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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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The SPLC has been federally indicted on six counts of wire fraud, four counts of false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. And the charges were filed in the Middle District of Alabama. 14-page indictment PDF here.

In brief, the indictment alleges that the SPLC raised money under false pretenses by claiming to fight right-wing extremism, instead funding extremist informants with roughly $3 million dollars of donor money. The informants included members of the KKK and an organizer of the infamous Charlottesville unite the right fiasco. They allegedly did this using illegal means, creating fictitious cutouts and lying to banks to open phony bank accounts to obscure the flow of funds from the SPLC to their informants.

I can't help but feel some schadenfreude here - "no one is above the law" also applies to left-wing NGOs who think they can larp as spies. They even named one of their cutouts Center Investigative Agency... It seems like they flew very close to the sun thinking that their brand and political affiliation would shield them from scrutiny. Project Veritas got a lot more heat for doing a lot less.

From a layman's perspective the indictment seems pretty compelling but I'd be curious to hear what the legal commentators here think. Of course this is only one side of the argument, but those statements to the bank in particular seem quite incriminating. Also, what exactly would be the consequences for the SPLC if the DOJ succeeds on some or all counts?

My timeline on X is filled with the Bronze Age Pervert-type, for lack of better term the philosemitic Far Right, accusing figures and organizations on the Right like Nick Fuentes and Patriot Front of being funded by SPLC and essentially claiming that right-wing antisemitism is astroturfed.

These were the same people that fed-jacketed Nick Fuentes with no evidence as well.

Almost certainly, the informant is from one of the "White Nationalist 1.0" groups, like the Aryan Brotherhood or something. Basically the groups that the SPLC and ADL wish still represented far right-wing antisemitism.

So what's most interesting here is the indictment seems to be helping the SPLC's mission insofar as the Bronze Age Pervert Sphere is playing a supporting role in the SPLC's gayops to bad-jacket the antisemitic Right wing and claim it is an inorganic movement.

This is pretty thin gruel. Nonprofits have broad discretion to use unrestricted funds any way they see fit to support their mission. Cases of nonprofit fraud usually fall into five general categories:

  1. Entirely fraudulent nonprofits: These are grifts from the beginning where the founders never intended to spend any of the money they raised on the ostensible purpose and only lined their pockets. This is the most obvious fraud.

  2. Embezzlement: Where an employee or director of a legitimate nonprofit misappropriates funds to line his pocket. Again, an obvious fraud, though it's limited to one person (or a few people) and isn't representative of the organization as a whole.

  3. Questionable nonprofits: This is a term I made up to refer to organizations whose administrative expenses are grossly disproportionate to program expenses. E.g., a food pantry in a large city that raised $45 million one year but only distributed $149,000 worth of food. These are usually the biggest media scandals because they often involve large organizations that do a lot of advertising and fundraising, reflected in financial statements that suggest they spend money on little else than advertising and fundraising.

  4. Improper use of restricted funds: This is often benign in a PR sense but serious in a legal sense. If someone donates money for a specific project, it can't be used for another project or to cover general expenses. If the food bank in the above example solicited donations for a building fund that would pay for planned renovations to their facility, and when food stamps were in jeopardy last fall they raided the fund to buy food for the needy, one could argue that it wasn't that big of a deal, maybe even the right thing to do. But it isn't permitted.

  5. Other improper use of funds: Again, this usually involves some personal benefit to the organization's employees or directors, like directing program services towards them or distributing profits. It also includes other miscellaneous non-nos like spending money on political campaigns or endorsements and improperly paying volunteers in ways that subject you to labor laws that you aren't following.

The first thing I would note for any of these is that none of them is particularly likely to result in a Federal fraud indictment. regulation of nonprofits is done at the state level, usually by the AG. Federal involvement is limited to the IRS for tax status and the FTC if they are large organizations that do a lot of advertising. What SPLC is accused of doing, though, doesn't fit into any of these categories, and there's no clear violation of nonprofit law. What the indictment accuses them of is fraudulently soliciting donations by using the funds in a manner that is inconsistent with the mission statement as it appears on their website. If what they are accused of doing is a matter for Federal criminal charges, then practically every nonprofit in the country should be charged, mostly for stuff that is entirely unobjectionable.

Consider the following fictional example: The Allegheny Trails Alliance is a nonprofit whose advertised mission is to support trail maintenance and construction on public lands in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. They donate $10,000 in unrestricted funds to support a trail construction project in Garret State Forest in Western Maryland, which is outside of their technical operating area but is frequented by the same people who frequent trails in PA and WV. Is this wire fraud? What if they pay a contractor to perform invasive species removal at a state park where they have a maintenance contract? Is this wire fraud because it isn't directly related to trail construction or maintenance?

