The Trump administration, bent on legitimizing the far right, has sicced the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a giant non-profit in the civil rights arena and the bane of MAGA for its extensive national database on violent racists.
The Center has a long history of paying informants to infiltrate neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and then sharing the information with the Justice Department and the FBI. This was fine with government spy agencies for decades until Trump’s second term when his base turned drastically to the far right.
It is unknown if the Center shared information with the FBI about grassroots antifascists, but its antipathy to mobilizing direct community action is well documented.
Regardless, in April, federal prosecutors indicted the SPLC on wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. They claim the organization not only bilked donors by funneling cash to informants but that it actually directed some white supremacist actions.
The case is weak given that paying confidential insiders is a routine practice of law enforcement agencies. But protracted legal battles can paralyze a group and exhaust its resources. Already, grants to the center have been halted while federal charges are pending.
SPLC has urged a judge to toss out the case, labeling it vindictive. It claims retribution by Trump, whom the organization frequently condemns for his policies on voting and LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racial divesity.
MAGA’s boogeyman
The SPLC was founded in 1971 to fight white supremacists through civil lawsuits. It monitored the hard right, eventually developing the “Intelligence Project” that exposes their activities and ideologies. It is a widely used resource and a popular target for Republicans who see it as overly leftist. The MAGA camp was especially incensed that Turning Point USA, founded by the murdered far-right youth recruiter Charlie Kirk, was featured in its report “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024.”
Trump is determined to mainstream the ultraright. His pardon of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists was a signal to bigots that they could operate with impunity. And he has made it clear that his minions will use every tool of the
government in this effort,
including the DOJ.
The nation’s top legal agency has become a weapon to use against Trump’s critics and to change government policy in favor of far-right interests. Created in 1860, one of the early tasks of the Justice Department was the prosecution of KKK brutality toward emancipated slaves. In ensuing decades, it played a role in investigating and bringing to court white supremacist crimes.
No more.
A threat to all
The indictment signals to every tax-exempt entity the long reach of the law. Recognizing their vulnerability, a coalition of more than 100 organizations published a letter vowing solidarity with groups that are “unjustly targeted” by a federal agency.
Nonprofits have always faced the possibility of government oversight which limits their militancy, proving to be a trap for activists.
The SPLC deserves our support, but with a caveat: It is no friend of the Left. It represents the liberal strategy toward fighting fascism: reliance on courts. In the 1990s, the United Front Against Fascism, a radical-led anti-Nazi group in the Pacific Northwest, clashed with SPLC on several occasions.
The conflict centered on their insistence that cops and courts were the only way to stop what they term “hate” crimes. UFAF, on the other hand, organized direct action mass community mobilizations to counter neo-Nazis, with an understanding that fascism’s downfall comes from a united, working-class-led civil rights movement.
The center’s mainstream beliefs and hostility to the Left is evident in their “2025 Year in Hate & Extremism.” It bemoans the loss of anti-terrorism law-enforcement programs, never acknowledging that these were used to persecute radicals, and that Trump is creating new, more powerful ones aimed at militants.
SPLC’s current bind exposes the failure of the liberal strategy: relying on the government and the law is no answer to fascism — nor is it a refuge from authoritarians.
Send feedback to the author at FSnews@socialism.com.
