The SLPC lists

Mark Krikorian of the Centre for Immigration Studies writes:

Are you now, or have you ever been, a “hate group”?

This is the question at the heart of an attempt to delegitimize and suppress views regarding immigration held by a large share of the American public.

Since 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center has methodically added mainstream organizations critical of current immigration policy to its blacklist of “hate groups,” including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and Californians for Population Stabilization, among others. In February, my own organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), got its turn.

The wickedness of the SPLC’s blacklist lies in the fact that it conflates groups that really do preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam, with ones that simply do not share the SPLC’s political preferences. The obvious goal is to marginalize the organizations in this second category by bullying reporters into avoiding them, scaring away writers and researchers from working for them, and limiting invitations for them to discuss their work.

Exactly right. The SPLC once upon a time provided a very valuable service. Today it has become an organisation that seems to exists to stigmatise groups they merely disagree with.

CIS has testified before Congress more than 100 times over the past 20 years. We’ve also testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and our work has been cited by the Supreme Court and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. We’ve done contract work for the Census Bureau and the Justice Department. Our director of research was selected by the National Academies of Sciences as an outside reviewer for last year’s magisterial study of the fiscal and economic impacts of immigration. Our authors include scholars at Harvard, Cornell University, Colorado State University, the University of Maryland and elsewhere. We are one of the most frequently cited sources on immigration in the media (including in The Post).

Equating a group that has such a track record of engagement in the public policy debate with, for instance, the Holy Nation of Odin has nothing to do with warning the public of “hate.” The SPLC’s true purpose can only be to deprive the American people of points of view they need to hear to make informed and intelligent collective decisions.

Is the SPLC itself becoming a hate group?

This attempt to narrow public debate is harmful to our civic life. Widely held concerns among the citizenry don’t just go away because gatekeepers of public debate decide not to allow them to be aired. As the cliche has it, this is why you have President Trump. And further attempts at suppression will yield worse.

Yep, the more the self-appointed guardians of what is acceptable speech try and enforce their views, the more the overall population gets sick of it, and decides time for a change.