The answer is no, because advertising gets a lot of leeway when it comes to promises like this. Practically every product you buy contains some kind of statement that would constitute fraud if we held the manufacturers to their exact word. The biggest risk to a nonprofit spending program funds like this is from donors, who might not donate again if they don't like the projects. From a legal perspective, what matters is the mission statement that appears in official filings, and even then, most nonprofits write these as widely as possible, state AGs will only pursue the most egregious violations, and the penalties are civil, not criminal. But in SPLC's case, it's not even clear that what they did violated their ostensible mission. I don't think Todd Blanche or anyone else in the administration is going to argue that SPLC gave money to hate groups because they really like white supremacy. It's pretty uncontroversial that they were using the money to pay informants, and that they notified the authorities if any illegal activity was discovered. It may be a shady practice, but it's not directly contrary to their mission, and when you add that to the fact that the government is relying on an advertising statement on a website as an inducement for fraud, it's hard to see how this stands up.

The bank fraud allegations seem more serious, but upon closer inspection, they aren't. What they basically did is have an employee open up various accounts in the name of fictitious sole proprietorships. The SPLC then put money into these accounts, which were used to funnel money to organizations they targeted. The purpose of the fictitious businesses was to disguise the origin of the money from the organizations. If we look at the text of the statute they are indicted under:

Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or report, or willfully overvalues any land, property or security, for the purpose of influencing in any way the action of...any institution the accounts of which are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation...upon any application, advance, discount, purchase, purchase agreement, repurchase agreement, commitment, loan, or insurance agreement or application for insurance or a guarantee, or any change or extension of any of the same, by renewal, deferment of action or otherwise, or the acceptance, release, or substitution of security therefor, shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

I omitted a lot of surplussage there. In fact, I admitted so much surplussage that I wouldn't be surprised if the attorney presenting this to the grand jury read the part up to the ellipses and skipped to the end, because, and I never thought I'd say this, the indictment doesn't allege facts that make a prima fascia case! I don't see anything in that statute about opening a bank account. If you read the entire section, including the short title, it's clear that it is referring to loan applications. There are no allegations in the indictment that the SPLC ever applied for a loan. There might be some FinCen reporting requirements or something that they violated, but cursory searching has failed to uncover anything that would have been in force when the accounts were opened in 2008, which incidentally creates a statute of limitations problem as well.

The money laundering charges are subordinate to the fraud charges, and are thus bogus. I predict this goes nowhere.

What if they pay a contractor to perform invasive species removal at a state park where they have a maintenance contract? Is this wire fraud because it isn't directly related to trail construction or maintenance?

I see your point, but I think a better analogy would be if they paid a contractor to organize a "Let's Trash the Trails" event and then cited that event to potential donors as a reason why they should donate. At a certain point, the use of the money is so different from the organization's stated goals that a decent argument can be made that the donors were defrauded. For purposes of criminal prosecution, organizations should get a good amount of leeway on this issue, but depending on how the facts shake out, it looks like SPLC may have crossed the line.

The bank fraud allegations seem more serious, but upon closer inspection, they aren't. What they basically did is have an employee open up various accounts in the name of fictitious sole proprietorships. The SPLC then put money into these accounts, which were used to funnel money to organizations they targeted. The purpose of the fictitious businesses was to disguise the origin of the money from the organizations.

That seems like money laundering to me. I mean, they are setting up phony bank accounts in order to conceal the source of money. If Donald Trump had pulled something like that in order to discretely pay a few sugar babies, he surely would have been prosecuted.

If what they are accused of doing is a matter for Federal criminal charges, then practically every nonprofit in the country should be charged, mostly for stuff that is entirely unobjectionable.

I would guess it's pretty unusual for not-for-profits to help fund and organize activities which they nominally oppose.

...What SPLC is accused of doing, though, doesn't fit into any of these categories, and there's no clear violation of nonprofit law. What the indictment accuses them of is fraudulently soliciting donations by using the funds in a manner that is inconsistent with the mission statement as it appears on their website. If what they are accused of doing is a matter for Federal criminal charges, then practically every nonprofit in the country should be charged, mostly for stuff that is entirely unobjectionable.

Consider the following fictional example: The Allegheny Trails Alliance is a nonprofit whose advertised mission is to support trail maintenance and construction on public lands in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. They donate $10,000 in unrestricted funds to support a trail construction project in Garret State Forest in Western Maryland, which is outside of their technical operating area but is frequented by the same people who frequent trails in PA and WV. Is this wire fraud? What if they pay a contractor to perform invasive species removal at a state park where they have a maintenance contract? Is this wire fraud because it isn't directly related to trail construction or maintenance?

