Like many pro-family organizations in the United States,
MassResistance celebrates the DOJ’s filing charges against the Southern Poverty
Law Center. This hate group masquerading as a civil rights organization has
repeatedly targeted us, and it’s good to see them finally facing the legal
music.
First, a little background ….
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has long posed as
America's premier watchdog against "hate." Founded in 1971 in
Montgomery, Alabama, it built a massive endowment—topping hundreds of
millions—by mailing dire warnings about rising extremism to fearful donors. Yet
beneath the polished facade of civil rights heroism always lay a darker agenda:
a partisan smear machine designed to delegitimize, defame, and ultimately destroy
conservatives who dare defend traditional values, border security, religious
liberty, and free speech.
While most pro-family groups cowered or avoided talking
about the SPLC, MassResistance has consistently exposed their tactics. With
more exposure in a federal criminal case, the institution is facing well-deserved
financial and legal freefall. The organization's recent federal indictment for
wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering—alleging it secretly funneled over
$3 million in donor funds to informants tied to extremist groups like the Ku
Klux Klan and Aryan Nations—only confirms what MassResistance has warned about
for years: the SPLC was never fighting hate; it was manufacturing it to justify
its existence.
For
years, MassResistance has endured defamation from this hate group in Alabama.
They falsely maligned our President, Brian Camenker, for claiming that the
Nazis never targeted homosexuals. They have defamed our Field Director, Arthur
Schaper, as an anti-immigrant activist and conflated him with white
nationalists. As a result of this smear campaign, local and national newspapers
would reference the Southern Poverty Law Center when describing our efforts and
activism. They insisted on hiding behind that institution to smear us as a
“hate group.” Local parents and activist organizations often stayed away from
us because of this unjustified smear. Other pro-family groups also resisted our
confrontational approach to activism because they feared the SPLC’s “hate
group” label.
There have been fatal consequences, of course—as intended,
frankly. In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins walked into FRC headquarters in Washington,
D.C., armed with a gun and a list of targets drawn from the SPLC's hate map
(one of the organization’s most notorious gimmicks to smear and harm
conservatives). He shot and wounded a security guard before being stopped.
Corkins explicitly cited the SPLC's labeling of FRC as motivation. The SPLC
condemned the act in vague terms but doubled down on its defamatory actions, refusing
to remove FRC from its “Hate Map” and insisting its criticism was
"fact-based." And that’s what the SPLC is really invested it: they
want to foment violence against conservatives. Mark Potok, one of their
“researchers,” readily admitted this motive in a 2007 conference: “Our goal is
to destroy conservatives.”
Some critics of this hate group have argued that the
organization started with the right motives, but then went to the dark side, so
to speak. The truth is much darker. From its inception, the SPLC sued many
groups—including the defunct KKK—for so-called civil rights violations just for
the money. It was never about fighting injustice. Morris Dees, one of the
co-founders of this hate group, had represented the KKK before turning to civil
rights litigation. While he would claim that he had had a moral epiphany, the
truth is that he was always a greedy ambulance chaser looking for a more
lucrative legal enterprise, nothing more.
Their selective outrage clearly exposed this moral rot. The
organization downplayed black separatist antisemitism or Islamist extremism
while inflating "anti-LGBTQ+" or "anti-immigrant" threats
from groups advocating basic biblical views on sexuality or immigration policy.
Their tactics weren't neutral monitoring; they were ideological warfare. The
SPLC partnered with Big Tech, corporate media, and the federal government to
blacklist conservatives, influencing everything from payment processors to
school curricula.
To their credit, conservative outlets, independent
journalists, and organizations like the Heritage Foundation have documented how
the SPLC inflated "hate group" counts by counting single-person
websites or peaceful advocacy outfits multiple times while ignoring left-wing
violence. Lawsuits mounted. The Center for Immigration Studies sued for
defamation after being labeled a hate group; courts allowed discovery,
revealing internal doubts at the SPLC about its own standards. Other targets
pushed back in the court of public opinion, refusing to cower.
But MassResistance directly confronted SPLC influence in
schools, libraries, and legislatures. We fought back against their defamation.
We confronted reporters and newspapers that listed that hate group as a
legitimate source. We even forced local newspapers to retract their libelous
claims and stop referencing the Southern Poverty Law Center altogether.
We certainly appreciated the exposure of the organization's
internal scandals, too: sexual harassment allegations against founder Morris
Dees (leading to his 2019 ouster), racial discrimination lawsuits from minority
employees, and bloated overhead that funneled donor dollars into luxury while
"fighting poverty." These revelations eroded trust. Donors, including
some on the left, began questioning the hype.
Post-2020, as riots exposed left-wing extremism, the SPLC's
credibility crumbled further. Conservative lawmakers, including House Judiciary
Committee members, grilled the group's influence on federal agencies. Limited
government activists even reached out to MassResistance, asking us to consider
testifying before House committees to expose the SPLC.
Then more good news followed, which MassResistance has
continued to celebrate. In 2024-2025, internal mutiny erupted: mass layoffs of
25% of staff, a no-confidence vote against CEO Margaret Huang backed by 92% of
remaining employees, and her eventual resignation. Financial woes mounted amid
donor fatigue and bad publicity. The SPLC's own reports showed fluctuating
"hate group" numbers that suspiciously spiked with Republican
administrations—classic fundraising fuel.
With the second Trump administration, the SPLC has faced
more troubles. FBI Director Kash Patel severed all ties. House Republicans held
hearings exposing coordination with prior administrations to target Christians
and conservatives. Then, on April 21, 2026, a federal grand jury in Alabama
indicted the SPLC on 11 counts, including wire fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors
allege the group secretly paid over $3 million (2014-2023) to informants
embedded in or affiliated with violent extremist circles—the very groups it
claimed to dismantle—while misleading donors about its work.
This indictment validates a decade of MassResistance’s
warnings. The SPLC didn't just target conservatives with rhetorical violence;
its methods subsidized the extremism it profited from decrying. Real hate
exists—Klansmen, neo-Nazis, jihadists—but the SPLC blurred lines to smear
pro-family Christians, border enforcers, and constitutionalists as equivalent
threats. MassResistance succeeded by refusing silence.
Yet the fight continues. The SPLC vows to "defend"
itself, and leftist allies decry "political targeting." True
resistance demands full accountability—no more partnerships with smeared
organizations, no more taxpayer-adjacent influence, and relentless sunlight on
its remaining assets. Conservatives must reject the hate label entirely,
building parallel institutions immune to smears.
For the last ten years, MassResistance fought the SPLC not
with truth, persistence, and principle. We exposed the SPLC as a bully
profiting from division, not a beacon against it. MassResistance proved that
determined patriots can topple even the mightiest smear factories. The SPLC's
decline offers hope: when citizens reject fear and demand honesty, the house of
cards collapses. America rejects manufactured hate. We defend ordered liberty
instead.
