Southern Poverty Law Center Controversy

It sounds like a headline from the Babylon Bee.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which built its reputation on suing the

Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy, was actually paying Klan

members and bankrolled an organizer of the Charlottesville Unite the

Right rally. The Justice Department alleges

that not only did the

SPLC pay these white nationalists, but it also set up shell

companies to hide it.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, on top of perpetuating this

widespread, decade-long, multi-million dollar fraud,

conducted more criminal activity.

They attempted to hide their criminal activity from

our financial banking network. They set up shell companies and

entities around America so that the financial institutions that we

rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was

not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme

and fraud.

For its part, the SPLC doesn't deny funding

KKK members. It just says they were part of a program of

informants that tipped the SPLC off to violent threats.

SPLC President Brian Ferre says the program saved

lives. Let's not immediately dismiss the SPLC's

claim

here. There's reason to believe the SPLC may

originally have

created this program for exactly that purpose.

After all, the Klan firebombed the SPLC's offices in

nineteen eighty-three. But the DOJ's indictment isn't talking

about the nineteen

eighties or the nineteen nineties.

The activity in the indictment started in twenty fourteen.

According to the indictment, the SPLC wasn't just funneling

three million dollars to informants.

No, the SPLC actually directed the racist

postings of a Charlottesville organizer and helped that person

bring more people to the tiki torch rally.

In at least one of these matters, our investigation revealed that

funds were used to facilitate the commission of further

state and federal offenses.

The SPLC was paying the very same extremists

it featured on its website. I'm no expert on embedding

informants in white nationalist groups, but it seems that if you're trying to

prevent violence, publicly spotlighting your informant on a

national website might defeat the purpose.

So if the SPLC wasn't paying these people to prevent violence,

why was it paying them? That's where my research from Making

Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law

Center comes in.

SPLC co-founder Morris Dees was a consummate

fundraiser. When the SPLC sued Klan groups into

bankruptcy,

liberal donors couldn't wait to send money.

Eventually, Dees ran out of grand dragons to slay,

but the

fundraising machine demanded the SPLC keep

finding hate. Klan Watch evolved into Hate

Watch, and the SPLC began placing mainstream

conservative and Christian groups on a hate map alongside

defunct Klan chapters. There was artificially high demand

for hate, and the SPLC struggled to keep up with the

supply. That exaggeration has consequences.

In twenty twelve, a gunman used the SPLC's hate map to

target the Family Research Council.

More recently, SPLC put Turning Point USA on the map,

and months later, Tyler Robinson allegedly murdered Charlie

Kirk

to silence his hate. So yes, it sounds

like Babylon Bee satire, but it's real, and it's another

reminder that the Babylon Bee itself is among the

SPLC's many targets. It's been the honor of my

life to defend good people from SPLC smears,

and I'm glad the Justice Department has finally

vindicated my work.