Inconsistent is one thing and I can see how there is wiggle room in the definition. But what they are being accused of is not just inconsistency with the mission statement, it is doing stuff directly opposed to the mission statement and directly opposed to what they said the money would be used for. From the indictment:

The Southern Poverty Law Center's ("SPLC") stated mission included the dismantling of white supremacy and confronting hate across the country. However, unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance. The SPLC's paid informants ("field sources") engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.

Here is I think the strongest example of the SPLC doing the exact opposite of what they claim to do:

F-30 led the National Socialist Party of America, was the former director of a faction of the Aryan Nations, and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC website contained an "Extremist File" webpage for F-30 from which the SPLC solicited donations. Between 2014 and 2016, the SPLC secretly paid F30 more than $70,000.00. This overlapped the time period in which F-30 was featured on the SPLC's "Extremist File" webpage.

If the SPLC specifically opposes this guy, and solicit donations on the basis do they really get to just turn around and give him $70k? That seems to be the exact opposite of opposing him, no?

Or to ask in terms of your Allegheny Trails Alliance example - if ATA had instead secretly donated that $10,000 to "Mr. No Trail Maintenance Ever" would your answer to "is this wire fraud" still be no? Even when the ATA explicitly told its donors "Donate to us to stop Mr. No Trail Maintenance Ever", who then went on to oppose trail maintenance according to the ATA? Because that seems to me to be closer to the story in the case of F-30, like this was not simply doing something slightly outside of their scope as in your example.

I'm confused. "led the National Socialist Party of America" is a direct quote from the indictment, but Wiki claims that literally describes only two guys, neither of whom seems to fit the rest of the description. Did some other organization take the same name after (or before) the first one disbanded? Is this a People's Front of Anti-Judea vs Anti-Judean People's Front thing?

For any present "director of a faction" of some hate group or other, I'd have said opsec might be a mitigating factor here. If the SPLC lists in its "Extremist Files" the leaders of factions A, B, C, and E, then they pretty much have to list their mole in faction D too, or they risk having to list his successor after an untimely murder later. But these indictment entries are saying things like "led", "the Imperial Wizard", and "National President", and they distinguish those from cases like "the former chairman" and "the former director of a faction", which suggests that these were singular-leader roles during the period of the SPLC payments. Even if they've found themselves stuck metaphorically riding a tiger they can't safely dismount, it seems pretty damning to pay someone who's in that position as a mere "field source". "What is your hate group doing tomorrow?" "Same old: whatever I tell them to." At that point at least feed the poor bastard some de-escalatory suggestions.

If what they are accused of doing is a matter for Federal criminal charges, then practically every nonprofit in the country should be charged

Don't get my hopes up. I would love for them to go for those wikipedia guys next.

That's practically impossible. Wikimedia Foundation (the org behind Wikipedia) does not do the editing and does not exercise any editorial control (excepting some rare cases where it is necessary to comply with the US laws). The editing cabals and Wiki admins are not controlled by Wikimedia and by any other official organizations, and a lot of them not even in the US. Those in the US would be protected by the First Amendment. Wikimedia sponsors a lot of stuff, including a lot of woke leftist stuff (don't think any Nazis though, SPLC is way ahead of the curve here), but there's no possible way to consider it fraudulent - they do it all in the open AFAIK. I am not very happy that the biggest and one of the most trusted (despite all) knowledge repositories on the planet is captured by the woke, but the US government can't do much about it, at least not without discarding the First Amendment, which would be a much bigger loss.

I think some of the indictments we see out of this administration are not for the purpose of getting a verdict, or even for the purpose of wasting time/money, but to get stuff out of the dark and into the air. The SPLC was spending money to support the leaders of organizations they claim to oppose. There's now a document with a summary of the FBI's investigations on a government website for everyone to reference. Information that once would have been a conspiracy theory is now as public as possible.

I think, if donators to SPLC knew ahead of time that their money would be going to "The Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America" or towards coordinating transportation to the "Unite the Right" rally, they probably would not have made that donation. SPLC characterized these people as informants, but many seem very highly placed. So highly placed, that they are in charge of the organization instead of informing on the organization.

Yeah, I think the chances of actual conviction are pretty slim. The chances it could make SPLC brand radioactive and ultimately bring them down by attaching an image of "pretend to fight Nazis but actually are financing Nazis with your donations" to them are much bigger, and getting a grand jury sign under it is a good move in this direction.

This is something I went into a little with my comment, the purpose of this doesn't have to be actually convicting anyone. In the same way that defamation suits don't necessarily have to win. The point of lawfare is to throw accusations into the public eye and to make your victims suffer having to spend lots of money and fight for years in court.

