Frank Gaffney Accuses the SPLC of Endorsing ‘Anti-Semitism and Hatemongering’

Anti-Muslim activist and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy is joining other conservatives in blasting the Southern Poverty Law Center, and last week on Secure Freedom Radio told CSP’s Fred Grandy that the group is “in the service of people who are really the perpetrators of the worst of the anti-Semitism and hatemongering” by opposing anti-gay and anti-Muslim hate groups. Grandy even said that the group is a “decidedly an anti-Semitic organization” because it calls out the extremist views of Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz.

Listen:

Grandy: The Southern Poverty Law Center, which at least generations ago had a very pristine reputation when we were still fighting the civil rights battle, but now they’ve sunk to a new low and of course one of their partners in this effort right now is the Muslim Public Affairs Council with whom they have conspired to create what is not just I think a coalition of hate crimes centered on organizations like the Family Research Center [sic] because of their support of traditional marriage but this has now become decidedly an anti-Semitic organization as well, tearing into Daniel Pipes at the Middle Eastern Forum or David Horowitz at his Freedom Center and of course we’re part of that mix as well. Interestingly enough Frank, when they were having this conversation on the phone, this conference call about hate crimes the night after the shooting at the Family Research Center [sic] no mention of that hate crime was even brought up.

Gaffney: This is a really extraordinary thing, as you say the Southern Poverty Law Center has fallen dramatically from its past and is now in the service of people who are really the perpetrators of the worst of the anti-Semitism and hatemongering and so on.

Today in the Washington Times, Gaffney said that “the SPLC is hanging out with today’s counterpart to the KKK and the pre-eminent threat to civil rights” and aiding the advancement of Sharia law. “If you lawfully object to, say, the erosion of traditional marriage or open borders, you stand to be condemned by the SPLC as a hater,” Gaffney said. “It seems that if you are militantly in favor of the radical homosexual agenda or racist groups such as La Raza, however, you get a pass from that organization.”

Last week’s near-massacre at the Family Research Council (FRC) put into sharp relief a curious fact: The people most aggressively denouncing others for their “hatemongering” sure are engaging in a lot of it themselves, with dangerous and potentially lethal repercussions.

Take, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Back in the heyday of the civil rights movement, the SPLC helped counter the Ku Klux Klan and other racists and anti-Semites. At the moment, though, the SPLC is hanging out with today’s counterpart to the KKK and the pre-eminent threat to civil rights — especially those of women — in America: Islamists bent on insinuating here their anti-constitutional, misogynistic and supremacist doctrine known as Shariah.

A case in point occurred Wednesday night, just hours after a gunman named Floyd Lee Corkins entered the headquarters of the FRC. Mr. Corkins apparently was bent on killing as many of the center’s employees as possible, perhaps because of the social conservative group’s listing (along with this columnist and a number of others) earlier this year by the SPLC as among the worst hate groups and bigots in America.

It turns out that, as with the Family Research Council, what seems to qualify one for smearing by the Southern Poverty Law Center is disagreement with its political agenda. If you lawfully object to, say, the erosion of traditional marriage or open borders, you stand to be condemned by the SPLC as a hater. It seems that if you are militantly in favor of the radical homosexual agenda or racist groups such as La Raza, however, you get a pass from that organization.