Civil Unrest Means It’s ‘Hate Map’ Time for Lazy Journalists

The violence in Charlottesville, VA, last Saturday, along with similar episodes of civil unrest caused by provocateurs of the alt-left and alt-right, has brought attention to the growth of “hate” in the U.S.

For lazy journalists of the mainstream media, who want to cover national and local stories on the subject, there is a standard go-to source: the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map.”

Both the Daily Caller and the Washington Times have reported on the questionable reliability of this magnum opus of the Alabama-based progressivists, who have recently been cited as reliable experts by both CNN and MSNBC.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an organization that makes lots of money by framing other organizations as “hate groups,” and then raising money based on the farcical idea that they will do something to remedy the problems caused by said groups. What they actually do is provide journalists and even law enforcement officials with a treasure trove of information (or “intelligence,” as they call it), much of which is false and libelous.

Because they are liberal progressivists, SPLC operatives are very selective about who they target as hate groups. Likely candidates on the left are conveniently ignored.

Boston’s vehemently pro-abortion, pro-sodomy Mayor Marty Walsh recently cited the SPLC as an authority during a press conference, saying that Boston city officials had consulted them concerning a matter of public safety — as if they specialize in such things, which they do not. For Walsh, it was merely an ideological hat-tip.

The SPLC does also identify genuine social misfits (neo-Nazis, the KKK, Skinheads, etc.), but they put these groups on their hate map alongside other groups that could not reasonably be tarred with the same brush. And the implication behind their hysterical rhetoric is always that violence is just around the corner.

Because of these incongruent juxtapositions, Father Nicholas Gruner (RIP), Michael Matt (of The Remnant), C-Fam’s Austin Ruse, and yes, your humble servant, are all, very inappropriately and outrageously, placed alongside David Duke and the demented Ohio man who directed his car at liberal counter-protesters in Charlottesville.

According to ChurchMilitant.com’s Trey Elmore,

Also listed on the map are pro-traditional marriage and pro-life groups such as the Ruth Institute, headed up by past Mic’D Up guest Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the pro-religious freedom, legal non-profit Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as such pro-life and pro-family Christian organizations as the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. The SPLC made headlines when it named the FRC to its list in 2010. All of these are listed under the category “anti-LGBT.”

On our website, I have kept something of an archive on this organization, with copious links to articles about them and their tactics.

More needs to be said about The Remnant’s Michael Matt, as events of recent days make him a case study in the effects of this SPLC-mainstream media coordination.

Thanks to the events in Charlottesville, some television journalists in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area wanted to do a story on local hate groups. This is a normal thing for journalists: a national or international event brings attention to a phenomenon, and this, in turn, encourages the press to go on the lookout for different angles from which to report on it to their target audience. State and city media will often try to find a local embodiment of the larger story. This is one way to get the interest of readers, viewers, or listeners. The more sensational, by the way, the better for ratings. The better the ratings, the more money. It’s a business.

Therefore, with the apparent growth in right-wing hate (which the SPLC constantly claims is on the rise), state and city media will be on the lookout for nearby “hate groups” they can report on. Dutifully, lazily, and uncritically consulting the SPLC as a reliable source, WCCO TV produced a slanderous segment on The Remnant, which is a small family-run traditional Catholic newspaper whose editorial policy is something the SPLC hates.

That is how Michal Matt, a Catholic husband and father of seven, becomes the moral equivalent of a potentially murderous goose-stepper.

Readers are encouraged to take a look at Mr. Matt’s own writeup of the episode. Knowing that one deranged homosexual activist, Floyd Lee Corkins II, used the SPLC’s hate map to find victims of his would-be murderous rampage at the offices of the Family Research Council (he was thankfully stopped by a competent security guard), Mr. Matt is concerned for his family’s safety. And who can blame him? In the heightened state of internal conflict the nation finds itself in — and with “liberal gun clubs” coming into existence — people on the SPLC’s list are all potential targets.

Is a genuine, widespread persecution of the Church around the corner? Perhaps. But it is certain that faithful Catholics, holding to the moral magisterium of the Church, are considered “hateful” by the SPLC. The more they and similar organizations dominate public opinion via the mainstream media, the more marginalized, at least, will be the loyal Catholic — and, most tragically, that marginalization will play out inside the Church herself thanks to the widespread Modernism infecting the Mystical Body.