In today’s political climate, the word “hate” gets thrown around a lot, and over the last ten years, it has lost nearly all meaning. While some still view hate as it should be seen; an intense feeling of dislike towards someone of a different race or culture, some have decided that hate is an idea with which they disagree. Not one person or organization has taken the term as lightly as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Founded in 1971, as a sister group to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the organization has done plenty of good over the years, but that does not excuse the fact that, in recent history, they have become just as politicized as CNN. They have created a branch called “Hatewatch,” in which they monitor different alleged hate groups. Labeling organizations hate is one thing, but to consider half the Church assemblies in the United States “hate speech” is completely ill-founded and bound to lead nowhere good for the Church in question or the SPLC. They have faced more law-suits for defamation than any other non-profit in the country.
One of the many slandered was the conservative organization, Patriot Prayer, which clashed with Portland Antifa in 2018. These riots received intense attention on behalf of the media, but nearly everyone had the same take, and it was the wrong one. Antifa took to whom they called Nazis, and when they were done, they went after random civilians. Patriot Prayer took most of the blame for the violence because of their retaliation, so much that their leader Joey Gibson lost his Senate nomination in the wake of the attack. According to the Portland Police Department, it was a mostly peaceful event. But Antifa had a long history of violence against alleged “Nazis,” especially in Portland, and even far left outlets such as MSNBC went out to investigate who was really responsible. The SPLC, however, decided to put the blame on Patriot Prayer for the riots, claiming that they were responsible for the millions of dollars in property damage caused by the riots. To this day, they still hold this claim, despite a lawsuit by Patriot Prayer itself and an abundance of evidence in support of the contrary.
In February of 2019, the founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, sued the SPLC for defamation on behalf of himself and the group he founded. This was in response to them placing his organization on their hate map, which damaged the Proud Boy’s reputation. In addition to claiming the Proud Boys were a hate group, the SPLC argued that the courts should rule the group unconstitutional and regulate their speech because of “an infringement on the public order.” In this case, the SPLC was operating much less on objective thought and more about subjective feelings. Disagreeing with a group like the Proud Boys is acceptable, disagreement and argument is a crucial part of any democracy. However, lumping them in with groups like Neo-Nazi’s of America and the Klu Klux Klan is so bizarrely unfactual and wrong. According to the SPLC, the Proud Boys had “documented instances of misogynistic and white-supremacist rhetoric.” But they never provided any evidence for these claims, and in the end they lost the lawsuit and were forced to issue a retraction.
The Three Percent is a far-right militant group based out of Georgia. They themselves are probably the most grotesque example of defamation on behalf of this non-profit. The SPLC labeled them under the category of “general hate” with no substantiation at all. The group did not see any media coverage until VICE decided to do a documentary. But before this, the group had never expressed hate towards anyone of a particular race, religion, or gender and they still have not to this day. The Three Percent has yet to take this issue to court, yet the SPLC removed them from their hate map not long after the VICE documentary came out.
According the SPLC’s website, there are 1,020 hate groups currently tracked across the country. These groups could range anywhere from the Nation of Islam in South Carolina to the American Nazi party right here in California. But they also track Churches across the country labeling their religious beliefs hate speech. Which is why many people, on both the political left and right have come to no longer take this group seriously. The qualities they promote go against everything the United States stands for as a country, preaching their own political beliefs as objective truth while denouncing those they disagree with as intolerable, and it’s this kind of behavior that enables similar behavior in left-wing protests today.