Even if this case is as frivolous as their many other cases against political opponents, the Trump admin still makes out in important ways. They get to tar the SPLC's reputation simply by having the indictment make the news to begin with. They get to force the SPLC to dedicate lots of time and money fighting the allegations. And interestingly enough like and I've never considered this before, the DOJ just used this to publicly expose SPLC informants and sources inside of extremist groups, helping the groups to clean house of leakers. If that's the intent, it's clever. Incredibly unethical and fucked up abuse of law enforcement, but clever.

This was my immediate thought to. I don’t know the criminal law but if the SPLC did this it is still fraud by the layman’s definition.

This is why I voted for Trump. Thé SPLC is my enemy, and driving them out of the face of the earth is a good thing.

I'm no fan of the SPLC, but... I don't see any contradiction between claiming to fight right-wing extremism and funding extremist informants.

If they broke laws while doing it, that's a different matter, but I'm not understanding the framing that they were hypocrites or something.

I don't see any contradiction between claiming to fight right-wing extremism and funding extremist informants.

I would say it depends on how far they go. If they are funding leaders; if they are paying for people to attend right-wing rallies; etc., then at a certain point there's a contradiction IMO.

There's certainly a contradiction. It may not be illegal - after all, it's not illegal to be a colossal hypocrite - but it's certainly looks contradictory when you say you collect donations to fight those people and then give those money - and a lot of money, they mention hundreds of thousands of dollars there - to the same people. Call it "informant" or anything else, it looks like it is - that they very much prefer the cause they pretend to destroy actually prospers so that they could collect more donations and pretend to fight it forever.

Is there a reason a state should generally allow private actors to play "undercover informant"? Citizens aren't generally encouraged to start writing dossiers on each other even if they did say they were going to turn them over to law enforcement. Doubly so for not-even-illegal activities, some of which are constitutionally protected.

Seems at least arguably a road to privatized secret police, although I'd steelman the reverse by saying that Target should be allowed to have a loss-prevention department and take evidence to the real police. Open to other thoughts on the principles here, though.

The SPLC is interesting because they don't have a real incentive to shut down the organizations they target. Police eventually want a big press conference with drugs or guns on the table and a bunch of arrests, that's how they demonstrate their efficacy. The SPLC has no authority to do any law enforcement, the best they can do is say "we helped" when law enforcement eventually does act. But they have a direct incentive to have more hate organizations to add to their hate map, more scary news headlines to use to raise money from their donor base, etc.

So if they are able to prove the SPLC funded some of these hate groups for decades and made no serious effort to shut them down, just farming them for content, that does start to look like a deceptive use of donor money. It requires more of a stretch compared to the other counts, but if they do get convicted, their reputation is ruined.

And indeed, making up ‘hate’ from essentially innocuous outside the mainstream organizations, which they then confirm with informants who are actually getting an answer of ‘sûre, buddy, why don’t you go play with someone else?’.

It requires more of a stretch compared to the other counts, but if they do get convicted, their reputation is ruined.

No, because they'll just claim it was a witch hunt against them by the Trump administration, and their donors will believe them.

I don't see any contradiction between claiming to fight right-wing extremism and funding extremist informants

Same sort of issue as the FBI prodding along and composing a significant fraction of the Whitmer kidnapping plot, the line between fighting something and manufacturing something to fight gets patchy.

Paying informants to stay in an organization, continue rousing for it, and report back is fungible with just paying the organization to exist.

No? In that case you could point to specific actions which would not have happened without fed involvement. What’s the equivalent here?

Paying informants to stay in an organization, continue rousing for it, and report back is fungible with just paying the organization to exist.

Maybe on some scales. Was the USG paying the USSR to exist since some KGB guys were on the American payroll?

I think it's useful to note before getting into any particular details that the Trump admin's record of even securing a grand jury in prosecutions against groups and people they don't like has been extremely poor, yet alone ever getting to a conviction. Whether it be frivolous defamation lawsuits or nakedly politically motivated investigations against someone like Jerome Powell, they keep losing when forced to find or put actual evidence in front of judges and juries. One reason as stated by a top Bondi aide is that finding competent lawyers who are also willing to play MAGA politics over their career prosecution success rates has been quite difficult. Not many want to walk away in 2028 with tons of failed indictments that couldn't even get past a grand jury attached to their name.

Not that it necessarily matters, as FIRE points out

But sometimes, the lawsuit is the punishment. SLAPP suits are weaponized by the wealthy and well-connected to punish speakers with costly litigation, even if the suit is ultimately thrown out. They’re abuses of America’s legal system, and FIRE fights against these violations of our First Amendment rights.

