listings of hate groups and extremists has been the subject of controversy. The authors of the 2009 book The White Separatist Movement in the United States, sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile, who used the findings of the SPLC and other watchdog groups, said that the SPLC chose its causes with funding and donations in mind. Concerns have been raised that people and groups designated as "hate groups" by the SPLC were being targeted by protests or violence that prevent them from speaking. The SPLC stands behind the vast majority of its listings. In 2018, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that while criticism of the SPLC had long existed, the sources of such criticism have expanded recently to include "sympathetic observers and fellow researchers on hate groups" concerned about the organization "mixing its research and activist strains". Laird Wilcox, an analyst of political fringe movements, has said the SPLC has taken an incautious approach to assigning the labels "hate group" and "extremist". Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center responded that Wilcox "had an ax to grind for a great many years" and engaged in name calling against others doing anti-racist work. In 2009, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argued that allies of America's Voice and Media Matters had used the SPLC designation of FAIR as a hate group to "engage in unsubstantiated, invidious name-calling, smearing millions of people in this movement." FAIR and its leadership have been criticized by the SPLC as being sympathetic to, or overtly supportive of, white supremacist and identitarian ideologies, as the group's late founder had stated his belief that the United States should remain a majority-white country. In 2010, a group of Republican politicians and conservative organizations criticized the SPLC in full-page advertisements in two Washington, D.C., newspapers for what they described as "character assassination" because the SPLC had listed the Family Research Council (FRC) as a hate group for alleged "defaming of gays and lesbians".Extremist Files: Family Research Council. Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016 In August 2012, a gunman entered the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council with the intent to kill employees and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches on the victims' faces. The gunman, Floyd Lee Corkins, stated that he chose FRC as a target because it was listed as an anti-gay group on the SPLC's website. A security guard was wounded but stopped Corkins from