Cross Word

Unraveling the Southern Poverty Law Center: From Civil Rights Champion to Controversial Activist

• Michele McAloon

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Can a civil rights icon lose its way? That's the provocative question we tackle as we dive deep into the Southern Poverty Law Center's journey from revered champion of justice to a polarizing force in activism. We're joined by Tyler O'Neill, managing editor of the Daily Signal and insightful author of "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center." Tyler unveils the SPLC's transformation under Morris Dees, from its initial noble victories against the Ku Klux Klan to its controversial expansion that targets mainstream conservative groups. Through Tyler's lens, we explore the potential motivations behind this evolution and the role money and power might play in reshaping the organization's mission.

Our discussion also brings to light the contentious labeling of groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council as hate organizations by the SPLC. Examining a chilling incident where the Family Research Council was victimized in a violent attack, influenced by the SPLC's hate map, we confront the troubling intersections between activism and real-world violence. Listen as we dissect the ongoing tensions between social conservatives and LGBTQ advocacy, while delving into the complex dynamics that fuel these clashes. Prepare for a thought-provoking dialogue that challenges perceptions and encourages critical thinking about the motives of influential entities.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and I am your host, Michelle McAloon, and today we have the one and only Tyler O'Neill from the Daily Signal. Tyler O'Neill, where he's the managing editor of the Daily Signal, is an author of two books Making Hate Pay, the Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Wokedopus, the Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government, and both these books are with Bomandir. His last book will be out in January, so he is very much a man in the middle of everything that is happening. And, if you've been listening to me recently, we've talked to a number of Daily Signal guests and they really are commenting on the cultural issues of the day, and I urge you to go and find their podcast, find their videos, find their literature. And it's the Daily Signal. Welcome, Tyler.

Speaker 2:

Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Michelle.

Speaker 1:

Oh, thanks for taking time out of this very, very busy season. But we're here to talk about something today that I think is very important and shows really an inside story of money and corruption, and that is the Southern Poverty Law Center and it is out of Birmingham, alabama, and actually it kind of breaks my heart a little bit because I am an Alabama girl and they started off with very noble cause and devolved into something very different, but actually not unexpected when you have the confluence of money and power. Can you tell us a little bit what is the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the Southern Poverty Law Center, as you noted, began as a civil rights organization in the South. It was the brainchild of a man by the name of Morris Dees who was a veteran fundraiser. He was really excellent at raising money and he got his big boost in the 1972 George McGovern campaign. So he took the donor list that he developed for that and the donor list that he developed for the 1976 Jimmy Carter race and translated those donors into donors for the Southern Poverty Law Center. So we're talking about a left-wing tilt from the beginning, but an organization that at the start was focused on providing legal help for those in the South who were not able to afford it. And this was important because you know they got people off of death row who had been falsely convicted of rape. They got people you know they represented a reverse racism case where white people had been discriminated against by black people. They did the kind of both sides noble work that you expect from an organization like this. But Morris Dees had personal connections. His uncle was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and this again is at a time in the 1970s it's established 1980s.

Speaker 2:

Morris Dees really takes the SPLC in the direction of suing Klan groups, and these Klan groups are essentially paper tigers. At this point the Klans are thankfully marginalized. The SPLC lawyers come out and say that suing these groups into bankruptcy is like shooting fish in a barrel, because they barely have enough money to represent themselves. And of course that's a wonderful thing that the Klan was weak at the time and that the SPLC was able to drive the nail into the coffin. That's still a positive thing. But what we start to see is that the SPLC goes to their donors and says we got a multimillion dollar judgment, we shut down a Klan chapter and the donors send in a lot of money, right, because they think what a noble organization. The SPLC gets millions of dollars in donations.

Speaker 2:

Meanwhile, the bereaved mother who's supposed to be getting this multimillion dollar settlement her name is Bula Mae Donald. How much does she get? She gets 50 grand and with that 50 grand, that is all that the Klan group has to its name. So 50 grand, that's money that she can use, right. Well, where does she end up using it? She uses it to pay off a loan from none other than the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center had her house, so she pays off a loan to the SPLC, so she's out the money that she was given from the court. Meanwhile the SPLC has millions of dollars. The SPLC decides they want to make a movie about this case and they get a movie deal. Meanwhile Bula Mae Donald also wants to make a movie about the case and she is shunted aside.

Speaker 2:

See some of this corruption. Where it's about the SPLC, it's about them making money, it's about them telling the story, and the woman who actually suffered the loss of her son is essentially relegated to a second-class citizen. So the SPLC it makes beaucoup bucks by going after the Klan, because everybody hates the Klan, because this is the 1980s and we've realized the evil of the Klan, and so the SPLC rakes in its money. And then eventually they run out of grand dragons to slay and because the Klan is a spent force, a paper tiger, and so they start going after ever more mainstream groups that they can tie to racism, hatred, the Klan and this suggestion that there might be a terror threat. So first they go after skinheads, then they go after others and by the early 2000s they're going after conservatives who are advocating for a crackdown on the border because they're concerned about illegal immigration, and so you get these conservative activists who want the laws already on the books to be enforced. They end up on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan because they disagree with the SPLC's preferred strategy on solving the border crisis, and then it just stonewalls. It just builds from there, it snowballs from there.

