The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was once an institution known for important civil rights advocacy. In the 1970s, the SPLC was opposed by terrorists that used violence to suppress their opposition.
Today, the SPLC is fomenting the type of terrorism and hatred it once fought against. Domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins attempted a mass shooting at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., after reading the SPLC’s website. The SPLC website lists the Family Research Council as an “extremist group” and frequently labels law-abiding and peaceful independent and conservative figures as “hate” and “alt-right.”
On March 9, 2018, an article on the SPLC website falsely asserted several reporters were enabling white supremacists and Russia. The SPLC was forced to issue a retraction. It should issue several more.
In an article dated February 2, 2018, the SPLC accused the “alt-right” of killing people. The SPLC argued that “Gamergate” was responsible for launching the alt-right, and then listed several supposed “alt-right” murderers.
The SPLC’s list of 13 “alt-right” murderers is a toxic mix of fact and fiction.
A look into the killers listed by the SPLC reveals many had no association with either “Gamergate” or the “alt-right.” In fact, some were strongly associated with far-left politics. By falsely listing murderers that were supposedly inspired by the “alt-right,” the SPLC is inciting hate and violence against activists that the SPLC has accused of being “alt-right.”
Here are the stories of the murderers the SPLC falsely claimed were inspired by the “alt-right.”
Jeremy Joseph Christian
Jeremy Joseph Christian stabbed and killed two people and injured a third on a train in Portland, Oregon in 2017. Christian’s Facebook profile shows he was a devoted and obsessive Bernie Sanders fan.
Christian posted that he was voting for Bernie on May 16, 2016.
“Just to clarify a few things: I Hereby Solemnly swear to Die trying to kill Hillary (Herself a filthy Murderess) Clinton and Donald Trump should they be elected to the post of President,” Christian wrote.
In a prelude to stabbing two people on a train, Christian was kicked out of a rally by Trump supporters in April 2017 after announcing he was a Nazi. He then posted “it’s called a psy-op…Now go SUCK HITLERS DICK”
Many journalists have reported Christian’s radical pro-Bernie posts, and yet the SPLC still included him in their article accusing the “alt-right” of killing people.
Elliot Rodger
Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others, including two women he shot inside of a sorority house near the UC-Santa Barbara campus.
The son of Hollywood director Peter Rodger, Elliot Rodger was actually a Young Turks fan. Rodger subscribed to and and liked their channel.
Like The Young Turks’s Cenk Uygur, Rodger published his sexual frustration with women. Before driving to the sorority house, Rodger uploaded a YouTube video explaining that he wanted to punish women for rejecting him and that he envied sexually active men.
Christopher Harper-Mercer
Harper-Miller shot a professor and eight students at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in 2015.
In his manifesto, Harper-Miller wrote of his admiration for Elliot Rodger and Vester Flanagan, a black man who murdered two white reporters.
“I have always been the most hated person in the world,” Harper-Mercer wrote. “Ever since I arrived in this world, I have been under siege from it. Under attack from morons and idiots.… My whole life has been one lonely enterprise. One loss after another. And here I am, 26, with no friends, no job, no girlfriend, a virgin. I long ago realized that society likes to deny people like me these things. People who are elite, people who stand with the gods.”
The people like him — who “stand with the gods” — were “Elliot Rodger, Vester Flanagan, the Columbine kids, Adam Lanza and Seung Cho.”
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The rest of the SPLC list includes several men whose motivations are harder to assess.
Samuel Woodward, 20, was a University of Pennsylvania student and devout Catholic. Woodward may also have been a conflicted gay man. Woodward killed gay student Blaze Bernstein, 19, and allegedly told authorities that Bernstein kissed him in a car and that it was unwanted advance. The two had been talking on Snapchat the night of the murder.
Sean Urbanski stabbed and killed a black student at the University of Maryland. Police initially said race did not appear to play a role in the killing. In July, state’s attorney Angela Alsobrooks told reporters that her office lacked sufficient evidence to pursue hate-crime charges. After the FBI got involved in the case, prosecutors used Urbanski’s membership in the Facebook group “Alt-Reich: Nation” as evidence of a hate crime. Alex Goodman, an administrator of the group, said it had been started as satire and was in fact partly intended to make fun of the so-called alt-right.
“Nothing is meant as true; we follow none of the beliefs,” said Goodman. “None of us believe in that philosophy. I condemn those who believe in white supremacy.”
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In total, five of the SPLC’s 13 claims of “alt-right” killers were demonstrably false or suspect. The remaining eight claims included several mentally disturbed individuals.
Considering the public nature of the killers the SPLC falsely labeled alt-right, it is hard to call the SPLC’s article anything but an outright fraud.
Most disturbingly, the SPLC is doubtless aware that pushing the idea of “alt-right” killers may inspire disturbed left-wing Americans to commit violent acts of terrorism. The indifference of the SPLC to this potential violence is most obvious when considering the terrorist attacks the SPLC is not interested in totaling on their website.
Nowhere on the SPLC website is a list of left-wing killers with a total of their victims.
Here are a small sample of recent left-wing terrorists.
Black Lives Matter supporter Micah Xavier Johnson fired on police officers in Dallas, Texas, killing five officers and injuring nine others.
ISIS supporter and registered Democrat Omar Mateen killed 49 people in an Orlando, Florida nightclub. The SPLC has never analyzed Mateen’s political affiliation, but has run articles including “Experts Seeing Spike in Possible Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes.”
Black Lives Matter supporter Gavin Long shot six police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, killing three.
Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson shot Congressman Steve Scalise and attempted a mass shooting at a baseball practice featuring several Republican congressmen.
Bernie Sanders supporter Jeremy Joseph Christian stabbed and killed two people and injured a third on a train in Portland, Oregon in 2017.
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In just five incidents, leftists killed 62 people and injured dozens of others.
Will the SPLC keep a tally of left-wing mass murderers? For now, it seems the only left-wing murders the SPLC wishes to tally are those they can somehow blame on the alt-right.
