A Letter to the Media on the Southern Poverty Law Center
L. Brent Bozell III, et al, Family Research Council, September 6, 2017
September 6, 2017
Dear Members of the Media:
We are writing to you as individuals or as representatives of organizations who are deeply troubled by several recent examples of the media’s use of data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a “hate group” label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it.
The fifth anniversary has just passed of the terrorist event for which the SPLC’s hate map and website were used to target its victims for political assassination. The following facts were established in the record of a federal court case. On August 15, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the Family Research Council offices in Washington, D.C. and shot and badly wounded its building manager, Leo Johnson, who stopped his intended killing spree. According to his own statements to the FBI, Corkins intended to kill everyone in the building, and then go on to terrorize additional organizations.
That day, Corkins carried both the means to carry out this act of terrorism and a list of additional targets. The U.S. Attorney stated in federal court that Corkins targeted FRC and the additional targets by using the SPLC website’s “Hate Map.” On February 6, 2013, Corkins pleaded guilty to three felonies, and became the first person convicted of violating the District of Columbia’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 2002.
We believe the media outlets that have cited the SPLC in recent days have not intended to target mainstream political groups for violent attack, but by recklessly linking the Charlottesville melee to the mainstream groups named on the SPLC website – those that advocate in the courts, the halls of Congress, and the press for the protection of conventional, Judeo-Christian values – we are left to wonder if another Floyd Lee Corkins will soon be incited to violence by this incendiary information.
The SPLC is an attack dog of the political left. Having evolved from laudable origins battling the Klan in the 1970’s, the SPLC has realized the profitability of defamation, churning out fundraising letters, and publishing “hit pieces” on conservatives to promote its agenda and pad its substantial endowment (of $319 million). Anyone who opposes them, including many Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and traditional conservatives is slandered and slapped with the “extremist” label or even worse, their “hate group” designation.3 At one point, the SPLC even added Dr. Ben Carson to its “extremist” list because of his biblical views (and only took him off the list after public outcry).
To associate public interest law firms and think tanks with neo-Nazis and the KKK is unconscionable, and represents the height of irresponsible journalism. All reputable news organizations should immediately stop using the SPLC’s descriptions of individuals and organizations based on its obvious political prejudices.
Laird Wilcox, one of America’s foremost genuine experts on political extremist organizations, has said of the SPLC: “What they do is a kind of bullying and stalking. They pick people who are vulnerable in terms of public opinion and simply destroy them.” Comparing his research to the SPLC group lists, Wilcox concluded that SPLC’s work was completely unreliable.
Writing at Harper’s, journalist Ken Silverstein also noted how fast and loose the SPLC plays with derogatory labels like “hate” and “extremism:” “In doing so, the SPLC shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people.”
There are many others who agree with this determination and have raised questions about the SPLC. On October 18, 2013, the Secretary of the Army, John McHugh, a former member of the House of Representatives, disassociated his service from the use of SPLC materials on two occasions. He wrote that “[m]edia accounts have highlighted instances of Army instructors supplementing programs of instruction and including information of material that is inaccurate, objectionable and otherwise inconsistent with current Army policy.” Furthermore, in March 2014, the FBI removed the SPLC as a “trusted resource” from its Hate Crimes resources page.7 For years, experts and journalists have cast doubt on the integrity of the SPLC’s methodology and the motives of its founder, Morris Dees.
Finally, we will leave you with the observations of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel who had a great deal to say about the SPLC at an event in December, 2016. The SPLC attacked numerous critics of radical Islam in one of its recent publications, “A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” but the seventh profile was particularly disturbing. In it, the SPLC slandered human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who has experienced the violent and misogynistic side of Islam firsthand. The first sentence of the two-page section defaming her stated, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born activist who says she endured female genital mutilation and fled civil wars and an arranged marriage in Africa.”
Ambassador Dermer was appalled by the attack launched upon Hirsi Ali by the SPLC. He made these observations about the SPLC at the end of a longer address to the Center for Security Policy on December 13, 2016 in New York City:
But the biggest shock of all came when I saw a name on that [SPLC] list of someone I regard as a hero – Ayaan Hirsi Ali. For those of you who do not know Ayaan, she was the Dutch parliamentarian who in 2004 produced a film with Theo Van Gogh called Submission, which focused on the oppression of women in the Muslim world. Because of that film, Van Gogh was assassinated by a fanatic Muslim and Ayaan was forced into hiding. She has had to live with death threats and under constant protection ever since.
Yet rather than cower in anonymity, Ayaan writes books, publishes articles, makes speeches and fights for her ideas – in particular the need for sweeping reform in the Muslim world.
