That’s why the Southern Poverty Law Center is being exposed by the Republican-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on Washington Watch Thursday.
Many say the SPLC’s rhetoric has lit the fuse for increasing violence against conservatives and Christian thought, particularly with its infamous “hate map,” which lists and details groups that call out left-wing culture such as abortion, Critical Race Theory, transgender lifestyle recruiting and education involvement and more.
Many of these liberal initiatives are funded with taxpayer dollars.
The shining example is the SPLC’s hate map, which FBI Director Kash Patel called a “partisan smear machine” as the Bureau severed ties with the SPLC earlier this year.
Among the more than 1,300 groups listed on the latest hate map are FRC, Mom’s for Liberty, Eagle Forum and American Family Association, the parent organization for American Family News.
The hate map was the inspiration for Floyd Lee Corkins II, who fired shots inside the Washington, D.C., headquarters of Family Research Council in 2012.
There were no deaths, but an unarmed security guard was injured, and Corkins later told FBI agents (pictured at left) the map led him to the FRC offices.
The purpose of the hearing is to expose relationships between the SPLC and government agencies, Roy told show host Tony Perkins.
“Anybody who loves and is familiar with FRC knows what Southern Poverty Law Center meant with respect to the attack here over a decade ago, here in this building. And now we've seen the connection to what happened with Charlie Kirk and the extent to which crosshairs are put on you,” Roy said. “Heck, my name is now getting put in the crosshairs because I'm daring to call out the Islamification of America.”
Perkins, the FRC president, will be among the witnesses called at the hearing.
One goal of the hearing will be to connect the dots on how SPLC receives some of its funding, Roy said.
Officially, SPLC, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, gets its funding from donations, grants and other philanthropic support.
Gray areas exist in honoraria or token payments extended to SPLC and other left-wing groups from some federal government sources, watchdog groups have reported.
“What we're going to do in this hearing is expose that and demonstrate what's actually happening,” Roy said.
The problem of taxpayer funding for extremist left causes isn’t only about SPLC, Roy said. Instead, the pie is crowded with fingers from “a vast array of networks that are funding all of it -- the Soros operation, Arabella, Islamification funding, the open borders groups, the NGOs, the United Nations.”
All these groups are united in one goal.
“It’s your taxpayer dollars, all of it coming together in this vast network to have a red-green alliance where you've got the Marxists and the Islamists who want to take our country over,” Roy said. “It’s all related. SPLC is at the center of it; Antifa is at the center of it. All of these groups need to be exposed, and we’re going to be doing that next week.”
