Last week, the president of the dark-money slop machine that is the Capital Research Center (CRC), Scott Walter, published an op-ed in the right-wing Daily Wire — continuing the CRC’s campaign against the Southern Poverty Law Center as Donald Trump weaponizes his Justice Department against the longtime civil rights group as part of his broader efforts to investigate and attack progressive organizations. This op-ed is just the latest piece of paper in the CRC’s dossier dedicated to smearing the Southern Poverty Law Center at all costs, facts be damned. Let’s correct the record on the so-called “misdeeds” of the SPLC named in Scott Walter’s op-ed:
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: Much of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Influence on American Government and Society Has Been “Malignant.” In his op-ed, Walter characterizes the SPLC’s influence on the U.S. as “malignant,” writing, “For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has had an outsized influence on American government and society, much of it malignant…”
- 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 “Has Strong Ideological Motives.” In his op-ed, Walter claims the SPLC has “strong ideological motives” because the group’s donor list includes “left-wing luminaries.”
- 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 Mainstream Conservatives. In his op-ed, Walter accuses the SPLC of “counting what seemed like every racist knucklehead who could afford to register a URL as a ‘hate group,’” as well as “tarr[ing] as hate groups such mainstream conservative organizations as the legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, the education advocacy groups Moms for Liberty and Defending Education, and immigration-restriction groups like the Center for Immigration Studies.”
- THE FACTS: The SPLC Comprehensively Tracks Hate Groups of All Forms and Sizes. Aside from downplaying extremist white supremacist groups as “racist knuckleheads” and rendering groups that proudly spread hate against immigrants and trans people as “mainstream,” Walter suggests that the SPLC has made no attempt to distinguish the different organizations it lists as hate groups, and just throws them into a list. In reality, the SPLC’s tracking operation is uniquely broad and comprehensive. In 2024, the group tracked 1,371 hate and anti-government extremist groups, with a clear focus on linkages to white supremacists. The SPLC’s dossier on the Center for Immigration Studies, for example, includes dozens of bluntly anti-immigrant quotes and documented associations with anti-immigration extremists, as well as hundreds of emails sent out from the group containing content from white nationalist websites.
CAPITAL RESEARCH SLOP: Walter Boosts The Trump DOJ’s Claim That the SPLC Is “Manufacturing Racism.” In his op-ed, Walter gives credence to Trump’s Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s claim that the SPLC is “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
- THE FACTS: Hate Crimes Are Rising, Not Being Pushed Out of the Mainstream. FBI reporting showed that crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, or gender identity are on the rise. Hate crime incidents have risen nearly 100% since 2015, with nearly 12,000 incidents reported in 2024 — even as many hate crimes go unreported.
###