The FBI trained personnel on countering extremism with material from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), according to former special agent turned whistleblower Steve Friend.
In an interview with the Tennessee Informer last month, Friend recalled his experience at the FBI Academy in 2014: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The film, Friend said, “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”
“I don’t know if they still show that,” Friend added, “but that’s what we were shown.”
The FBI still relies on SPLC material a decade later, leading a pair of top Republican senators to demand the agency sever ties with the leftist hate group that routinely smears right-of-center associations as “hate groups.” SPLC’s false “hate group” designations led to a domestic terrorist attack in 2012 on the offices of a pro-family organization.
“The SPLC is known for disseminating its ‘hate group’ list, which contains at least 1,225 organizations, to Democrat allies in Congress, Big Tech, and woke corporations on a regular basis,” The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported last fall. “The activist hub recently aided the Biden regime’s quest to target concerned parents by sullying a dozen grassroots groups, including Moms For Liberty, as ‘anti-government extremist groups’ in its 2022 ‘hate and extremism’ report.”
The FBI also cited the SPLC to target traditional Catholics with counterterrorism resources, according to former agent Kyle Seraphin.
“The FBI should not lend credibility to an organization
