10/06/2025
Coalition For Liberty is pleased that the FBI has finally cut ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a discredited and scandal-ridden group that one of its own employees described as “a highly profitable scam,” and which has been lambasted by progressives as “everything that’s wrong with liberalism.”
In the mid-1980s, the SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear mongering, money-raising machine, resulting in the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985.
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/heritage-explains/what-went-wrong-the-southern-poverty-law-center
SPLC’s “Hatewatch” blog is a perfect example of how this organization has devolved into the standard bearer for Cancel Culture. SPLC says this blog “monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right” and the “activities and events of anti-LGBT organizations.” The so-called “radical right” and “anti-LGBT organizations” SPLC has identified include many beloved, respected, and mainstream conservative and religious organizations and individuals, such as Ben Carson, Heritage Foundation, Dennis Prager, PragerU, The Federalist Society, Franklin Graham, Catholic Medical Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Heritage Action, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Liberty Counsel, Pacific Justice Institute, The Leadership Institute, First Liberty Institute, Ruth Institute, European Center for Law and Justice, Alaska Family Council, Florida Family Policy Council, Texas Values, and Homeschool Legal Defense Association, to name just a few.
Predictably, this has inspired violence. Floyd Corkins cited SPLC as motivation for his attempted mass murder at the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012. He told investigators that he “had chosen the research council as his target after finding it listed as an anti-gay group on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center” and that he “planned to stride into the building and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many as possible.”https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/111227/documents/HHRG-117-JU08-20210224-SD012.pdf
In addition, students cited SPLC as a reason they rioted and assaulted a female professor at Middlebury College in 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/middlebury-engages-soul-searching-after-speech-shouted-down-and-professor-attacked
In 2023, the SPLC added Moms For Liberty to the Hatewatch list, setting off a coordinated smear campaign among the left-wing media that led to group members being targetted for harassment and death threats. https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/10/exclusive-moms-for-liberty-undaunted-by-death-threats-being-treated-as-subhuman-after-splc-attack/
When government agencies listen to far left idealogues, ordinary citizens wind up being targetted for exercising their First Amendment Rights. In 2021 the DOJ labeled parents, who were concerned over excessive shut downs and controversial curricula, as domestic terrorists. https://www.ifs.org/blog/fbi-targets-outspoken-parents-school-boards-silence-them/ The FBI moving away from groups like the SPLC will greatly reduce the risk of this sort of thing ever happening again.
Once again, Coalition For Liberty applauds this move. Cancel Culture has no place in law enforcement, state or federal, and groups like the SPLC need to be relegated to the ash heap of history. This move is a step in the right direction on both fronts.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-cuts-ties-with-civil-rights-group-southern-poverty-law-center-2025-10-03/
The FBI has cut ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks extremist groups, after conservatives criticized the nonprofit for including slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's organization on its list of hate groups.