Today, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the world’s great champions of freedom, pluralism and tolerance.
And every self-respecting group that claims to value any of those things should be defending her not defaming her.
Yet in an Orwellian inversion of reality, a woman whose life is threatened every day by extremist Muslims is labeled by the SPLC an anti-Muslim extremist.
Have those who put Ayaan on that list no shame? Have they no decency?
The SPLC and others who asked me not to come here tonight claim to support free and open debate. But in reality, they seem to want to stifle debate….
Unfortunately, some have amended that famous Voltairian dictum to be “I hate what you say and I will never defend your right to say it.”
I will defame you as an extremist. I will label you a racist and a bigot. I will put you on the blackest of lists that should be reserved for Nazis, for the Klan, and for the true enemies of mankind.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t stand with the defamers and the blacklisters. I stand with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We all should stand with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
For if we do not stand with her, then the values she champions – the same values we cherish – will be under threat and the dangers we face will only grow.
We must not let the defamers and blacklisters succeed . . .
We wonder how the media would react if a corresponding situation arose on the center-right of the political spectrum. For example, let’s assume that congressional debate were raging as to whether or not taxpayers should continue to fund Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million a year from Congress. If a national pro-life advocacy organization were to release a map with caricatures of abortionists and title it, “Here’s Where the Baby Killers are Located in Your State,” would the media run the story? Would it reprint the map and discuss the location of these “pro-death” doctors throughout the news day? Clearly, it would not.
Given the above points, and most alarmingly that the SPLC’s “hate group” propaganda has been linked to two terrorist shootings in the D.C. area, we respectfully request that you cease using the SPLC’s data and its various lists and maps in your reporting.
Sincerely,
L. Brent Bozell III
President
Media Research Center
Lt. General (Ret.) William G. Boykin
Executive Vice President
Family Research Council
Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council
The Honorable Edwin Meese III
Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus
The Heritage Foundation
Frank Gaffney
Founder, President & CEO
Center for Security Policy
Clare Lopez
Vice President for Research & Analysis
Center for Security Policy
Mat Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel
Brad Dacus
President & Counsel
Pacific Justice Institute
Michael Farris
President, CEO and General
Alliance Defending Freedom
Dr. Frank Wright
President and CEO
James Kennedy Ministries
Scott Walter
President
Capital Research Center
David Bozell
President
ForAmerica
William J. Becker, Jr.
President and CEO
Freedom X Law
David Yerushalmi
Robert Muise
Co-Directors
American Freedom Law Center
Brigitte Gabriel
Founder and Chairman
ACT for America
Gary Bauer
President
American Values
Robert Spencer
Director
Jihad Watch
David Barton
Founder and President
WallBuilders
Martin Mawyer
President
Christian Action Network
Tom Trento
Director
The United West
Dr. Michelle Cretella
President
American College of Pediatricians
Dr. Tom Benton
Fellow
American College of Pediatricians
Sandy Rios
Director of Government Affairs
American Family Association
Tim Wildmon
President
American Family Association
Christian Adams
President
Public Interest Legal Foundation
Tracyce Bradfford
President
Texas Eagle Forum
Andrea Lafferty
President
Traditional Values Coalition
Austin Ruse
President
C-FAM (Center for Family and Human Rights)
Professor Ryan Mauro
National Security Analyst
Clarion Project
Dave Wilcox
Executive Director and General Counsel
Immigration Reform Law Institute
Joe Farah
Founder and CEO
WND.com
Arthur Goldberg
Elaine Silodor Berk
Co-Directors
Jewish Institute for Global Awareness
Ann Corcoran
Editor
Refugee Resettlement Watch
Jenny Beth Martin
President and Co-Founder
Tea Party Patriots
James Simpson
Freelance Investigative Journalist
Crisisnow.net
Pamela Geller
Editor in Chief
American Freedom Defense Initiative
Michael Cook
Editor
Mercatornet.com
Richard Viguerie
Chairman
ConservativeHQ.com
George Rasley
Managing Editor
ConservativeHQ.com
Christopher Doyle
Political Consultant and Co-Coordinator
National Task Force for Therapy Equality
Equality And Justice For All
Cathy Hinners
Founder
Dailyrollcall.com
Dr. Jennifer Morse
Founder and President
The Ruth Institute
Cathie Adams
Vice President
Eagle Forum
Tom DeWeese
President
American Policy Center
David Smith
Executive Director
Illinois Family Institute
Becky Gerritson
President
Wetumpka Tea Party
Brian Glicklich
CEO
How Handy is That, LLC
