Our overuse of the word ‘extremism’ hurts people

Angry protesters shouted down an eminent scholar and sent a female professor to the hospital.

A crazed gunman entered a D.C. public policy shop and shot an employee before being disarmed.

Someone mailed a suspicious white powder to a Scottsdale advocacy group, partially closing the office while a Hazmat team tested employees who had been exposed.

The victims in each case were targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC is a non-profit heralded for its noble history defending civil rights.

Founded in 1971, the Montgomery, Ala. legal advocacy organization sued the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups in the South on behalf of victims. Big settlements and harsh sanctions were levied against the racist organizations, successfully shuttering some and scaring off many others.

But by 1986, these groups had rapidly declined.

The SPLC could have declared “mission accomplished.” But since funds were still coming in, they declared a new mission statement. No longer would they fight Grand Wizards and Jim Crow, but turned instead to an endlessly expanding target of “extremism.” The change in goals was so stark, the entire legal staff resigned.

The group’s website now hosts a Hatewatch vertical, a Hate Map, and offers a glossy magazine titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” The publication’s most recent cover features a yelling Donald Trump with a confederate flag in the background.

The fact that the presidential choice of 63 million Americans is equated with a lynch mob skulking around Dixie shows how far the SPLC has strayed from its roots. Half the country can now be declared hate-filled extremists if this group is allowed to define the terms.

And those targeted by the SPLC face dangerous consequences.

In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council carrying a pistol, nearly 100 rounds of ammo and several Chick-fil-A sandwiches. The FRC (and the fast food company’s CEO) opposed same-sex marriage — just as President Barack Obama did that year.

Corkins shot one employee but told authorities his goal was to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.” Why did he target the FRC? “Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” Corkins said. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that.”

Another religious liberty group, Alliance Defending Freedom, works “to preserve and defend our most cherished birthright — religious freedom.”