The Southern Poverty Law Center’s payments to the handful of remaining white supremacist groups in the country are just like how Jewish groups took down extremists, according to a University of Southern California historian.
Professor Steven Ross made the comments during an interview last week with National Public Radio. He has a book coming out about “racist” and “antisemitic groups” in the 20th century.
Last week, the Trump administration announced federal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing it of defrauding donors. The 14-page complaint says the SPLC paid informants within the Ku Klux Klan and other white hate groups. At the same time, the group was fundraising off the alleged resurgence and influence of those same organizations.
But Professor Ross rushed to defend the payments to white supremacist groups, linking that activity back to the work of Jewish groups in the 1940s and onward to infiltrate hate groups.
He told NPR:
I’m not sure if the indictment is true or not, but the idea that there are paid informants is not illegal. These people are simply monitoring what was going on. And when they’re accused of being – stealing records, those records were sent, I’m sure, to government forces like the FBI, the Justice Department, because they weren’t doing their job.
To be clear, the informants were not simply accused of “stealing records,” like the surely dwindling check register of a random “Klan” group.
In one horrifying example, the Southern Poverty Law Center paid an organizer of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally.
The unidentified perpetrator “attended the event at the direction of the SPLC,” according to the indictment. The person “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”
Furthermore, the group continued to pay the organizer after the deadly violence, making payments throughout 2023. In total, the left-wing group paid $270,000 to the perpetrator.
NPR host Terry Gross interjected to clarify the accusations about inciting violence, before pivoting and suggesting FBI agents do the same thing. (I mean, likely true).
“I’m [sure] the SPLC is doing the same thing because they know their informants would get in trouble, otherwise,” Ross said. “That they could be prosecuted by the government.”
Hellbound and Down 