Has the Southern Poverty Law Center listed specific groups as Christian nationalist or white nationalist?
Executive summary
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) does designate and publish lists of specific organizations it classifies as white nationalist and as linked to Christian-identitarian or radical Christian extremist ideologies; its public annual reports and online “Extremist Files” include named groups and quantify categories such as “white nationalist” and “Christian Identity” [1] [2]. Those designations have drawn pushback and litigation from some groups the SPLC has named, which the record also reflects [1].
1. The SPLC’s public taxonomy: categories and numbers
The SPLC’s published materials and the secondary summaries of them show that the organization classifies hate and extremist groups by category — including “white nationalist,” “Christian Identity,” “radical traditional Catholic,” and related designations — and reports counts of named groups in those buckets (for example, 148 white nationalist groups listed in the SPLC’s 2018 report) [1] [3].
2. Named white nationalist organizations: examples in SPLC reporting
The SPLC’s listings include individual white nationalist and neo‑Nazi organizations by name; public trackers and media coverage cite examples the SPLC has listed such as Atomwaffen Division (also recorded by the SPLC under neo‑Nazi/white nationalist headings) and Identity Evropa (a white nationalist group documented in state-level reporting) [4] [5]. The SPLC’s Extremist Files likewise profile groups it identifies as white supremacist or white nationalist — for instance, the Goyim Defense League and Active Clubs are discussed in SPLC resources as white supremacist/white nationalist actors [2].
3. Christian‑linked extremist designations: Christian Identity and radical traditionalists
The SPLC treats explicitly religious currents that intersect with racist ideologies as distinct categories; “Christian Identity” is listed as a category of hate groups in SPLC summaries, and the SPLC has labeled certain “radical traditionalist Catholic” organizations as hate groups — a designation that has even been cited by federal law‑enforcement memos relying on the SPLC’s research [1] [6]. SPLC analysts have also documented and warned about “white Christian nationalism” as a movement and its overlap with white nationalist ideas [7].
4. How the SPLC explains overlap and context
The SPLC explicitly acknowledges overlap between categories: groups classified as Klan, neo‑Nazi, neo‑Confederate, racist skinhead or Christian Identity “could also be fairly described as white nationalist,” and its reports describe ideologies and behaviors (such as advocating racial separatism or violence) that drive a group’s placement [1] [8]. SPLC annual analyses track trends — rises and falls in counts — and call out accelerationist tendencies among some white nationalist factions [9] [3].
5. Disputes, legal challenges and criticism over labels
The SPLC’s naming of organizations has provoked controversy: some groups and commentators have disputed specific listings (the Family Research Council’s contested classification is a longstanding example), and the Center for Immigration Studies filed a lawsuit over an “anti‑immigrant” designation that was dismissed [1]. Conservative and alternative sites also criticize the SPLC’s methods or branding decisions, and those disputes form part of the public record about how these labels are applied [10] [11].
6. What the available reporting does not fully show
The material provided here is a mix of SPLC resources and secondary summaries (Wikipedia, media pieces, state reporting); while they demonstrate that the SPLC does list many specific groups as white nationalist and identifies Christian‑aligned extremist currents, the supplied sources do not include a comprehensive, current master list of every named group or the SPLC’s internal methodology documents in full, so exhaustive naming beyond the examples cited here cannot be asserted from these sources alone [2] [4].
Conclusion
The Southern Poverty Law Center publicly names and categorizes organizations as white nationalist and identifies Christian‑linked extremist currents (Christian Identity, radical traditionalists, and analyses of white Christian nationalism) and lists specific groups in those categories in its reports and extremist profiles; those designations are documented, widely cited, and have been challenged by some organizations and commentators [1] [2] [6].