Speaker 2:

So what you have in 2012, the SPLC adds social conservative organizations to the hate map. No, no, no, sorry, it's 2010. They add the Family Research Council to their hate map Again, a hate map that has chapters of the Ku Klux Klan on it. They eventually add Alliance Defending Freedom to the map. But these social conservative organizations they get branded anti-LGBTQ hate groups, or actually at the time it was just LGBT. The later letters and plus come later. But the Family Research Council actually experiences a terrorist attack because a pro-LGBT activist sees the SPLC hate map and goes and tries to shoot up everyone in the building and he has a bag of Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches and he was going to take a Chick-fil-A sandwich and smear a Chick-fil-A sandwich into the face of every one of his victims. And this was when Chick-fil-A was being condemned for Chick-fil-A sandwich into the face of every one of his victims. And this was when Chick-fil-A was being condemned for Chick-fil-Hate.

Speaker 2:

They were funding quote unquote hate groups. They've still been attacked by the left here and there for funding the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, because the Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a Christian organization that doesn't buy into the LGBT ideology. And so they say, like we don't want males competing in women's sports, for instance, and we don't want to open our bathrooms and changing rooms that are for women to biological males who claim to be women, and that's not out of any animus, that's just because they believe in biology and because that's the easiest way to protect women in these spaces. Anyway, this LGBT movement, this woke movement that the SPLC starts, it starts growing and growing. So the hate accusations are highly profitable scam and it's a really useful tool for the SPLC and for the left generally, because the SPLC can say look, hate is growing across the United States. You need to give us money because we're monitoring hate, we are the number one organization.

Speaker 2:

And then what they also do is they put on their hate map groups that oppose the SPLC's agenda. So the SPLC also has an arm called Learning for Justice. It was called Teaching Tolerance Apparently. That wasn't woke enough, so they changed the name to Learning for Justice. And this arm pushes critical race theory. It pushes transgender orthodoxy. It pushes a lot of things in schools race theory. It pushes transgender orthodoxy. It pushes a lot of things in schools. And it used to brag about sending its magazine to hundreds of schools across the country. Eventually, that language disappeared from their website. I can't imagine why.

Speaker 2:

And so the SPLC puts you on the hate map if you disagree with their preferred policy agendas and their allies' policy agendas. So they've worked for a long time with the Council on American Islamic Relations, a group called CARE that brags that it's the biggest Muslim group in the United States and it has really disturbing ties early in its own history, in CARE's history, to terrorist funding networks outside the US. And they never like it when this is brought up. And, by the way, they've said that and this is true that they were an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror funding case. Unindicted co-conspirator does not mean that they were specifically involved in terror funding, it's a term of art, but at the same time it is true that that is the case and they constantly push against this narrative.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, the SPLC has anti-Muslim hate groups on the hate map and these often are the groups that warned against radical Islamic terror ideology, which does exist in the United States, and CARE is constantly pushing and fighting against that being exposed. And so the SPLC and CARE have this mutually beneficial relationship where the SPLC will demonize anybody who's criticizing radical Islam and that helps CARE and CARE will backpack on that. Care has released reports where they shame charitable organizations for donating to the anti-Muslim hate group alliance and all this stuff. So it's all very activist. The SPLC is using the hate group smear to silence its opponents, and nothing revealed this more than in 2023. Last year, when they added parental rights organizations to the hate map yeah, the Moms for Liberty across the country. And it's brilliant for their fundraising team because they can say hate ballooned this year. There's so much hate across the country and we're the ones watching it, so you need to give to us. But then it's also very useful for these ideologically driven people who want their political agenda to be implemented forever to say oh, if you dare speak up against us, we're going to put you on the map with the KKK. People are going to think that you're a terror threat, so they're not going to want to give money to you. The federal government is going to blacklist you if we get our way and this is what we've seen under the Biden administration.

Speaker 2:

The FBI used the hate map to go after radical traditional Catholics in Virginia. So this was the FBI's Richmond office. According to the FBI national office's narrative, this was only one office. Of course they were working with other FBI offices. We know that. But the FBI national headquarters was. Immediately they rushed. They said this is a bad document, we rescind this. We don't believe this, all of that. But I've spoken to people who have gone to Catholic churches in Virginia who suspect that they were being monitored by the FBI and I don't think the FBI is ever going to confirm or deny this. But this is where we are.

