Google donated $250,000 to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC ) since 2016.

The SPLC, a prominent civil rights organization that once fought the Ku Klux Klan, discredited itself in the last number of years by designating those who disagree with its Far-Left agenda as hate groups.

Included in that group of named people and organizations was anti-Islamist activist Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, who was listed on the SPLC’s Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Activists.

The list also once included Clarion Project and our national security analyst and Shillman Fellow Ryan Mauro. Clarion’s observant Muslim spokeswoman Raheel Raza was also flagged by the group for being “anti-Muslim.”

Ben Carson was placed on the list in 2014.

The notorious list, which is offered as a guide for journalists and the like, is a source of damage for those on it. This is due to the fact that not only does the mainstream media use it, but also four of the world’s largest online platforms partner (or partnered in the past) with the SPLC in determining their designation of hate groups and hate speech. Those tech giants include not only Google, but Facebook, Amazon and Twitter.

According to Google, its $250,000 donation to the SPLC was to fund a redesign of the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance program. The program trains teachers and provides them with materials – including lesson plans – to discuss controversial topics in classrooms.

“The Teaching Tolerance program bills itself as a program focused on social justice, civil rights, multiculturalism, and anti-bias education,” said the Family Research Council (FRC), which monitors the SPLC program. “However, Teaching Tolerance program materials, sample curricula, and resources focus disproportionately on conveying acceptance for homosexuality and endorsement of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.”

The program’s newsletter and magazine reaches 400,000 teachers nationwide, “presenting strategies for creating classroom environments that celebrate the LGBT lifestyle” and beginning in preschool, according to the FRC.

Google also just launched a new program called Google.org Fellowship whereby it will pay its employees for six months to work full time for free for nonprofit groups the tech giants partners with. On the list of Google’s partners is the SPLC.

Last June, the SPLC agree to pay Nawaz and his organization, Quilliam, $3.375 million as part of a settlement for wrongly including them on its list of anti-Muslim extremists. SPLC also issued a written and video apology.

The SPLC is currently being sued by the Center for Immigration Studies, which contends that it has also been wrongly designated as a hate group.

Still on the SPLC’s website is a Hate Map. The map shows the locations of organizations it has decided are hate groups.

In 2010, the SPLC put the FRC on its hate list. Two years later, a gunman walked into FRC’s headquarters intending to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.” When apprehended, the gunman told the FBI he had used the SPLC’s hate list to choose his target.

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