DOJ Indicts the SPLC: Which Group is More Extreme?

The Justice Department (DOJ) indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last week on eleven counts related to fraud and systemic racism, prompting commentators on both the left and right to accuse their opposing side of being extreme.

The Details: Acting Attorney Gen. Todd Blanche alleged the SPLC unlawfully paid $3 million to informants within extremist groups and manipulated corporate giving at big businesses. He said SPLC did "the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it." The FBI reportedly cut ties with the organization last year due to its biased labeling of conservative and Christian groups as "extremist." FBI Director Kash Patel dubbed the labeling a "Hate Map" and accused SPLC of contributing to political violence. 

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Benevity, a software company that facilitates billions in corporate giving, uses the SPLC's labels as a filter to direct funding, which, though the filter may be turned off, some critics flagged as a systemic injustice. The companies using the software reportedly include Amazon, BlackRock, Coca-Cola, Fox Corporation, McDonald's, Netflix, News Corp, Nike, Oracle, Pfizer, and Starbucks.

From The Left: The DOJ's claims "make no sense," wrote People for the American Way (Left bias) President Svante Myrick. In an opinion for The Hill (Center), she called the indictment "an alarming sign of how corrupted the DOJ has become since President Trump returned to power." Myrick highlighted the SPLC's success in bankrupting a Ku Klux Klan organization in 1981 and said the "Department of Injustice" promotes the "Big Lie" that "racism and violent right-wing extremism aren't real." She asserted, "It's all part of a larger corruption of truth, law and history."

Commentators for HuffPost (Left) similarly said the indictment "appears to be yet another escalation of the Trump administration's push to limit how civil rights groups operate." They cited other DOJ prosecutions, such as that of former FBI Director James Comey, that "both fulfilled Donald Trump's base urge for revenge and power and, even though they failed, functioned as warning shots for anyone else to cross or disobey him in the future." 

From The Right: "I know from experience that left-wing protesters were emboldened to harass and even physically attack the parents who were associated with the SPLC-smeared groups," wrote a New York Post (Right) commentator. The writer cited SPLC's 2023 addition of Moms for Liberty and other conservative parental advocacy groups to its list of "anti-government extremists… feeding them directly into the SPLC's widely circulated 'Hate Map,' alongside neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan." The commentator accused the organization of "manufacturing the hate it claimed to be fighting." He asserted, "Whatever the indictment's legal outcome, we know the strategy is dishonest, immoral – and highly effective."

A commentator for National Review (Right) emphasized the SPLC's shift from a focus on groups like the KKK to Christian groups, highlighting, "The SPLC's tracking of extremism does not include any leftist organizations." The writer specifically cited the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council, a Christian nonprofit, as the attacker "explicitly cited the SPLC's website as his reason for targeting the conservative group."

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