You know those websites listing celebrities you thought were dead but are still around? The Southern Poverty Law Center might as well have been on such a list.
The “civil rights” group has been lying low for some time, since the eruption of multiple humiliating scandals involving racism and sexual harassment that led to the firing of most of the group’s leadership, including founder Morris Dees.
The appearance of its annual “hate map” was months late, raising suspicions that there were changes afoot. No such luck — the latest anathema was just pronounced. (Google it yourself, if you want to see it.)
The Center for Immigration Studies is still there, of course; after operating for three decades, we graduated to “hate group” status right after Trump’s election in 2016 — coincidentally.
The other usual targets are still there as well: Alliance Defending Freedom, Center for Security Policy, Family Research Council, etc.
But in what I assume is a bid to goose donations (and add to its half-billion-dollar hoard of cash), the SPLC has added parents’-rights groups like Moms for Liberty to the hate map. (Tyler O’Neil, author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Daily Signal’s indefatigable SPLC-watcher, is on the case.)
But the SPLC may be facing an unprecedented challenge. Earlier this year, a defamation lawsuit against it for a “hate group” designation was, for the first time ever, not dismissed and has made it to the discovery stage. . . .