FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy condemned the Biden administration Friday over reports that it reached out to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which critics call a far-left smear factory, for advice on combating the “domestic terrorism threat.”
“This is the same organization that added parental rights organizations to its so-called ‘hate map,’” Ramaswamy told The Daily Signal in a written statement. The GOP presidential hopeful was referencing the SPLC’s map plotting mainstream conservative and Christian groups—which it brands “hate groups” or “antigovernment groups”—alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
“The SPLC is a tentacle of the woke-industrial complex,” Ramaswamy added. “I exposed the game in [the book] ‘Woke, Inc.’ Countless companies blacklist law-abiding Americans because nonprofits like SPLC label them members of ‘hate groups.’”
Companies such as Amazon, Eventbrite, and NextDoor have used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” to refuse their services to conservatives.
“The real problem isn’t that SPLC spouts off its nonsense. It’s that powerful companies & institutions take action based on its judgments,” Ramaswamy told The Daily Signal. “This is an invisible force that fuels the spread of woke-infused cancel culture in America.”
Video Shows SPLC Bragging About Advising Biden
On Thursday, The Daily Signal exclusively reported on a video showing SPLC President Margaret Huang bragging in a fall 2021 donor meeting that many agencies in Biden’s administration had approached the SPLC to craft a domestic terrorism strategy.
“I think there’s no question that we are unparalleled in our abilities to track and monitor the hate and extremist groups in the country, and I can tell you that we’ve had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat,” Huang says in the video.
The Biden administration’s ties to the SPLC make Huang’s claim credible, and neither the White House nor any agency involved in the administration’s domestic terrorism strategy denied Huang’s claim.
Biden and his team hosted SPLC leaders and staff at the White House at least 11 times since Biden took office Jan. 20, 2021. The president nominated an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to a federal judgeship.
Last year, the FBI’s Richmond office used the SPLC’s “hate group” list to target “radical-traditional Catholics” in an infamous memo. According to the SPLC’s logic, the entire Roman Catholic Church arguably should be listed as a “hate group” because the center cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church in branding the Ruth Institute a “hate group.”
Earlier this week, the White House touted Vice President Kamala Harris’ meeting “with voting rights leaders.” Among the leaders highlighted was Seth Levi, the SPLC’s chief strategy officer.
SPLC’s Lack of Credibility
As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has taken numerous hits to its credibility, especially on the issue of domestic terrorism.
In 2012, a terrorist gunman used the SPLC “hate map” to target a Christian nonprofit in the nation’s capital, the Family Research Council. He planned to shoot everyone in the council’s headquarters, but the building manager successfully foiled his plan. Although the SPLC condemned the attack, it kept FRC on its map.
Last March, police arrested an SPLC attorney at a riot in Atlanta that involved the use of Molotov cocktails, and he faces domestic terrorism charges. The SPLC also has a long track record of carrying water for Antifa, a violent extremist group.
Critics on both the Right and the Left long have accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of exaggerating hate to scare donors into ponying up cash. In 2019, amid a racial discimination and sexual harassment scandal, a former employee called the SPLC’s “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
In 2018, the SPLC paid $3.4 million to settle a defamation lawsuit after it branded a Muslim reformer an “anti-Muslim extremist.” It currently faces another defamation lawsuit for branding an immigration reform organization an “anti-immigrant hate group.”
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