The manufactured boogeyman of White supremacy

OPINION:

Joseph R. Biden launched his 2020 presidential bid on the promise to restore the soul of America.

He used the White supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as his motivation for jumping into the race.

“It was [in Charlottesville] in August of 2017 that we saw Klansmen and White supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open,” Mr. Biden recalled in his debut video in 2019. “Their crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism. Chanting the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s.

“The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” he said.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Biden consistently referred to White supremacy as “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”

Under his tenure, the Department of Justice significantly increased its focus on domestic terrorism, with a particular emphasis on racially motivated violent extremists. Whistleblowers within the FBI alleged that the Biden administration pressured agents to label cases as domestic extremism to meet internal quotas, often without sufficient evidence.

The entire justification of Mr. Biden’s presidency was based on the boogeyman of White supremacy. Without it, there was no substance. So the left found it and funded it.

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which worked hand in glove with Mr. Biden’s Justice Department to combat domestic terrorism, was alleged to have paid one of those Charlottesville rally organizers no less than $270,000 from 2015 to 2023.

The person, identified as “F-37” in the indictment, used SPLC’s help to create “racist postings” and “coordinate transportation to the [Charlottesville] event for several attendees.”

Before the rally, SPLC published a map of Confederate monuments likely to spark “turmoil and bloodshed.” These could be found on many military bases and at high schools and middle schools.

Liberals then used the map to organize protests, many of which turned violent, resulting in those monuments being knocked down.

One could surmise that the chaos that ensued in Charlottesville was funded, planned, coordinated and executed by SPLC and that the organization reaped the rewards.

After the rally, SPLC’s public support, revenue and net assets tripled. Its revenue before the rally was $51 million; a year later, it had ballooned to $133 million.

From 2014 to 2023, SPLC paid more than $3 million to at least eight people working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche alleges.

Some of the money used in these endeavors was disguised through fake businesses.

“[SPLC] was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing: not dismantling extremism but funding it,” Mr. Blanche said at a press conference Tuesday.

The investigation into the SPLC’s informant program originated under a previous administration but was shut down by the Biden administration, he said. During that period, the organization worked with Mr. Biden’s Justice Department to stoke Mr. Biden’s race-based hate agenda.

One of SPLC’s attorneys was appointed to a top federal judgeship. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division often met with SPLC to consult on cases it identified as hate crimes.

The FBI’s Richmond office would go on to cite SPLC in a memo that outlined the threat of “radical traditional Catholics.” In 2022, SPLC worked with PayPal to decide which “extreme” groups to remove from its service.

After Mr. Biden’s White House received a letter from the National School Boards Association asking his administration to treat concerned parents as “domestic terrorists,” SPLC put parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty on its “hate map” and gave his Justice Department early access to the report.

Then, in 2024, after Mr. Biden dropped out of his reelection race, Kamala Harris picked up the mantel and falsely accused Donald Trump in a debate of coddling White supremacists. She used the Charlottesville example.

It was exactly one month after she received an endorsement from SPLC — the group Mr. Trump’s Justice Department now claims planned, organized and paid for the rally.

• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.