Southern Poverty Law Center Bias Exposed
Posted Monday,
March 18, 2019 | By Outside Contributor
https://amac.us/southern-poverty-law-center-bias-exposed/
The co-founder of
the Southern Poverty Law
Center, a deep-pocketed,
left-wing civil rights organization, was fired on Wednesday.
Morris Dees, a
prominent lawyer who founded SPLC in 1971, was reportedly forced out due to
workplace misconduct, though the organization didn’t specify what that
misconduct was.
The Los Angeles
Times reported: “A letter signed by about two dozen employees—and sent to
management and the board of directors before news broke of Dees’ firing—said
they were concerned that internal ‘allegations of mistreatment, sexual
harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of
this organization and our integrity along with it.’”
Dees’ firing is
an important development. Dees has been the face of the SPLC while it has
transitioned from investigating genuine hate groups to casting a wide net that
lumps in mainstream organizations like the Family Research Council, a social
conservative organization, with the Ku Klux Klan.
Yet, despite
serious issues with how SPLC defines hate groups, the organization is
constantly cited by the media as an authority, during which time, Dees has been
continually praised for his work.
One prominent journalist
in the 1990s called Dees the, quote, “Mother
Teresa of Montgomery.”
YouTube has
used SPLC as a part of its trusted flagger program.
Large media
outlets like CNN, ABC,
and NBC frequently
publish the SPLC’s hate map.
GuideStar, a
nonprofit tracker, at one point used the SPLC hate group tracker, but dropped this
later, citing its “commitment to objectivity.”
There is
certainly a good reason to suspect, beyond Dees’ ousting, some of SPLC’s work
as having a deeply partisan agenda rather than being committed to casting light
on genuine hate groups.
Though it
received little media attention, SPLC recently settled with and had to
apologize to Maajid Nawaz, an anti-Islamist activist who was maligned by the
organization as an anti-Muslim extremist.
Nawaz was not an
anti-Muslim extremist, but in fact a Muslim who turned away from the radical
Islamist views of his youth and now uses his organization, Quilliam, to fight
extremism.
The bottom line
is: shedding light on genuinely violent and extremist groups is a noble
endeavor, but it’s inappropriate for the media to continually cite SPLC as an
authoritative source on hate without acknowledging its progressive agenda and
conflation of extremist groups with mainstream ones.
Connecting the Dots:
Julian Bond is
a co-founder, director emeritus for the Southern Poverty Law Center,
a director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a
director at People for the American Way.
Open Society Foundations was a funder for the Center for
Economic and Policy Research.
George Soros is
the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations and was
the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for People for the
American Way.
Resources: Past
Research
Leftist Shooter Used
Southern Poverty Law Center “Hate Map” to Plan Killings (Past Research on the Southern Poverty Law Center)
THURSDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2015
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