The Southern Poverty Law Center Is a Fundraising Front & Everyone Knows It

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s primary business has been convincing wealthy Northern liberals that they are engaged in a righteous cause.

The argument: The SPLC has used its platform to stoke the fires of social division and racial hatred for decades as a means of fundraising—and a new federal grand jury indictment is long overdue.

WHY IT MATTERS

Morris Dees once worked on the gubernatorial campaign of segregationist George Wallace and, as a Montgomery attorney, represented a defendant accused of assaulting the civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders. Dees’ fee was reportedly paid by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council. These early endeavors did not foreshadow his 1971 pivot to racial justice champion when he co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center. Under his leadership, the SPLC earned the moniker “Poverty Palace.”

Photo by: Joseph Chan (Unsplash)

From the early 1980s, the Southern Poverty Law Center began pursuing litigation against the Ku Klux Klan. These aims were, on their face, laudable. By that time, however, the Klan had declined significantly. Its peak membership was roughly one million but had dwindled to about ten thousand scattered, uneducated members. It was still the hooded face of Civil Rights Movement-era terror in the minds of wealthy donors. As one of Dees’ associates noted, “The only thing easier than beating the Klan in court … was raising money off Klan-fighting from liberals up north.” The Klan’s notoriety, despite its impotence, made it the perfect adversary to drive fundraising.

The SPLC’s most visible project is likely its list of groups and individuals the organization defines as advancing “hate”. The majority legitimately belong on such a list. Others, however, earn their spots merely because they transgress the accepted progressive dogma. Examples include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, founder and executive editor of Restoring the West; the Clarion Project, an anti-Islamist group with Muslim advisory board members; and the Family Research Council, a mainstream Christian organization. This list, like its anti-Klan litigation, is a significant driver of fundraising. And now SPLC appears to be on to its next grift by funding the very hate groups it claims to combat.

On April 21, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC, Dees’ now former organization. (He was fired in 2019 following several allegations of sexual harassment.) The indictment alleges that the organization funneled funds to hate groups through fraudulently created bank accounts. Over $270,000 was reportedly sent to a group integral to the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one person died and 35 others were sent to the hospital after a car rammed into a crowd. The return on this meager investment was more than $80 million. Fundraising soared from $51 million to $133 million year over year after the SPLC-underwritten rally.

The SPLC’s leaders appear to have had a greater interest in the fundraising potential of their mission than actually realizing the organization’s stated goals of decreased hate. They have exposed innocent organizations and individuals to unjustified scrutiny and manipulated donors into supporting their efforts to fight fires they set themselves. This indictment is not likely to destroy the SPLC, but hopefully it will force an end to its worst practices.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Americans are living in a deeply divided society that the SPLC certainly did not create. If there is any hope, however, of bridging the divides of our fragmented culture, bad actors like the SPLC cannot be given any sanction or support.