In the financial world, most frauds are short-lived. Ponzi schemes such as Bernie Madoff’s eventually run out of new suckers to provide enough funds to pay the phony “returns” promised to earlier investors. When the cash flow dries up, the scam collapses.

The con artists at the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center have a different racket, and a different problem. Instead of swindling the public with promises of unrealistic, too-good-to-be-true investment returns, the fear-mongering SPLC sold “paranoia porn” to credulous donors, convincing them – falsely – that the country is full of dangerous right-wing extremists who need to be identified and brought to heel. 

SPLC’s problem is that in 21st century America, there is not enough racism and far-right extremism to keep donors sufficiently panicked to continue writing checks to finance the organization’s fat executive salaries, a palatial six-story quarters in Montgomery, Alabama and a nine-figure investment portfolio (some of which is held in offshore accounts).

SPLC’s solution? They made up, and even funded, a façade of right-wing extremism. Between 2014 and 2023, they secretly funneled at least $3 million to leaders within the KKK, the Aryan Nation and neo-Nazi groups to create the appearance of an incipient crisis. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo quipped that “the supply of right-wing ‘hate’ was so low that a left-wing ‘anti-hate’ group had to subsidize it, so it could then raise money to fight it.” 

This is precisely what a........

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