Is the Left’s Censorship Industrial Complex Pulling the Strings Behind AI?

Over the past decade, the Left has cultivated a censorship industrial complex of “experts” on “extremism” who try to bully Big Tech and corporate America into blacklisting conservatives over hot-button cultural issues such as LGBTQ+ orthodoxy and parental rights.

While the censorship industrial complex has suffered setbacks, it enjoys a persistent influence—notably at Anthropic, the major AI company behind the chatbot Claude.

Anthropic openly touts its relationship with four branches of the censorship industrial complex, and each of them has ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC, the left-wing smear factory that pioneered the censorship strategy, now faces federal charges for allegedly lying to banks while attempting to conceal payments to members of the Ku Klux Klan, but Anthropic is not reconsidering its work with the SPLC’s allies.

“Truth-seeking AI has the potential to make Americans more prosperous and productive than ever before,” America First Legal co-founder and President Gene Hamilton told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “But AI platforms that are inherently biased from the outset, based on flawed constitutions or radical left-wing ‘reinforcement learning from human feedback,’ pose a tremendous threat to freedom-loving Americans.”

“Many of the same entities that the Left relied upon to push its censorship agenda in the Biden administration appear to be serving a similar function when it comes to woke AI platforms,” Hamilton added. “We must be clear-eyed about their ultimate objective, which has been and will continue to be the elimination of free speech, free thought, and free inquiry.”

Anthropic Seeking Advice on ‘Terrorist’ Content

Anthropic mentions the censorship industrial complex groups in a section on its “Transparency Hub” addressing “Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content.”

“We engage with external experts on combating extremist content through safety briefings, usage standards consultation, and Policy Vulnerability Testing,” the website states. “We have partnered with the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, the Polarization and Extremism Research Lab at American University, and the Middlebury Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism to validate model performance on extremism and will continue to invest in similar partnerships. We have also joined the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism to help strengthen our ability to detect potential risks early, and participate in their AI working group.”

Each of these four groups has cited the SPLC, and most of them have direct ties with it. The SPLC weaponized its history in suing the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy to demonize conservatives. It maintains a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups—including Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, Focus on the Family, and others—alongside Klan chapters. The map inspired a terrorist attack in 2012. Under President Joe Biden, the FBI cited the SPLC in targeting traditional Catholics, and SPLC staff advised Justice Department prosecutors.

Many financial companies have started to cut off funds from the SPLC in response to a federal indictment last month, charging the SPLC with wire fraud and bank fraud in a scheme to fund Klan members. (The SPLC claims it funded Klan members as informants, but the indictment suggests otherwise.)

“Like many AI labs, we work with a wide range of well-established and nonpartisan academic, civil society, and research organizations to help prevent AI from being used to incite real-world violence and terrorism,” an Anthropic spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “We share this work and our partnerships publicly.”

GPAHE

Two former SPLC staffers, Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via, founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. Beirich directed the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, which publishes the “hate map,” and she appears to be running GPAHE as a kind of SPLC 2.0.

GPAHE frames opposition to mass immigration and transgender ideology as rooted in “hate,” “white supremacy,” or “Christian nationalism.”

GPAHE openly admits that it “does not cover far-left extremism.” It claims far-left groups do not “attack individuals for their identity traits,” that they do not “advance rights-restricting agendas,” and that “far-left extremist movements have not in recent years engaged in mass violence in the manner that the far-right has.”

“It’s inexcusable Anthropic has partnered with such biased outfits as GPAHE, which was launched by leaders from the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center, and admits it ignores extremism among its left-wing allies,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, told The Daily Signal.

PERIL

American University’s Polarization and Extremism Innovation Lab also has close SPLC ties. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the project’s director, also serves as a member of the SPLC’s Tracking Hate and Extremism Advisory Committee.

The SPLC and PERIL have allied to condemn opposition to transgender ideology as “hateful” and “pseudoscience.” PERIL has published joint reports with the SPLC repeating accusations against Moms for Liberty and claims that conservative nonprofits such as Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council are “hate groups.”

CTEC

The Middlebury Institute, a graduate school of Middlebury College, hosts a Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. The center has repeatedly cited the SPLC in research and published a March 2025 paper condemning Moms for Liberty as “cultural facilitators of exclusion and extremism.” The institute’s professors have suggested the IRS should remove tax-exempt status from organizations the SPLC brands as “hate groups.”

GIFCT

After the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, major tech companies, including Meta, Microsoft, YouTube, and Twitter, created the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

The forum does not have close ties to the SPLC, but it has suggested that companies use the SPLC “hate map” to designate extremists. The forum has also repeatedly listed the SPLC among civil society participants.

None of these groups responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about its role with Anthropic or its stance on the SPLC indictment.

It is beyond the pale that Anthropic would work with these groups, particularly GPAHE. This AI company should reconsider, as should any other AI company taking notes from former SPLC staff.