supposed “white privilege.” Swain had previously aroused the SPLC’s ire by describing it as an organization supposedly monitoring hate groups that has become one itself.
Another hate group, according to the SPLC, is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal advocacy organization, which has won nine cases in the Supreme Court, including one 9–0 and another, Masterpiece Cakeshop, 7–2. All that is required to be put on the SPLC’s hate list is to have opposed the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which imposed same-gender marriage on the entire country, or to have defended the rights of traditional religious believers not to affirm by their actions what their religion tells them is a sin.
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