The term “social engineering” never fit an entity better than it does the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This intrusive, tenacious organization has spent years attempting to recast and transform American society to fit its own peculiar ideals. Its directors are missionaries in the full sense of the word, in that they relentlessly work to stamp onto the hearts and minds of the public a distinctive belief system, which teaches what is evil and what is not. 

This month, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) has published an excellent analysis of the SPLC’s attack on FAIR and other immigration reform groups, entitled, Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate. It offers much-needed insights. Besides giving the ordinary citizen an opportunity to view the insides of this “watchdog” group, the report should become a reference guide for members of the media, who generally take the easy way out when covering stories about race and/or immigration. 

Reporters, editorialists, and feature writers are notorious for accepting, without further investigation, reams of data and materials disseminated to them by a cluster of self-appointed overseers of American society, among the most prominent, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. [See also here and here.]

Thanks to the fawning acceptance granted them by the establishment media, these groups, and several more like them, have acquired an almost quasi-governmental status in the public mind. When they spread lies, there are few people who will risk inevitable public denigration and stand up to challenge them. In regard to the SPLC, FAIR’s new report does just that.

FAIR was founded in 1979, and is the country’s largest immigration reform group. It has more than 250,000 members whose aims are to improve border security, stop illegal immigration, and promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest. Sensible immigration reform would enhance national security, improve the economy, preserve our environment, and protect jobs for American citizens.

Such goals have earned FAIR the designation of a “hate” group by the SPLC. Other immigration reform organizations  have also incurred the wrath of the SPLC. They include, but are not limited to, the two next largest groups, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Numbers USA. These groups are reputable organizations that handle in a respectful manner what has become a volatile subject. Yet, the SPLC makes it clear that any individual or group that emphasizes the need for immigration reform of any kind is a “hater” and, hence, an enemy of American society.

Although the SPLC claims to take no position on immigration policy, for more than a decade it has acted as a bully by attacking citizens who even suggest that our borders should be monitored, or that the immigration population should be limited. According to the FAIR guide, “In countless articles and ‘investigative reports,’ the SPLC concluded that just about everyone actively opposed to amnesty and mass immigration was a ‘nativist’ a ‘white supremacist,’ or had ties to such groups and individuals.”

The SPLC is well known for its ever-growing list of “hate groups” and individual “haters,” often referred to as the SPLC’s “hit list.” Lacking an objective criteria for what constitutes “hate,” the SPLC uses its own inscrutable standards. There are some hints, however, that point to a consistency in its multicultural emphasis. Not satisfied with customary, voluntary activity between races, its directors give the impression that they would like to engineer more aggressive policies, in order to bring about greater racial interaction.

In the SPLC’s universe, race and how one deals with it, is an important component in determining who is good and who is bad. In order to put the full kibosh on perceived enemies, the SPLC will slap the “racist” tag on them, just for good measure. This was never clearer than in the case of the Mormon polygamous sect in Eldorado, Texas, where, last year, over 400 children were temporarily kidnapped by the government and removed from their parents. With all the troubles faced by these people in just trying to navigate around the intrusions by outsiders, in coping with a system they did not understand, the SPLC had to come along and declare the group “racist.”

In trying to figure out the SPLC’s bizarre intervention in this case, one might wonder if the charge of racism was based on the early history of the Mormon church (the sect still adheres to the church’s early beliefs on race) or, given the SPLC’s propensity for racial meddling, was the charge based on the fact that the men in this sect apparently had no colored wives? Might the lack of any bi-racial children disturb these diversity-minded social engineers? 

SPLC leaders are relentless in their venomous attacks on those who they claim try to “retreat from the government and press.” On the SPLC “hate” list, there are dozens of little religious groups that do not subscribe to establishment religion. Some believe in their group’s special “chosenness” by the Deity. They each wish to have the freedom to worship in accord with their beliefs. You know, exercising the kind of freedom that Americans possessed in an earlier time—even to living separately, if they so determined—before it became mandatory to stay in view of the government and the press. 

Groups like the ADL and SPLC, however, refuse to leave such gatherings alone. Instead, these religious sects (some with only a handful of members) are added to “hate” lists and brought to the attention of the public. Members of such faiths are suspect, not for their peculiar doctrines, but because, according to the “watchdogs,” no citizens should be allowed to operate on the outside or fringe of what is considered “mainstream” society. Outsiders who prefer to behave in such a manner are clearly not engaging in “inclusive” practices and, hence, could very well be haters of members of other groups and, therefore, “dangerous.” 

This is the heart of the SPLC philosophy that it conveys in its massive, annual fundraising mailings to thousands of subscribers, in which fearful scenarios are painted of a society ridden with racists, xenophobes, and potential domestic terrorists. 

This month, black Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hit list. Deemed an “apologist for white supremacists” by SPLC’s Mark Potok, Swain earned this ad hominem attack because she had dared to offer a favorable review of the documentary film, A Conversation About Race. [See my review here.]

The film, produced by Craig Bodeker, is focused on interviews with a diverse group of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. They each get to offer their opinions on the “racism” that they supposedly observe in the world around them. It is Bodeker’s suspicion that genuine racism in today’s America is a “myth.” Many of the responses offered by the interviewees in this film confirm his hunch, though inadvertently. In spite of the SPLC’s attempt to shame her, Professor Swain stands by her assertion that Bodeker’s film would be useful in classrooms to stimulate honest discussions on the subject of race. 

It is understandable why the SPLC does not want the Bodeker film, or anything like it, disseminated too widely. The results of the interviews, right from the mouths of ethnics themselves, suggest that blacks are not held back by a pernicious white racism. 

For its purposes, the SPLC does not want America’s race story shifted away from that of black victimology—that is, the tale of blacks caught in a system that prevents them from improving their circumstances in a racist society. After all, where would that leave the SPLC and its ability to raise those millions of dollars annually in the name of “social injustice?”

If racism is not preventing a black person from going about his business, or living his daily life as he chooses, and places no life-threatening obstacles in his path, as in the days of a 1930s sharecropper, then what are we talking about? 

Those who are familiar with the history of the SPLC know that this organization does not seek honesty. Like its other counterparts, it is determined to remain entrenched in its self-appointed role as caretaker and guardian of Americans’ thoughts and social habits. Professor Swain is yet another target to have encountered the SPLC’s tactic of character assassination. In the coming days we will learn to what extent it will follow through with its usual “link and smear” maneuvers and poisonous press releases. (Of course, as a vocal critic of open borders immigration policies, Swain could never win the approval of the SPLC.) 

The FAIR guide cites several investigative articles that have been done on the SPLC. They include critical pieces in The Nation, Harper’s, and the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser newspaper. Each describes how the SPLC skews, exaggerates and manipulates data to fit its biased perspectives on race, along with information about its questionable fundraising tactics. 

As the FAIR guide suggests, an honest analysis of the immigration issue is possible if, after receiving press releases and other data from SPLC directors, journalists would feel obligated to test the accuracy of their information, question their motives, seek out responses to their allegations about other citizens and, most primary, distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.