A new report shows Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal group that claims to track “hate groups,” is ignoring rising left-wing anti-Semitism on college campuses.
The Family Research Council – a conservative group targeted by a domestic terrorist who used SPLC’s hate map in 2012 – released a report on SPLC’s activity, claiming the group is ignoring anti-Semitic incidents on campus, especially from the Left.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins says the media and other organizations that use SPLC as a resource need to realize SPLC is “a discredited left-wing political group” and stop pretending they’re not biased.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, which aims to establish itself as the preeminent authority on hate, has virtually ignored the growing anti-Semitism on college campuses. This is no surprise. Its deafening silence on incidents outside its preferred targets on the religious right cannot be ignored,” Perkins told Fox News. “While the SPLC wants to be viewed as a referee on the field of political debate, their demonization of mainstream conservatives and predictable silence on anti-Semitic incidents can only lead to one conclusion: the SPLC wants to be both referee and player.”
The report says that while SPLC targets white supremacist groups, they can’t point to a single college or university that is teaching that kind of propaganda – a far cry from the new form of anti-Semitism embedded in higher education.
The report titled “Left-Wing Anti-Semitism: The Greatest Campus Threat Is Ignored by the SPLC” says SPLC has “turned a blind eye to this emerging Jew-hatred” in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement which has “devolved into a full-bore attack on Israel’s existence, Zionism, and on Jews themselves” on campuses through student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and universities’ “leftist, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist ideology and propaganda.”
This comes as SPLC recently announced student chapters on more than 100 colleges and universities nationwide.
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According to the AMCHA Initiative, an anti-Semitism higher ed watchdog group, there is a “strong correlation between anti-Zionist groups, such as [SJP], and acts of anti-Jewish hostility. Schools with an SJP or similar student group were seven times more likely to host incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm.”
Renowned Holocaust scholar Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld from Indiana University in Bloomington told The Algemeiner in 2016 that more people need to be aware of “the role that hostility to Israel plays in generating” contemporary anti-Semitism.
The report points out SPLC President Richard Cohen said “I don’t know about [SJP]” when asked about why the group, which has “advocated for violence against Jews,” is not on their hate list.
SPLC declined to comment, referring Fox News to its website.
“The organizations on our hate group list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity – prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines,” SPLC writes on its site.
The group adds it is “extremely difficult” to track hate group activity and membership, and in general, hate crimes are “more prevalent on the far right than it is on the far left.”
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