(LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) beefed up charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), alleging that the leftist group used millions of dollars in donations to fund groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in order to foment racist hatred and unrest as a means of keeping its purported mission of “dismantling” hate alive.
In April, the DOJ announced an 11-count indictment against the SPLC, including bank fraud.
This week, the grand jury issued a superseding indictment, charging that “unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance.”
Diabolical sleight of hand
“The SPLC actively led donors to believe that their donations would be used to ‘dismantle’ violent extremist groups,” the new DOJ indictment charges. In a diabolical sleight of hand, “the SPLC hid from donors the fact that a portion of their donated funds was being secretly used to support extremist groups and to fund their violent, racist, and extremist activities. These activities were of the same nature as the activities about which the SPLC published articles on its website and other forums in an effort to obtain donations.”
The SPLC’s paid informants – referred to as “field sources” (Fs) – engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website, according to the new DOJ indictment. The document explains:
The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia. That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.
In order to covertly pay its field sources, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the field sources. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.
Between 2010 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled approximately $4.1 million in tax-exempt donor funds to a series of fictitious accounts created to pay Fs embedded in “violent extremist organizations” to, among other things:
- Attend extremist group rallies across the country;
- Host extremist group rallies throughout the country;
- Grow existing chapters of extremist groups;
- Create new chapters of extremist groups;
- Recruit new individuals into extremist groups;
- Make donations to extremist group leaders;
- Purchase materials for cross burnings;
- Purchase materials to make Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods;
- Create racist paraphernalia that extremist groups sold at rallies;
- Publish extremist literature used in the recruiting of more members; and
- Pay everyday living expenses, which allowed the Fs to focus on their extremist groups rather than seeking other employment.
During the period alleged in the Superseding Indictment, the SPLC’s reported revenue on their IRS Form 990s rose from $38,712,628.00 in 2010 to $129,069,290.00 in 2023, an increase of approximately 233 percent. During this same time period, the SPLC’s net assets grew from $238,134,564.00 in 2010 to $786,768,246.00 in 2023, an increase of approximately 230 percent.
Southern Poverty Law Center targets traditional Catholics, other conservatives
Founded in 1971 as a civil rights legal firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become known in recent decades for its radical leftist activism and for smearing mainstream conservative, Catholic, and other Christian organizations as “hate groups” for opposing homosexuality and transgenderism.
The SPLC’s “hate map” features prominent pro-family organizations such as Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Liberty Counsel alongside terroristic white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
The notorious January 2023 FBI memo targeting “Radical Traditional Catholic ideology” and proposing “threat mitigation” of traditionalist Catholics notably cited the SPLC and its designation of nine Catholic organizations as “hate groups.”
The SPLC lists “anti-LGBTQ+” beliefs as one of the “extremist ideologies” that it tracks, along with “Racist Skinhead,” “Neo-Nazi,” and “Holocaust Denial” movements. The group associates “anti-LGBTQ+ hate” with the ideas that heterosexuality “is the only ‘normal’ sexuality” or that “gender can only be understood as either ‘male’ or ‘female’,” both of which Catholic teaching and the Bible uphold.
The SPLC also tracks “Radical Traditionalist Catholicism,” faulting so-called “radical traditional Catholics” for opposing “liberalizing reforms” after Vatican II that “placed more power in the hands of laypeople” and claiming that “antisemitism is an inextricable part of their theology.”
Other organizations targeted by the SPLC include the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, the American College of Pediatricians, the Ruth Institute, now-defunct Catholic media outlet Church Militant, and Do No Harm, which opposes underage “gender transitions.” The group absurdly lists pro-parent organizations like Moms for Liberty as extremist “antigovernment groups.”