For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has monetized and weaponized political tensions by labeling anyone right-of-center a "hate group." Now the Montgomery-based organization is facing multiple indictments, accused of stoking the hatred they claimed to fight.
Allen Mendenhall and Tyler O'Neil with the Daily Signal joined "1819 News: The Podcast" last week to discuss the history of the SPLC and the allegations against it.
"In order to hunt the monster, it has to feed the monster. It became a parasite on the very pathology it claimed to cure. So it had to actually create the impression that these groups were spreading when in fact they weren't. At least that's how the allegations run, and that's what I believe to be sincerely true," said Mendenhall, a senior advisor and research fellow with The Heritage Foundation.
"These people are evil, but they're not idiots. And they tried to capture all kinds of institutions, not just corporate America, but they knew where the centers of power were," he continued. "So, they were trying to get training materials into police departments, into law enforcement, into military, into everything that basically is a center of control in society."
RELATED: House Judiciary Committee subpoenas SPLC; CEO Bryan Fair to testify in June
O'Neil explained how the SPLC's "hate map" was used to discredit conservative leaders and groups.
"[The SPLC] ran out of grand dragons to slay and they started putting ever more mainstream groups on their hate map, trading off of their history of suing the Klan into bankruptcy to smear mainstream conservatives," he said. "…When the SPLC puts you on a map with Klan chapters, they are telegraphing that you are spreading the exact same form of hate as America's most notorious hate group… That's why I always say the SPLC engages in routine defamation because what they're doing when they put you on the hate map is they're comparing you to the worst hate group in history."
He continued, "I think it is important for us to continue on this even if the SPLC goes the way of the dodo; their strategy is not going to be eradicated unless they're really held accountable for it."
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