In the same way, just having the federal government use the legal system to smear your name, out private details, and force you to defend yourself is a victory for lawfare wagers.

But let's get into the details anyway.

In brief, the indictment alleges that the SPLC raised money under false pretenses by claiming to fight right-wing extremism, instead funding extremist informants with roughly $3 million dollars of donor money. The informants included members of the KKK and an organizer of the infamous Charlottesville unite the right fiasco.

This is already questionable. The idea that paying for an informant inside of a group to provide you leaks and information that you report on, and even share with law enforcement if it hints at potential criminal behavior counts as "funding" the movement as a form of support is quite a stretch. I doubt they'll find many major donors who consider this to be a fraudulent use of a really small fraction of their money.

It's also really interesting to see some of the blatant social media shills flip from "unite the right was peaceful" (which it was) to "unite the right was a dangerous rally caused by the SPLC!' just because of a single guy unrelated to the informant organizer driving into a crowd. Just peak partisan brain on display.

They allegedly did this using illegal means, creating fictitious cutouts and lying to banks to open phony bank accounts to obscure the flow of funds from the SPLC to their informants.

Now that might actually have some teeth to it, assuming of course that this is actually correct considering ya know, the Trump admin repeatedly failing over and over when having to actually provide evidence for their claims in court against political opponents. But assuming this one is true and they did lie to the banks themselves, then it does seem criminal.

This is already questionable. The idea that paying for an informant inside of a group to provide you leaks and information that you report on, and even share with law enforcement if it hints at potential criminal behavior counts as "funding" the movement as a form of support is quite a stretch.

Ok there is the legal question here, and it kind of looks like they are cooked because lying to banks seems like a very easy thing to prove. But probably more important is the court of public opinion, and what future donors will think. And reading the indictment it really seems very bad, the SPLC was going far beyond just paying informants for information. They were directly funding people who they promised to fight against. They were directly funding behaviors and events they promised to fight against. They were directly funding leadership of organizations they promised to fight against. To the tune of millions of dollars.

Some examples from the indictment:

F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 "Unite the Right" event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00.

The SPLC billed this as a hate rally, they told their donors they were working against it, and they solicited donations from them on that basis. At the same time they were paying organizers, they were telling people they paid to attend, and they were coordinating transportation to the rally. They told their donors they were working to stop a hate group doing "hate speech" while they directly funded and coordinated with leaders of that group to do that very same thing they promised to stop, with money that they said would be used to stop it!

F-9 was affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance and served as an F for the SPLC for more than 20 years. F-9's activities included fundraising for the National Alliance. Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-9 more than $1,000,000.00.

This is what the SPLC tells its donors about the National Alliance. If the SPLC wanted to dismantle National Alliance why would they give their fundraiser a million dollars? How exactly could donating to a group be considered dismantling that group?

F-42 was the former chairman of the National Alliance. The SPLC website contained an "Extremist File" webpage about F-42 from which the SPLC solicited donations. Between 2016 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-42 more than $140,000.00. This overlapped the time period in which F-42 was featured on the SPLC's "Extremist File" webpage.

Is it honest and ethical to tell your donors you are working to stop this specific person and this specific organization while secretly paying that person, the former leader of that organization, $140,000? While giving their fundraiser (and presumably by extension that group) over $1,000,000? In what sense can the SPLC be said to be working against a man when they are directly funding him and indirectly funding his organization? In what sense is that not just flat out lying?

F-unknown was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America. In an article published on November 22, 2013, the SPLC described the group as a "millennial reboot of what was once a serious domestic threat.

F-unknown was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and married to an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. F-unknown and their spouse were involved in litigation whereby the Ku Klux Klan applied to take part in the Adopt-a Highway program. During the course of the litigation, known payments were traced from the SPLC to F-unknown which exceeded $3,500.00.

These are the people who set policy, who make decisions, who control the entire organization. In a very direct sense they ARE the organization, more so than anyone else, and the SPLC is giving them, the KKK, the SPLC's biggest bogeyman, hundreds of thousands of dollars and indirectly funding their lawsuits.

The indictment is pretty short so I encourage you to read it if you think I am taking these out of context. This information was not in the OP so maybe you were not aware of it, but does seeing it now does that change your mind at all? If it was just paying informants for information then I agree that the funding allegations would be quite a stretch. But that is not really even close to what was happening here. They were directly coordinating and promoting and facilitating this stuff. It looks much closer to "self licking ice cream cone" than "informants for info".

Some examples from the indictment:

F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 "Unite the Right" event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00.

That’s disgusting. $30,000 a year for making racist postings and helping to plan and coordinate a rightwing meet-up. How does one get on the radar of organizations for these types of jobs? Just so I know how to avoid such disgusting side gigs.

