At a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday morning, Rep. Clay Fuller (R-GA) may have unwittingly revealed a basic truth about recent right-wing attacks on the Southern Poverty Law Center: they are part of a broader authoritarian assault by the Trump regime on civil rights groups and the progressive community, or in Rep. Fuller’s words, “this nonprofit-industrial complex that is seeking to destroy our country each and every day.”
The press conference was a prelude to the House Judiciary Committee hearing in which Republicans accused the SPLC of “manufacturing hate.” Speaking to a handful of right-wing media outlets were representatives of right-wing organizations complaining about having been designated as hate groups or included in extremism reporting by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and Awake Illinois. Joining them was right-wing journalist Tyler O’Neil, author of an anti-SPLC book.
Before the event started, a correspondent for the Real America’s Voice network could be heard falsely telling listeners that SPLC had “staged” the 2017 Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a claim commonly heard in right-wing propaganda promoting and going well beyond the claims in the Justice Department’s bogus indictment of the SPLC for using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.
Speaking for the Family Research Council was its executive vice president Jerry Boykin, who falsely claimed that SPLC’s hate map is based on “no criteria” except what might help make money for the group. In reality, whether or not you agree with any particular designation SPLC makes, you can find their reasoning on the website—for example, its report on FRC’s demonization of LGBTQ people and more.
While most of the speakers complained that there were dire consequences for being placed on SPLC’s hate map, the representative of TPUSA’s George Washington University chapter was a bit off-message, dismissing it as a “silly little map” and vowing that his group would not be intimidated by the “lunatic left.”
At the hearing itself—the second one focused on the SPLC—Republican members of the Judiciary Committee trotted out expected claims about SPLC’s paid informants being used to “manufacture hate” and to allege that the SPLC smears Christians and “good pro-family organizations,” in Rep. Jim Jordan’s words. Reflecting that level of discourse was Rep. Glenn Grothman, who sighed, “They just hate Christianity, don’t they?” Rep. Michael Baumgartner said he had favorable memories of the SPLC playing a role in helping people in eastern Washington respond to an Aryan Nations compound, but he charged that the group has now become “an almost militant weaponized arm of a progressive Marxist political project.”
Right-wing witnesses also made clear that their goal is broader than taking down a single organization. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued that investigations should not stop with the SPLC, which he called a “hub,” but should expand to other organizations and companies that made decisions about groups based on their SPLC designations—the “spokes.” Tyler O’Neil, a reporter at The Daily Signal, which started as the Heritage Foundation’s news and commentary platform, called for a broader investigation of SPLC “and its offshoots,” naming specifically the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which was started by a former SPLC staffer.
Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, portrayed the DOJ prosecution as outrageous political persecution, in the memorable words of Rep. Lucy McBath, “charges so flimsy they would make Bull Connor and George Wallace blush.”
While Republicans suggested that the SPLC was somehow responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, several Democrats noted that before the Unite the Right rally, the SPLC gave the FBI a 45-page dossier warning that violence could erupt, and that SPLC had also shared information from informants that led to the conviction of members of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.
Committee Democrats also effectively used some of their time to focus on the scandalous corruption revealed this week: the DOJ’s creation of a nearly two billion dollar slush fund for the president to dole out to insurrectionists and other allies; and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s apparently related agreement in connection to Trump’s bogus lawsuit against the IRS to drop any current audits or investigations and grant a permanent blanket of immunity for any wrongdoing by Trump, his family, or their massive business networks at any time in the past. Rep. Raskin moved for the committee to subpoena administration officials involved in the creation of the slush fund, but Republicans voted to table his motion.
More than one Democratic member of Congress referred to Monday’s shooting at a San Diego mosque, in which teenagers who bonded online over white supremacist hatred killed three people before killing themselves, as evidence that far-right violent extremism deserves more attention from the committee.
Maya Wiley, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was the witness called by Democrats. She delivered a powerful opening statement calling the campaign against the SPLC part of “a coordinated attack on civil rights non-profits that work to ensure voters can vote, children can learn history, and unions can protect workers,” and she deftly responded to GOP members’ often ridiculous questions. Here’s more from her opening statement:
But this case and today’s hearing aren’t about how to protect people from violent hate and extremist groups or better understand how we can prevent hate and bias. They are about using the powers of prosecution as a weapon, with the sole aim of stopping speech and activities that this administration dislikes and denying the real threats that we should all be concerned about.
In the past year, we have seen countless examples of this weaponization. This administration is coercing law firms, universities, and media companies. It is threatening to brand advocates as “domestic terrorists.” It is cutting off billions in federal grants to non-profits that do important work to track and prevent hate and bias. It is letting law enforcement off the hook for systemic misconduct that violates rights of people who need protection. It is letting violence and even extrajudicial killings by federal agents go unpunished. In all of this and more, the President has not even tried to hide his motives. And for the past year, he has also been open about his willingness to weaponize criminal law. So cases like this were inevitable. And our concern is that no organization seen as dissenting from administration policy, large or small, will ultimately be safe. …
Each year, the SPLC issues a report on hate and extremism in our country. This report is so important because it tracks organizations promoting the ideologies that brought us the Charlottesville riot that left Heather Heyer dead, and the massacres at the Tree of Life synagogue, the Emanuel AME church, and the El Paso Walmart. It is sadly part of the reason SPLC is being targeted. It is uncomfortable for an administration that has backed away from and cut grants for tracking white nationalism, which the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration defined as our greatest domestic threat.
The SPLC is far too busy fighting hate to “manufacture” it. You don’t have to like or agree with all of its strategies for doing so. But the fact that SPLC is now being criminally charged for its work only shows how much more work it has to do.