For most Jews and many other people, the “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 was among the most shocking and disturbing moments in recent American history. As much as anything, it was the imagery of the torch-lit procession of hate-mongers at night that brought to mind the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s that scared the Jewish community far and wide.
The events both on and near the campus of the University of Virginia itself were fairly small-scale and involved only a few hundred persons. Still, those haunting memories, coupled with the fact that one of the counter-protesters was killed by the mob of racists, convinced so many Americans that the country was in the middle of a crisis brought on by the election of Donald Trump.
But what if it turned out that among the funders of those involved was a group that not only hyped the threat from the far right, but also profited from it with a huge surge of fundraising? If that were true, then perhaps so much of what had shaped American public opinion about not only the alleged threat from such extremists and Trump, now in his second term as U.S. president, would have to be rethought.
A false narrative
As it turns out, that’s the truth about Charlottesville.
The indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges of fraud ought to put in perspective much of the hysteria and alarmism about Trump supposedly empowering racists and engendering an epidemic of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The SPLC is charged with pouring millions of dollars raised from gullible liberal donors to far-right operatives. In its defense, the group claims that it was operating a vast undercover operation, obtaining intelligence about extremists that it could then use to better inform the nation about the threats it faced from dangerous organizations. But its funders didn’t know that’s where their money was going.
More to the point, a deep dive into the indictment makes it clear that what it was doing wasn’t merely investigating extremism as helping to produce it.
In point of fact, the SPLC funded one of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, paying him $270,000 to post racist comments online and transport fellow extremists to central Virginia.
The principal myth about Charlottesville was that Trump had called the neo-Nazis and white supremacists that SPLC had helped gather were “very fine people.” That lie was debunked long ago—the president was referring to those upset by the removal of various statues in the South, not the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members—but many Democrats and others on the left persist in spreading the accusation to bolster their narrative that Trump has encouraged and enabled racism, as well as antisemitism.
‘Gain of function’ racism
The widespread belief about the importance of Charlottesville (former President Joe Biden claimed that it was his anger about Trump and the neo-Nazis that impelled him to run for the White House in 2020) was even more unfounded than thought. What happened there was not endorsed by the president. Instead, it was, in part, manufactured by cynical liberals who claimed to be fighting racism. As National Review’s Dan McLaughlin noted, Charlottesville was a case of “gain of function racism,” a reference to the type of research about dangerous viruses that likely led to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The narrative about Charlottesville must take its place alongside other recent hoaxes and misinformation campaigns that have done so much to distort American public discourse in recent years. It must now go down alongside the myth that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election as an example of big lies that may have altered history. The same could be said for the claim—accepted by the mainstream media in the weeks before the 2020 election—that the information on Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop was a Russian intelligence operation. Also dismissed were accusations that the coronavirus was produced in a government lab in Wuhan, China.
The courts will ultimately determine whether SPLC’s actions were criminally fraudulent, as opposed to merely dishonest behavior that merits opprobrium but didn’t technically violate the law. But no matter what the outcome of the case turns out to be, the revelations about its conduct ought to prompt a reevaluation of a lot of what it and others on the left have been saying about extremism in America.
Those in the legacy press who continued to treat it as a credible source, despite a history of shady behavior and irresponsible accusations, and even defend it today, shouldn’t dismiss the indictment merely because it came from the Trump administration. Instead, they should realize that the assertions emanating from the SPLC—amplified by its allies in the media—were motivated to no small degree by a desire to promote the very extremism it was denouncing so as to profit—both politically and financially—from the ensuing concern.
Nor should the discussion about SPLC be limited to the question of fraud. Over the course of the last decades, it was a major force behind the effort to redefine the definition of American extremism. The organization expanded its concerns from those about the supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups to include those who criticized open-border policies or opposed illegal immigration. Critics of Islamist extremism and Muslim support for antisemitism were also branded as “hate groups” by the SPLC, which was then regurgitated by liberal media outlets.
Seen in that context, the case should be understood as not merely calling into question the specific actions listed in the case. The efforts of the group and those who have ill-advisedly continued to promote it have created an atmosphere in which legitimate criticism of public policies has been tarred with the extremist label.
