Conservatives Wrongly Demonized as 'Hate Groups' by SPLC May Get Justice at Last

April 21, 2023

The Left has a long and ignoble history of grasping at straws to demonize conservatives, but one organization arguably encapsulates this strategy more than any other. That group may finally have to face accountability for its defamation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a "hate map" plotting "hate groups" across the United States. Of course, the map features chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups like the National Socialist Movement, but it also includes a broad swath of conservative organizations whose major crimes amount to disagreeing with the SPLC's policy positions.

Take the Dustin Inman Society, for example. This small Georgia-based nonprofit essentially consists of one man, D.A. King, who was moved to advocate against illegal immigration by the story of a Georgia boy who lost his life at the hands of an illegal immigrant in a 2000 car crash.

King advocates for enforcing immigration laws, something the SPLC once apparently found unobjectionable. In 2011, Heidi Beirich, then-director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project—which publishes the "hate map"—told the Associated Press that the society was not a hate group, although she did brand it "nativist."

Yet the SPLC turned on a dime in 2018. Suddenly, the Dustin Inman Society found itself on the "hate map." King hadn't changed his positions, and the SPLC hadn't altered its definition of a "hate group." What changed? An SPLC staffer registered as a lobbyist opposing legislation the Dustin Inman Society supported.

That strategy failed in this case, and a judge denied the SPLC's motion to dismiss King's claim.

This represents a monumental victory, not just for King but for conservatives across the country who had their names dragged through the mud because they don't support the SPLC's radical agenda. The judge's move allows the case to proceed to the discovery phase, where the Dustin Inman Society can request SPLC documents to prove its case.