The SPLC billed this as a hate rally, they told their donors they were working against it, and they solicited donations from them on that basis. At the same time they were paying organizers, they were telling people they paid to attend, and they were coordinating transportation to the rally. They told their donors they were working to stop a hate group doing "hate speech" while they directly funded and coordinated with leaders of that group to do that very same thing they promised to stop, with money that they said would be used to stop it!

This seems to assume that the Charlottesville rally would not have occured had they not been in touch with a single member of the larger group chat behind the rally. Informants have to be higher ups in order to provide solid information, but it's not like they are gods who make all the decisions by themselves for the groups. Helping the informant avoid exposure also seems like a basic concept that doesn't require assuming Charlottesville wouldn't have happened without them.

This is what the SPLC tells its donors about the National Alliance. If the SPLC wanted to dismantle National Alliance why would they give their fundraiser a million dollars? How exactly could donating to a group be considered dismantling that group

Because if you want an informant on the inside to leak you information and stay under cover, financial appeal can help you where moral appeal might not. Just paying people to snitch is not some new concept. It's not something the SPLC has invented, it's been around since the beginning of snitches and is used by law enforcement constantly.

Consider in just the five years from 2012 to to this hearing in 2017 the ATF and DEA alone paid informants almost 260 million.

Since 2012, ATF and DEA paid CIs almost $260 million, with payments largely determined by field agents who did not seek approval or review from headquarters.

This seems to assume that the Charlottesville rally would not have occured had they not been in touch with a single member of the larger group chat behind the rally.

No, it doesn't. I don't have to assume that a particular supporter was critical to an even to call him a supporter.

Consider in just the five years from 2012 to to this hearing in 2017 the ATF and DEA alone paid informants almost 260 million.

Yeah, glowies are also known for creating situations that would later allow themselves to swoop in, and call themselves heroes.

The idea that paying for an informant inside of a group to provide you leaks and information that you report on, and even share with law enforcement if it hints at potential criminal behavior counts as "funding" the movement as a form of support is quite a stretch.

I think this highlights an interesting difference between some sort of moral intuition because it seems common among SPLC defenders that this is just a nonsense connection, but I don't find it a stretch at all. It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable conclusion! But I don't know how to phrase what that difference in intuition is, exactly.

Now that might actually have some teeth to it

34 felonies. But Alabama's probably not as corrupt and motivated as New York.

I don't think it's that surprising to begin with that they might pay some people tbqh. The SPLC would get leaks somehow after all. and paying people some money to leak information is not a new concept they invented. If you can't make a moral appeal to group insiders, you can often make a financial one.

Your argument proves too much: the Trump administration also had difficulty securing a grand jury in cases where they had video evidence of the crime.

Which case was this? The first thing that came to my mind was a vague recollection of the recent reported paper-bag-of-bribery-sting-cash video, but the suspect there (despite being first appointed to ICE by Obama) was considered "one of the president's top allies" and it was the Trump DoJ that dropped the case.

There was the sandwich guy in DC who threw his food at federal officers and was a found innocent of all charges, and within DC is now regarded as a local folk hero for standing up to the federal government or whatever.

Do you know what the precise charges were? I see news stories saying "assault", which, yeah, he was totally guilty by the dictionary meaning, but laws usually get much more fine-grained than that.

DC does allow juries to convict on a "lesser included offense" when the charge is for a greater offense that necessarily includes the lesser offense, so there's no way for a criminal-friendly or just-stupid DA there to let a criminal walk away free from a misdemeanor assault by mischarging them with felony assault instead.

But it might have mattered to the jury if prosecutors overcharged; jury nullification is so much easier to pull off if the DA pisses off the jury first.

Or ... does DC even define an appropriate level of assault charge? In Texas I think this would be a Class C Misdemeanor Assault, offensive contact without physical injury, but the weakest assault level I can find in DC is "Simple Assault" which requires there to be an attempt "to do injury to the person of another", and it wouldn't be crazy for a jury to decide that a short-range ballistic sandwich just wasn't possibly going to do any injury. Maybe there was no better charge possible than misdemeanor destruction of property, if the mustard stains just wouldn't come out?

(IANAL, IANYL, please don't throw food at anyone anywhere or encourage others to do so, etc.)

That was kind of doomed from the start with a DC jury. In this case they were able to file in Alabama, which should have a more level playing field.

The outsized sway of DC and NY juries on federal law enforcement has seemed like a viable opportunity for reform, but I haven't seen any political operatives (conservative, presumably) actually talking about it.

