MAGA world uses SPLC indictment to downplay racist extremism

Several legal experts say the Trump administration’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center seems to be premised on bogus, demonstrably false claims.

This Video Is Trending Right Now →

These critics include MS NOW legal analyst Joyce Vance, who said the Department of Justice’s main assertion — that the SPLC effectively funded white supremacist groups by paying informants to infiltrate the groups for research purposes — is ridiculous. 

“The Justice Dept’s theory of the case — that the group that single-handedly disassembled the Ku Klux Klan defrauded its donors by concealing that it was using paid informant[s] to do that work and more — have about as much merit as the now-dismissed charges against Jim Comey, the charges against the members of Congress who never got indicted for telling service members they shouldn’t follow illegal orders, & the sandwich thrower a DC grand jury declined to indict,” Vance wrote on X.

Ryan Goodman, another legal expert, denounced the DOJ’s “false narrative” about the SPLC, while noting that the legal advocacy organization often shared its research with the FBI and openly discussed that relationship.

Best I can tell, most influencers in MAGA world are welcoming the indictment — no matter its legitimacy — for two primary reasons. For one, it marks the political targeting of a group known for tracking hate, including white supremacy. Far-right conservatives have publicly crusaded against groups and people who monitor the spread of harmful content online.

And second, some conservatives — including slain activist Charlie Kirk — have long derided the SPLC for including Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, on its digital map tracking hate across the nation.

But many MAGA influencers also see the indictment as a means of downplaying the existence of white supremacist groups and like-minded extremists. You can detect this in some of the responses from influencers who essentially argue that the indictment proves white supremacist extremism is little more than a liberal contrivance.

One post from content creator Clay Travis baselessly accuses the SPLC of staging “fake hate crimes.” Another, from MAGA propagandist Eric Daugherty, falsely claimed that the DOJ’s allegation that an SPLC informant helped plan the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, proved the event was “USED by Democrats as a hoax to paint ‘white supremacy’ to be larger than it is.”

An X post from the popular account Election Wizard similarly alleged that the “SPLC helped fund Charlottesville” and thus “helped shatter millions of liberal minds into permanent derangement.”