The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has awarded itself far more grace than it deserves by having the word “poverty” in its name, which conjures up images of bootstrap liberal attorneys who live and work like the fictional Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The founders of the organization, in 1971, integrated a myth that became a legend in the very naming of the organization. From a branding standpoint, this is an amazing feat. But author Harper Lee took a shot at her own iconic character with a sequel to that story that, in light of this week's news, strikes an interesting parallel.
Now it seems that this fictional archetype may have run its course in terms of usefulness for the SPLC. For one, how many kids these days graduate from high school and even know who Atticus Finch is? Even if they do, they didn’t grow up in a culture that might fully appreciate what Finch represented and the very context for his story.
That’s why the news this week of the SPLC propping up groups like the KKK might seem unfathomable to a Boomer but no big deal to someone in Gen Z.
Still, for decades all the SPLC had to do was call your organization a hate group and you were toast. All the SPLC had to do was label you a “white supremacist” and you were done.
In recent years, the SPLC has built its very brand on its power to use allegations of hate and racism to cancel and destroy anyone or any organization it targeted. Almost a year ago, the SPLC put a target on the back of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA with its “case study” on the “hard right.”
This was business as usual for the SPLC. Smearing other groups as “hate groups” is where the organization has now landed. Its trademark “hate map” is its touchstone for everything. The map is a formal doxxing of sorts of anyone and everyone it dislikes, from Moms for Liberty and TPUSA, to the American Family Association.
This is the SPLC brand, one that has not only been bruised but has entered an active stage of decay in recent days—and now it’s starting to smell awful. As our Catherine Salgado reported, the SLPC was indicted by a grand jury this week on multiple charges that allege SPLC was propping up, funding, and, in some cases, providing behind-the-scenes direction to individuals who ran the very “hate groups” SPLC says it wants to dismantle.
On April 21, the DOJ posted on X about the indictment of the SPLC over charges of channeling millions of dollars to people who are part of extremist groups and even white supremacist groups. The latter is particularly ironic, because the woke SPLC loves to hurl accusations of white supremacy and racism at conservatives. But like all leftists, the SPLC radicals are hypocrites. In fact, they shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to multiple members of the Ku Klux Klan, Catherine wrote.
This raises an obvious question: Is the SPLC a hate group?
According to the SPLC’s own criteria, a hate group is one whose beliefs or practices attack or malign an entire class of people, usually based on things like race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. It also says that its focus is on the “hate group’s” ideology and messaging. According to the SPLC, a hate group does not need to be guilty of committing a crime to make it onto the organization’s “hate map.”
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the SPLC had to say on its own website about how it identified the 940 “active hate groups” it ranked in 2019. The organization said it used information from its own “Intelligence Project,” which reviewed and analyzed “hate group publications, citizen reports, law enforcement agencies, field sources, web postings and news reports.”
Susan Corke is the Managing Director of Norm Eisens State Democracy Defenders AND the director of Southern Poverty Law Centers (SPLC) Intelligence Project.
— Bad Kitty Unleashed 🦁 💪🏻 (@pepesgrandma) April 22, 2026
The SLPC is also a Soros Democracy Alliance partner. They ain’t here to help any conservatives.
Second photo is from a… https://t.co/sdukcj2hTa pic.twitter.com/BPj44R03N1
The organization never really gets into how it defines the “hate” part of the group. It seems to operate under the you-know-it-when-you-see-it philosophy. More to the point, the SPLC knows an organization or person it doesn’t like when it sees it.
Once the SPLC identifies yours as a possible hate group, and then decides to add you to its “hate map,” you’re going to be put into any one or more of these categories: “Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, White Nationalist, Racist Skinhead, Christian Identity, Neo-Confederate, Black Separatist, Anti-LGBTQ, Anti-Muslim, Anti-Immigrant and General Hate.” I wonder how the SPLC is balancing “anti-Muslim” with antisemitism tensions these days. It feels like antisemitism has fallen on the SPLC’s list of priorities.
To be sure, you don’t have to actually be a hate group to make the SLPC’s map. You just have to be someone or some organization that the SPLC wants to smear. Now, let’s take a step back, with this week’s developments in mind, to give proper context to the SPLC’s own rapidly deteriorating brand.
Does the SPLC attack or malign an entire class of people? Sure it does. That’s the very point of its “hate map.” It does malign people based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. If you’re a Christian and you’re a white male who is attracted to women, you are off to a bad start with the SPLC. If you are an organization that promotes Christianity or heterosexuality at the exclusion of competing faiths, no faith, or deviant sexuality, you’re all but on the SPLC map, which means it does malign people in the same manner in which its own criteria says qualifies as a hate group.
All of this suggests that the SPLC is already a viable candidate for its own hate map. But it gets worse. This week’s revelations coming out of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) suggest that when it comes to actual hate, the SPLC’s mantra is, “Go big or go home.”
🚨Grand jury indicts SPLC for paying KKK.
— Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) April 22, 2026
Reporter: “You’re alleging that the SPLC was paying the leaders of KKK and other groups?”
Blanche: “I’m not alleging it. The grand jury returned an indictment that says that.” pic.twitter.com/FEh9i7OJ5O
The alleged activities are mindboggling, from giving millions to people involved with the very groups the SPLC is supposed to be monitoring and “dismantling,” to coordinating and supporting leaders of groups like the KKK and the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 where one woman was killed by an automobile.
The picture that is emerging is not a flattering one for the SPLC. If true, it paints an organization that can’t seem to find “hate,” and so it has allegedly been helping to manufacture it. To make matters worse, it’s then accused of duplicitously not revealing any of this.
Maybe it’s time to rethink how we describe the SPLC. Given the amount of money the organization has allegedly thrown around, “poverty” is the last word that comes to mind. But “hate” could apply. "Hate" could be a sticky of a descriptor of the SLPC itself.
What would you say if from here forward, anytime we mention the SPLC we preface it with a more accurate descriptor? At every mention, we would call it “known hate group, the SPLC.”
I’m not sure if known hate group, the SPLC would like this, but hey, the truth hurts.
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