First, thanks for the sources. It was a pleasant surprise considering how this thread has gone.
To address some of what was brought up:
The SPLC was founded by a leftist who sought out leftist donors to enrich himself.
This is essentially little more than a variant on the genetic fallacy. It doesn’t actually show that the organizations on their hate list don’t deserve to be there. I could just as easily dismiss all the Daily Caller, National Review, and FOX News say because their customers tend to be conservative and their message tends to cater to that audience.
For example, based on the report, if you state that kids do best when raised by a mom and dad (as opposed to two moms or two dads), you are propagating a known falsehood.
I believe I’ve already hinted once or twice that I find some of what the SPLC says worrying, and this is actually what I was referencing. Some of their motivations for labelling a group as a hate group go too far. I think I remember one group who, among the various complaints, was criticized for what basically amounted to evangelization. While the SPLC does seem to have a threshold before a group becomes an actual hate group, the fact that they sometimes descend into broad, sometimes Christian ideas, is worrying.
The SPLC has also labeled Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, the John Birch Society, and LewRockwell[.]com as hate groups in 2015 even though they are “nonviolent”
I wish to again restate that I don’t see the point in requiring violence to be considered hateful. The Bible condemns people for considerably less. It also ignores the nonviolent ways hate affects people, whether that be psychological or, such as some LGBT teenagers find out, estrangement from family, including a source of income.
Walker also points out that the SPLC also has a bad habit of duplicating certain organizations
This is fair, and I’ve noticed it as well. They seem to go by chapter rather than organization, which obviously inflates the numbers. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the labelling is wrong so much that the aggregated statistics are more doom-and-gloom than necessary.
As for the NR article, I’m not bothering. What few actual claims make it through the name calling are either too vague to make use of or given without easy reference, and I’m sick of spending more of my time doing people’s homework for them. (As you can probably guess, the antics in this thread have seriously worn down my patience.)
Frankly, the Politico article isn’t much better, spending most of its time painting a picture of the SPLC’s founder, office, and critics than getting into any actually bad labels. The one thing that stuck out was the mention of the Center for Immigration Studies, and well, the SPLC
gave a good reason for that.
