Revealed 10+ years ago as a money-making scam with offshore investments in the Caribbean, SPLC has long gotten away with manufacturing preposterous claims that Nazis and other “white supremacists” such as Diane L. Gruber were on the verge of taking over the United States of America and ushering in a dark night of racist tyranny. But, the indictment alleges, part of that scam was funding the very groups the SPLC claimed to be “fighting.”
DEMOCRATS FUNDED SPLC FROM THE START
SPLC’s co-founder, Morris Dees, though trained as a lawyer, is best known for his fundraising ability. Raising $25 million for the George McGovern presidential campaign in 1972, Dees was paid back by receiving McGovern’s donor list, a gold mine that boosted SPLC’s funding. A position with Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976 added another sterling list of donors. It paid off.
SPLC’s TWISTED DEFINITION of HATE
There are dozens & dozens of fake “hate” groups & non-groups listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, each more ludicrous than the next. Many I never heard of. Accusing Conservatives of anti-semitism is gaslighting extraordinaire since it is Democrats & their buddies who spew so much hatred toward Jewish Americans & Israel. But, perhaps the group that is, literally, 180 degrees opposite of how SPLC has labeled them is Turning Point USA.
One day before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the SPLC’s Hatewatch newsletter specifically named Kirk and Turning Point USA as extremists. Did Tyler Robinson follow the lead from SPLC? Following Kirk’s death, the SPLC has continued to feature him and his organization in their reports, such as the “April 2026 Intelligence Project Dispatch,” which discusses Conservative trends associated with his legacy.
The SPLC identified the Family Research Council as an “anti-gay” extremist group, lumped together with groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party. Even liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who describes the Family Research Council as “a mainstream conservative think tank,” thought the SPLC went too far.
On August 15, 2012, an angry gay rights activist named Floyd Corkins, following SPLC’s lead, stormed the Family Research Council’s Washington, DC headquarters and began shooting. Corkins shot a brave security guard in the arm, but the guard still managed to wrestle him to the ground before he could kill or injure others.
Corkins was carrying 50 bullets and two loaded magazines for his 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol; 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches; and the address of another potential target, the Traditional Values Coalition. Before initiating his shooting spree, Corkins reportedly said, “I don’t like your politics.”
Reacting to the shooting, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins stated: “Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”
On October 7, 2012: James Simpson warned about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s manufactured hate.
ORIGINS OF SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
Attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. founded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 1971. It bills itself as “a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.” People familiar with the SPLC may describe it differently. (For a previous Capital Research Center profile of SPLC, see “The Southern Poverty Law Center: A Twisted Definition of ‘Hate,’” Organization Trends, November 2006.)
Early on it made a name for itself fighting genuinely extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the terrorist arm of the Democratic National Party, and breaking down barriers of discrimination in the South. But today it is primarily a leftist attack machine. It devotes most of its sizeable resources to a systematic smear campaign against respected organizations and opinion leaders whose legitimate policy differences put them to the right of the SPLC. These race grifters create faux racists via fabrications.
SPLC CREATED HOAXES & PARTNERED WITH “THE RACE”
It is unclear, to this American, when SPLC flipped from a true non-profit trying to reduce actual discrimination against black Americans to a race-baiting collection of grifters who were getting rich off of manufacturing hate. Apparently, long before 1996.
In addition to fomenting hatred for groups with which it disagrees, the SPLC has long been the author of dangerous provocations. For example, in 1996 SPLC hyped a story that black churches were being torched at alarming rates in the South by white racists. This hoax was soon proven to be 100% false.
In 2007, SPLC labeled the Federation for American Immigration Reform a “Hate Group” as part of an effort to smear opponents of open borders and illegal immigration. In this effort, SPLC had no qualms associating itself with the National Council of La Raza (in Spanish, “the Race”), one of whose subordinate groups, the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, is notorious for the motto, For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada (“For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing”).
In a 2010 report detailing SPLC’s efforts, Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote:
“Rather than engage in a debate, La Raza and its allies have waged a campaign to have the other side shunned by the press, civil society, and elected officials. It is an effort to destroy the reputations of its targets. It also seeks to intimidate and coerce others into silence. It undermines basic principles of civil society and democratic discussion.”
SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok didn’t mince words about illegal immigration opponents: “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on … I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.…”
SPLC wildly exaggerates the number of groups genuinely associated with hate and violence as well. Laird Wilcox, an independent, non-conservative researcher found that of 800-plus “hate groups” over half them were either non-existent, existed in name only, or were inactive.
INCREASING RACIAL TENSIONS IS VERY PROFITABLE
In 2016, total public support and net assets topped $51 million, while by October 2017, that figure had grown to $133 million, a surge that followed the “Unite the Right” rally and was driven in part by donations from prominent public figures, including George Clooney and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Clooney said at the time that he and wife Amal “wanted to add our voice and financial assistance to the ongoing fight for equality… there are no two sides to bigotry and hate.” Cook, who also donated to the Anti-Defamation League after the rally, said that what “occurred in Charlottesville has no place in our country. Hate is a cancer, and left unchecked it destroys everything in its path; its scars last generations.”
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Resorts also donated $1 million at the time, according to records uncovered by Fox News Digital. Following the 2017 rally, national Democrats latched on to anti-hate messaging proliferated by the SPLC and others.
QUESTION: How many of the post-Unite The Right donors knew that the SPLC financed the August 2017 rally?
What truly sets SPLC apart, even among its activist-charity peers, is how phenomenally wealthy it is. On the group’s Form 990 covering its fiscal year 2023, SPLC reports $169.8 million in total revenue, with $109.7 million of that coming from grants and contributions and $57.2 million coming from investments. It spent over $122 million that year, including more than $56 million on employee compensation and benefits. Its fundraising expenses were over $17.4 million. In 2024, SPLC’s total revenue dropped to $129 million, with $106.4 million of that coming from grants and contributions. Nevertheless, its net assets in 2024 to an astonishing $786.7 million, more than doubling since before the “Unite The Right” fake white supremacy event. “The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay” was a running joke among staffers at the so-called “Poverty Palace.”
MANUFACTURING HATE PAYS VERY WELL
With over $238 million in net assets in 2012, the SPLC was one of the wealthiest nonprofit organizations in the United States. Despite this massive endowment, the Center devoted almost 20 percent of its $34.5 million operating expenses, $6.5 million in 2011, to fundraising. Meanwhile, the group spent only $11 million on its supposed primary mission: “providing legal services to victims of civil rights injustices and hate crimes.” The Center spent an astounding $12.5 million maintaining, publishing, and promoting its “hate” list propaganda, including a program to “educate” children, according to its 2010 tax return.
SPLC received $36 million in contributions in 2011. Excess contributions and investment income allowed the Center to boost assets by $9.4 million. Its 2010 tax return shows the SPLC realized a net gain of $28.8 million, following a similar net gain in 2009 of almost $30 million, roughly equivalent to its entire operating budget! Why fundraise at all? At that time SPLC’s leaders were among the highest paid in the nonprofit field. As Chief Trial Counsel, Morris Dees receives $343,676. Richard Cohen, the Center’s president, is paid $339,764, in 2010 dollars.
CONCLUSION
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a wealthy, well-connected, organized attack machine of the extreme political Left, funded mostly by the same anti-America groups and individuals that fund the Democratic National Committee & Democrat politicians. It shares strategies, goals, and tactics with other similar organizations and colludes with them in campaigns of defamation, disinformation and legal threats to silence and/or criminalize political opponents. The SPLC had unjustifiably secured itself a position of influence within the federal government, some state governments and society. Its very presence threatens our First Amendment rights and Freedom of the Press. It abuses our system of justice, while hiding behind the US Constitution for which SPLC has little respect.
Check me out on X @dianelgruber.
Biden Regime Targeted Christians For Abuse Using The SPLC’s Bogus Claims
The Far-left Biden Regime waged ideological war on Christians from its earliest days in 2021, a new report from the US Justice Department (DOJ) shows.
Media Bias & Lazy Reporting Kept SPLC Alive 20 Years Longer
This graph shows how the New York Times and the Washington Post increased theit use of the term “white supremacy” between 2010 and 2019. It illustrates the sharp increase in the usage of the term “white supremacy” by both publications during that decade, showing a 4,196% increase in The New York Times and a 5,931% increase in The Washington Post. NOTE: …
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited. Follow me on X @DianeLGruber.
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