SPLC walls tumbling down

Grifters piling bounty by exploiting others' decent passions merit merciless condemnation. As do fake news mongers who enable dirty crimes.

An Alabama grand jury considered evidence presented by the government against the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is alleged to have funneled millions of donor dollars to the very hate groups it claims to fight.

Per a DOJ press release, the SPLC "secretly funneled more than $3 million to individuals who'd been associated with violent extremist groups like the KKK, National Socialist Party of America [Nazis], and Aryan Nations."

“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups, it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a press conference.

(The SPLC's position is that payments were made exclusively to "informants" within racist groups, not to perpetuate reasons for the progressive 'champions' to exist.)

Alabama grand jurors returned an indictment; among 11 counts are wire fraud, lying to a financial institution, and money laundering.

During an April 22 Hannity appearance, FBI Director Kash Patel said: "The Southern Poverty Law Center ran a methodical, calculated scheme to defraud their donor base of $3 million and lied to them and used an illicit banking structure system to create shell companies to hide their money and who it was being sent to, specifically for the reason to sow discord and hate into our society."

“They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes," the director added.

Since its 1971 founding, the Alabama-based SPLC has postured as a noble battler of repugnant hate groups. But from the organization's genesis, profits and not principles were the game.

In his 1991 book, Shades of Grey (Louisiana State University Press), John Egerton quoted SPLC founder Morris Dees: "A lot of groups we work with in litigation on social issues are poor, themselves, living hand to mouth. Sometimes they're a little envious of us. I'm sorry they feel that way, but I can't do anything about it. We just run our business like a business."

Dees, who had marketed cakes while in college, added: "Whether it's cakes or causes, it's all the same thing."

Dees was in 1998 inducted into the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. Discover The Networks recorded his boast: "I learned everything I knew about hustling from the Baptist Church. Spending Sundays on those hard benches listening to the preacher pitch salvation -- why, it was like getting a PHD in selling."

The SPLC's board fired Dees in 2019, for alleged sexual harassment and racial discrimination. His office was filled by Margaret Huang.

In its April 23 report, the New York Post charged: "Huang’s tenure saw the SPLC take a much more partisan tone, accusing conservative and religious groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, and the Family Research Council of fomenting 'hate' or 'extremism.'"

The SPLC later listed Turning Point USA on its 'Hatewatch' list. One day after, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Trans-loving leftist Tyler Robinson is alleged to have murdered Kirk.

Mainstream news media has long embraced the private and unaccountable group. Talking heads cited the organization's pronouncements as if they were sacrosanct.

So timepiece-certain was reporters' resort to the SPLC that whenever alleged hate crimes were in the news, one was certain an SPLC spokesman would within moments appear on camera to spout boilerplate.

Fake news hacks have long discounted conservative, Christian speakers and organizations, by observing they had been 'listed by the SPLC as a hate group.' (Who had decided judgments issued by that organization were of the same beyond-skepticism quality as, say, Newton's law of gravity?)

In coverage of the new indictment, left media venues strove to protect the SPLC - the group so frequently a source of anti-Trump brickbats legacy press bannered without question.

MSNBC/MSNOW's online writer, Ja'han Jones, ensured the leftist channel's checks kept coming his way, by painting the Trump administration's pursuit of rightness as wrong.

"As Americans nationwide are being squeezed by Trump’s destructive economic agenda, House Republicans this week homed in on a top priority: attacking a civil rights group for monitoring hate speech," was Jones's opening.

Not only did he just plain lie, in front of the entire world, about the nature of charges brought, but Jones couldn't even make it beyond sentence one without assailing Americans' chosen president.

(An accurate idea of President Trump's opinion can be got by considering his post-Charlottesville words: "Racism is evil," he declared. "And those who cause violence in its name are criminals or thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups who are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.")

The Southern Poverty Law Center's guilt or innocence will be determined by a trial yet to be convened. But fake news operatives sympathetic to the previously-established-as-reprehensible organization have already, unashamedly, flaunted their own biases.

Waterloo's DC Larson is the author of That a Man Can Again Stand Up and Ideas Afoot. He counts among freelance credits the Daily Caller, American Thinker, Iowa Standard, and numerous heartland papers. His political blog is American Scene Magazine.