Speaker 2:

The SPLC has multiple White House meetings with the Biden-Harris administration. Biden nominated an SPLC attorney to a top federal judgeship and we know from FOIA documents that the hate map. When the SPLC released their hate map the 2023 one that mentioned Moms for Liberty for the first time they were advising different Biden administration officials about that hate map when it was released. So they reached out to the Department of Justice. They said hey, would you like a briefing? A briefing took place. We don't know whether the FBI or the Department of Justice is going to act on that. We don't know if they already have, but this raises a whole host of alarm bells that people should be aware of. That this organization that makes its bread and butter by demonizing conservatives and by demonizing Catholics and Protestants for the things we believe traditionally Catholics and Protestants for the things we believe traditionally, by the way, like Jews also. Anyway, it's very broad whom they're demonizing. This organization is very close with the halls of power and it also is very heavily funded by the left's dark money network, tyler.

Speaker 1:

what is that? I tell you, that is one of my foremost questions in reading this. Who is donating to these people? Foremost questions in reading this who is donating to these people? I was reading in recent documents that they have believed maybe close to a billion dollars. Where are they getting this money from?

Speaker 2:

So two main answers to that. And I want to be clear that when I talk about the Left's Dark Money Funding Network funding the SPLC, I don't believe that the majority of the SPLC's money comes from them the majority of the SPLC's money and I see I have a Google alert for the SPLC, so I get notified when there's an obituary and someone says in lieu of flowers, give money to the SPLC. And I get a lot of these. So I think what's happening is the SPLC.

Speaker 2:

Morris Dees was a brilliant fundraiser. He found the people on the left who are likely to donate to these causes, and these poor donors are being abused. Essentially, they're being lied to in order to prop up this organization and they're sending a lot of the money, and so that's where I think the money really comes from. But there also are contributions, and these are fairly major contributions. They're kind of a drop in the bucket when you look at the SPLC's endowment, but when it comes to raising questions of influence, I think it's the Open Society Policy Institute, which is one of the organizations set up by George Soros to fund money to activist groups on the left under the Open Society Foundation's umbrella, which George Soros' son, alex Soros, now runs Tides Foundation, which is one of these dark money organizations that sends money everywhere. And the Tides Foundation, by the way, has Palestine Legal, which is a legal outfit that represents pro you know, anti-israel rioters on college campuses. When they have, when they face criminal charges, palestine Legal will be defending them and that's part of the Tides Foundation.

Speaker 1:

So the Tide Foundation? Is this what I just washed my socks in?

Speaker 2:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Very important question though Tides plural, not Tide detergent.

Speaker 2:

Okay, all right, don't boycott Tide, okay, but do be cognizant of if anybody is giving to the Tides Foundation, because that should be a major red flag. And so these organizations have ties not only to the Southern Poverty Law Center and this is moving into woke-topus territory but they're also bankrupting not bankrupting, bankrolling a whole bunch of these woke activist groups that have many ties in the Biden-Harris administration. In the administrative state they're still going to be, you know, fighting to influence policy. But so this influence campaign is vast, and the SPLC is a small part of it.

Speaker 1:

Let me ask you a question. So In the past four years since you've written this book, actually, the SPLC has had some major issues. I believe in 2019 or 20, they fired Morris Deese and his, I guess, whoever it was Richard Cohen who was his co-president or co-chairman.

Speaker 2:

He was the president Morris Deese was the co-founder, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so he resigned. All right, he resigned. And actually I looked at Glassdoor today and Glassdoor only gave a 14% recommendation to go work for this organization because they have had charges of racism, sexism, sexual harassment. I believe this summer they just unionized because 60 of the employees have been fired. What are you hearing about what is going on now in this organization, and is this very ironic, that these people who are supposedly fighting injustice are practicing injustice in their own organization?

Speaker 2:

Yes, no, so it's hard to break all of this down. The scandal in 2019 that led the SPLC to fire Morris Dees led Richard Cohn to step down, also led Jocelyn Benson, who is the Secretary of State in Michigan, to a swing state to formally remove herself from the SPLC's board of directors. She had claimed that she had no longer been on the board since she got elected as secretary of state, but they removed her from the website amid this. So I have questions about that. This scandal traced back decades, and so what we have is early reporting from the 1990s. And then, of course, morris Dees had a very, very public divorce where there were a lot of accusations that he had slept with other women, that he had abused women, that he had abused his position at the SPLC to try to sleep with women. All of these claims are naturally difficult to prove, but these claims are longstanding, and the SPLC also faced longstanding claims that they didn't promote their Black employees, and this is particularly interesting coming from a very liberal organization that presents itself as a civil rights organization. So these two scandals kind of came to a head. I think it was a new generation of employees who were raising a stink about it. That led to the 2019 scandal. Amid that scandal, you had Margaret Huang come in. You had Tina Tchen, who was Michelle Obama's chief of staff, come in to do an internal review, the results of which have still not been shared publicly and the SPLC. Earlier this year, there was a big round of layoffs at the SPLC and, according to the union, it particularly targeted union members, and so the union is accusing the SPLC of union. Add that to the list. So it's like amid that 2019 scandal, that's when the former employee came forward and said the hate accusations are highly profitable scam. Many of us who'd been following the SPLC for a while already knew that, but to have someone from inside say it made a big difference and so we've had this organization. Now they've faced a racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hate for pay and now also union busting scandal, and yet they're still considered by many on the left to be the gold standard on hate. Why is this? It's because they're super useful If anybody on the left wants to demonize Moms for Liberty, and I'm wondering who is convincing the SPLC to add people? Because this year they added an LGB group. They added Gays Against Groomers to the hate map and called them an anti-LGBTQ hate group, but they also added organizations that exist to fight for truth in medicine.

