You get what you pay for, and the Democrats want you to pay for more bogus hate crimes.

PJ Media reported Friday that “Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, co-sponsored a bill focused on cataloging hate crimes.” Not just cataloguing, either: “While the text of the current legislation has yet to be published, the ‘NO HATE Act’ from the previous session of Congress would create grants for state-level hate crime hotlines, triple damages for civil cases involving a bias incident, and otherwise incentivize reporting.”

If passed, this bill would lead to an epidemic of fake hate crimes, reported by people anxious to cash in on the new hate crime bonanza. And who would pay for all this? You, of course. The American taxpayer.

The stated motive for this massive hate crime payout is the highly dubious proposition that hate crime is severely underreported in Donald Trump’s ostensibly racist, bigoted America. Gillibrand is basing this assumption on a source that no informed or fair-minded person should be citing at this point: the notorious and comprehensively discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

In a press release for the “Khalid Jabara-Heather Heyer NO HATE Act,” S.2043, Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.)’s office stated: “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported a sharp uptick in reported hate crimes in the fourth quarter of 2016. Researchers have shown that reported hate crimes following President Trump’s election made up the second largest surge since the FBI began collecting data in 1992. Yet the FBI’s annual Hate Crimes Statistics report vastly understates the true incidence of this problem.”

Vastly indeed: “In 2017, the report reflected that approximately 7,000 hate crimes occurred nationwide, when the SPLC believes the number is closer to approximately 250,000 per year.”

How anyone could invoke the SPLC as a reliable source in July 2019 is mystifying. The SPLC’s vicious use of its “hate group” list to demonize and destroy legitimate groups that dissent from the Leftist agenda has gotten so bad that even the Washington Post took notice. Last November, the Post, hardly a conservative or “far-right” source, published a massive expose of the SPLC, demonstrating its cynical and dishonest classification of all organizations that dissent from the Leftist agenda as “hate groups.”

“For decades,” said the Post, “the hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists. But in recent years, as the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists — mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories — those conservatives have been fighting back. [General Jerry] Boykin, of the FRC, recently sent a letter to about 100 media outlets (including The Washington Post) and corporate donors on behalf of four dozen groups and individuals ‘who have been targeted, defamed, or otherwise harmed’ by the SPLC, warning that the hate list is no longer to be trusted. Mathew Staver, chairman of the Christian legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel, told me 60 organizations are interested in suing the SPLC.”

Some organizations have recognized that the SPLC’s “hate group” list can indeed not be trusted. “Last year GuideStar, a widely consulted directory of charitable organizations, flagged 46 charities that were listed by the SPLC as hate groups. Within months, under pressure from critics, GuideStar announced it was removing the flags. The FBI has worked with the SPLC in the past on outreach programs, but [then-] Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled a very different attitude. At a meeting of the Alliance Defending Freedom in August, Sessions said, ‘You are not a hate group,’ and condemned the SPLC for using the label ‘to bully and to intimidate groups like yours which fight for religious freedom.’”

The Post also noted that “along the way, the SPLC undermined its own credibility with a couple of blunders. In 2015, it apologized for listing Ben Carson as an extremist (though not on the hate list), saying the characterization was inaccurate. Then, this past June, the group paid $3.4 million to Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization to settle a threatened lawsuit. The SPLC had listed them in a ‘Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’ (again, not on the main hate list). The SPLC apologized for misunderstanding Nawaz’s work to counter Islamist extremism.”

“Blunders”? “Misunderstanding”? Hardly. The SPLC has worked hard to stigmatize and silence all opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women and others, classifying Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative and my own Jihad Watch as hate groups for the crime of standing for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law.

Compounding the increasing awareness of its lack of credibility, the SPLC’s uncritical acceptance by the establishment media suffered a body blow last March when allegations surfaced of rampant racism and sexual harassment among its ranks.

Nonetheless, the Left’s authoritarian agenda is galloping forward, with steady bannings of dissidents from social media platforms. And now Gillibrand and her Democrat colleagues want you to pay for more of the SPLC’s venomously biased “hate crime” scam. The Democrats seem avid to support every possible measure that will weaken America and pit Americans against each other. If they win in 2020, a new era of peace and tolerance will dawn – won’t it?

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

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