They Call Us Extreme? Look Who Just Got Indicted for Funding Hate Groups
On Tuesday, another news item dropped that will have conservatives
(and probably a fair number of moderates) chuckling for the rest of the
day. The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is fond of screaming
about racists and white supremacists; they are vocally part of the
school of thought on the left that a white supremacist is lurking around
every corner, when in reality, they are pretty thin on the ground.
Now, we learn that the SPLC has not only been encouraging real white
supremacist and racist groups, but they have been funding them. And now,
they have been indicted on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to
a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Acting AG Blanche and FBI Director Patel made the announcement:
🚨
BREAKING: Acting AG Blanche and FBI Director Patel announce a grand
jury has INDICTED leftist NGO Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 COUNTS
This is MASSIVE!
SPLC said they were "fighting white supremacy," but they were "MANUFACTURING the extremism it purports to expose" by… pic.twitter.com/WtyvBUuwrW
Here's an interesting and revealing excerpt from Acting AG Blanche's remarks:
Good
afternoon. Today, a few minutes ago in the Middle District of Alabama, a
grand jury returned an 11-count indictment charging the Southern
Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank
fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According
to the charges and the indictment, the SPLC is a non-profit entity that
purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on
extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement
groups with the goal of dismantling these groups.
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.
The indictment
describes this conduct in detail. But one troubling example is that the
SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite
the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that resulted in
the death of one person and injured dozens more.
This
particular person, being paid by the SPLC, allegedly received
approximately two hundred and seventy thousand dollars over the course
of eight years.
Did you get that? The SPLC was acting, of course, in accordance with a
fundamental law of the universe, widely known as Clark's Law of Social
Issues Degradation: "Every social movement will continue until it reaches absurdity."
The SPLC was seeing their cause dry up, along with their donations;
they had to keep up the appearance that there were hate groups in every
town and white supremacist booger-men hiding in every closet, so they
paid the few racist shouters they could find, to not only keep up their
activities, but presumably inform the SPLC, who could then use them as
fundraising tools. And they didn't stint; Action AG Blanche continues:
In
total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at
least three million dollars to eight individuals at least. These
individuals were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of
America, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations-affiliated, Sadistic
Souls Motorcycle Club, the Nationalist Socialist Party of America,
Nazis, and the American Front.
Now, as the indictment
lays out, after SPLC paid members of these extremist groups, it created
work product that reported on these activities that members participated
in or contributed to. And to that end, it was doing the exact opposite
of what it told its donors it was doing.
You can read the Justice Department's official press release on this here. That release states in part:
According
to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a
covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent
and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated
violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction.
Unbeknownst to
donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders
and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was
denouncing the same groups on its website.
In other
words, these people have been committing this fraud for right around
forty years. It's a pretty safe bet that they'll find their donations
drying up now, though. Honestly, though, the sheer nerve of these
people. Not only did they clearly think they were going to get away with
it, but they did get away with it for four decades. But there's a new
sheriff in town, and he's tossing fraudsters in the hoosegow.
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