While Donald Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a 55-year-old legacy civil rights organization, the dark-money slop machine that is the Capital Research Center is busy doing what it does best: supplying Trump and his Republican allies with ammunition to investigate progressive organizations. Yesterday, the Capital Research Center released an explainer patting itself on the back for its years-long campaign dedicated to smearing the SPLC at all costs — facts be damned. Let’s correct the record on those so-called SPLC ‘controversies’:
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Is “More of A Threat to Free Speech” Than a “Foe of Violent Extremism.” The CRC memo highlights an article it wrote in 2012 declaring that the SPLC has “become more of a threat to free speech and civil debate than a defender of the weak or a foe of violent extremism.”
- THE FACTS: The SPLC Has Spent 55 Years on the Front Lines of Fighting Violent Extremism. For 55 years, the SPLC has been at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights – even amid decades of credible bomb threats, bombings, and assassination plots. Its decades-old informant program contributed to infiltration efforts and lawsuits against the KKK, and has saved lives by sharing information with the FBI and local law enforcement. It has relentlessly fought white supremacy, and names bankrupting the KKK and forcing the integration of state troopers in the South among its top achievements.
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: The SPLC “Mak[es] Money By Smearing Conservatives.”
- THE FACTS: The Call Is Coming From Inside the House. CRC expends much of its resources smearing and pushing to defund progressive organizations, such as the SPLC, and brings in six- and seven-figure sums from high-profile right-wing foundations, including DonorsTrust, the Koch Foundation, and the Scaife Foundations, among others.
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: The SPLC Is Targeting Trump and Mainstream Conservatives. The CRC memo shares an article it published in 2025, accusing the SPLC of lumping “Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other genuine extremists alongside mainstream conservative and religious organizations,” and criticized the SPLC for tracking the first Trump administration’s ties to white nationalism, white supremacy, and extremism.
- THE FACTS: The SPLC Tracks Hate Groups In and Out of the White House. The SPLC’s tracking operation is comprehensive. In 2024, the group tracked 1,371 hate and antigovernment extremist groups, with a clear focus on linkages to coordinated violence or calls for violence.
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: CRC Claims The SPLC “Successfully Pushed Bigots Out of the Mainstream,” and “Need to Constantly Find New Bigots Inside the Mainstream to Fight Against.” The CRC memo highlights a video the group put out in 2017 attacking the SPLC’s mission: “The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that has so succeeded in pushing bigots out of the mainstream, that now over 40 years after their founding, they need to constantly find new bigots inside the mainstream to fight against.”
- THE FACTS: Hate Crimes Are Rising, Not Being “Pushed Out of the Mainstream.” Even when the article was published, FBI reporting showed that crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, or gender identity were on the rise. Between 2014 and 2017, hate crime incidents rose 30%. Hate crime incidents have risen nearly 100% since 2015, with nearly 12,000 incidents reported in 2024 — even as many hate crimes go unreported.
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: The SPLC “Ideologically Captured” Homeless Advocacy In 2024. The CRC memo highlights an article it circulated in 2025 claiming that the SPLC has “ideologically captured” homelessness advocacy, writing, “the SPLC also engages in homelessness policy by submitting amicus filings that oppose enforcement. They have connections to networks previously documented in CRC reports regarding pro-Hamas activism crossovers.”
- THE FACTS: The SPLC Has Fought For the Rights of Homeless Individuals For Decades. The SPLC has advocated for the rights of homeless individuals for decades. In 1989, for example, the organization spearheaded a lawsuit against an Alabama high school that denied admission to a homeless teenager.
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