Earlier this year, Montgomery’s Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) received backlash from conservatives after labeling certain parental rights organizations on their “hate map,” alongside the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and neo-Nazis.
The SPLC is a left-wing activist organization that focuses primarily on litigation. However, it also purports to categorize hate and extremist groups on its “hate map” and has a history of working with federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.
The organization has long been accused of tarnishing conservative and libertarian organizations by falsely labeling them as hate and extremist groups.
According to the SPLC’s website, many groups the organization monitors are antisemitic. These include white supremacist groups but also predominantly black organizations like the Nation of Islam and Black Israelites.
But currently missing from the list are leftist organizations admitting “solidarity with Palestine” following Saturday’s terrorist attack in Israel. The attack occurred when militants with the terrorist organization Hamas fired rockets and raided multiple towns near the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, The Federalist reported that the SPLC refused to respond when asked whether it intended to designate organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Black Lives Matter Chicago and Black Lives Matter Los Angeles as hate groups for taking the side of the Palestinians following the attacks.
Meanwhile, two U.S. Senators are pressing the FBI to sever its relationship with the SPLC, which they say is an unreliable source of information.
U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, condemned the federal law enforcement organization for still using the SPLC to obtain data about hate and extremist groups in the United States.
Earlier this year, the SPLC recommended that the FBI spy on and infiltrate traditionalist Catholic organizations, which brought national attention to the relationship between the activist group and the law enforcement organization.
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