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The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a well-publicized list of organizations that promote hateful agendas.

Without debating the merits of the list -- which would be outside the scope of the question -- my question is this: Has any such organization ever reformed itself to the extent that it was then publicly removed from the SPLC list -- redeemed in the eyes of the public, as it were?

To be clear, I am talking about organizations that continued to exist under the same name after their removal from the list. Organizations that were removed from the list because they no longer existed would not meet my criteria.

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    Wikipedia seems to list quite a few: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… Aug 19, 2017 at 10:19
  • Unfortunately that wikipedia article doesn't mention why any groups were dropped from the list. It could be that the SPLC considers them redeemed or that they simply are no longer active. In most cases I would suspect it's the latter. I doubt they would drop any KKK sub-groups from the list for good behavior.
    – Philipp
    Aug 19, 2017 at 11:00
  • Also, the listing began relatively a short time ago, and people and organizations usually don't change that fast. Organizations no longer listed may have become defunct as Philipp says or it may have been cases of being borderline or an incorrect original assesment.
    – SJuan76
    Aug 19, 2017 at 13:38
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    It might also be useful to examine the accuracy of that list, and whether the groups on it are actually hate groups, or just happen to disagree with the SPLC's ideas. I've always found it strange that so many news groups seem to accept it as unbiased, when (judging from the junk mail I get from them) the SPLC should be on its own list.
    – jamesqf
    Aug 19, 2017 at 18:37
  • I'd be interested to know about individuals making it off any of their lists as well. Aug 20, 2017 at 4:55

2 Answers 2

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The SPLC published the following statement in June 2018 in both text and video format:

The Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong to include Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation in our Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. Since we published the Field Guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect. We’ve found that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism. Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have taken, they are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists. We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Mr. Nawaz, Quilliam, and our readers for the error, and we wish Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam all the best.

They also paid a settlement of $3.375 million to the foundation. The settlement agreement specified the format and content of the apology quoted above, indicated the SPLC would unpublish "every version of" the field guide, and stated that Quilliam would release any legal claims it might have against the SPLC.

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From this link:

we extend a sincere apology to ... Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Tim Pool, Rania Khalek, and Brian Becker, and disclaim, as clearly as we can, any intention to suggest that any of them are white supremacists, fascists, and/or anti-Semites, that they hold such views, or that they are engaged in a conspiracy with the Russian government to promote such views or otherwise.

Regardless of whether "Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Tim Pool, Rania Khalek, and Brian Becker" made any previous SPLC list, SPLC acknowledged (with this apology) that they (SPLC) may have suggested that these people were white supremacists. That prior suggestion was strong enough that SPLC felt that they needed to make it clear that the suggestion was not appropriate.

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    To add extra irony: Tim Pool is ethnically half-Korean. Including him either somewhat undermines SPLC credibility or makes White Nationalists surprisingly diverse movement.
    – Shadow1024
    Jul 7, 2019 at 19:25

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