Southern Poverty Law Center’s Alleged Fraud Exposes the Hate It Claimed to Fight

Commentary

In 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) put a bull’s-eye on our backs.

We at the Population Research Institute were smeared as “radical right extremists” who, for opposing population control and gender ideology and defending the natural family and unborn life, were accused of promoting “harmful ideologies.”

We were lumped together with our friends at the World Congress of Families—guilt by association—and added to their “Hate Map,” alongside neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan.

So it was with great interest that we learned that the SPLC has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Alabama on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

What was the alleged fraud?

According to the indictment, the organization was allegedly defrauding donors by telling them that it was fighting the Klan when in fact it was funding the Klan. The SPLC denies wrongdoing, and the charges are to be tried in court.

All told, the Justice Department alleges that the SPLC sent more than $3 million in donor funds to the Klan, the American Nazi Party, Aryan Nations, and other racial extremists.

If true, it is hard to imagine a more cynical racket. The SPLC would have been helping to stoke the very hate that it claimed to be fighting. Imagine an insurance salesman who burns down houses at night so he can sell more home insurance the next day.

Remember the infamous 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville that was supposedly organized by “white supremacists”? Well, the indictment alleges that one of its leaders was paid $270,000 by the SPLC to attend and help fan the flames.

If the charges hold, when SPLC donors find out that part of their donation may have been going to fund the Klan and neo-Nazi groups, I doubt they will be writing any more checks.

It is one thing to exaggerate a problem to entice donors to open their wallets, as some groups do. But it would be quite another to actually pay the leaders of extremist groups to create incidents that can then be used to fleece unsuspecting donors.

Over the years, the SPLC cast a wide net. Anyone who disagreed with any tenet of leftist ideology—and we at the Population Research Institute disagreed with virtually all of them—would be attacked. And, in our case, these attacks resulted in real hatred being directed toward us in the form of letters and emails.

We fell afoul of the SPLC for our work in defunding the U.N. Population Fund because of its involvement in China’s one-child regimen of forced abortions and sterilizations.

They smeared us again for warning of the coming demographic winter due to falling birth rates, saying that such warning—based on objective studies of falling birth rates—were “ultimately rooted in white supremacy.”

They attacked us also because we defended the right to life of unborn children, labeling us “anti-abortion.”

And because we were defending the right of parents to protect their children from gender ideology and transitioning, we were labeled “anti-LGBT.”

These attacks—and the threats that followed—didn’t deter us from our pro-life, pro-family mission, but they did convince us to double the locks on our office doors and devise a contingency plan in case anyone tried to act on their threats.

SPLC will have its day in court, and a jury will decide if the charges in the indictment are true.

But if the charges are true—and the Department of Justice looks to have assembled a compelling body of evidence—the group that attacked anyone and everyone as “hateful” may turn out to be the biggest hate monger of all.

If so, they will have sown the seeds of their own destruction.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.