In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a mob determines whether a woman is a witch by seeing if she weighs the same as a duck.

The Southern Poverty Law Center uses the same rigorous and scientific approach to deciding whom to designate a “hate group,” which is today’s equivalent of being a witch, or a leper.

In a paper published last week, my colleague Jerry Kammer, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter, wrote that Heidi Beirich, research director of the group, acknowledged “we do not have a formal written criteria.” Kammer continued:

When a radio host asked her in late 2007 how an organization qualifies for the label, Beirich offered this explanation. “You qualify as a hate group if you treat an entire group of people for their internal characteristics, or their inherent characteristics, as less, or you demean them in some way.” A definition this flexible and imprecise could summon the SPLC Hate Patrol to the door of nearly any group of football fans, political activists, or Apple computer enthusiasts. It is an invitation to just the sort of mischief that gives the SPLC’s designation of FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] the odor of a made-to-order, politically expedient smear. It was delivered in December 2007, the month before La Raza launched its “Stop the Hate” campaign.

The whole piece, “Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors,” is well worth reading as a case study of how the race club is wielded to quash dissent (and how despicable and fraudulent the SPLC itself is). A summary is here.