Southern Poverty Law Center overuses 'extremism': Jon Gabriel

Angry protesters shouted down an eminent scholar and sent a female professor to the hospital.

A crazed gunman entered a D.C. public policy shop and shot an employee before being disarmed.

Someone mailed a suspicious white powder to a Scottsdale advocacy group, partially closing the office while a Hazmat team tested employees who had been exposed.

The victims in each case were targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC is a non-profit heralded for its noble history defending civil rights. Founded in 1971, the Montgomery, Ala. legal advocacy organization sued the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups in the South on behalf of victims. Big settlements and harsh sanctions were levied against the racist organizations, successfully shuttering some and scaring off many others.

But by 1986, these groups had rapidly declined. The SPLC could have declared “mission accomplished.” But since funds were still coming in, they declared a new mission statement. No longer would they fight Grand Wizards and Jim Crow, but turned instead to an endlessly expanding target of “extremism.” The change in goals was so stark, the entire legal staff resigned.

The group’s website now hosts a Hatewatch vertical, a Hate Map, and offers a glossy magazine titled The Year in Hate and Extremism. The publication’s most recent cover features a yelling Donald Trump with a confederate flag in the background.

Fighting extremism in Trump's America: Column

This is what a JCC bomb threat feels like: Voices

The fact that the presidential choice of 63 million Americans is equated with a lynch mob skulking around Dixie shows how far the SPLC has strayed from its roots. Half the country can now be declared hate-filled extremists if this group is allowed to define the terms.

And those targeted by the SPLC face dangerous consequences.

In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council carrying a pistol, nearly 100 rounds of ammo and several Chick-fil-A sandwiches. The FRC (and the fast food company’s CEO) opposed same-sex marriage — just as President Barack Obama did that year.

Corkins shot one employee but told authorities his goal was to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.” Why did he target the FRC? “Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” Corkins said. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that."

Another religious liberty group, Alliance Defending Freedom, works “to preserve and defend our most cherished birthright – religious freedom.” In February, a suspicious powder was mailed to their Scottsdale headquarters. Fire crews evacuated the mail room while two people who had been exposed were evaluated and released. Two weeks after the incident, SPLC listed Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media 

We all need to scrap identity politics: Column

Charles Murray, a best-selling author and political scientist with the American Enterprise Institute, was preparing to give a lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont. Hundreds of students disrupted the event, forcing Murray to flee. The mob surrounded and jumped on the car to prevent him from leaving the campus. Middlebury professor Allison Stranger was roughed up in the melee.

Here’s the lede written by the Associated Press on the incident: “A libertarian author who has been called a white nationalist said college students who protested his guest lecture this week were ‘scary.’” And who called Murray a “white nationalist?” The SPLC.

In an environment of escalating political rhetoric and violent protest, groups on both sides of the aisle should think twice before labeling those who disagree with them hateful extremists. Let’s leave these terms to the truly execrable; otherwise, anyone engaged in activism could be targets in a much uglier future.

Jon Gabriel, a Mesa resident, is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, where this piece was first published. Follow him on Twitter at @exjon.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check our submission guidelines.