To acknowledge the fraudulent nature of much of the SPLC’s work is not to deny the existence of extremism in America or that it is a problem that should be addressed. Racism exists, as does white supremacism and antisemitism. Indeed, hate-mongering is on the rise, as can readily be surmised by spending time on social media or viewing the fare available on the internet.
The problem with the SPLC was that it has always taken a blinkered view of hate speech. The Alabama-based group was originally conceived in 1971 as an effort to fight the remnants of the “Jim Crow” racism that ruled the American South until the triumph of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s. But under the leadership of founder Morris Dees, it soon became a partisan outfit that was primarily geared toward raising large sums of money from a set of donors who were inclined to see hate as coming from only one end of the political spectrum.
Ignoring left-wing hate
In this way, it made two fundamental mistakes.
One was that it defined hate in such a way as to ignore its sources on the left.
SPLC purports to be as concerned about antisemitism as it is about prejudice against African-Americans or Hispanics. Yet it has completely ignored the post-Oct. 7 surge of Jew-hatred rooted in anti-Zionist blood libels that have fueled so much targeting of Jews on college campuses, city streets and elsewhere. At the same time, it has doubled down on its irresponsible claims about Islamophobia, including accusations against groups that have focused on raising awareness of the tsunami of vitriol and delegitimization of Jews and Jewish rights that emanates from the Muslim and Arab community. The fact that it treated an openly antisemitic organization like the Council on American-Islamic Relations as both a credible source and an ally tells you all you need to know about whether the SPLC should be trusted.
Another problem was that it decided to apply it to causes advocated by conservatives, which might have been debatable or even controversial, but not prejudiced. In this manner, it played a major role in undermining a national consensus about extremism into one defined primarily by partisan affiliations rather than a focus on combating actual hate-mongering.
And that is not even taking into account the fact that the SPLC has been under fire for what many termed racism in its workplace, as well as longstanding issues about fraudulent practices.
As far back as 1995, the organization was under fire for racial discrimination, as documented by investigations by The Montgomery Advertiser and Harper’s Magazine. In 2019, it fired Dees for his behavior toward female and African-American employees, as well as financial misconduct. Despite that, complaints about a dysfunctional organization lingered, fed by the testimony of those who had worked there, believing it to be dedicated to a crusade against bigotry, but who soon learned that its purpose was large-scale grift as much as anything else. The rumors and reporting about its problems undermined its appeal, but Charlottesville helped give it a new lease on life.
Investing in extremism and smears
The neo-Nazi rally became the centerpiece of SPLC’s fundraising efforts, helping it to raise a staggering $132 million in its aftermath. Among others, companies like Apple and JPMorgan Chase, as well as celebrities like George and Amal Clooney, were eager to donate to the SPLC after Charlottesville. The millions it spent on funding its operatives inside hate movements was a colossal scam. Nevertheless, it was also an excellent investment. By 2024, it claimed to have nearly a billion dollars in assets and was taking in $129 million in revenue—astounding figures for an organization that claimed to be advocates for civil rights.
What also matters is how it used that money. It expanded its efforts not so much to do anything about racism but to smear anyone who disagreed with liberal patent nostrums about illegal immigration, critical race theory, settler-colonialism and gender ideology as no different from the Klan offshoots and Nazis that they were subsidizing. Organizations like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Center for Security Policy, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA or the Center for Immigration Studies. Such groups not only didn’t deserve to be smeared in this manner by SPLC, but were forced to deal with the consequences of such labeling in terms of public abuse.
Liberal media outlets like The New York Times, which faithfully mimicked SPLC’s false labeling of critics of open orders, gender indoctrination and Muslim antisemitism as bigots, are now claiming the charges against it are politically motivated. But the key question isn’t about the Department of Justice’s motives, as it is why the SPLC’s corrupt operations weren’t properly scrutinized before this.
The lies it helped tell about Charlottesville have sapped faith in U.S. institutions, and fueled racism and Jew-hatred rather than fighting hate.
The corrupt practices of SPLC should set off alarms no matter where you see yourself on the political spectrum. That’s not just because it may have defrauded its donors and violated the law. Its undeserved reputation as an authority on extremism—and the trust placed in it by liberal media—enabled the group to promote a false narrative about hate that not only feathered its own nest and that of its executives. It also skewed public discourse in ways that further divided Americans and undermined genuine efforts to address threats like racism and antisemitism.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
