(LifeSiteNews) — Elon Musk caused a stir on X last week when he re-posted a video produced by libertarian reporter John Stossel.
The “Southern Poverty Law Center is a scam,” the multi-billionaire said.
Southern Poverty Law Center is a scam https://t.co/YkghIPblaY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2024
Stossel, 77, had an extensive career working for mainstream media outlets, though he always had a distinct edginess to his reporting. He is perhaps most well known for being a correspondent for ABC’s 20/20. He was hired at Fox in 2009 but now runs “StosselTV.”
Seven months ago, he did a five-minute report on the tactics used by the anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The report exposed the group’s efforts to smear the pro-family “Moms for Liberty” and the Family Research Center (FRC).
Jennifer Roback-Morse of the Ruth Institute, who was also targeted by the SPLC, was interviewed by Stossel as well. The Ruth Institue was told by its online donation processor in 2017 that they would no longer do business with them because they promote “hate.”
As reported by LifeSite at the time, a gunman who was inspired by the SPLC’s “hate map” entered the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the FRC in 2012. He had expressed strong opposition to the FRC’s conservative political goals. Fortunately, he did not kill anyone thanks to an armed security guard’s heroic efforts.
At the end of the video, Stossel describes the SPLC as a “left-wing, money-grabbing, slander machine” that targets Christians and others it disagrees with while remaining silent about true violent extremists like Antifa.
Musk purchased X, formerly Twitter, for more than $40 billion in October 2022. At present, he has 176.2 million followers on the platform. According to the video’s statistics, Stossel’s report has been viewed more than 9.1 million times.
The SPLC was relied upon by the FBI in 2023 to justify its surveillance of Catholics who attend Latin Mass. A memo made public by whistleblower Kyle Seraphin revealed that the FBI cited “studies” on “hate groups” in the United States conducted by the group to support its efforts.
In 2019, a former SPLC staffer publicly accused the organization of being a “highly profitable scam” that “never lived up to the values it espoused.”