Mat Staver, the Christian Right activist who routinely lies to spread the myth of Christian persecution, has once again twisted the truth to suit his whims (and boost his fundraising efforts).

Here’s the truth: The Southern Poverty Law Center has created a “Hate Tracker” which looks at the tweets of “a community of far-right Twitter users” to see what they’re talking about. The reason? The SPLC notes these particular people “use Twitter as a tool for media subversion, ideological indoctrination and propaganda dissemination,” so it’s worthwhile to see which hashtags and words they’re using as an indication of how they may be trying to manipulate everyone.

The most popular hashtags in that community, as of this writing, include #EuropeIsOurs, #DefendEurope, and #Infowars.

But a couple of days ago, this is what the most popular topics were:

You can see that #MerryChristmas and #Christmas make that list (because I guess even White supremacists love a white Christmas).

Now look at what Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver sent out as a press release to his followers yesterday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was caught “monitoring hate” by tracking its 12 top most hateful hashtags, which included: #merrychristmas, which ranks number two, #christmas at number three, #christmaseve at number five, #jesus at number eight, and #merrychristmaseve in the last slot. The SPLC is willing to lump anyone who says “Merry Christmas” or “Jesus” in with the most violent and racist groups in America. This is one more way that the SPLC is exposing its own radical, discredited, anti-Christian hate.

How stupid and/or ignorant do you have to be to see what the SPLC is doing and turn it into a form of Christian persecution?

Since Staver and his staff clearly don’t know how to read, let me help them out:

The SPLC wasn’t claiming people who say “Merry Christmas” or “Jesus” are hateful. That’s not what they do, and that doesn’t make any sense.

The SPLC was claiming that a select group of far-right extremists tweeted those topics on the day before Christmas. That’s a fact.

This is just another example of how evangelical Christians like Staver, who refuse to accept reality, see everything as a personal attack on them even when it’s clearly not.

Staver should apologize. Staver should admit he didn’t do the bare minimum amount of research it took to understand what was going on here — in this case, clicking on the “About” page for the Hate Tracker. Staver should admit Christian persecution in the U.S. isn’t real.

Staver will do none of those things, of course, because his entire career has been dedicated to spreading lies in the name of Jesus.

(via Joe. My. God.)

