Elon Musk and online influencers help drive FBI split with SPLC and ADL

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The FBI severed ties this week with two civil rights organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, after a wave of online backlash led by Elon Musk and other influencers who accused the groups of smearing conservative personalities and inspiring violence.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed on Friday that the bureau no longer shares information with or receives intelligence products from the SPLC, denouncing the group’s “hate map” as a political tool that has endangered mainstream conservatives and Christians.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington, March 9, 2020. An air quality board has ordered electric car manufacturer Tesla to stop illegally polluting the air in the San Francisco Bay Area. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel said in a statement on X. “Their so-called hate map has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.”

Grassroots social media outrage sparked scrutiny

The FBI’s decision follows mounting pressure from social media figures in the days since the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, before Musk helped uplift those complaints to higher figures in government.

Pericles Abassi, a Chicago lawyer and online commentator with over 76,000 followers, was one of the first users on X to draw attention to the SPLC’s and ADL’s classifications of Kirk’s organization.

“My main function was kind of getting it started—tipping the first domino,” Abassi, who maintains a comical yet intimate relationship with his online community of followers, told the Washington Examiner in an interview.

“After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, people were kind of going after different people for celebrating his murder. I looked to see what the ADL said about Turning Point, and saw they had them in their glossary of extremism,” Abassi said, pointing to an X post he published on Sept. 27. “I took the screenshot and tweeted, ‘Even after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the ADL still lists Turning Point USA as a hate group. They have blood on their hands.’”

The post quickly went viral and amassed 6.4 million views. Musk replied the following day, calling for changes at the ADL, and the post was amplified by Libs of TikTok, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and other commentators, including Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, the latter of whom credited Abassi by name during an episode of Timcast IRL on Thursday night.

On Tuesday, the ADL announced it would be removing its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” from its website, and the FBI cut ties with the group in an announcement from Patel the following day.

SPLC ties cut amid renewed focus on infamous ‘Hate Map’

Conservative advocates raised criticism about the ADL’s and SPLC’s systems of labeling people they disagree with long before the course correction made by the FBI this week.

But Patel’s broader disavowal of the SPLC comes as critics such as Abassi reignite conversations and awareness about the group’s history of placing conservative, religious, and pro-family organizations alongside violent extremists such as the Ku Klux Klan, and how more leaders in the Trump administration are willing to take on initiatives from allies within the MAGA movement.

The SPLC gained prominence in the 1980s and ’90s for bankrupting Klan chapters, but its more recent reports have focused on groups such as Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and Turning Point USA.

In 2012, a man inspired by the SPLC’s hate map attempted a mass shooting at the Family Research Council’s Washington headquarters. He wounded a building manager before being subdued.

Turning Point USA appeared on the SPLC’s “hate and extremism” map in a 2024 report, and more recently, on Sept. 9, the day before Kirk was murdered, in a report in which the group was described as “well-funded, hard-right” and with alleged links to extremists. A day later, Kirk became the target of a gruesome assassination in what officials say was a politically motivated attack. His alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, 22, faces up to a life sentence and the prospect of the death penalty if convicted.

While the SPLC condemned the violence against Kirk, it did not remove Turning Point from the map.

Patel said that the group’s “disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”

Patel rejects outside ‘agenda-driven’ intelligence

The FBI director previously signaled his opposition to the SPLC, and there is no evidence that the FBI has relied on the group’s guidance since he was sworn in as the bureau’s director on Feb. 21. Yet the commotion that unfolded on social media this week nevertheless prompted him to make two separate statements vowing that the bureau would no longer rely on information and data gathering from either group under his watch.

During an April panel on anti-Christian bias, he criticized former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s reliance on the group — especially after a 2023 memo from the Richmond Field Office proposed surveilling “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” churches using SPLC data.

“The FBI will never rely on politicized or agenda-driven intelligence from outside groups — and certainly not from the SPLC,” Patel reiterated Friday.

The bureau’s SPLC denouncement follows Musk’s post about ADL

The FBI’s break with the SPLC came on the heels of its decision to end cooperation with the ADL, which Musk and other conservatives have accused of conflating conservative speech with hate speech, in addition to helping legacy media outlets launder false or defamatory allegations into mainstream discourse.

ADL’s now-removed glossary described Turning Point USA as promoting “bigoted statements,” a label strongly rejected by Kirk and his allies. The group issued a statement on Wednesday saying it “has deep respect” for the FBI and reaffirmed its commitment to combating antisemitism.

“As we prepare to observe the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar, we have seen the statement from FBI Director Patel regarding the FBI’s relationship with ADL,” the group said in a statement on the eve of Yom Kippur. “We remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people.”

Despite the ADL’s long-standing law enforcement partnerships, Patel’s move aligns with growing disillusionment among conservatives who see such organizations as weaponized against political opponents, and it remains unclear whether the group can earn back the good graces of this FBI.

Musk helped catapult issue to FBI head

Musk, a longtime critic of both the SPLC and ADL, escalated the battle against the SPLC this week by calling the group a “criminal” and “evil” organization in a post that amassed over 7.2 million views.

“The SPLC is an evil organization that spreads hate propaganda relentlessly,” Musk posted early Thursday morning on X. “It needs to be shut down.”

ELON MUSK CALLS FOR THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER TO BE ‘SHUT DOWN’

Musk previously described the SPLC as a “scam organization” and amplified criticisms from Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, who accused the group of planning to dox staff members.

Kirk, before his death, also slammed the SPLC’s hate map as “a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.” By Friday morning, Patel affirmed that the bureau would no longer take into consideration data or information from the group.

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