Emily Jashinsky (54:28)
into the scandal swallowing the Southern Poverty Law center right now because the SPLC is something that, going back to, I think 2017 is the first time that I covered the SPLC, all the way back when I was at the Washington examiner and was new in journalism. CNN replicated their hate watch map and just put it out on the site like this was a perfectly credible source of information. And that was not a unique situation at all. It's almost impossible to describe how often the media would take the SPLC's hate designations over many decades and then put them up on the screen or in their copy and act as though this was not a controversial, not an ideologically charged, not a partisan source. It was really, really despicable for many years. And so multiple layers here. There. There are two things we're going to talk about. The first has two layers in and of itself, so follow along with me here. Allegations from conservatives against the Southern Poverty Law center for years, including myself, were that they were engaged in a really despicable conflation of traditional values with bigotry and not even traditional values. We're talking about, as we just discussed on the show, opposition to radical trans policies. We're talking about Ayan Hersi Ali's criticism of her own former religion, Islam. All of this immigration hawks. All of this was enough to get people slapped with a hate designation that would then this is the second part here, be laundered by the media, because all of these journalists were inclined to agree with the SPLC that the toothless rubes in America's heartland were actually racist and hateful. Who could forget the Taylor Swift, you need to calm down music video where she pans over to the protesters against, I guess, the LGBT community. And they're all depicted as like toothless hillbillies with overalls on at the time. So another story I wrote for the Federalists, it was actually the black community that had the highest level of opposition to gay marriage. But again, this is the point that coastal elites in their bubbles are in their bubbles of affluence in super zips. As Charles Murray documented in Coming Apart, they are just inclined to believe because they don't spend enough time with people outside of their bubbles, whether that is in the their own cities, people of less affluence, or in A quote, unquote, flyover country. They were inclined to believe that the SPLC was absolutely tough. The truth that people who are, you know, opposing the full slate of cultural progressivism are necessarily bigoted and hateful. So you would often see the SPLC cited as a credible source. And when I say often, I mean, it was like a reflex, and to some extent still is like a reflex. Whenever you're covering one group or the other, it's just, boom. SPLC is, says this is a. This is a hate group, even if it's a mainstream conservative organization. So we're going to get into all of it. Obviously, what the Department of Justice unveiled yesterday was an indictment. I have it here in my hand. This is the indictment itself. My copy is all highlighted. But you've seen a lot online in regard to what's actually going on. And that's where I just want to say again, there are these allegations conservatives have made and even some on the left have made. As early as 2000, Liberal journalist Ken Silverstein was writing for, for Harper's about this, wrote about it again in 2010. This has been. The SPLC has been controversial for a long time. You just wouldn't know it from the media coverage, and you wouldn't know it from all of the corporations that showered them with cash. Their 2024990 form shows they had $123 million in revenue, about $822 million in total assets. That is a staggering amount for a nonprofit in the United States. Staggering blows. Most other nonprofits totally out of the water. And so what the DOJ unveiled is pretty shocking because this is what people weren't talking about, about the splc. Right? The bias was one part of it. The laundering in the media was another part of it. But nobody really had evidence or had an inkling. I mean, people were suspicious, but nobody really knew how serious the case was that the Southern Poverty Law center, while it was fundraising on fighting hatred and extremism, was allegedly, according to the Department of Justice's indictment, funding members of the hate groups and their activities on behalf of those hate groups. This does include, allegedly, that famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that Joe Biden cited as one of the reasons he ran for president in 2020. Now, this indictment, it's actually pretty easy to read if you want to read it yourself. But. But I'm just going to read from the introduction. The SPLC's paid informants, listed as field sources, engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website. The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville. That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the splc. And I just want to underline that. I literally underlined it in my document. But they're saying under the supervision those postings were made. And then they helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. So in order to covertly pay its field sources, the splc, according to the government, opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. That is also critical. I was going to say key and critical at the same time, but that's really key to understanding this indictment because that's what the charges are. They're basically about fraud. That the SPLC defrauded its donors and supporters by creating these fake groups and transferring money from bank accounts in those names to people who were actively boosting the hate groups that it was fundraising to fight. So there's 11 counts here, if I'm counting this correctly. And there is conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud, and the like. And that stems from this allegation that because they were funding, quote, field sources, that was an act of fraud. Now, again, the DOJ has bank sources here. They clearly have bank records. You can see it. They have charts in the indictment of records that they procured, including wire transactions from their operating accounts straight to accounts controlled by the field sources. And they list them out here. That level of evidence is. Is obviously significant. The grand jury returned this indictment yesterday when the announcement was made. So let's go a little bit deeper into what happened. They have, per my count, there are nine field sources, nine separate field sources. The DOJ says that they were secretly paid by the splc, but it is not limited. These are examples of field sources who were secretly paid by the splc. But these are not. They are not, not the only ones. So they say include, but are not limited to the following. And then they list out all of these different field sources. Again, I counted nine of them in groups like in events like Unite the Right National Alliance. There was a someone at the national alliance who, according to DOJ, between 2014 and 2023, that's a neo Nazi organization. By the way, the SPLC secretly paid this person F9 more than $1 million. So over a decade, this person was given $1 million of donor money from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Crazy, crazy story. They were paying an imperial wizard of the United Clans of America an imperial wizard. The United Clans of