Speaker 2:

What we've seen? The medical industry has been wholly captured by the transgender orthodoxy and pushing gender-affirming care they call it, but these really experimental, damaging interventions to force men to look like women, and they push these things on children or women to look like men. They push these things even on children, even though they have bad side effects and a lot of people have testified. So now there are doctors who are sick and tired of seeing the Academy of Pediatricians, the American Medical Association, buy all this crap. Hook line. The medical, the american medical association buy all this crap, hook line and sinker. And they're they're starting organizations to say no, the best science does not support this insanity. And lo and behold, a few years after those organizations start, they find themselves on the splc hate map. So now you have organizations like what what's SEGAM stand for, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. They're on the hate map now. Do no Harm, which is an organization that just recently published an amazing database of hospitals that are engaging in these horrible treatments on children that will leave them stunted, scarred and infertile. Do no Harm is now on the hate map.

Speaker 2:

I've long been saying that the SPLC is a master at what I call the demonization of dissent. If you dissent from the left's narrative on critical race theory, on gender ideology, on immigration, you get put on the hate map and you get your reputation destroyed. And what happens is, you know, the hate map is a really useful tool for the SPLC because they go to big tech and corporate America and they say you need to cut off anybody on the hate map from your, you know, from your services. And a lot of places do it, like Eventbrite is one of the worst offenders. Amazon used to be one of the worst offenders because they had Amazon Smile, their charity donation platform that just outsourced all of their vetting to the SPLC. And so, if you were Alliance Defending Freedom, for instance, one of the most premier law firms in the country when it comes to representing religious freedom, they've won multiple cases at the Supreme Court the biggest, obviously, jack Phillips, I think. But they also have follow-ups like 303 Creative with Laurie Smith in Colorado.

Speaker 2:

Adf is on the hate map, and so if you want to give money to ADF, you couldn't do it through Amazon Smile Now that program no longer exists but you can't do it through some donor-advised funds because there's this big charitable apparatus and the SPLC knows where to go to these people and say look, this is the hate map.

Speaker 2:

You should cut these people off from any charitable funds. They have a big campaign called Hate is Not Charitable. They work with the big union bank called Amalgamated Bank and this is not something they're hiding. Amalgamated Bank is part of the Hate is Not Charitable campaign and they work to pressure charities and charitable institutions to blacklist anybody who's on the hate map, nevermind that this is essentially, you know, a woke left-wing partisan organ that is all about silencing their opposition and demonizing people. This is, you know. They couldn't care less. These organizations trust the SPLC and they need to not trust the SPLC Like I could scream from the rooftops, because I think the SPLC is one of the worst organizations that exist in this country and they're one of the most nefarious, but they have a big impact.

Speaker 1:

So that's why I wrote the nexus between the FBI and SPLC, which, and, and the whole Catholic thing where they went after the Catholics and I believe it was in. It was only in April of this past year where the FBI has kind of come out and said you know, mea culpa, and they've, and they've rescinded the memo, Right, Was it? And it's recent. Yeah, I tell you all of this, whether it's lawfare, whether it's this kind of nonsense, it undermines the Department of Justice and we in a democracy you need, and especially in a democracy of noisy American people, you need a robust Department of Justice. So you need a robust Department of Justice. So I'm not against the Department of Justice, but boy, their credibility has really been taken out on the carpet lately.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that is exactly right. The nexus is hard to fully pin down. What we have are a lot of insulated incidents, isolated incidents that suggest a broader pattern. So when the SPLC released its 2020, it was called the 2022 hate map, but it was the one they released in 2023. They went to the Department of Justice and they said, can we offer you a briefing? And they got further down and then they did actually have a briefing. What that briefing was we don't have a copy of.

Speaker 2:

What we do know is that their number one talking point with that hate map was that Moms for Liberty posed a threat, that they were the big ad. Splc was leaning in on that and they said these parental rights groups are anti-government extremists. And they put them on the hate map with chapters of the Klan and they're going to the FBI and they're going to the DOJ and the DOJ is meeting with them on this. This we know for certain. What we also know for certain is that the agencies went and this is more from my chapter of the Woktopus about the weaponization of the federal government but these agencies also took as gospel this memo comparing parents to domestic terrorists if they disagreed with COVID policies, if they were opposing critical race theory and gender ideology in schools. I think part of what we're seeing is a milieu, an insulated, bureaucratic milieu, that doesn't know these people, that doesn't know that parents are legitimately frustrated, that thinks that buys the left's propaganda, that this is all rooted in hate and therefore they are willing to believe certain things about the people who disagree with them that are not only false and not only defamatory but also might lead to violence.

