Southern Poverty Law Center attacks Turning Point USA with ‘cheap smear’ in latest hysterical ‘extremism’ report

Liberal activists and their fellow travelers in business, government, and media frequently cite the Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority on what qualifies as a hate group or an extremist organization.

That’s despite — or because of — the SPLC’s heavy left-wing bias, the frequency with which it smears law-abiding conservatives as “extremists,” and its link to alleged domestic terrorism.

‘First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate, and then they wanted you to participate.’

Exuding liberal sanctimony with an air of legitimacy helps keep the SPLC — a nonprofit sued numerous times for defamation, accused by one former staffer of exaggerating hate to “bilk” donors, and given an F-rating by Charity Watch — awash in cash.

After all, what’s not to like when the SPLC largely fundraises on the premise that it is “exposing hate and injustice”?

True to form, the SPLC smeared agential conservatives in its latest annual hate and extremism report.

This time around, the smear merchants focused their attack on Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, characterizing it as a pro-Christian extremist group with an “authoritarian vision for the country that threatens the foundation of our democracy.”

But Kirk wasn’t having it, responding in a statement that “the SPLC has added Turning Point to their ridiculous ‘hate group’ list, right next to the KKK and neo-Nazis, a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.”

“Their game plan? Scare financial institutions into debanking us, pressure schools to cancel us, and demonize us so some unhinged lunatic feels justified targeting us,” continued Kirk. “But it’s 2025, and nobody with a functioning brain buys their garbage anymore. The SPLC is a laughingstock, a hollowed-out husk of an organization that’s been exposed as a grift time and time again.”

According to the SPLC — whose recent top targets include Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok fame and the parental rights advocacy group Moms for Liberty — TPUSA is “emblematic” of the American political right’s supposed embrace of “aggressive state and federal power to enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy” against a backdrop of “patriarchal Christian supremacy dedicated to eroding the value of inclusive democracy and public institutions.”

RELATED: Own the hate: Why patriots should wear the ‘hate group’ smear with pride

RomoloTavani/iStock/Getty Images Plus

When trying to make the case that TPUSA somehow is an extremist outfit or at the very least extremist-adjacent, SPLC contributor Rachael Fugardi, aided by a pair of DEI-credentialed researchers, noted that Kirk:

• dared to link the health of liberty in America to the religiosity of its people;
• suggested that Democrats love what God hates;
• championed motherhood and suggested women should get married and start having children at a younger age;
• highlighted that in the case of non-straight activism, “First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate,
  and then they wanted you to participate. And if you don’t, they are
  willing to destroy your life”;
• suggested that Americans should buy weapons and ammunition; and
• warned that “native born Americans are being replaced by foreigners.”

The report also clutched pearls over TPUSA’s supposed encouragement of “parents to be fearful the government was harming their children in schools” and its criticism of critical race theory and LGBT propaganda in the classroom.

‘DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors.’

This desperate attempt on the part of the SPLC to paint Kirk and TPUSA as extreme might have less to do with the conservatives’ views and more to do with their political effectiveness in changing minds and curbing the abuses of the left — as well as their alignment with President Donald Trump.

TPUSA videos notched billions of views in the lead-up to the 2024 election — and it was at this precise time that its members were engaging young Americans on college campuses across the country and promoting Trump. That momentum and engagement still have not tapered off.

Kirk stressed on X, “Being on their list is a badge of honor. It means they’re terrified that we’re so effective. Keep crying, SPLC — America’s done with your scam.”

While evidently worried about TPUSA, the SPLC also warned of the “merging of anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ activism with fear of demographic displacement” and framed efforts to dismantle the racist DEI regime as a campaign to “whitewash American society and protect white supremacy.”

Yet, a study published late last year by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University concluded that “DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment.”

RELATED: Damning study reveals what DEI does to people — and unsurprisingly, it’s really bad

Race-obsessive activist Ibram Kendi, originally Ibram Henry Rogers. Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Netflix

Having evidently missed or ignored this damning insight into the divisive and dangerous nature of DEI, the SPLC claimed that DEI initiatives “are essential in ensuring pluralism, reducing inequities that spur division, and promoting democracy.”

Working off the basis that DEI is necessary — and necessarily good — the leftist outfit attacked those attempting to eliminate it, including Moms for Liberty, normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck, Republican states and officials, and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo.

The SPLC also conducted a number of drive-by hits in its annual report, deeming, for instance, the Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom a “hate group” and suggesting that reports indicating the Obama administration worked to debank conservative clients was somehow a “false narrative.”

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