Posted on 09/11/2025 3:23:42 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk appeared on Fox News Tuesday and wasted no time firing back after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) officially designated his conservative youth organization as a “hate group” in its latest annual report.
The SPLC’s 2024 report, released Thursday, identified 1,371 extremist groups and said that their growing influence is fracturing communities and undermining U.S. democracy. Kirk discussed the matter during an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Understand that they’re literally putting high school chapters of ours on a hate group next to the KKK and next to neo-Nazi groups,” Kirk told Laura Ingraham.
Kirk said that the SPLC’s label has real-world consequences, pointing to the 2012 attack on the Family Research Council, where a shooter cited the SPLC’s hate list as his inspiration. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins partly blamed the SPLC’s rhetoric for inspiring the shooting at his organization’s headquarters.
“Remember that there was a shooter that went to the Family Research Council years ago, inspired by the SPLC list. This is them trying to make us basically surrender at Turning Point USA,” Kirk added. Rather than back down, Kirk said that Turning Point USA would double its efforts.
“We’re going to do the opposite, and our students are only going to lean in even more. But they can’t debate us on our ideas. They cannot have dialogue. They cannot actually go onto the merits of why they are right or why we might be wrong,” Kirk said. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk Roasts ‘Compliant Little Beta’ David Hogg For Gushing Over Jasmine Crockett)
Kirk explained why he thinks Turning Point made the list.
“They must smear us with the age-old one-liner that you are a racist or that you are a hater. And they’re finally realizing the power of Turning Point USA, which is why they put us on the list,” Kirk said.
The SPLC has drawn similar criticism in the past. In 2023, the SPLC added parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education to its list of 1,225 so-called hate and extremist organizations, sparking backlash from conservatives who accused the group of smearing mainstream advocacy.
In 2023, former SPLC staffer Bob Moser called the organization a “highly profitable scam” that betrayed its own stated values. In a scathing essay published by The New Yorker, Moser accused the SPLC of exploiting donors while ignoring internal issues like racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
When Family Research Council was the victim of a shooting attack, didn't the shooter get info from SPLC.
Yes. SPLC is the real “hate group”
BTTT
The purpose of the SPLC.is to make bogus claims about some group that Leftists don’t like. The Lamestream media then quotes the SPLC. The SPLC has listed ‘insert group’ as a bunch of Goose-stepping Nazi’s who are worse than Hitler!
RICO.
Many groups, and also Catholics.
Is Free Republic eligible for their little list? Lots of hate here for communism, socialism, islamofascism, racism, tribalism, perversion, DEI, dictatorships, supervillains and cheesy hypocrites who hustle government money while purporting to be the authority on who’s a hate group or not.
Anybody with half a brain could tell SPLC was a Nazi-like organization. Only their preferred people should be allowed to exist. Their preferred people murdered other people by the millions, just for the hell of it.
Only in America could such things happen. Most other societies would have eliminated such a threat by now.
Freedom has a high price. I’m willing to pay that price.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is the very definition of a “hate group”, making their accusations out of whole cloth, with no evidence or supporting documentation for their claims, operating with the sole purpose of denigrating or openly slandering those of whom they have chosen to defame and designate as “unlawful”.
It is odd that they chose to designate “fascists” or “Nazis” as “right-wing extremists”, as there is nothing at all “right-wing” about either. Both fascists and Nazis have their roots in socialistic writings that actually predate the rise of Karl Marx, (specifically the French Revolution) and are only “right-wing” in relation to International Socialism, Communism, which is considered to be a more “pure” form of socialism. All forms of socialism eventually become a militaristic hierarchy, with a Maximum Leader, and subordinate lackeys organized along military command-and-control lines.
They incite hatred. Always thought they were a fringe group, but in recent years they wormed their way into official government programs. They are a “cited source” you see, in those all too familiar circle jerks of cites. It’s like a self-licking ice cream cone. “Without evidence” indeed. But, Charlie is dead because of this type of thing. That is very real.
My working hypothesis is that the SPLC is a front organization for money laundering.
Among the biggest outages is MSM using SPLC as a source for accuse good decent orgs of being racism hate groups.
Although they are lunatic, SPLC hasn’t been (regarded as) a fringe group for at least fifty years..
I don’t know why these creeps can’t be sued into oblivion. They are putting targets on the backs of the people they don’t like.
Didn’t the founder of the SPLC, Morris Dees, get charged with sexual harassment and embezzlement of his own companies funds?
JMO, YMMV
A more hate-filled outfit than the SPLC probably never reared its ugly head.
Their ideas, the invective. That stuff used to be only heard in the Teacher’s Lounge or bong hit sessions in College dorm rooms. Not on the national “news” or mewlings on the floor of congress. Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs went mainstream. I did not have this on my bingo card.
For many conservative groups, being put on the SPLC’s list of hate groups is a sign that they are over the target.
Why listen to the SPLC? A few years ago, the county sheriff followed the SPLC’s list of orgs that were unfairly labeled “terrorist orgs” and announced this list to the public. I just gritted my teeth.
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