The SPLC Indictment

Has a Leading Anti-Hate Group Transformed Itself into America’s Foremost Hate Factory?

In a bombshell development, an Alabama grand jury has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on eleven counts. The charges include wire fraud and making false statements to a federally insured bank. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the nonprofit organization sent more than $3 million to informants inside extremist groups without informing donors how their money was used.

The SPLC rose to prominence in the 1970s for legal work in civil rights cases targeting the KKK and the Aryan Nations. In a brilliant marketing adventure, the SPLC expanded its focus to smear and target groups it labeled "hate groups," including Christian nonprofit groups.  

The SPLC targeted the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, and Turning Point USA as “Hate” groups in recent years. The New York Post notes that the SPLC also added Moms for Liberty, Defending Education, and ten other parents’ rights groups to its list of anti-government extremists, feeding them directly into the SPLC’s “Hate Map” alongside neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan.

It appears that being conservative, Christian, or a parent's group exposes an organization to the risk that the SPLC will brand the entity a “hate group.” But of course, there is more to the SPLC. Evidence has been presented showing that the SPLC was not content to target Christian and non-Christian groups. Rather than focusing all of their efforts on groups that were actually spewing hate, the indictment alleges the evidence shows that the SPLC advanced hate and sowed discord, ostensibly as part of its attempt to highlight and fundraise off of such behaviors.

Consider the following evidence alleging that the SPLC weaponized discord and advanced hate. The Alabama indictment indicates that the SPLC allegedly paid a member of an online group, which helped plan the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia; the individual “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” Acting Attorney General Blanche described the alleged practices at issue as “Manufacturing racism to justify [the SPLC’s] existence.”

Evidently, this practice was advanced by creating “fictitious entities” to open bank accounts and pay informants without revealing the source and nature of the funds. This practice, according to the indictment, entailed making false illegal statements to banks to fund informants who then, according to the indictment, fueled hate. Apparently, this process advanced questionable fundraising efforts, which, according to the National Review, influenced billions of dollars in corporate giving.

It appears that the SPLC solicited donations that were used to fund the very hate they claimed to combat. The Washington Examiner editorial board concludes that the incentive for the SPLC to fund “hate groups is simple: Without high-profile hate incidents in the news, the SPLC cannot raise the donations it needs to remain relevant.”

This practice can be explained by blatant self-interest. Initially, it bears noting that the SPLC appears to have a deep-seated interest in perpetuating social division to sustain its own existence. This self-interest leads to three possibilities. First, it provides an incentive to expand the definition of hate. Second, it provides an incentive to fund hate. Third, self-interest supplies an incentive to hide such information from donors. If true, this situation suggests that the SPLC has become one of America’s leading grifters.

Given the foregoing analysis and evidence, no one should be surprised that the SPLC kept paying Aryan Nations operatives after bragging about bankrupting them. While everyone is entitled to a fair trial in court, increasingly, the court of public opinion suggests the SPLC could not resist manufacturing hate.

At the same time, Americans should not ignore the possibility that the mainstream media has engaged in a Herculean effort to obscure the details of the SPLC indictment. Writing in Salon magazine, Austin Sarat argues that the indictment lends support to hate groups.

While it is doubtful that anyone should take Professor Sarat seriously, given that the real world is comprised of self-interested economic and financial incentives, all Americans should focus on the possibility that hate can be manufactured to ensure the continued existence of anti-racist, anti-extremist, and anti-hate groups. Evidently, such groups—however noble they claim to be—can be just as selfish as the rest of humanity.