The biggest takeaway from a House Judiciary subcommittee meeting this week was the exposure it brought to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Rep. Mark Harris (R-North Carolina) said on Washington Watch Tuesday.
“It was so important to expose what the Southern Poverty Law Center is all about, and it really exposed how they are really trying to stop Christians,” he said.
The SPLC was founded in the 1970s to to fight Jim Crow laws, and defend black Americans, in the Deep South.
Many decades later, long after that mission went away, many say the SPLC’s rhetoric has lit the fuse for increasing violence against conservatives and mainstream Christian beliefs.
The main culprit at the SPLC is its infamous “Hate Map." Across the country, it might list a self-described Neo-Nazi in Kansas and a group of racist Aryans in Idaho. It also lists, right beside them, right-leaning groups that oppose abortion, homosexuality, Critical Race Theory, transgender lifestyle recruiting and education involvement, and more.
Many of these liberal initiatives are funded with taxpayer dollars.
Ending a partnership under the Biden administration, FBI Director Kash Patel called the Hate Map a “partisan smear machine” this year when the Bureau severed ties with the SPLC.
The hate map was the inspiration for Floyd Lee Corkins II, who fired shots inside the Washington, D.C., headquarters of Family Research Council in 2012.
There were no deaths, but an unarmed security guard was injured, and Corkins later told FBI agents the map led him to the FRC offices.
“Even in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you could easily make that link," Harris told show host Jody Hice. "Then of course, you all know what happened at FRC as a result of SPLC's dangerous, dangerous statements that they put out there."
FRC President Tony Perkins was among the witnesses to testify in the hearing.
Pointing out how the "Hate Map" is used as a tool against the Left's political enemies, Perkins told lawmakers the SPLC's goal is to "silence political and cultural opponents," not to fight violence.
Even though Corkins plainly admitted on video he was influenced by the SPLC’s hate map, FRC is targeted by the SPLC even today.
Other witnesses who appeared were Andrew Sypher, an executive with Kirk’s Turning Point USA; Tyler O’Neil, editor of The Daily Signal; and Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) had been targeted by the SPLC when he was critically injured after being shot during a practice for the annual Congressional baseball game.
So, too, was Kirk when alleged shooter Tyler Robinson took his life.
Kirk’s name appeared many times in SPLC “Hatewatch” articles with coverage focusing on his leadership of TPUSA and activities such as the “Professor Watchlist,” which the SPLC characterized as part of efforts to monitor and target educators with opposing views.
After the Scalise shooting, it was learned that alleged shooter James T. Hodgkinson, who had volunteered for Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 presidential campaign, was carrying a list of six members of Congress in his pocket at the time of his crime.
It was also learned that he had “liked” the SPLC on his Facebook page, along with other leftist organizations such as Media Matters and MoveOn.org.
Back in his congressional testimony, Perkins recalled how the FRC security guard, who was wounded by Corkins, could have shot him but did not. The reason he didn't, Perkins said, is he knew God didn't want him to take the young man's life.
"That kind of restraint, the belief that life is sacred," Perkins stated, "is what the SPLC refuses to acknowledge in the very people it labels as dangerous."
More about the ‘who’ than the ‘what’
“The issue is not what they say, the fact that they have a map. It's who uses the map and amplifies their voice. The government should not be using an advocacy organization that has a left-wing ideology or a right-wing, for that matter. It should be a neutral, peer-reviewed criteria for elevating a standard of what they call as a hate group,” Perkins told the committee.
Most people don’t understand the connections between the SPLC and the federal government, Perkins told Hice.
State governments and media have also used the SPLC to identify late, leaving individuals and groups in the position of having to defend themselves and their beliefs just because they disagreed with the SPLC.
“We actually have law enforcement that has utilized that list,” Perkins said.
In addition to the hate map, the SPLC is active in public schools through an education initiative it calls “Learning for Justice” which distributes magazines, lesson plans and other resources. The materials have reached “more than 400,000 educators nationwide,” the group says.
“Their ideology is being used in our public schools, again, supposedly to be this neutral viewpoint on these issues when, in fact, it's a leftist ideology,” Perkins said.
