2 Long Island groups on Southern Poverty Law Center list for being 'antigovernment' extremist

Two local organizations, Long Island Loud Majority and Long Island Mutual Assistance Group, again have been listed by Southern Poverty Law Center researchers as "antigovernment" extremist groups.

SPLC, which monitors hate groups and "seeks to be a catalyst for racial justice," according to its website, produces the list annually. The group says its researchers comb group publications, citizen and news reports, law enforcement agencies, field sources and internet postings to produce the organization’s Year in Hate and Extremism report.

It also named the two Long Island groups to its list last year. 

The center distinguishes between hate groups, which attack or malign an entire class of people, and antigovernment groups, which “see the federal government as an enemy of the people and promote baseless conspiracy theories,” its researchers wrote. 

The SPLC did not make anyone available for an interview. But in a written statement, Travis McAdam, a senior research analyst, said Loud Majority had shared "typical antigovernment rhetoric about false conspiracies regarding a supposed tyrannical government and masking it with patriotic language."

Last year, he wrote, Loud Majority "increased their use of anti-trans rhetoric, which they often directed at local schools and libraries, dishonestly claiming that kids are being harmed by those local institutions. The group reflected national antigovernment trends of targeting schools, using intimidating tactics, and eroding civic dialogue."

The Mutual Assistance Group last year "continued looking for new members to join what, at its core, is a pretty standard antigovernment militia entity," McAdam wrote. The group wrongly asserts constitutional justification and wrongly contends that it can "assume for itself law-enforcement type functions. Nothing could be further from the truth," the SPLC said.

Loud Majority started organizing rallies supporting then-President Donald Trump in 2020 and later helped drive turnout in school and even library board elections. The group pushes content on social media platforms like YouTube and Rumble. Recent streams on YouTube got a few hundred views; on Rumble, a video-sharing platform that bills itself as "immune to cancel culture," most streams draw thousands of views.

In an interview, group co-founder Kevin Smith denied that his group was antigovernment, citing its support of candidates in local elections, and derided SPLC as “an organization to scare Northeast liberals into giving them money.” In a video last year, Loud Majority co-founder Shawn Farash decried Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “radical left-wing Communist socialist totalitarian policies.”

Smith denied that the group was anti-trans but says it opposes parents being excluded from their child's medical decisions.

Mutual Assistance Group is a “militia coalition” formed to protect its members’ families and communities during disasters, along with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, according to the group’s website. 

The group did not respond to an email. Group member Andrew Poliakoff said in an email last year that the group was not antigovernment. He could not be reached for comment.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.