Federal prosecutors allege that the Southern Poverty Law Center misled donors while secretly routing more than $3 million to individuals tied to extremist groups it publicly condemned. For Christians, the indictment is more than a legal story – it is a warning about a powerful “hate” industry that has used fear, racial division, and false moral authority to target faithful Americans and fracture the country.
This article is a lightly-edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
On April 21, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the U.S. Department of Justice announced an 11-count federal grand jury indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the Middle District of Alabama. The indictment included multiple count of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
According to the indictment, beginning in the 1980s, the indictment alleges that the SPLC built a covert network of individuals connected to violent extremist groups, including the KKK, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the American Nazi Party, and Unite the Right.
Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donation funds to leaders and organizers of these same groups, while simultaneously denouncing these groups on their website and — simultaneously — fundraising off of their existence.
One co-conspirator reportedly received as much as $270,000 from the SPLC and helped organize the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counterprotester was killed. This is also the same Unite the Right rally where the mainstream media intentionally misquoted President Trump as saying that “there were many very fine people, on both sides” without including that “neo Nazis” and “white nationalists” should be “totally condemned.”
This same SPLC campaign was used to target conservative evangelicals and demonize their support of President Trump in the 2016 election. Randall Balmer of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Under Trump, evangelicals show their true racist colors.” Both Russell Moore and David French wrote in response to Unite the Right rally (again an operation funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center) in order to foment division and raise money from it. They wrote, “White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger the church?”
Of course the answer is clearly YES, but we are learning quickly that this was a massive operation funded and organized by the left.
After Charlottesville, the SPLC’s annual donations nearly tripled, from $50 million in 2016 to $132 million in 2017. The left, including former President Biden, used that tragedy to declare that white supremacy is the greatest threat to American life. Numerous organizations followed, including the Anti-Defamation League, which said that without a doubt right-wing extremist violence is the greatest domestic terrorist threat to everyone in this country.
The SPLC and other like-minded left-wing groups had every incentive to keep this fire burning. And according to the documents from the Department of Justice, that is exactly what they did.
So how should Christians think about this?
First, this country has been under a massive misinformation war for years now.
This was certainly the case during COVID and the BLM riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd, as well as the trans movement, which lies about biological reality. Add to that, the left has been fomenting the narrative of racism for decades in order to continue to divide the nation and, more importantly, enrich themselves from it.
Let’s be clear, racism is evil and must be rejected.
Peter extolled in Acts 10:34-35 that “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation [that is, every ethnos, every people group] “the one who fears Him and who does what is right.”
In Revelation 7:9, we see the full vision of the Church consummated at the end of the age: “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb… dressed in the righteousness of Christ.”
We know that racism is based fundamentally on hatred and a total rejection of the imago Dei that every man, woman and child, regardless of ethnicity, is made in the image of God.
But what happened tragically in the political world is that while much progress has been made to eliminate racial prejudice and division, the political left has weaponized racism by keeping that narrative alive and has funded front groups to promote it.
The SPLC, if it ever was a true civil rights organization, is no longer operating in that way. It is now a fundraising machine built on the premise that political power matters more than truth and it matters more than unity and that by ensuring that the narrative continues that America is irredeemably racist and that conservative Christians are one step away from white supremacy, these organizations can continue to raise money and promote radical left-wing candidates who promote race Marxism.
That narrative requires villains to sustain it. And when there were no longer villains, the SPLC had to manufacture them. This is not shocking to anyone who has watched the left operate for the past 30 years. The grievance industry requires grievances.
Without it, the donations dry up, the media appearances stop, and the influence collapses. The SPLC funded and fabricated its extremist enemies to be used to separate people of goodwill, like you and me, who already abhor racism.
The cruelest irony in all of this is that real people, real Americans, suffered real consequences while the SPLC cashed their checks and political favors.
Second, real people were harmed by this targeted hatred.
In 2012, a gunman walked into the Family Research Council’s (FRC’s) Washington D.C. headquarters and opened fire. He told police that the FRC’s placement on the SPLC’s hate map had inspired him.
The FRC’s inclusion on that list had nothing to do with violence. They had only honored Biblical convictions on marriage and sexuality. A security guard named Leo Johnson took a bullet in the arm and likely saved the lives of every staff member in that building.
But the Southern Poverty Law Center never took responsibility. Their donors never demanded it.
Turning Point USA also appeared on the SPLC’s 2024 report on hate and extremist groups. On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder and one of the most consequential voices in the conservative movement, was assassinated at Utah Valley University while speaking to students. The shooter had adopted a hard-left ideology, supporting the trans movement and identifying himself as a part of it.
The SPLC’s hate map was a list that targeted real people — people who had no business being labeled as hate groups or hate leaders.
Third, we should never again give organizations like these the benefit of the doubt.
For decades, the mainstream media, major institutions, NGOs, and the federal government treated the SPLC as an authoritative, nonpartisan source for information.
A top SPLC official even bragged about helping government agencies design anti-terrorism frameworks, the same frameworks used under the Biden administration to classify parents at school board meetings and traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorist threats.
The DOJ indictment is merely the beginning of addressing the abuse of power that have been ongoing for decades. It is merely the beginning of holding these institutions accountable for the lies and propaganda they have created in order to keep the American people divided and evangelical Christians fearful.
Every federal agency that used SPLC designations as policy inputs, every media outlet that laundered their threat reports as news, every evangelical charlatan who hid behind the SPLC propaganda in order to attack evangelical conservatives and every politician who cited their research as fact owes the American people an apology.
For Christians, we have to be discerning of the realities around us and how this information is being weaponized, even against the Church.
Yes, racism still exists. Yes, sin is universal. Yes, America needs revival and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And yes, Christians need to stand biblically on the truth of Scripture. But no, these political narratives surrounding white supremacy and the various front groups funded by the SPLC are not real.
And the political machine used to manufacture them must be destroyed. It is the most patriotic and anti-racist thing we can do.
When powerful institutions profit from fear and label faithful Americans as threats, truth needs defenders with courage. Make your tax-deductible gift today to equip the Standing for Freedom Center to expose corruption, confront ideological deception, and help Christians defend ordered liberty with biblical clarity, moral courage, and conviction.
