Scam organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center can remain institutional mainstays if they serve the Left’s political ends. The Sacramento Bee has provided the latest example of that.
The Bee recently published a list of the 72 “hate groups” that operated in California, according to the SPLC, and “where and what they are.” The list undoubtedly includes some real hate groups, but it also names several organizations that are merely opposed to left-wing politics.
Pulitzer Center and Sac Bee just published a list of “hate groups” in CA from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The list includes “traditional Catholics,” David Horowitz, Eagle Forum, and other conservative groups.
This is not journalism — it’s pushing SPLC propaganda. https://t.co/yV9SlOdyT6
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) November 15, 2021
This is the norm for the SPLC. It’s the same group that declared Maajid Nawaz to be an anti-Muslim extremist. Nawaz, once a member of a radical Islamist group, had become a leading voice in fighting extremism. He is a Muslim himself. But the SPLC smeared him and was forced to pay $3.4 million with an apology and a full retraction for its trouble.
The SPLC placed (and later removed) Ben Carson on its extremist watch list as well. Charles Murray has an “extremist file” because left-wing activists have misinterpreted his writings about race and IQ. Then there is the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group that opposes same-sex marriage. It was listed on the website’s hate map, which led a left-wing extremist gunman to attack its building with the goal of killing “as many as possible.”
The SPLC’s history of exaggerated or spurious claims of extremism is well documented, but the group continues to be propped up because it punches at the right people (or at the Right, in this case). In 2018, the group was picked by YouTube to help police content on the site. The group was on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.
Aside from its liberal usage of the “extremist” label, the group later fell into a scandal on its treatment of female and minority staffers (which caused Twitter to cut ties). But neither of those issues mattered to the Sacramento Bee, which uncritically published the SPLC’s list of California “hate groups” with no mention of any of these facts.
Fawning media help the SPLC continue to rake in money from gullible leftist donors. This has been the SPLC’s business model for some time. The group should not be taken seriously. Outlets such as the Bee do a disservice to society by helping it keep some semblance of credibility in spite of its track record.
