The Southern Poverty Law Center is supposedly an expert on targeting hate groups. We've exposed how they are not great at their jobs. Instead of making us aware of actual hate, too often the group targets organizations that protect religious freedom and believe in traditional marriage.
Case in point, how on earth are Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council hate groups? If anything, they are targets of hate. The FRC had an extremely close call in 2012 when an armed suspect arrived at their office with the intent to kill. But, the SPLC continues to place groups like them on their hate map and the media continues to fall for it and report it as fact.
Oh, and did I mention the SPLC labeled Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "extremist?" She's apparently guilty of speaking out against Islamic extremism.
Dr. Carol Swain, a former professor at Vanderbilt University, knows SPLC's game all too well. In an interview with Tony Perkins last week, she explained that the group may have originally had good intentions, but it slowly but surely began to engage in "mission creep." Now, she said, the SPLC is nothing more than a tool of the radical Left.
Swain became one of the SPLC's enemies because a critical op-ed she wrote exposing how the organization had lost its way. She also dared to offer a positive review on a documentary called "A Conversation about Race," which the SPLC claims was made by a racist filmmaker.
"It was written by a guy that the SPLC said was a bigot. He had criticized President Obama," Swain explained to Perkins. "I did give the film a glowing review and the reason I did is, as a professor, I thought it would be great for classroom use."
Swain also shared her story with Fox News's Tucker Carlson, who could only laugh when he learned that the SPLC had attacked her as an "apologist for white supremacists."