Fund raising must be down at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Because the KKK and skin-head groups are a distant memory, the folks at the SPLC have worked feverishly to find radial bad guys so the money will keep rolling in. Their new phantom targets are “far right hate groups.” Mark Potok, the so-called “Senior Fellow” at the SPLC, wrote the following in its Spring 2013 Intelligence Report:

“Capping four years of explosive growth sparked by the election of America’s first black president and anger over the economy, the number of conspiracy-minded antigovernment ‘Patriot’ groups reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012, while the number of hard-core hate groups remained above 1,000. As President Obama enters his second term with an agenda of gun control and immigration reform, the rage on the right is likely to intensify.”

J. Richard Cohen, President & CEO, of the SPLC sent a letter to Attorney General Holder and Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security with this outrageous charge: “Because of the looming dangers, we urge you to establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.”

A patriot group is identified as a group of individuals who are opposed to “gun control” and “immigration reform,” both of which are constitutional issues. If you stand against the President and other anti-Second Amendment advocates, then you are a “conspiracy-minded antigovernment ‘Patriot.’”

If immigration reform means advocating amnesty for illegal aliens who will be used as political fodder for the Democrat Party, then you are a “conspiracy-minded antigovernment ‘Patriot.’”

The SPLC is in the fund-raising business. They have to create straw man targets in order to keep the checks coming in.

Of course, the SPLC had to make its report about race: “the election of America’s first black president.” But in the same report, Potok mentions that anti-government sentiment over gun control goes back to the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president. While Clinton was touted as America’s “first black president,” he is white as the driven snow. I suspect that he was described as our “first black president” so that criticism directed against his liberal policies could be labeled “racist.”

Where are the actions of these “far-right militia groups”? It wasn’t militia groups that killed people in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater or the elementary students in Newtown, Connecticut.

In fact, there hasn’t been a single “far-right militia group” incident since Obama’s been president. We do know that Floyd Lee Corkins, who opened fire at the Family Research Council, injuring a guard before he was subdued, was not a far-right militia type. In fact, he was in full agreement with the “hate-group” label stamped on many conservative groups.

Tony Perkins, president of the FRC, blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” label as a contributor to Corkins’ actions. After Corkins pleaded guilty, Perkins said the following:

“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarters and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group.’

“Today both assertions were validated in court as Corkins plead guilty to multiple criminal charges, including terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center can no longer say that it is not a source for those bent on committing acts of violence.  Only by ending its hate-labeling practices will the SPLC send a message that it no longer wishes to be a source for those who would commit acts of violence that are only designed to intimidate and silence Christians and others who support natural marriage and traditional morality.”

Corkins was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his bag when he was taken into custody. He wanted to kill people and put a bag next to each victim. The SPLC had designated the Family Research Council as a “hate group” because of the organization’s views on homosexual practices and homosexual marriage.

The SPLC never lists Leftist groups as “hate groups.” It’s only organizations and groups on the so-called right of the political and social spectrum. When homosexual groups targeted people who supported California’s anti-homosexual marriage ‘Proposition 8,’ the SPLC remained silent.

The SPLC is nothing more than a fund-raising machine for leftist causes and high salaries for leftist propagandists. As Jesse Walker of Reason magazine has written, the SPLC “would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds.”