You might well have missed it. But a number of conservative or Christian groups got smeared, then after protests unsmeared, by Guidestar.

Prudent donors approached by a charity will consult Guidestar. It tells you which groups spend half their budget on salaries. Which ones overpay their executives or otherwise squander what would-be philanthropists give them. But last month Guidestar put out ominous language about a list of conservative groups. That endangered their financial viability. After all, what corporation wants to be on the record as donating to a “hate group”? Which politician would have the nerve to cooperate with it? Guidestar admitted that it hadn’t done any research to back up those claims. It had borrowed its “hate group” language from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Furnishing the Poverty Palace

The SPLC grew out of what was once a useful organization. It closely watched the doings of the then-powerful Ku Klux Klan and other white racist groups. As the Klan shriveled and mostly died, the SPLC wasn’t ready to declare victory. Instead it widened its scope. Soon it began targeting more and more diverse organizations — including many with absolutely no connection to issues of race. Or actual, you know, hate.

Indeed, the SPLC has become just another left-wing pressure group. It has no more claim to credibility than the Democratic National Committee. As Stella Morabito wrote at The Federalist, “Two years ago, the FBI deleted the SPLC from its website’s list of legitimate resources on hate crimes.” That was while Barack Obama was president, folks.

The SPLC raises lavish funds through alarmist rhetoric from (one suspects) aging retirees. People with memories of the Holocaust and anti-black violence in the South. To keep the money coming in, it must keep stoking fears. It must argue that racial hate groups are growing in power and influence. What if such groups aren’t really growing but shrinking? Then it’s time to broaden the definition of “hate.” That will pry open folks’ checkbooks. This seems to work pretty well. The nickname for SPLC’s gleaming headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, is “The Poverty Palace.”

The SPLC raises lavish funds from (one suspects) aging retirees with memories of the Holocaust and anti-black violence in the South through alarmist rhetoric. To keep the money coming in, it must keep stoking fears.

Morabito concludes that “the SPLC uses its list of designated hate groups … to manipulate the lives of others, smear reputations, control personal relationships, and reap the spoils.” The terrorist who attacked the Family Research Council in 2012 got its name from the SPLC website’s list of “hate groups.” The Bernie Sanders volunteer who shot Rev. Steve Scalise followed and praised the SPLC on social media.

Smearing the Innocent for Fun and Profit

Here are some of the groups and people against whom the SPLC has unjustly issued warnings:

• Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz.
• Ex-Muslim, escaped child bride, and victim of Female Genital Mutilation Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
• Social scientist Charles Murray — attacked and silenced by Antifa mobs at Middlebury College this year.
• The mainstream, academically oriented Center for Immigration Studies.
• The American College of Pediatricians (which opposes body-altering hormonal “treatments” for allegedly transgender children).
• The Family Research Council.
• The World Congress of Families.
• Alliance Defending Freedom.

SPLC lumps those groups and people in together with a short list of deserving organizations such as …

• The Westboro Baptist Church.

Karl Zinsmeister of the Philanthropy Roundtable rounds out the list of the SPLC’s victims:

Others branded with a scarlet E by the SPLC and many media enablers include former Cincinnati mayor and Ohio ­Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, think-tank president Frank Gaffney, Cliff Kincaid of the press watchdog Accuracy in Media, former Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, ­WorldNetDaily journalist Joseph Farah, Rafael Cruz, a Cuban immigrant and father of a U.S. Senator, legal gadfly Larry Klayman, and immigration restrictionist Dan Stein. Philanthropist Ron Unz, bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza, regular Congressional testifier Mark Krikorian, former Senator and Governor George Allen, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Congressman Tom Tancredo, former Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul, and scores of other public-spirited Americans active in national debates. …

Hatred is ugly and repugnant. So fake charges of hate-mongering are among the most despicable forms of slander. They aim at destroying someone professionally, socially, even personally. Slandering someone as a racist these days is nearly as bad as falsely calling him a rapist. Ask Duke’s lacrosse team: Some leftists do that, too.