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

Article subtitle: 
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate List’ has all the authority of a mean girl’s burn book. Yet it is dangerously provocative.
Article author: 
Stella Morabito
Article publisher: 
The Federalist
Article date: 
18 May 2017
Article category: 
National News
Medium
Article Body: 

... What qualifies the SPLC to act as judge, jury, and social executioner of any human being who is not their blind supporter?

... 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...

3. SLPC Uses Emotion-Laden Images to Spread Innuendo...

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...

6. Its Nonprofit Status Masks Highly Political Fundraising

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

... 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...

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...

11. SPLC Propaganda Seems to Encourage Hoax Hate Crimes...

12. Its Blacklist Foments the Campus Anti-Speech Movement...

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...

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?

 


 

Related

An excellent 5 minute video on the SPLC - the 'Anti-Hate' group that is a hate group

 

The SPLC's Impoverished Mind, by Edward Cline, December 6, 2017.

IRLI Releases Obama Justice Department Reprimand of the Southern Poverty Law Center over its “Derogatory” Tactics, “Frivolous Behavior”, IRLI, May 8, 2017:

Today, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) announces the first-time release of an official letter of reprimand signed by the Obama-era Justice Department (DOJ) against the controversial tax-exempt “hate-watch” organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) (letter found here). In the letter, DOJ states that the SPLC attorney violated professional ethics, among other things, by making personal and baseless attacks against IRLI, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and their staff during official immigration court proceedings...

Although the SPLC’s utter lack of ethics was thoroughly condemned by the DOJ, the agency inexplicably requested that FAIR keep their conclusions confidential. FAIR and IRLI have complied with the request for more than a year; however, in that time, the SPLC has continued and escalated its attacks on both FAIR and IRLI, likely in part in retaliation for FAIR and IRLI filing a complaint with DOJ regarding its conduct. At this time, IRLI has decided it must release the letter to defend itself and protect its charitable purposes...

 

Comprehensive research, articles, and references on the SPLC - Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, CAIRCO

More articles on the SPLC

Why the Mainstream Media Must Stop Citing ‘Anti-Hate’-Crusader Southern Poverty Law Center, Dale Wilcox, Breitbart

The SPLC exposed, The Social Contract

The Southern Poverty Law Center - SPLC - research on Discover The Networks

Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness

The Political Spectrum

 

Research from The Social Contract: