(LifeSiteNews) — The influence of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center may be coming to an end.

Earlier this month FBI Director Kash Patel announced that he was cutting ties with the group, which has attacked Christians for decades.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel said in a statement.

Patel is undoubtedly correct. In 2012, a disturbed gay activist stormed into the national headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. and opened fire with a gun, injuring a security officer. The shooter specifically cited the SPLC in a videotaped admission, saying he used the SPLC’s “hate map” to find the location of the FRC’s offices. The SPLC called accusations that it was culpable for the shooting “outrageous.”

Moreover, in 2020, the SPLC partnered with the radical Anti-Defamation League in attempts to police “extremist” content online.

Lastly, in 2023, multiple anti-Catholic articles published by the SPLC were cited by the FBI to justify its monitoring of Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass, which the FBI identified as “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.”

Is Big Tech ‘distancing’ itself from the SPLC?

According to Daily Signal reporter Tyler O’Neil, several major tech companies are now “distancing” themselves from the SPLC.

O’Neil recalled that conservative shareholders at Alphabet, Amazon, Mastercard, Meta, PayPal, Salesforce, Starbucks, and Texas Instruments filed resolutions this month urging the companies to stop using the SPLC’s “hate map.”

When O’Neil reached out to them for a follow up comment, Alphabet, Mastercard, Meta, PayPal, and Salesforce replied “that they do not have relationships with the SPLC any longer.”

READ: FBI cuts ties with Southern Poverty Law Center: ‘Partisan smear machine’

At the same time, the SPLC, Amazon, Starbucks, and Texas Instruments did not respond to his email before his story went to print.

The SPLC and Charlie Kirk’s assassination

The straw that may have broken the SPLC’s back, at least in the eyes of the public, is how it responded to Charlie Kirk’s death. O’Neil explains why.

“Kirk’s alleged murderer said he killed the Turning Point USA founder because he ‘spreads too much hate.’ The assassination took place two months after the SPLC put Turning Point USA on a ‘hate map’ with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan—a ‘hate map’ that had inspired a terrorist attack in 2012. The SPLC condemned the assassination, but kept Turning Point on the map,” he wrote.

Pressure was put on the SPLC by many influential persons in the wake of Kirk’s death. Among others, Elon Musk rebuked the SPLC (and the Anti-Defamation League) for its behavior.

“Incitement to violence by evil propaganda organizations like SPLC is unacceptable,” Musk said. “This is getting innocent people killed.”

The ADL drew Musk’s ire for having placed Turning Point USA (TPUSA) index of hate groups.

“While TPUSA repeatedly has stated that it rejects white supremacist ideology, white nationalists openly have attended their events,” its entry stated. “Moreover, extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists have been featured at the AmericaFest conference and other TPUSA events.”

True to form, the SPLC has filed a lawsuit supporting a Georgia teacher who said that the “world is a bit safer without [Kirk].” The teacher, Michelle Mickens, had been placed on indefinite leave for making the remarks online. The SPLC maintains that Mickens should not have been punished and that she has the right to speak her mind without reprisal.

Work remains to be done

The FBI first endorsed the SPLC in February 2007 under former President George W. Bush. Globalist financier George Soros has given the group millions of dollars in years past.

Former FBI Director James Comey praised the work of its partner in crime, the ADL, at its 2014 National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C.

During his remarks, Comey congratulated the ADL for its “record of success” over the past 100 years for advocating for “gender and LGBT equality to anti-Muslim prejudice.” He also praised them for working for the “separation of church and state.”

Will the second Trump term finally be when the SPLC and the ADL’s influence comes a close? Will more companies wake up to their many lies and “hate map” distortions? Conservatives have a golden opportunity right now to double down on efforts to ensure that happens.