On April 21, the federal government charged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with multiple violations of federal law. This indictment of the SPLC--coming in the wake of the blatantly political Texas trial and conviction of 9 activists alleged to part of "antifa" in March--is part of a growing program called for by Trump to attack and defund organizations opposing the administration’s fascist agenda, as laid out in National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. One key part of this is going after the finances and tax-exempt status of the targeted organizations. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center was established in 1971 to give legal assistance to civil rights cases. From there, the SPLC went on to focus on destroying the Ku Klux Klan. It famously won a 1979 lawsuit against the leading Klan organization at the time for monetary damages for victims of Klan violence, thereby bankrupting the main Klan group. Members of the Klan then tried to burn down the Center’s Montgomery, Alabama offices in retaliation. 

The SPLC publishes the Hatewatch (originally called Klanwatch) that keeps track of fascist groups, and its Intelligence Project maintains a list of right-wing extremist organizations, that has included groups from the Christian-nationalist Focus on the Family to Charlie Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA. SPLC described Turning Point USA in its “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.” The SPLC has proven a valuable resource for identifying white supremacist and anti-Semitic organizations.

The “Justice” Department jumped at the chance to target the SPLC after the assassination of Turning Point’s founder and leader, the fascist youth organizer Charlie Kirk. Turning Point’s Executive Vice President Andrew Sypher had warned three months before Kirk’s death that the SPLC putting Turning Point on its “hate map” would place the organization “in the crosshairs.” But Charlie Kirk had long developed plenty of enemies on his own through his advocacy of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and opposition to the separation of church and state, and the SPLC should be supported, not attacked, for telling the truth about Kirk’s fascist program.

Bizarrely, given the SPLC’s history of going after the Klan and other fascist organizations, the government’s whole indictment of the SPLC is based on the claim that the SPLC has actually been funding these same right-wing organizations and defrauding its financial supporters by not telling them this.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of making false statements to federally insured banks, and one count of conspiracy to conceal money laundering. The government’s case is based on the fact the SPLC kept track of what various fascist groups were doing by using paid informants in their ranks, an allegation that the SPLC fully admits (although it has stopped the practice). The government claims that such large amounts of money were paid to these informants, who were operatives of the fascist groups, that it amounted to subsidizing these groups.

For example, the government alleges that one informant was paid over $1,000,000 over nine years, that this informant “entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group and stole 25 boxes of their documents,” and that material from this heist later appeared on the SPLC’s “Hatewatch” web site. As another example, the government also alleges that one of the SPLC’s paid informants “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” This informant, according to the government’s indictment, was paid $270,000 over the course of eight years.

While many have lauded the SPLC’s paid informant efforts, the SPLC also worked with and turned over information to the FBI (a practice that no progressive organization should engage in). In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, FBI Director Kash Patel has announced that the bureau was severing its relationship with the SPLC—to which we say “good riddance.” To understand the FBI’s reactionary role, see American Crime Case #42 and Case #41, and for an explanation of the standards we need in our social movements, see “The Culture, the Principles, the Standards We Need” by Bob Avakian.

These complaints about the use of paid informants, you will note, are coming from a government that has for decades used paid informants to collect information and steal documents from communist and other radical organizations as a matter of course. And the nonprofit fascist Project Veritas has used hidden camera stings to embarrass and even destroy news organizations, progressive groups, and the Democratic Party. But the Trump administration only sees “criminal activity” when it happens to their fascist social base! 

The indictment of the SPLC is actually part of a larger movement on the part of the fascists in power to target liberal and progressive organizations, monitor publications and speech, revoke visas for foreign radicals, and lay the basis for designating a widening swath of organizations as “domestic terrorists.” Immediately after the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Trump and his top officials indicated that they would go after groups like George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and the right-wing media was full of charges that demonstrators at No Kings Day were being paid by Soros and others.

J.D. Vance has alleged the existence of a network of nonprofit nongovernmental organizations that “foments, facilitates and engages in violence” and Stephen Miller has threatened to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” groups opposed to the regime. What is involved here is the potential for a major assault on progressive “nonprofits,” such as legal defense organizations, universities and scientific research institutions. These groups can function at a high level because they are exempt from taxes on their income and enjoy the ability to receive contributions which the donors can deduct from their taxable income. Trump has already suggested that Harvard University should lose its tax-exempt status for refusing to bow to his demands. Rather than bringing criminal charges against the staff of the SPLC, the Trump-controlled Justice Department is seeking a court-ordered forfeiture of the SPLC’s assets, in order to destroy the organization.

Only one step behind these attacks on progressive nonprofits is an attack directed at the Democratic Party. To fully consolidate its rule, the fascist wing of the ruling class has to actually take down the organizational structures of the more mainstream ruling class. The MAGA forces see the large progressive nonprofits as institutional bulwarks of the Democrats. And, indeed, there is a lot of connection. George Soros is a major contributor to the Democrats, and Morris Dees, the founder and for many years head of the SPLC, was a fund raiser for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Edward Kennedy.

As the revcoms have put it in their May Day flyer: “Trump and his minions are well aware of the growing anger against his regime. They are, right now, actively moving to subvert the next election, including through the use of ICE at the polls. They are, right now, also ramping up repression against everyone who opposes them, from liberals to radicals to revolutionaries.” To this is now added the gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the fascist majority on the Supreme Court.

There is an urgent need for people from many different political and ideological points of view to unite to oppose any and all attempts to suppress, repress and criminalize political speech, thought, and other forms of opposition. In HUMANITY ON THE BRINK: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness?, Bob Avakian emphasizes that "[T]hrough this fight, it is necessary to win more people, building up more organized forces, for the fight against Trump/MAGA fascism, in terms of the immediate situation, and for the fundamental goal of revolution—giving life to what we describe as the R/CR/More R phenomenon (that is, revolution and resistance against the system, met by the counter-revolution of the repression of the regime, and met in turn by calling forth more powerful resistance and building for revolution). This is going to be an extremely acute focus and front of the struggle against the Trump regime and for the possibility of something even more fundamental to change.”