America, as the Justice Appointment points Department points out, is was responsible for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham all the way back in 1963. Okay, that's F unknown listed in this indictment, but also people involved with the Aryan nations, the kkk. The breadth of this indictment, which is based on bank records, is stunning. And it shows a very significant amount of money going into. I think it totals like $3 million. This, they say that this is a practice the SPLC started all the way back in the 1980s. A lot of the evidence here is from roughly the last 10, 12 years. I think we're starting here in like 2014. I think one of them goes back to 2013. But you get the. Yeah, 2013. So you get the gist, you know, roughly the last 15 years. Most. Most of it in the last 10 years. And so what the Justice Department is going to have to prove here is that these, quote, racist postings were actually made under the supervision. That's the quote of the splc. What I expect the SPLC to counter this with is by just saying, and they're denying everything, to be clear. But again, this is based on bank records and it was returned by a grand jury. They're going to say, basically, I'm expecting they're going to say these people were going rogue every time they were, you know, as F9 reportedly did. This is one of the guys at the national alliance who was a field informant for the SPLC for more than 20 years. According to the DOJ, they entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group in 2014 and sold 25 boxes of their documents. So the SPLC is probably going to say that was the actions of a rogue field source, they had nothing to do with it, they didn't ask for it, etc. Now, I would assume there's going to be ample evidence that's not the case. This is a lot of smoke. It's actually more than smoke. It's pretty hard evidence. Again, we have bank records. We have a pattern of behavior allegedly here. So we'll see. See the SPLC's full response to this. But what we know is that the Department of Justice has clear evidence that money was going from bank accounts controlled by the Southern Poverty Law center to people who were involved in violent extremist groups. Actual racist, hateful, hateful groups. So well worth noting that. Now, why is this coming out in 2026? I just want to roll v1. If you're listening to this, you should head over to the YouTube channel, and just watch it. This is a compliment compilation that producer Kelly put together of an example, a sample of all of the times that the corporate press. This is an example from CNN, would launder the SPLC's hate group research. I mean, the Jeff Session example right here, credibly, you know, by the numbers, seven charts that explain hate groups in the United States states. That's from CNN. And it's literally just the SPLC's research, but it's presented like that in the headlines. Conservative groups were fighting this for years and years and years because as, as Molly Hemingway pointed out earlier in the show, this sometimes did lead to violence. And also, it is just so profoundly incorrect. It is so profoundly wrong. It is factually incorrect. But it is also entirely immoral to lump your fellow countrymen in with actual Nazis racists. We're talking about the Klan, we're talking about neo Nazi groups. And to take the goodwill that you earned, the reputation you burnished after the Jim Crow era, this is where the SPLC comes into play. Going after really legitimate hate groups like, we're talking Klan, Klan affiliates, neo Nazi groups, actual violent groups, groups, racist motorcycle clubs and the like, and, and fighting the vestiges of real bigotry in this country to then take that reputation and turn your fire on people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who survived female genital mutilation and should have the right to say whatever she damn well wants to within reasonable boundaries about Islam, which she has done and has done very bravely at great risk to her own life every single day to then put her in this category of hatred and extremism that should include the remaining hateful extremists in this country, while you were the one providing funding to some of the people that were infiltrating this group. And not just spying, but actively participating in the hate and extremism, actively making racist postings, for example, as the allegations are, coordinating travel to hate events, infiltrating other hate groups and stealing their documents. The audacity of the Southern Poverty Law center to do that, and the laziness of our corporate media because journalists in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as Charles Murray documented, are increasingly isolated from people who are less affluent and are therefore more likely to share traditional beliefs that disagree with them, who are more likely to have totally different lifestyles. All of that led journalists to rest on their laurels and allow the Southern Poverty Law center to get away with this despicable grift that divided the country, that pitted people against each other. As and putting this up on the screen, we were making enormous progress and I would argue world historical species scale progress towards eliminating racism and bigotry over the last 100 years in the United States of America. What we have in the United States of America we should not take for granted because we have so many people from different racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, living very closely together here in this country. And yes, there are many times we feel divided, there are times when there is tension, but over the years that has improved significantly. What's up on my screen right now is a538 article that shows how attitudes towards racism and inequality have shifted in the United States over time. So for example here, this one is the question in surveys, would you vote for a black person for president? Southern respondents who said yes, assuming the candidate was qualified and nominated by the respondents party. Among white respondents, that went from just under 75% around the 1970s all the way up to almost 100% by 2010. We have the question posed to southerners what explains inequality between blacks and whites? Southerners who answered that it was inborn inability went from around 30% of white respondents all the way down to almost 0% of white respondents from the 80s to the mid 2010s. Is it okay to discriminate in home sales? This is actually of all US Adults who say a homeowner should be allowed to refuse to sell a potential buyer based on race. That went from get the 75% of white respondents in the mid-70s all the way down to just a quarter of white respondents in the mid-2010s. Still too high, of course, still too high, but enormous progress. And this is right when the southern poverty law center is going pedal to the metal, turning the screws on conservative groups and telling everyone that people who disagreed with them on trans issues, gay marriage, islamism, immigration, like hawkish immigration groups, that they were racist, hateful extremists and giving the mainstream media basically permission to publish that over many years. Now here's another. This is a good proxy that social scientists have used for many years to gauge racist attitudes. This is 2021 from Gallup. U.S. approval of interracial marriage at new high of 94%. And now look at the progress that has been made since 1958 to 2021.
