President Donald Trump never defended white nationalists in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, but a leftist group in league with Trump’s 2020 opponent, President Joe Biden, was funding the white nationalists under the table.
According to the Justice Department’s new indictment, the Southern Poverty Law Center—which raises money by presenting itself as the top opponent of “white supremacy” and trades on its history of suing the Klan into bankruptcy in the 1980s to smear conservatives today—paid one of the “Unite the Right” organizers no less than $270,000 between 2015 and 2023.
Not only was the SPLC paying the person—identified as “F-37” in the indictment—but the leftist group was also supervising F-37’s “racist postings” and helped F-37 “coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”
To call this explosive would be an understatement. A brief reminder: Joe Biden said he decided to run for president after watching the events of Charlottesville. He repeatedly used the event as a cudgel to demonize Trump, and he mentioned going after “white supremacy” in his inaugural address.
When Biden became president in 2021, many federal agencies reached out to the SPLC for advice in combating “the domestic terrorism threat,” or so the SPLC’s then-president told donors. Public documents unearthed by America First Legal confirmed this, showing not only that SPLC staff advised Justice Department prosecutors, but regularly met with leaders at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The division’s head, Kristen Clarke, actively sought advice from the SPLC.
Biden would go on to nominate an SPLC attorney to a top federal judgeship. Under him, the FBI’s Richmond office would cite the SPLC in its notorious memo on “radical traditional Catholics.” After the White House reportedly helped draft a letter comparing concerned moms and dads to domestic terrorists, the SPLC put parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty on its “hate map” with Klan chapters—and gave the DOJ early access to the report.
So much of the weaponization of government against conservatives in that administration either traces back to the SPLC or is otherwise connected to it.
So, the SPLC’s funding of Charlottesville white nationalists undercuts the entire rationale for Biden’s campaign, and the rationale for the DOJ working with the SPLC to combat “hate.”
But it gets worse.
In the lead-up to Charlottesville, the SPLC arguably enflamed tensions. The SPLC published a map of Confederate monuments, warning that these monuments might spark “turmoil and bloodshed.” The map included military bases, high schools, and middle schools.
Antifa agitators, a comparably new phenomenon at the time, had mobilized to protest at the monuments, and knocked many of them down. The SPLC’s Confederate map arguably put children in the crosshairs of a violent movement—just because their schools were named after Confederates.
Carol Swain, a black former professor at Vanderbilt University who has analyzed white nationalist movements, told me that the SPLC likely knew that attacking Confederate monuments would inspire an event like Charlottesville.
“Just the whole idea of taking down the monuments, that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull and it does incite a reaction, and some of it’s being done for that purpose,” she told me in an interview for my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
“The SPLC knows what’s incendiary and when you have racial clashes, it works to their benefit because they can take the clashes and interpret it in a [favorable] way,” she added.
The SPLC didn’t just arguably incite the “Unite the Right” rally and allegedly pay one of its organizers—it also reaped enormous benefits from Charlottesville.
When the white nationalist rally rightly shocked America’s conscience, corporate America and concerned citizens looked for ways to combat the hate. JP Morgan Chase announced it would give $50,000 to the SPLC. Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged $1 million.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s board voted to crack down on postings from hate groups, Spotify pledged to take down music tracks with “hate lyrics,” Airbnb blacklisted hate groups, and Google and GoDaddy revoked website credentials for the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.
CNN uncritically published the SPLC’s “hate map” for all to see—acting as though it didn’t include mainstream conservative and Christian groups.
Some of the targeted groups may have deserved what they got, but the mainstream conservative and Christian groups the SPLC also targeted rightly worried about deplatforming and ultimately debanking. Thankfully, corporate America has distanced itself from the SPLC following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but concerns remain.
Charlottesville was a major coup for the SPLC and for the Left in general—and, if the indictment is correct, we now know that the SPLC actually invested funding for the effort.
I’m sure the SPLC was very happy with that investment, until the rest of the world found out about it.
