A coalition of institutional left, anti-Trump groups will attempt to choke Americans’ free-speech rights, using the excuse they’re opposing “hate speech.”

The assortment of far-left and establishment groups in the “Coalition Against Hate” includes two groups associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief operative John Podesta, plus pro-illegal immigration groups, such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) plus the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was an unindicted co-conspirator in an anti-Semitic, jihad-funding operation.

MALDEF, which was formed in 1967 with funding almost exclusively by The Ford Foundation, has been called by author David Horowitz a group which “no longer draws a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.”

Other members of the 55-member hate coalition include the Brennan Center for Justice, CHIRLA, Color of Change, Common Cause, GLAAD, Matthew Shepard Foundation, National Immigration Law Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). These groups are suppressing their own rivalries — such as Islam’s hatred of gays — to unite against Americans.

The coalition plans to use legal action and government pressure to stop what it calls “hate speech.”

As Breitbart News recently reported, the SPLC has published a list of what they call “Terror from the Right” that categorizes two Islamic terror attacks as “radical-right terrorist plots.”

The group lays out their “mission” on their website, under the guise of stopping what they refer to as “hate speech.” That “hate speech” term helps them stigmatize rival opinions and ideas that the left rejects, even as the group ignores the hatred by fellow progressives towards President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

Our mission is to #breakhate by elevating the voices of the impacted and hold purveyors of hate speech accountable. As the Coalition Against Hate, we will encourage media platforms to abandon hate speech as a profit model and bring civil discourse back to the public square. We will expose purveyors of hate speech and those that use multiple media platforms to amplify their hateful rhetoric. We have a responsibility to speak out against hate speech and demonstrate to our communities and our children that words have meaning. We will also promote positive portrayals to illustrate that our diversity is what makes communities flourish.

This trend is fortified by media outlets such as the New York Times, which has a new, regular section by the Editorial Board called This Week in Hate, where it says, “The editorial board tracks hate crimes and harassment around the country since the election of Donald Trump.”

The Times had no such column regularly tracking the crimes and harassment spread by Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and various college groups during the Obama administration.

One approving article about the new group makes it clear that President-elect Trump and Breitbart News will be targets for the Coalition Against Hate, writing:

The coalition said it will warn of the dangers of using the “alt-right” label to describe what it said is actually white supremacy, and that it will take issue with Trump appointees and staffers. The candidate himself has broad-brushed Mexican immigrants as rapists and Muslims as potential terrorists and his tapping of Stephen Bannon of the Breitbart News site drew a firestorm of criticism from those who see that site, and Bannon, as facilitating hate speech

On the group’s website, they urge fellow progressives to seek legal help from lawyers working for CAIR.

The Civil Rights Department of the Council on American-Islamic Relations works to protect and extend the civil liberties guaranteed primarily by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. We take requests for legal help for civil rights matters.

The irony of the Coalition’s positions against “hate” is made clear by a tweet supporting #BreakHate from Hussam Ayloush, the Executive Director of the Los Angeles chapter of CAIR and part of CAIR nationally.

In December, Ayloush had been quoted by the Coalition Against Hate’s Twitter account:

'We will work together and engage with the media and public to challenge hate' Hussam Ayloush of @CAIRNational #breakhate — Coalition Agst Hate (@_AgainstHate) December 7, 2016

As Breitbart News reported, Ayloush was sharply criticized when he recently said he wished more people had died in the crash of a Russian military plane into the Black Sea.

This sick bastard CAIR exec should be so ashamed. Absolute filth. @HussamA pic.twitter.com/4QMyBL00UV — Cassandra Fairbanks ❤️⏳ (@CassandraRules) December 26, 2016

The Coalition has not commented on Ayloush’s statement.

Breitbart has frequently noted that the CAIR group is so closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees, or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses.

Breitbart has also published evidence highlighted by critics showing that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, that CAIR was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans top-level meetings with CAIR officials. “The FBI policy restricting a formal relationship with CAIR remains … [but] does not preclude communication regarding investigative activity or allegations of civil rights violations,” said an Oct. 2015 email from FBI spokesman Christopher Allen.

In 2009, a federal judge concluded that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with Hamas.”

The CAIR group defends itself here.

Lee Stranahan makes you smarter about the news every day with his free email newsletter The Stranahan Report; start your day smarter, sign up at Stranahan.com.