We, the editors of The Social Contract, designate the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate group. Founded by a man accused of lurid sexual improprieties, the SPLC is steeped in extremism. It frequently circulates racist hate material from sites such as Salon.com, which has blamed gun violence on “white guys” and warned about the “plague of angry white men.” It has ties to Dan Savage, an anti-Christian bigot who defends underage relationships, called passages in the Bible “bulls---,” and once wished that “Republicans would f----ing die.” The SPLC traffics in such extremism that it inspired two separate incidents of attempted mass murder. Based on its ugly history and its continued association with bigots, the SPLC should not be granted a platform to spread its vitriol.
See what we did there? The above paragraph is unfair. Notice the personal attacks, the guilt-by-association, the name-calling, and the lack of any sources or links. We insinuated that the SPLC’s founder discredits the entire mission of the organization. We held the SPLC responsible for anything ever written or spoken by anyone affiliated with a publication that it links to. We connected it to violence. We used scare-terms such as extremism and hate. Worst of all, we called for expelling the SPLC from mainstream debate.
This is, of course, exactly the modus operandi of the SPLC itself. ...
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