In a statement to The Daily Signal, the FBI announced Friday it has severed all ties with the SPLC because of its “Hate Map” that targets right-leaning conservative organizations.
One of those organizations is Turning Point USA, led by founder Charlie Kirk, until he was assassinated Sept. 10 at Utah State University.
Kirk’s murder, which has been celebrated and justified by Democrats, is likely a reason Patel took action this week to distance the FBI from the the SPLC. He also announced the same action against the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, which targeted Kirk, too.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Director Patel told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Their so-called hate map has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.”
Before President Trump took office in January, the SPLC was enjoying a close and cozy partnership with the Biden administration. A detailed New York Post article describes how the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice shared crime data with the SPLC and relied on the SPLC for training its attorneys on racial issues and hate crimes, elections and election law, and LGBT rights.
The Alabama-based SPLC was founded in the 1970s by attorney Morris Dees to help blacks fight for their legal rights in the post-Jim Crow South. At the same time the SPLC said it is fighting “white supremacy” and inequality, however, Dees was forced out in 2019 amid complaints that black employees were mistreated and went underpaid, and females were sexually harassed and punished for speaking out.
Long before his departure, the non-profit had transformed into a neo-Marxist watchdog best known for its nationwide “Hate Map” that documents dangerous far-right groups, such as Neo-Nazi groups. Mirroring the Far Left’s view that conservatives are Nazis and fascists, prominent right-leaning people and organizations are on the “Hate Map” listed alongside literal Klansmen.
American Family Association, the parent organization of American Family News, has been listed on the SPLC website for decades.
“The SPLC has been doing this for years in misrepresenting the views of Christian groups like American Family Association,” Ed Vitagliano, an AFA vice president, tells AFN.
Sandy Rios is a former AFR radio host and now a part-time podcaster. She is mentioned by name in the SPLC’s complaint about AFA but also recalls an SPLC article that targeted her and other right-learning female conservatives.
“They had a list for women, which I was on with Judge Janine and Laura Ingram, about 10 of us,” she says. “We were ‘Women Against Islam,’ and they used our photos and they put our geographical location.”
The SPLC’s most-famous pushback over its “Hate Map” came in 2012 after gunman Floyd Corkins attacked the Family Research Council’s office in Washington, D.C. In a recorded FBI interview, Corkins was asked by agents how he targeted FRC.
“It was, uh, Southern Poverty Law,” he answered. “It lists, uh, anti-gay groups. I found them online.”
In an X post reacting to Patel’s announcement, FRC president Tony Perkins praised the decision in light of the FRC attack. He called the SPLC “a hate group of the worst kind” for comparing FRC to the KKK.
“No credible law enforcement agencies should be associated with them,” he wrote.
