VICTOR JOECKS: Why the left won’t let racism die

America isn’t racist enough for modern leftists, so the Southern Poverty Law Center appears to have paid white supremacists.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unveiled an 11-count indictment against the center. The most shocking part of the indictment isn’t the alleged crimes. It’s what the feds believe led to the crimes.

“The SPLC was founded in 1971 to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all,” the group’s website says. It brags that it “shut down some of the nation’s most violent white supremacist groups.”

White supremacy is an immoral and illogical belief. It also barely exists in the United States. In 1958, 4 percent of Americans supported interracial marriage, according to Gallup. In 2021, 94 percent did. For comparison, 84 percent of Americans said they believe the Earth is round in a 2018 YouGov poll.

Instead of declaring victory, the SPLC was allegedly subsidizing the groups it claimed to be trying to destroy. It paid individuals “associated with violent extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan,” according to the indictment. Some inside the organization called them the “Fs,” short for field sources.

“Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funded more than $3 million in SPLC funds to Fs who were associated with various violent extremist groups,” the indictment reads. One field source who “was affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance,” received more than $1 million.

SPLC interim President Bryan Fair admitted his organization did “use paid confidential informants.” But when you pay a group’s leaders, you aren’t merely gathering information. You’re funding the cause.

“In addition to directly paying leaders and others associated with the same violent extremist groups that the SPLC sought donations ostensibly to ‘dismantle,’ the SPLC also used Fs to indirectly funnel money to other violent extremist group leaders,” the indictment said.

That includes the most infamous racist rally in the past decade.

“F-37 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,” the indictment said. “F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”

The SPLC couldn’t find enough racism in America, so it appears to have decided to subsidize it.

Leave aside the glaring hypocrisy. Think about why the SPLC would chart this course. One reason may have been financial. In 2016, it took in less than $60 million in revenue. In 2017, the SPLC’s revenue soared to more than $130 million. Talk about a return on investment.

But there are more cynical and self-centered reasons why the left won’t acknowledge that racism against Blacks has declined dramatically over the past 60 years.

For one, Democrats have long used the threat of discrimination for electoral gain, especially to unify the Black vote. Joe Biden said the Charlottesville rally was why he ran for president. In 2020, Biden received support from 90 percent of Black voters, according to AP VoteCast. That level of uniformity isn’t based on policy. In 2022, a KFF/theGrio Survey of Black Voters found more than 70 percent said they were moderate or conservative. It’s based on identity and fear.

Crying “racist” also allows Democrats to avoid defending unpopular policies, such as open borders. In a recent California gubernatorial debate, the moderator asked if truck drivers should be required to learn English. Leading Democrat candidates equated that with racism.

America’s embrace of judging people by their character instead of their skin color should be a point of bipartisan national pride. Instead, it’s an existential crisis for the SPLC in particular and the left more broadly.