Speaker 2:

These sort of claims that the SPLC is making should be laughed at. If anybody at the FBI, if anybody at the DOJ knew just in their circles, knew of a conservative who was angry about their kids being indoctrinated with CRT, or knew of a liberal, this is not an issue that only conservatives care about, right, yeah, and this is not an issue that only white people care about. A lot of people who are really worked up about CRT are the Asian Americans, the Black Americans, who are rightly offended and angry that kids are being told that Black people are inherently oppressed and white people are inherently oppressors and that the way to get ahead that you should reject virtue as a way to get ahead, because that is some form of whiteness it is. It is so beyond the pale what this ideology teaches.

Speaker 2:

I know I keep mentioning it because I think, on one extent, it is legitimately funny that an organization of homosexuals that just opposes the parts of transgender ideology that they say go too far is on a hate map and now branded an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

Speaker 2:

I think that is legitimately funny, but it's also scary because it really I've been screaming from the rooftops about this for years because I see and I predicted that the SPLC would go after parental rights groups, and one of the things that I'm a little bit nervous about is the way that they've been leaning into Project 2025. Yes, I would not put it past them to take the list of everybody on Project 2025, which is about 100 organizations, some of whom are already on the hate map, and add the whole thing to the hate map. I'm not sure if that's going to happen, but I am seriously concerned that they're going to add the Heritage Foundation to the hate map, which for a long time, I thought that would be beyond the pale. The Heritage Foundation is known as being the quintessential bedrock of conservatism in Washington DC. If you put the Heritage Foundation on the hate map, you are so far removed from reality, but they already are.

Speaker 1:

Do you think they've watered down their cause, though? Because if you put too many people on there, when you put Moms for Liberty or the Ruth Institute or a Catholic organization or the Heritage Foundation, at some point people go all right, this is ridiculous, you don't matter anymore. You have talked yourself into oblivion. At this point, what do you?

Speaker 2:

think and knows exactly what's going on. You know it's a laughingstock, but at the same time, most people on the left are consuming only the left's narrative and only the left's media. And so a lot of conservatives they hear the SPLC and they laugh and they say, oh, they have no credibility. But it's like OK, yes, you know that, but how many people in the actual public know that? This is the problem? Is bridging that gap of saying, look, conservatives can laugh at this and say that it doesn't mean anything. Democrats stop celebrating it.

Speaker 2:

Until the administrative state stops working with it, until big tech and corporate America stop taking it seriously, it's still going to have an impact. And you do actually have to say and this is the funny thing in conservative circles I think some people think that I was silly to write the book because everybody knows that the SPLC is corrupt, right, like, why do you need a book about it? But I think it's important to have as much down on paper and to have a resource for everybody and to go to people on the left and say like, look, you're being lied to and I don't know if I was the right messenger for that specifically. No-transcript.

Speaker 1:

Moved the points that I wrote statistics on this and there's 1,430 groups on there. It has grown by 230 groups in the past year and this is crazy intelligence report on. If you go to the SPLC, I think, org website and I've been looking for groups Now most of them are kind of crazy, I admit, and a lot of them are kind of sad. You know it looks they're something out of the 60s and 70s. I've never heard of most of the groups but if you look, antifa's not on there and Antifa in my mind is, and I think most American minds and most American law enforcement minds is it is a radical, violent group.

Speaker 1:

Groups have the right for association. They have the right to speak. They don't have the right to be violent and Antifa is a violent group. They've proven this over and over again. They are a violent group. They've proven this over and over again. They are a violent group. So it just it kind of boggles my mind. Black Lives Matter is not on there. I don't think they are. I think they've moderated their positions and I think they've calmed down a lot so I wouldn't really maybe consider them a hate group. But I mean there's no left groups on there. I was looking up left violent groups on my search, so who knows who's going to be calling me later?

Speaker 2:

on in the day.

Speaker 1:

But I just see who was on this list and it's actually pretty incredible the Moms for Liberty. You may not agree with all of them. I mean it doesn't matter, it doesn't hurt you if you don't agree with them. But they're not these poor ladies. They're not a hate group. They're anything but a hate group. They're trying to spread love and democracy and all that kind of other stuff. So you can have an opinion without being a hater, and most Americans have an opinion. Most Americans are not haters. I'm saying that.