Grand juries have long been considered incredibly easy to get past, to the point a common joke is that you could even manage it with a ham sandwich. Given that nothing about the system has changed (they're still just made up of ordinary citizens through the jury selection process), the constant failings to convince ordinary people of crime seems to suggest a selection bias. Normal smart prosecutors would never try to indict a ham sandwich anyway so the grand juries never turn them down, similar to how Japan maintains their high conviction rates.

similar to how Japan maintains their high conviction rates.

By treating ‘rights of the accused’ as a suggestion?

Probably in part, but they also don't bring the indictments in Japan to begin with. https://usali.org/comparative-views-of-japanese-criminal-justice/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-per-cent-conviction-ratenbsp-examining-japans-criminal-justice-system-from-a-comparative-perspective

In Japan the majority of cases are cleared by prosecutors through the exercise of broad discretion to refrain from bringing any indictment. Unlike plea bargains in the US, the suspect receives no punishment and has no criminal record. Prosecutors decide to indict in fewer than one-third of the referred cases (see here and here for Japanese FY2017 data in English). Some 90% of the cases indicted in district courts result in confessions and guilty pleas, although in Japan these cases still go to trial. The remaining 10% of the indicted cases are contested at trial.

There are some other differences including just weird statistical quirks like that, but being selective in only bringing high confidence cases is a good thing for both efficient use of taxpayer money and minimizing harassment of innocents.

If his characterization of a specific case is correct, none of what you said is relevant. It's perfectly possible that on average things are more or less lime you describe, but people make an exception for Trump.

This is the kind of thing that, if it turns out to be true, makes me angry at myself for ever doubting DOGE. Millions upon millions are spent on grift that only ever makes life worse for any conscientious law-abiding person. If it requires torching actually useful institutions because they're too enmeshed with the grift, well, too bad. Should have not done the enmeshing then.

Well so far DOGE.... didn't do much, so even if there is lots of fraud out there, we can happily doubt DOGE by its total lack of accomplishment

How's the defect doing again? Oh right, bigger than ever

Per Steve Sailer's extensive investigation of SPLC finances, very little of the money here is taxpayer money - the whole point of the SPLC was to maximise unrestricted donations from left-wing Jews so Morris Dees and Jo Levin could keep the money. DOGE wasn't going to find this one - it required old-school criminal investigation.

It's a tough web to disentangle because the reason you would donate your money to the SPLC over other groups is that the SPLC works with law enforcement and has federal connections.

"Dangerous right wing hate groups" are so thin on the ground they literally can't hold a meeting without funding from the Deep State funneled through NGO cutouts like the SPLC. I'm reminded of the tale of the anarchist newspaper in which every one of the dozens of editors, employees and writers was an intelligence agent or informant for a different government. "Anarchy" groups were a whole thing for intelligence services to conceal their doings back in the early 20th century. If you've heard of a "white supremacist", odds are good he's being promoted by teh glowies.

If you've heard of a "white supremacist", odds are good he's being promoted by teh glowies.

Whether that's true or not, I don't think it applies in this case, since the SPLC's definition of "white supremacist" is probably so broad that it certainly includes large numbers of people who are not glowies.

Yeah, I had an idea a few years back of starting a "militia group," charging each recruit a few thousand dollars, and having them meet every weekend to crawl around in the mud and do jumping jacks.

This should add credence to the belief that e.g. the groypers are "controlled opposition". But it likely won't; the lesson of ECHELON, AT&T Room 641A, and the Snowden revelations is that conspiracy theories are never credible even when there's precedent.

The only ways I can think of in which groypers help any elite groups is that they stir infighting among right-wingers and make it easier for some groups to raise money under the guise of fighting extremism.

However, both of those things could also be explained by the simpler theory that the groypers are genuine in their political beliefs, so I don't know why the theory that they are controlled opposition would be more credible.

I'm reminded of the tale of the anarchist newspaper in which every one of the dozens of editors, employees and writers was an intelligence agent or informant for a different government.

The Man Who Was Thursday?

It’s very telling that the mainstream left-wing media is completely ignoring this story as I type these words.

I have little compassion for the SPLC. They were one of the first people to accuse RooshV of starting a hate group in an era when RooshV’s forum was one of the few online spaces where men could feel supported, in an era that was so “woke” and man-hating that Al Franken’s career was ruined for putting his hands above a woman’s breasts in a picture which was obviously intended to be a joke.

The problem the SPLC and similar institutions which call out men for being “misogynistic” is that they have become leftists who look the other way, ignoring the widespread misandry coming from leftists.

They also went after Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz for being anti-Islamic extremists/racists (they eventually settled this with an apology).

Harris I can get even if I wouldn't defend it. He dared to defend Charles Murray after all.

