By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
ONE of the primary targets of the neo-Marxist Southern Poverty Law Centre, Stewart Rhodes, the US founder of the Oathkeepers group, has questioned motives behind the US Department of Justice’s 11-count indictment of the SPLC.
“What I am shocked by though, is that the DOJ is going after them, I’m kind of surprised by that,” Rhodes told Harrison Smith of Infowars.
“And so being the cynic as I am about about anything that this current DOJ is doing and sadly not acting much different than the Biden DOJ, I have to assume there’s a bigger game – that maybe the ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) is going to be put in the primary place to go after all the so-called antisemites and white supremacists as they label anybody on the political right.
“So it might be that SPLC has worn out its usefulness and they’re getting rid of it because they’ve had a lot of problems…”
In his introduction Smith described the SPLC as “basically anti-white and Jewish supremacist”. For decades the SPLC has hounded and cancelled people, almost exclusively conservatives like Rhodes, for being “racist”, “white supremacist” and “antisemitic”.
The DOJ has indicted the SPLC on 11 counts including wire fraud, making false statements to a bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The indictment alleges the SPLC defrauded donors by telling them that the group was working to dismantle extremist groups but was, in fact, using donated money to fund the extremist groups they were publicly condemning and pursuing – the standard intelligence agency tactics.
The FBI has had previous working relationships with both the SPLC and the ADL, but under Kash Patel has apparently severed its ties with both organisations.
Court papers say that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid about $3 million in total to informants affiliated with several groups including the KKK, Aryan Nation and the National Alliance. The SPLC allegedly set up bank accounts in the names of fictitious entities to pay these informants, to hide money coming from the SPLC.
Rhodes, a former attorney, was first targeted by the SPLC in 2009 when he started Oathkeepers. He said their primary tactic was conflation and then physical persecution.
“They talk about neo-Nazis then talk about you, they talk about Timothy McVeigh then talk about you, as though you have anything to do with those groups or individuals. That’s what they always do to demonize anyone on the political right they don’t like,” he said.
SPLC has built its reputation as a “champion of civil rights” by running high-profile legal actions against various extremists, who were often involved in violent crimes – even as far back as the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
“Throughout its more than 50-year history, the SPLC has been at the forefront of combating hate and the crime it spawns – winning multimillion-dollar court verdicts against hate groups to hold them accountable for promoting violence; tracking and exposing the activities of hard-right hate and extremist groups that propagate violence-inspiring lies and false conspiracy theories; providing free anti-bias resources that foster inclusive classrooms across the U.S.; and pushing for government policies to prevent bias incidents,” the group brags on its website.
So the SPLC is essentially an organisation that enforces neo-Marxist ideology by picking on the worst cases of bigotry-inspired crime involving the KKK or other right wing extremists and conflating them with all conservatives on the right of politics.
The SPLC, from its spectacular high rise HQ in “racist Montgomery Alabama”, even wrote policy recommendations for the Biden administration “to improve hate crime reporting and enforcement; expand community-based prevention initiatives; improve the government’s response to domestic terrorism; promote online safety; and hold tech and social media companies accountable for providing platforms where hate and extremism can thrive.”
This same leftist playbook can be seen being employed by the Australian Labor Party and the e-Safety Commissioner.
Meanwhile Rhodes also harbours questions about the DOJ’s dropping of charges against him and dozens of others in relation to the January 6th false flag “attack” of the US Congress. He wonders if it’s not just a way of brushing DOJ crimes under the counter.
Both Rhodes and Smith agreed that the charges of fraud were not the primary crimes of the SPLC, which deliberately destroyed peoples’ lives for holding certain political beliefs. Rhodes said the SPLC also ran false flag events that resulted in fatalities.
“They helped promote the shit show that was Charlottesville – and we stayed out of that by the way. I could tell that the guy putting is on was a fed – it was obvious to me,” said Rhodes.
“We were at many protests all across the South against tearing down the (Confederate generals) statues and all the absurd communist, revisionist things they were trying to do to us – so some more (of our) men guarded confederate cemeteries, actually. That’s not in the news.
“Black Lives Matters swore they were going to go in there and tear up all the headstones, so our guys posted out the front with rifles and said you’re not and local cops basically united with them against the BLM. You’re not going to hear about that because that doesn’t fit the narrative.”
Rhodes said Oathkeepers stayed out of the Charlottesville march because they knew is was going to turned into a manufactured Nazi-fest with people displaying Nazi flags and making Roman salutes. “That way they could paint the entire political right as that – that’s why we stayed away from it.”
NPR, one of the media organisations frequently used by the SPLC to spout its propaganda, reported on the indictments and was forced to publish what it never reported on itself – that is that the SPLC funded the very organisations it painted as grave threats to American life.
“For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been known for tracking hate groups. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced federal criminal charges against the nonprofit in connection with its use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups,” NPR host Michel Martin said.
She then asked NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas to “remind us of what the SPLC does”.
Lucas: “So the Southern Poverty Law Center – it’s also known as the SPLC. It’s a 55-year-old civil rights organization. It has a storied history. It’s based in Montgomery, Alabama. It started out as a law center doing a lot of civil rights work, trying to help end the vestiges of the Jim Crow era in the South. And its work later expanded to monitoring white supremacist groups, hate groups – including the KKK – and extremist groups more broadly.”
So the picture is painted of a “non-profit organisation that has been fighting for civil rights for 55 years and that tracks “hate groups”. How noble. What could the Trump DOJ possibly have against them?
NPR went on to detail the charges and then reported on SPLC’s response: “…the nonprofit’s CEO, Bryan Fair, defended the payments made to informants. He says these people risked their lives to infiltrate extremist groups and provide information on their activities.
“It was done to protect SPLC staff, to gather intelligence on violent threats. He said that information was shared with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, and he said that information no doubt saved lives. He also said the SPLC will defend its work.”
NPR then aired comments by Fair: “We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.” Obviously the protestations of a noble champion of social justice! (Excuse the sarcasm).
Lucas: Now, Fair also argued in that video that the SPLC is being targeted for political reasons.
Martin: Well, we’re – and we have seen the Justice Department under this administration go after President Trump’s critics, often at his explicit direction. So what about Fair’s argument that this indictment is political?
Lucas: Well, look. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche delivered this news at a press conference yesterday. He was asked about concerns about politics in this investigation. Here’s what he said.
Todd Blanche: Well, I mean, look. It’s free from – there is nothing political about this indictment or this investigation.
Lucas: Now, it is no secret, though, that conservatives have been highly critical of the Southern Poverty Law Center for years. They say it unfairly labels conservative organizations. One example they point to is an SPLC report in 2024 that described Turning Point USA – that’s the group, of course, that was started by the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk – described it as a case study of the hard right. And then after Kirk was assassinated last year, the FBI ended a long-running relationship that it had with the Southern Poverty Law Center. And at the time, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the civil rights group had turned into what he called a partisan smear machine. Now, this prosecution, this case, of course, is just getting underway, so we will see how this all plays out in court.
Rhodes said SPLC could probably effectively defend itself with skillful lawyers by arguing that the payments to informants was a necessary security measure.
