Will Ricciardella, DCNF

CNN published a list of alleged hate groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization known for spuriously including conservative groups it disagrees with, continuing a trend by a sympathetic establishment media to parrot the organization without proper due diligence or scrutiny.

“The Alabama-based nonprofit activist group tracks civil rights and hate crimes and defines a hate group as an organization with ‘beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics,’” writes CNN’s Dakin Andone before publishing the SPLC’s lengthy “hate group” list.

Here are five groups included on the list that are not hate groups:

In July, former Attorney General Ed Meese slammed the organization for labeling Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil rights group defending religious liberty, as a hate group.”The designation had nothing to do with the law firm’s policies or behavior,” wrote Meese.

“It’s just that the SPLC objects to its traditional views on the Constitution, the First Amendment and the meaning of marriage. No responsible media outlet should parrot the SPLC’s hate list without seeking to understand not only its motives but also the consequences of spreading false charges,” he continued.

Andone’s report treats the list as definitive and the be-all and end-all of what constitutes a hate group. “But since the FBI doesn’t keep track of domestic hate groups, the SPLC’s tally is the widely accepted one” writes Andone, curiously leaving out by whom the list is accepted.

What Andone also fails to mention, however, is that the FBI abandoned the SPLC’s list as a “resource” in 2014 after it inspired a domestic terrorist attack the the Family Research Council’s headquarters in Washington D.C. by referring to the Christian organization as “anti-gay.”

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