The Southern Poverty Law Center — the organization that Fortune 500 companies, Big Tech platforms, and mainstream media have been citing as the gold standard for identifying “hate groups” in America — was paying actual neo-Nazis and KKK members to manufacture racial hatred. For money. Their money. Your donations.
Ha! We’ve been saying this for YEARS. Every conservative in America knew the SPLC was a racket. Now the Department of Justice has the receipts, a grand jury indictment, and federal charges to prove it.
Here’s what happened. The DOJ just charged the SPLC with donor fraud after an investigation revealed that the organization was funneling payments to white supremacist sources — real-deal neo-Nazis and Klansmen — to stoke racial fears and inflate the threat of domestic white supremacy. Why? Because scaring liberal donors into thinking the KKK is marching down every Main Street in America is a billion-dollar business model.
And business was booming.
The SPLC has been sitting on an endowment north of $700 million. They’ve got more cash reserves than some countries. They moved their money to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. (Nothing says “nonprofit fighting hate” like a Cayman Islands bank account, right?)
This is the same organization that slapped the “hate group” label on mainstream conservative organizations like the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and basically anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders who ever expressed an opinion about anything. Moms who didn’t want pornographic books in elementary school libraries? Hate group. A church that believes in traditional marriage? Hate group. A veteran who flies a Gadsden flag? Probably a domestic terrorist.
Meanwhile — and this is the part that should make every corporate CEO in America lose sleep tonight — the SPLC was cutting checks to ACTUAL white supremacists behind the scenes. They were literally manufacturing the product they were selling.
Think about that for a second.
Every tech company that ever banned a conservative account because the SPLC flagged them? Duped. Every corporation that pulled advertising from a conservative outlet based on an SPLC report? Played like a fiddle. Every journalist who ever cited the SPLC as a “nonpartisan watchdog” in a news article? Carrying water for a criminal enterprise.
Apple, Google, Amazon — they all integrated SPLC data into their platforms. Amazon used the SPLC to decide which charities were eligible for AmazonSmile donations. “Sorry, your veterans’ organization doesn’t qualify, but here’s a list of approved groups vetted by the people who pay neo-Nazis.”
Classic.
The grand jury indictment lays out a scheme that’s almost too perfect in its cynicism. Step one: pay extremists to do extremist things. Step two: point at the extremist things and scream that America has a white supremacy crisis. Step three: send out fundraising emails warning that hate is on the rise and only YOUR donation can stop it. Step four: deposit checks. Step five: repeat.
It’s a perpetual motion machine of manufactured outrage. And it worked for decades.
The founder, Morris Dees, was fired back in 2019 amid accusations of racial discrimination and sexual harassment — inside his own “anti-hate” organization. (You seriously cannot make this stuff up.) Multiple former employees described the place as a “highly profitable scam.” One former staffer told the New Yorker that the SPLC’s operating model was essentially: “ichever way you can raise money, do it.”
Well, one of the ways they raised money was paying Klansmen. So there’s that.
We spent years watching this outfit destroy the reputations of good, decent conservative organizations. Pastors. Parents. Policy groups. All branded as “hate” by an organization that was bankrolling the very hate it claimed to be tracking.
Every single corporation that ever used the SPLC as a gatekeeper owes every single conservative organization they blacklisted a massive apology. And probably a check.
Don’t hold your breath on that one.
But here’s the good news — the DOJ isn’t asking for apologies. They’re asking for convictions. A federal grand jury just told the SPLC that their little racket is over. The charges are on the table. The evidence is in the record. And the American public finally gets to see what we’ve known all along: the people who made a fortune calling US hateful were the ones paying for the hate the entire time.
Welcome to accountability. Population: the SPLC.