Democrats, leftists and media opposed to new House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., are using the notorious, far-left group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its discredited “hate” designation to tar Johnson as being affiliated with a supposed “hate group,” which is actually a leading Christian conservative legal organization.

Johnson worked for the Christian legal defense group Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, which the SPLC has smeared as a “hate group” – mainly for ADF’s longstanding opposition to homosexuality and the transgender agenda as being sinful.

As Daily Signal reported Thursday, “Leftist groups and one of Johnson’s Democratic colleagues in the House noted his history as a lawyer with Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, has branded ADF a ‘hate group,’ placing it on a ‘hate map’ alongside Klan chapters.”

Democrat Representative Judy Chu, representing California’s 28th Congressional District, blasted Johnson on X Wednesday as he was on his way to being elected Speaker of the House. Her Oct. 25 X post stated: “MAGA Extremist Mike Johnson is not fit to lead the House of Representatives. He: – led efforts to overturn 2020 election, helping fuel the January 6 insurrection; – wants to criminalize abortions nationwide; – worked previously for an @splcenter[SPLC] -identified hate group.” Chu’s post was accompanied by a video of Johnson assailing Roe vs. Wade for leading to the loss of millions of future workers through abortion-on-demand:

The left-biased Guardian repeated the SPLC “hate” smear in its reporting on Johnson:

SPLC’s tactic of “designating” various conservative organizations as “hate groups” to advance the Left’s political and cultural narratives has come under withering criticism in recent years as many millions of Americans who follow conservative media and social media were exposed the group’s radicalism and highly political nature.

(Editor’s note: Years ago, this reporter’s organization, Americans For Truth, was one of the first (non-racist) socially conservative groups to be mislabeled a “hate” group by the SPLC, whose “reporting” was so slipshod that in 2010 the author of one SPLC report mistook this writer for Paul Cameron, another conservative researcher.)

If anything, despite the massive blowback in recent years against SPLC’s spurious “hate” designations, the Alabama-based “anti-hate” organization has only expanded its web of conservative organizations that it maligns as “hate groups.” For example, in the MSNBC interview below, SPLC CEO Margaret Huang discusses how the SPLC added “Mom For Liberty,” a national grassroots organization of moms (and dads) opposing leftist “critical race theory” and pro-LGBT and pro-transgender propaganda targeting young children in schools as a “hate” group:

Moms For Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler dismissed the SPLC labeling it and 11 other groups “anti-government extremist groups”: “Outside of it being a leftist attack, political hit job, there’s no credibility behind it. It’s truly laughable,” Florida-based Ziegler told USA Today in June. Ziegler is the chair of the Sarasota School Board.

USA Today reported: “In 2018 the SPLC paid $3.38 million and issued public apologies to Maajid Nawazan, an Islamic activist and the founder of the Quilliam Foundation, to avoid a defamation lawsuit after the SPLC labeled him and others as ‘anti-Muslim extremists.’”

Predictably, the dominant corporate media used loaded terms like “ultra conservative” to bash Johnson, the media watchdog group Media Research Center reports:

Left-watcher Andy Ngo sent out an X post Monday revealing the radicalism of the SPLC’s union, which in its own series of X posts Oct. 18 echoed radical Palestinian propaganda despite Hamas terrorists’ wanton slaughter of Israeli citizens:

Scarlett Johnson noted that the SPLC Union’s post stressed that Palestinian “lives matter,” but made no similar assertion for Israelis’ and Jewish lives, even though theirs had just been savagely brutalized and murdered by Hamas terrorists in their Oct. 7 slaughter of unsuspecting civilians:

The world’s leading LGBT advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, sent out this X post Wednesday denouncing Johnson:

Daily Signal reporter Tyler O’Neil offered this critical clarification of the HRC reference to the “trans”-activist propaganda term “gender-affirming care”:

“Transgender activist groups use the term ‘gender-affirming care’ as a euphemism for experimental medical alterations with lifetime impacts to which critics say children cannot provide truly informed consent. The bill Johnson introduced, the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act of 2022, aims to prohibit the use of federal funds for ‘any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10.’ Johnson’s critics branded that a ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill along the same lines that they demonized Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bill expanding parental rights in education.”

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