Speaker 2:

Since you mentioned Antifa and BLM or Black Lives Matter not being on there, there is an organization that I've written about called the New Tolerance Campaign, and they have their own hate map that is specifically answering the SPLC's hate map. So I would encourage people to check them out. In Portland you had the Rose City Antifa that was engaged in all that violence over there. They've named them and put them on their own hate map, and so I like the idea of having an alternate resource that actually adds the groups that should be on the SPLC hate map but aren't At the same. Know, when it comes to a lot of the groups, as you were mentioning one of my favorites there, there was a group that was on the hate map for a while called wild man, surplus and herb shop, and this this organization I mean it's it's insane that first off, it was just a guy who ran an herb shop, right, and I think he had like a confederate flag in the shop or something, and maybe he had some weird ideas right, but the notion that he should be on a map with chapters of the clan. They didn't have any proof that he was engaged in any sort of like preparations to do anything bad or like gathering people to hate people. It was all just one guy and his shop and the splc.

Speaker 2:

In I think it was 2018. They sent a reporter to this guy's shop and the the story. You, you gotta find it. It's so fun I wrote it in my book that they say they they act as though this is a huge scandal, that the local community is embracing this hater, and the evidence they have for this is that he performed in the Nutcracker one year in, like a community thing. And it's this guy who, like I don't know, maybe he does have bad ideas, but he's just a guy with a shop. Is he really advocating? Is he really like bringing people together? They have no evidence that he's doing anything really bad and he's on this map with the Klan.

Speaker 1:

It's just crazy.

Speaker 2:

I'm just sitting here, okay, who is your audience for this?

Speaker 1:

Exactly that's what I was kind of thinking too.

Speaker 2:

Only Northern liberals, who are really removed, who, like, see everybody in the South as evil, can really give to an organization like this. And I think that's what's going on. And you have this phenomenon of the elite 1%. That's what Scott Rasmussen. You have this phenomenon of the elite 1%. That's what Scott Rasmussen. He's a really excellent pollster. He's broken down.

Speaker 2:

He found that if you are extremely wealthy, if you live in an urban area and if you have a high degree, a graduate degree, then you are far more likely to believe certain things than most Americans, and some of those things are you want more censorship of disinformation. You think that Americans have too much freedom as opposed to not enough freedom and things like that. And I think that that set is the SPLC's donor class and that's why the SPLC still makes a lot of its money. That's why the SPLC still has its impact is because those people are very hard for conservatives to reach, because conservatives are automatically demonized I mean partially by the SPLC itself, but like if I were to try to give my book to somebody on the donor list, they would probably be like oh, this is trash. So, like you know, it's living in an entirely different world.

Speaker 1:

This book is good that you've written, tyler, because it really brings attention to something that people kind of hear in the background but they don't really think about. But they need to really be thinking about, to actually look and to be very careful of where you are putting your money and where you're putting your donation dollars. And it's Tyler O'Neill. Your book is Making Hate Pay the Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I really encourage people to get this book, to go on the Southern Poverty Law Center website and look at what they are about, especially that program, justice for Tolerance. That's a real interesting program. Or justice in the classroom.

Speaker 2:

Learning for justice.

Speaker 1:

Learning for justice. Yeah, you need to be very aware of what is happening, so yeah, so wow, times are interesting, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, well, thank you so much for having me. You can also follow me on AXE, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Tyler, the number two, o'neill. I'm also on Truth Social with the same handle.

Speaker 1:

All right, tyler, thank you very much. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks again for having me.

Speaker 1:

So, to continue this conversation about the SPLC, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to somebody who's actually on the hate list. This is Dr Jennifer Roebuck Morse of the Ruth Institute, and we're going to talk to her about her experience with the Southern Poverty Law Center and her actually being placed on this list. Dr Morse, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Oh, thanks for having me, Michelle. It's nice to connect with you again.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's great. We connected about five years ago and it's good to have these connections and your program and your institute is doing fabulous.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you, so I congratulate you on that. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Tell us first thing, tell us what is the mission of the Ruth Institute.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so the Ruth Institute is an interfaith international coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love, and we do that by providing people with scientifically sound evidence and carefully reasoned arguments and compelling personal testimonies to show that traditional Christian sexual ethics is the most humane social system out there and that it defeats all its competitors. You know, so we oppose the sexual revolution all of it, not just the gay parts, not just the abortion parts, but we basically think that the sexual revolution has been of it, not just the gay parts, not just the abortion parts, but we basically think that the sexual revolution has been a mistake. And so, if you go to our YouTube channel, for example, we have a little banner up there right now that says kids need their mom and dad, and it looks like one of those BLM yard signs that people used to have in their yard In this house, we believe. And then they post all their virtue signals. You know, so we did a parody of that. And it says kids need their mom and dad. The sexual revolution destroys lives. The sex of the body can't change. And then the one in biggest print children are a blessing, the human person is meant for love, and you know it's true. So that's pretty much what we stand for. You know it's true, that's good, that's pretty much what we stand for. You know, as simply as I can put it.

