Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, is tying the company he leads to a hate group in what looks like a crude attempt at virtue-signaling.  He wasted no time in emailing company employees and announcing a donation  of one million dollars to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a fundraising machine that has vacuumed up hundreds of millions posing as a foe of racists.

Now Apple is even shilling for the SPLC on iTunes.  Andrew Liptak of the Verge:

A new page appears on the iTunes desktop and mobile storefronts, and can be found under the New Music, Hot Tracks, and Recent Releases sections. Users can donate in $5, $`0, $25, $50, $100, and $200 increments.

So reckless is the SPLC that it actually placed Dr. Ben Carson on its "extremist watch list" and recently puzzled everyone who knows anything about the Amana Colonies in Iowa by declaring the community founded by German pacifists as a home of hate groups and identifying it on a map.  The Amana Colonies draw many visitors and tourists.

WHO TV Des Moines reports:

A national organization says there are three hate groups active in the state of Iowa, but people in one of those communities say the town shouldn't be on that list.

"There is no hate group in the Amana Colonies," said David Rettig of the Amana Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Despite assurances from officials in the Amana Colonies, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists it as an area of white supremacist activity. The group in question is called the Daily Stormer, which the SPLC says is affiliated with neo-Nazis.

Conversations on the website about the Amana Colonies show where members visited last year. They even talked about holding meetings in local restaurants.

When asked what he thought about the group holding meetings in the town, Rettig said, "I don't know what to think about that. What the Amanas are about, forget their political ideology, people come to the Amanas every day, we want them to like it. There certainly have not been any Nazi rallies or neo-Nazi rallies in Amana or even talk about that. The whole thing has been a big surprise."

You might think the SPLC would be a bit more careful about mapping what it casually labels hate groups in the wake of its role in targeting the Family Research Council and placing it on a map, after which a same-sex marriage fanatic entered its building intent on killing as many as possible.  He later admitted that he had used the SPLC to identify and find his target.

Apple's shareholders are being badly served by their CEO.