Turning Point USA executive Andrew Sypher testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, highlighting how the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “villainizes” conservatives — which Charlie Kirk warned would put him and his organization “in the crosshairs” three months before his assassination — and called on Congress to “act decisively” by finally confronting “the brewing political violence in our midst.”
“Over the years, Charlie and Turning Point have been attacked by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which villainizes our open-dialogue approach on campuses,” Andrew Sypher, Turning Point USA Executive Vice President of Field Operations, said.
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“The SPLC hastily labels ideologically opposing organizations as ‘hate groups,’ misleading well-intentioned entities and blurring the line between real hate and mere differences of opinion,” the Turning Point USA executive continued.
Sypher further pointed out that before his Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University, the Turning Point USA founder warned that the SPLC’s “Hate Map” designation — which equates conservatives with the KKK and neo-Nazis — would “put Turning Point in the crosshairs.”
“This proved prophetic,” Sypher said. “Just months later, an assassin took Charlie Kirk’s life on campus, during one of those very open-dialogue events that often lowered tensions and fostered healthy debate among young people.”
Sypher, who was standing just ten feet from Kirk when he was assassinated on September 10, pointed out that the Turning Point USA founder’s murder was “later condoned and justified” by the very people who falsely labeled him and his organization.
“Since Charlie’s death, political violence against conservatives has only risen,” Sypher added, citing violent protesters harming Turning Point USA event attendees at UC Berkeley after Kirk’s assassination, before urging the committee to “act decisively.”
“We cannot allow biased organizations like the SPLC to arbitrarily dictate good and evil in our government and culture or to weaponize the ‘hate’ label against ideological opponents,” the Turning Point USA executive asserted.
“My hope is that this becomes America’s turning point: that we never forget Charlie Kirk’s murder and that Congress confronts the brewing political violence in our midst,” Sypher concluded.
The Turning Point USA executive addressed the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government during Tuesday’s hearing, “Partisan and Profitable: The SPLC’s Influence on Federal Civil Rights Policy.”
The hearing seeks to examine the SPLC’s “coordinated efforts with the Biden-Harris Administration to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association,” the House Judiciary Committee said.
The hearing also looks into the left-wing organization’s history, funding, and work to silence conservative and Christian Americans for their beliefs, the committee added.
As Breitbart News reported in May, the SPLC attacked Turning Point USA, America’s largest conservative grassroots youth organization, by placing the group on its so-called “hate map” alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters, for having an “anti-government” stance.
Kirk reacted to his organization being added to the accusatory map in a May 25 X post, calling the move “a cheap smear,” before pointing out that the SPLC “somehow still rake in over $100 million a year peddling their ‘hate map’ nonsense.”
“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 prophetically warned, adding, “They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs.”
Kirk went on to cite the Family Research Council being targeted by “an SPLC-inspired gunman” after the left-wing group deemed the nonprofit Christian organization a hate group.
“Maybe someone should take a hard look at where all that ‘nonprofit’ money’s really going,” Kirk added in his May X post, just three months before his assassination.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council — which was targeted by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II in 2012 after the SPLC designated the organization as a hate group in 2010 — also testified at Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.
The SPLC frequently lists mainstream conservatives alongside hate groups like the KKK.
In May, the left-wing organization also targeted the conservative nonprofit PragerU by placing it in the same “anti-government” category on its “hate map.”
Last year, the SPLC placed Gays Against Groomers — a group run by homosexuals— on its “hate map” for opposing sex changes for children, a stance that the majority of Americans agree with.
The SPLC has even labeled the conservative Christian legal advocacy firm Alliance Defending Freedom an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” citing its work in developing religious liberty legislation and case law.
In 2017, D. James Kennedy Ministries filed a federal religious discrimination lawsuit against the SPLC for labeling the Christian organization a hate group due to its stance on LGBT issues.
“A review of SPLC’s extensive hate map can be terrifying to the uninformed reader,” a writ of certiorari read. “The map, however, is largely a political attack on peaceful organizations.”
The petition went on to explain that the SPLC exaggerates the number of “hate groups” by “naming peaceful, respected, mainstream organizations to its list, not because they are hateful, but simply as punishment for their social and political views.”
“What makes the Southern Poverty Law Center particularly odious is its habit of taking legitimate conservatives and jumbling them with genuine hate groups (the Klan, Aryan Nation, skinheads, etc.), to make it appear that there’s a logical relationship,” columnist Don Feder wrote in 2007.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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