Speaker 3:

And we got on the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate list in 2013. At that time, we were a project of the National Organization for Marriage, and National Organization for Marriage was, you know, a very strong voice in opposition to the imposition of same-sex marriage in the United States, and so we were always in their crosshairs, that whole small army of people who were trying to redefine marriage for everybody. And since that time, the Ruth Institute is independent of the National Organization for Marriage, so we're no longer affiliated with them, but that doesn't matter. That's just for people's information. I don't think my little organization would have ever come to their attention if I had not been part of the National Organization for Marriage. I just think that's the fact of it. But, for whatever reason, I was the educational arm of NOM and they went after me and they put the Ruth Institute on the hate list in. I guess it would have been spring of 2013.

Speaker 3:

And we were not notified. We were not informed. It's not like they reached out to us and said hey, we have some concerns. Can you fill out this little checklist and tell us what you think about this and that? As far as I know, there is no objective criteria for getting yourself on the list. No one really knows how you get on. No one knows how to get off, except I think one guy sued them and got off. I mean, there was that. But in general, no, it's just completely arbitrary, whatever they feel like doing, and so we kind of laid there on their list. It was like, oh well, big deal, what can we do about it? It's like, okay, we'll just march on.

Speaker 3:

But then I want to say it was 2017, and there was some uproar. I forget what it was, but it was some uproar about racism. It might have been Charlottesville, I don't remember. These things kind of run together in my mind because I don't really track them that closely. But anyway, because of that, the mainstream media thought it was a good time to go and look at all of the hate groups that were out there to show just how terrible racism really is and how pervasive racism really is. And so in the process of that, we were still registered in San Diego, california. San Diego Union Tribune ran a story and said oh look, there's a hate group in San Diego. By that time I didn't even live in San Diego anymore, but that's okay, our address was still there. We still had a PO box over there. There we were in the news, I think.

Speaker 3:

What happened is, I think I issued a statement saying okay, yes, it's true, we're on the hate list. Here's what we stand for. We think kids need their parents. We think marriage is between a man and a woman. We think the sexual revolution has harmed people. If that makes us a hate group, fine. And that's literally what I said. You know, I mean, I was pretty aggressive about it. Well, not long after that, we received an email from our credit card processing company, which at that time, the name of Vanco it was called Vanco which is a credit card processing company that marketed itself as something that churches should use to process their monthly donations and sponsor their raffle tickets and their turkey dinners, and they marketed themselves to Christian organizations. We received an email from them saying you no longer meet our terms of service. We will be discontinuing our service with you. And we went to our bank account and it was already gone by the time we had finished opening the email. It was gone.

Speaker 1:

So they had finished business with you.

Speaker 3:

They finished business with us literally without any notice.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Did they say?

Speaker 3:

why, oh, you no longer meet our terms of service. Right, I don't have the exact language in front of me, but basically it was because you discriminate, or something like that. At one time I had all of this cataloged someplace. I could probably resurrect it, but in any case, once again I'm like we can't let this go by. So we issued a press release and said, okay, this is what they did. Everybody should know, this is what this organization did to us. We're now looking for a new credit card processor.

Speaker 3:

Of course, we had to write to all of our donors, our monthly donors, and say, hey, this isn't happening anymore. Sorry for the inconvenience, yada, yada, manner. We did not lose a single donor over. It took the best of my knowledge. Nobody said, oh my gosh, I had no idea you were so terrible. No, no, everybody understood exactly what was going on. We fought back. We basically issued a press release and started talking about it, and then we came to the attention of a lot of people and I would say I think we got something like 25 news stories and interviews and stuff out of it. Every single one was favorable, every single one. And that's how I met Tyler O'Neill. At that time he was working for PJ Media and he did a big story about us and he was outraged and everything. And then he went on to write this really important book about the Southern Poverty Law Center, just showing how corrupt they really are. But in a nutshell, that's what happened to us.

Speaker 1:

That's what happened? Are you still on the list now?

Speaker 3:

Oh yes, oh my goodness. Yes, I'm still on the list.

Speaker 1:

You're still on the list. Now let me ask you a question have you ever tried to incite violence against anyone? No, have you ever said that we should hate or shun anyone?

Speaker 3:

No.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever insulted anyone Now?

Speaker 3:

that's a difference of opinion. Perhaps some people feel insulted by things that I've said from time to time.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever purposely or maliciously maligned anyone?

Speaker 3:

I don't have a need to do that. In fact, I try as hard as I can to stay out of personalities. I try to keep the conversation at the level of the ideas and policies, and so very seldom will you say you know, every once in a while the Ruth and Sue will say that guy is a knucklehead, he shouldn't have done that, you know, but but but it's not because they're gay. I mean, I think, for example, during COVID, when the New York Department of Public Health issued a statement giving people instructions for how to have an orgy safely, we're like OK, stop.

Speaker 1:

You know stop.

Speaker 3:

We can't go hug our grandma, but you need to use a condom when you have an orgy or group sex. I'm like stop, stop. Yeah, we said something about that, right, but it was about the policy, it was not about the individual, whoever.

Speaker 1:

Ok, and so there's really no rhyme or reason why you are on a hate list that equates you with the KKK?

