OPINION:
“He has dug a hole and hollowed it out; he has fallen into a pit of his own making.” (Psalm 7:15)
The Southern Poverty Law Center, famous for battling “hate groups,” helped stoke hate by funneling millions of dollars to the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other extremists and engaged in criminal activity to cover it up, according to the Justice Department.
Announcing an indictment with 11 counts Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that from 2014 to 2023, the SPLC paid big bucks to leaders at the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America and the American Front.
The SPLC set up shell companies to hide this from the public, the indictment alleges.
The scandal includes $270,000 in payments to an unidentified conspirator who helped organize the Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counterprotester was killed. The left, especially President Biden, cited the episode frequently as proof that the biggest threat to America was “White supremacy.”
Mr. Biden repeatedly aired the debunked lie that President Trump had called neo-Nazis who were at that rally “very fine people.” Mr. Trump had been talking about the two sides in the debate over historic statues, after which he thoroughly condemned the neo-Nazis.
After the rally, the SPLC’s donations tripled from $50 million in 2016 to $132 million in fiscal 2017, The Washington Times reported Friday. Hey, stoking hate is good for business.
“This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups but in turn actually only fueled the hatred,” said FBI Director Kash Patel, who added that the SPLC was “lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposedly violent extremist groups.”
The phrase “hoist with his own petard” comes to mind. From Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” it means being blown up by your own bomb. SPLC interim President Bryan Fair said the allegations are false and that the group “for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting White supremacy and various forms of injustice.”
Well, it did, at first. Founded in 1971, the SPLC went after bad guys and helped put them out of business. It was so lucrative that the show had to go on well after the threat was no longer plausible.
As the menace of Klansmen and Nazis grew dimmer, the SPLC invented a new enemy: conservative Christians. To the SPLC, supporting marriage, family and porn-free classrooms and school libraries is a hallmark of bigotry and “White nationalism.”
By equating biblical moral values with hate, the group has gotten countless Christian organizations blacklisted and demonetized. The SPLC is a key component in the left’s campaign to criminalize Christianity.
Failure to embrace any part of the LGBTQ agenda can put a group on the SPLC’s national “hate map.” These include Moms for Liberty, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.
The latter group was attacked by a shooter in 2012, who told police that the SPLC’s “hate map” had inspired him. It was only the heroics of guard Leo Johnson, who took a bullet in his arm, that spared Family Research Council staff from mass murder.
More recently, the conservative campus group Turning Point USA, whose founder, Charlie Kirk, was fatally shot on a college campus in September, was listed as “hard right” on the SPLC’s 2024 report on hate and extremist groups.
The SPLC has survived previous scandals. In the 1990s, Black employees accused SPLC founder Morris Dees and others of racial discrimination, a charge they and the organization denied.
In 2019, the center’s director, Richard Cohen, announced Mr. Dee’s firing, citing “personnel issues.” Allegations included sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism. A week later, Mr. Cohen quietly resigned.
Since then, the SPLC has continued using Christian boogeymen to raise money by the boatload. It has an estimated $750 million endowment.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the Justice Department severed ties in 2018 with the group, but it came back into vogue during the Biden administration.
The SPLC was a welcome presence then, meeting with White House officials at least 11 times, said Tyler O’Neil, author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The Pentagon and other federal agencies relied on the SPLC to provide materials for diversity, equity and inclusion struggle sessions. Corporations, including PayPal, relied on the SPLC to weed out “extremists” from their charity and client lists.
A top SPLC official boasted about helping government agencies craft anti-terrorism efforts at a time when federal agents under Mr. Biden were targeting parents protesting at school board meetings and traditionalist Catholics as potential terrorists.
In October, the FBI again cut ties to the SPLC, which Mr. Patel called a “partisan smear machine.”
It’s hard not to indulge in a little schadenfreude when a particularly malicious actor such as the SPLC is found out to be a hypocrite and worse, but the Bible warns against celebrating others’ misfortune, especially since our sinful human nature makes us all prone to hypocrisy at one time or another.
“Do not gloat when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart rejoice when he stumbles, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.” (Prov. 24:17-18)
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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