Racism is a curse, and it is therefore understandable that news stories about the corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are focused on its funding of the Ku Klux Klan. What is frequently overlooked is its record of targeting Christians, especially Catholics.
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, nailed it when he said SPLC was guilty of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” That’s akin to firefighters setting fire to a row of houses so they can put it out, and then demanding an increase in salary and benefits. SPLC has also invented anti-Catholicism to serve its political agenda.
Eleven charges have been brought against SPLC by a federal grand jury, including six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering. It paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, including those linked to the Klan and neo-Nazi groups. While there is no evidence that it paid anti-Catholics, it is undeniably true that it worked to promote anti-Catholicism.
SPLC has long attacked those who stand for traditional moral values. It has a “hate map” on its website that details those groups it labels as “hate groups.” Besides naming a handful of small wacky right-wing groups, it includes reputable conservative organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty. None of these are hate-mongers. The real hate-mongers are those like SPLC who smear responsible entities.
Guess who SPLC denies are “hate groups”? Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Antifa is a loosely knit bunch of urban terrorists, and Black Lives Matter is a racist bunch of thugs. But not to SPLC. “Designating Antifa as Domestic Terrorist Organization Is Dangerous,” and “Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group.” The violence these two groups have engaged in is well documented. By contrast, the conservative organizations it cites as “hate groups” have never threatened, harmed or killed anyone.
SPLC does not list the Catholic League as a “hate group,” per se, but it has several listings of us. To take one example, we defended President Trump’s banning of trans persons from the military. It was horrified when I said, “Kudos to Trump for banning men and women who switch their genitals from the military. The armed forces are not a lab for sexual engineers.”
It is telling that it blames me for promoting hatred because I have objected to publicly funded artistic displays that show large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross. I am the problem for objecting, not the bigots who defile Christ. And so on.
It also got bent out of shape when I commented on an animal shelter that resisted a dog owner’s request that his pet be euthanized because the owner thought the animal was homosexual. To which I said, “Being gay is not only a bonus for humans these days, it is a definite plus for dogs as well.” Normal people laugh; abnormal people go berserk.
On a more serious note, SPLC has a history of objecting to bigots who hate Jews and blacks, but it has nothing to say when learning that the same person is also anti-Catholic. That does not offend them.
The granddaddy of them all is when it advised the Biden Justice Department how to sabotage Catholicism.
The FBI, under Biden, conducted a spy operation on traditional Catholics. It did not monitor dissident Catholics who are pro-abortion. No, it only went after those who were—in its own words—“pro life,” “pro-family,” and who “support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction.” They were literally called “domestic terrorists.”
Guess who the Biden FBI leaned on for advice? SPLC. To be sure, there were some FBI agents who warned against using SPLC as a reliable source, but they were overruled. The FBI-SPLC connection was aimed at spying on traditional Catholics so they could smear their reputation and thereby undermine their efforts. Just as SPLC “manufactured racism to justify its existence,” it manufactured anti-Catholicism to justify its existence.
A more despicable organization would be hard to find. It was morally bankrupt from the beginning.
SPLC was founded by Morris Dees. He was fired in 2019. According to the Los Angeles Times, some two dozen employees sent a letter to the board of directors before the news broke of Dees’ firing. They said that “internal ‘allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.’”
Perversely, Dees championed himself as the enemy of white supremacy, yet his own people said he was a racist. But now we know he was not alone in hating blacks. To wit: SPLC likes to grease the Klan.
Similarly, Dees was not the only one responsible for eviscerating the integrity of SPLC. He had nothing to do with declaring war on Catholics. That was left to his successors.
SPLC is positive proof that “The fish stinks from the head down.” Lock ‘em up!
