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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9605 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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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.

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