Speaker 3:

Oh, that depends on what you consider a reason. Okay, so for most ordinary people, you're correct, but from the perspective of the Southern Poverty Law Center and whatever coalition it's part of and I don't pretend to know who they're connected to and how you know, but it's pretty clear that they're that within the whole pro-sexual revolution coalition, that they're working pretty closely with one another. You know that they're coordinating messages and stuff like that. I don't this is not QAnon time, I don't pretend to know how, but, but it's pretty clear that it is happening, right, because there are just too many instances of things that would be hard to explain any other way. But anyway, from their perspective, the object is if you've got somebody who is an effective, powerful voice in opposition to your agenda, what you do is you smear them, you do not attempt to answer their arguments, because that number one dignifies their arguments and number two, you might lose, which, in fact, those knuckleheads would lose if they went head to head with me. I think that's pretty clear. Sure, yeah, if you look at their stuff, you look at my stuff, you know they have this noise making you know.

Speaker 3:

So what you do is you slime people by basically framing a photo where there's your opponent and there's the KKK. There's your opponent and there's the Nazis. Oh look, they're Nazis. Don't listen to anything they say. So it's like an inoculation to vaccinate the public against listening to your name. I know that's the logic of it. Don't treat them like they're stupid. These people are smart, but they have an objective that I think that an awful lot of people would reject out of hand, and that's becoming more obvious with every passing day that kind of the desperation of that group of people and some of the capers that they've tried to pull off. And a lot of people are like this can't be. You know, they've lied about this, they've lied about that, I don't believe this or that, or I don't believe it.

Speaker 1:

You know, I don't believe anything these people tell me anymore, right, well, yeah, there is definitely a trust factor now.

Speaker 3:

Well, and not only that. You know one big piece of evidence that has nothing to do with you or me, or being a Catholic or anything like that Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post. Yeah, I don't know when this is going to air, I don't know when people are going to watch this, but as of the date that we're sitting here recording this, it's very recently in the news that Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, made a decision to not endorse any candidates for president because he says nobody trusts us and every we you know, every time we make an endorsement. Now people are like oh yeah, that's just what we expected of them, right, and so for us to make some attempt to be impartial and to regain the public's trust, we're just going to stay out of that altogether and try to report the news. Well, you know, I think it's too little, too late, for, you know, a lot of us don't even wrap dead fish in the Washington Post.

Speaker 1:

But once trust, yeah. Once trust is gone, it's hard to rebuild, but I mean that is not Jeff Bezos, is not QAnon.

Speaker 3:

Ok, I mean, you know, I mean I think that's an important marker of the lack of trust that's out there. Marker of the lack of trust that's out there, and the Southern Poverty Law Center is part of that, because they've been doing smear jobs and nothing but smear jobs for a long time.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, I kind of wonder. If you do too many smear jobs, then guess what? You've lost people's trust when you put Moms for Liberty, when you put someone like you on a hate list. I mean it's just crazy. Well listen, dr Jennifer Roebuck-Morse of the Ruth Institute. Where can listeners go and find out information about your work and find out your works, your videos, your podcasts?

Speaker 3:

Yes, well, come on over to ruthinstituteorg, and we've been doing this work since 2008. So there's an enormous amount of material and we we don't go after the news cycle all the time. We're trying to stick with, you know, kind of big concepts and big issues. So you go in there and read something from 10 years ago and it's still relevant in a lot of ways, and so so ruth institute dot org is there, and then also our youtube channel. Just look for ruth Institute on YouTube and you'll find literally over a thousand videos now, most of which have this evergreen quality to them, so that you'll still benefit from them, from watching them. So that's what we're up to, and also I should mention, because of the nature of this topic, we have what we call resource centers that you can find from the little search bar or the little navigation bar at the top of our website, and one of the resource centers is called Parent Resource Center.

Speaker 3:

Since you mentioned Moms for Liberty, we have in that Parent Resource Center all sorts of other organizations that are doing things that might be of interest to parents who are trying to protect their kids, who are trying to figure out how to get their kids through school without them being transed without their knowledge. So we've got kids books. We've got a couple of lawyers organizations if you need a lawyer, some activist groups, some therapy groups just a lot of different things there. So if people are concerned about a lot of these issues, we try to direct you. We don't endorse all these other people, but we know them, they're friendly with us and it's a good place for you to begin your search. If you, as parents, are trying to work out how to best exercise your God-given right to direct the upbringing of your own children, we're here to help you do that.

Speaker 1:

That's great. And, dr Jennifer Roebuck-Morse, you know what you are in a free society, living your faith using free speech, and you don't have the right to be smeared. So I really thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to give us sort of your testament of your experience with the Southern Poverty Law Center. God bless, thank you. You've been listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. My name is Michelle McElhoun and if you've liked my episode, please consider subscribing. If you really like it, give me a five-star review and you can find more information about me at bookcluescom. I also can be reached at x at MichelleMcAloon1 and Truth Social MichelleMcAloon1. Thank you, god bless you.