Charlie Kirk’s assassination shook the conservative movement to its core.
The tragedy sparked an unprecedented reckoning.
And Big Tech scrambled to cut ties with one radical group after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s "hate map" inspired violence before
The Southern Poverty Law Center built its reputation suing the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy during the 1980s.
But somewhere along the way, the Alabama-based organization abandoned actual civil rights work and turned into something far more sinister.
The SPLC took the program it developed to monitor Klan chapters and weaponized it to smear mainstream conservatives and Christians as "hate groups."
Organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, which has won multiple Supreme Court cases defending religious liberty, found themselves plotted on the SPLC’s infamous "hate map" alongside actual neo-Nazi organizations.
The consequences of these smears proved deadly.
In 2012, a terrorist walked into the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters carrying a semiautomatic pistol and a bag of Chick-fil-A sandwiches.¹
He told FBI agents he targeted the conservative Christian nonprofit using the SPLC "hate map" and planned to kill everyone in the building.²
The terrorist intended to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces after murdering them.
Building security foiled his plan, but the SPLC’s response spoke volumes.
The organization condemned the violence but kept the Family Research Council on its "hate map" anyway.
Five years later, James T. Hodgkinson opened fire at a Congressional Baseball Game practice, nearly killing then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.³
Hodgkinson had "liked" the SPLC on Facebook, which had repeatedly attacked Scalise.⁴
The SPLC put Turning Point USA in the crosshairs
The SPLC added Turning Point USA to its "hate map" in May 2025, just months before Charlie Kirk’s assassination.⁵
The organization placed Kirk’s grassroots youth movement alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters, labeling it an "anti-government extremist group."⁶
Kirk’s alleged murderer told investigators he killed the Turning Point USA founder because he "spreads too much hate."⁷
The day before Kirk’s murder, the SPLC published a newsletter directly attacking him.⁸
"Did these contribute to the assassin’s motive?" asked Andrew Kolvet, a longtime friend of Kirk and Turning Point USA spokesman. "We may never know, but the swirl of extremist propaganda certainly played a role."⁹
Kirk himself had warned about exactly this scenario.
"Their game plan? Scare financial institutions into debanking us, pressure schools to cancel us, and demonize us so some unhinged lunatic feels justified targeting us," Kirk wrote in a social media post after the SPLC added Turning Point to the map. "Remember the Family Research Council? An SPLC-inspired gunman went after them. They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs."¹⁰
Kirk called being on the SPLC’s list "a badge of honor" because "it means they’re terrified that we’re so effective."¹¹
Big Tech’s scramble to abandon the SPLC
Kirk’s death changed everything overnight.
Shareholders at Alphabet, Mastercard, Meta, PayPal, and Salesforce filed proposals demanding their companies investigate any ties to the SPLC’s "hate map."¹²
Conservative groups went after Benevity, a platform connecting nonprofits to major corporations.¹³
Eleven organizations the SPLC branded as "hate groups" signed a letter telling Benevity to dump the discredited list.
The letter didn’t mince words about what the SPLC really is. "Instead, it is a political weapon that targets mainstream libertarian, conservative, religious, and family advocacy organizations for ideological reasons."¹⁴
The companies scrambled to deny any current relationship with the discredited organization.
Google and YouTube told The Daily Signal they "don’t and have never used SPLC’s hate map for any reason, including for content moderation."¹⁵
A YouTube spokesperson confirmed "the Southern Poverty Law Center is not part of our priority flagger program and has not been for at least three years."¹⁶
Meta issued a similar denial.
"Meta does not work with the SPLC and has never relied on its ‘hate map’ when creating our policies," a spokesman said.¹⁷
The company has actually moved in the opposite direction since Kirk met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in January.
Kirk praised Zuckerberg after the meeting for "getting rid of their fact checking department" and protecting freedom of speech.¹⁸
PayPal distanced itself from past comments by its former CEO Dan Schulman, who mentioned the SPLC in a 2019 interview.
"PayPal does not rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center when making assessments about activity on our platform," a spokesperson said.¹⁹
Mastercard denied claims from the David Horowitz Freedom Center that the SPLC convinced the credit card company to cut off the conservative organization.²⁰
Even Salesforce, which stated in a 2022 blog post that it uses the SPLC list "to identify hate groups," backed away from exclusively relying on the organization.²¹
"We don’t rely on the SPLC list or any single external source when making acceptable use policies decisions," a spokesperson said.²²
The SPLC’s credibility collapse
The denials reflect a broader recognition that the SPLC’s credibility has completely collapsed.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced earlier this month that the bureau terminated all ties with the organization.
"The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine," Patel wrote. "Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence."²³
The SPLC has been plagued by scandals for years.
The organization fired founder Morris Dees in 2019 amid allegations of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism.²⁴
A former employee called the "hate" accusations against conservative groups "a highly profitable scam."²⁵
The SPLC sits on an endowment of more than $730 million while peddling fear to donors.²⁶
In 2019, a federal judge ruled that the SPLC’s "hate group" label does not "depend upon objective data or evidence" and described the designation as "an entirely subjective inquiry."²⁷
The organization is currently defending itself in a defamation lawsuit that has reached the discovery phase, where its internal documents about how it determines what constitutes a "hate group" may finally see the light of day.²⁸
Heritage Foundation Chief Advancement Officer Andrew Olivastro summed up what many now believe about the SPLC.
"The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated October as Hate Crimes Awareness Month — but few organizations have sown more hatred against fellow Americans than the SPLC itself," Olivastro said. "It doesn’t fight hate — it manufactures it, embedding division into every press release they issue and every word they post; their business model is defamation, and America is finally waking up."²⁹
Charlie Kirk’s assassination proved the deadly consequences of the SPLC’s smear campaigns against mainstream conservatives.
¹ Tyler O’Neil, "What Went Wrong with the Southern Poverty Law Center?", The Heritage Foundation, accessed October 24, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Tyler O’Neil, "SPLC Must Remove Turning Point USA From ‘Hate Map,’" The Daily Signal, September 12, 2025.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Tyler O’Neil, "SPLC Puts Turning Point USA on the ‘Hate Map’ With the KKK," The Daily Signal, May 24, 2025.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Tyler O’Neil, "Tech Companies Distance Themselves From Far-Left Smear Factory Under Pressure After Charlie Kirk Assassination," The Daily Signal, October 23, 2025.
⁸ "FBI cuts ties with leftist group that put Turning Point USA on its ‘hate map’ before Kirk assassination," Fox News, October 3, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² O’Neil, "Tech Companies Distance Themselves From Far-Left Smear Factory."
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Ibid.
¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Ibid.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Ibid.
²² Ibid.
²³ "FBI Severs All Ties With Southern Poverty Law Center," The Daily Caller, October 3, 2025.
²⁴ "Charlie Kirk dismisses SPLC as ‘laughingstock’ for listing Turning Point on ‘hate map,’" The Washington Times, May 26, 2025.
²⁵ Tyler O’Neil, "Conservatives Wrongly Demonized As ‘Hate Groups’ May Get Justice at Last," The Heritage Foundation, accessed October 24, 2025.
²⁶ Ibid.
²⁷ "Comer Probes Southern Poverty Law Center’s Influence Over Federal Employees," House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, December 11, 2023.
²⁸ O’Neil, "Conservatives Wrongly Demonized As ‘Hate Groups’ May Get Justice at Last."
²⁹ O’Neil, "Tech Companies Distance Themselves From Far-Left Smear Factory."