The Nawaz one was just particularly grating . Reminded me of a lot of leftists who don't actually know or care about Islam but feel justified in taking a stance on it based on how it fits their own domestic political battles (this is actually my charitable take: the alternative is that they got taken in by anti-reform Muslims). Absolute no sense of care in how they use their supposed expertise.

It’s very telling that the mainstream left-wing media is completely ignoring this story as I type these words.

I heard of it last night on one of those NPR news summaries (yesterday's NPR), and this morning it's everywhere: AP, CBS, ABC, NBC.

It finally got some attention. On the New York Times it was buried, placed under the fold, and the headline is deceptive: “Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes”.

The meme "The demand for racism outstrips the supply" is being validated in the most hilarious way possible.

Is it a meme if it's true?

I would also even change "racism" for "hate" in general. The demand for hate of all kinds vastly outstrips the supply in the west.

How is paying informants a sign of demand outstripping the supply? Seems like pretending the story is about something else to dunk.

There's a thin line between informants and agitators.

Plus an informant could easily just make up random salacious shit and bang both parties are helped

Fair.

KKK meetings made up of 1 FBI guy, 1 CIA guy, 1 SPLC guy and 1 undercover journalist.

You left out the "borderline retarded 16 year old guy looking for a friend."

"Isn't anybody here a real sheep?"

relevant Far Side

The Man who was Thursday

And broken up when the undercover FBI agent starts suggesting actual serious criminal activity and the undercover journalist calls the local cops on him.

If they're not all aware of each other's status, that just looks like an earnest Klan meeting. Didn't it come out that a majority (or near majority) of the Malheur occupiers were informants, including some of the leaders?

Honestly, some required coordination of this sort of thing might make some sense, but I'm sure it's a confidentiality risk to investigations.

If they're not all aware of each other's status, that just looks like an earnest Klan meeting.

Except that everyone's constantly hinting at doing illegal stuff but nobody wants to be the first person to explicitly suggest it. You can bet there's a lot of "We need to DO something" combined with ample hemming and hawing. I bet it's pretty funny.

Depending on the day it could have been the majority. The prosecution admitted to 15, defense said it was higher.

Malheur Trial Defense Team Seeks More Info On Government Informants

prosecutors said in court the government used 15 confidential informants during the occupation.

Similar many if not most of those in the kidnapping plot of Gretchen were feds. The feds admitted to at least 4 defense says 12.

I am dying. The meme is that the demand for racism vastly outstrips the supply leading to things like the Jussie Smolet situation. The reality is so, so, so much more entertaining. It's pretty well-established that the going rate for bribing American politicians is shockingly low (according to the US Sentencing Commision, median amount is $45k-65k). From the indictment, between 2014 and 2023 the SPLC paid an informant more than a million dollars to steal documents for them. Oh, and also they paid somebody else a measly $6k to be the fall guy for the first informant's theft. Wonder how he's gonna feel knowing he could have held out for so much more?

I believe that the demand for active, violent white racism probably outstrips the supply here in the US. However, I don't see how that applies to the SPLC case. Paying informants money with the hope of getting information is not the same thing as paying them money with the hope that their racism justifies your existence.

Money is fungible, and the difference between the two is a perforated line of intent. If you want information, you need your stool pigeon to stay in the group and keep participating.

That said, the SPLC probably has more money than every group they "track" combined, and nobody really cares that much if they just make shit up or fall for 4chan trolling. It does suggest they're trying to find something real rather than just continue justifying their existence, though I do suspect it's mostly in their heads.

In the case of the SPLC, they are the same thing. The organization only exists as long as donors can be convinced the big scary evil hate organizations actually exist in any meaningful way. When the SPLC was founded, the KKK was an actual social force that had real political heft in the South. They are now a joke in internet memes. The biggest "racist gathering" in recent memory, Charlottesville's "Unite the Right" appears to be at least partially funded and organized by the SPLC themselves. There are functionally zero active, violent, White race groups in the US, and thats a big problem for the SPLC, because thats their entire raison d'etre. Its not that demand outstrips the supply, its that the supply is entirely fictional.

Mind you, what a politician risks when taking a bribe is a tiresome lawsuit and some PR damage. What an informant risks when leaking an extremist militia's secrets is a bullet to the brain. In theory, it makes sense that the latter would demand greater hazard pay.

The US actually throws politicians in jail fairly regularly for corruption and bribery. Not often enough for my tastes, but it happens. Just yesterday a congress critter resigned minutes before being expelled by a bipartisan vote, and the federal charges are probably going to stick.

The informant the SPLC paid 7 figures for was fundraising for the most milquetoast-ass Nazi group possible who seem to be decades removed from any convictions for violent crimes. Safe? No, but La Cosa Nostra or the cartels they are not.

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