Read about the SPLC Targets and who is on their List. Continued from the home page!

​​

Awhile ago I told you about the Red/Green Alliance and its campaign to use Confederate heritage as the proving ground for the demolition of American history. Today I want to introduce you to the third leg of that operation, the one that makes the whole machine run.

The Southern Poverty Law Center does not march. It does not show up at monument removal ceremonies for the cameras. It does something far more powerful and far more dangerous. It decides, from its palatial headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, who in America is a hater and who is not. It prints the list. And then everyone else uses the list.

​

That is the division of labor. CAIR condemns. The progressive left enforces. The SPLC provides the credentials that make the condemnation sound like fact.

Understand how that works and you understand the entire machinery of erasure.

​

THE LIST TARGETING AMERICANS!

The SPLC was founded in 1971 doing legitimate civil rights work. By the mid-1980s that had changed. The SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear-mongering, money-raising machine, a shift so profound it triggered the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985. Five years later, in 1990, it launched the hate group list, the commercial product of that pivot. A published, mappable, annually updated catalogue of enemies is the perfect fundraising tool. The more haters you find, the more fear you can sell, and the more money flows in.

​

The SPLC had discovered something that Morris Dees, a direct mail marketing pioneer before he was a civil rights lawyer, understood better than almost anyone: fear raises money. And the more haters you find, the more fear you can sell.

​

Journalist Ken Silverstein wrote in Harper's magazine in 2000 that the SPLC spends most of its time and money on a relentless fundraising campaign. That was 2000. By 2017, the organization held $477 million in total assets, including an endowment of $432 million, with $69 million parked overseas including accounts in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda.

There is nothing poor about the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

​

THE DEFINITION SPLC USED TO TARGET GROUPS!

Here is where Confederate heritage communities need to pay close attention, because the SPLC has not merely criticized Confederate organizations. It has built a formal category on its hate map specifically designed to encompass them.

​

The SPLC had discovered something that Morris Dees, a direct mail marketing pioneer before he was a civil rights lawyer, understood better than almost anyone: fear raises money. And the more haters you find, the more fear you can sell.

​

Journalist Ken Silverstein wrote in Harper's magazine in 2000 that the SPLC spends most of its time and money on a relentless fundraising campaign. That was 2000. By 2017, the organization held $477 million in total assets, including an endowment of $432 million, with $69 million parked overseas including accounts in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda.

There is nothing poor about the Southern Poverty Law Center.

THE DEFINITION

Here is where Confederate heritage communities need to pay close attention, because the SPLC has not merely criticized Confederate organizations. It has built a formal category on its hate map specifically designed to encompass them.

​

The SPLC defines its neo-Confederate category as "a reactionary, revisionist branch of American white nationalism typified by its predilection for symbols of the Confederate States of America, typically paired with a strong belief in the validity of the failed doctrines of nullification and secession."

Read that slowly.

​

Under the SPLC's own published definition, believing in nullification and secession, which were live constitutional debates argued by serious legal minds on both sides in 1861, is classified as white nationalism. Honoring Confederate symbols is classified as white nationalism. That definition does not describe the Ku Klux Klan. It describes your local SCV camp. It describes anyone who puts a Confederate battle flag on their truck. It describes the descendants of the soldiers Mississippi honors every April.

​

The SPLC has placed this category on its hate map alongside neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and the Klan. When a journalist, a corporate donor screening committee, a payment processor, or a social media platform looks up a Confederate heritage organization, they find it listed between organizations that advocate racial extermination. That is not an accident. That is the product.

​

The SPLC has openly boasted that its decades-long pressure campaign against Confederate heritage organizations is responsible for their decline, crediting sustained targeting by the SPLC and Southern civil rights activists as a key factor in reducing the number of groups it designates as neo-Confederate.

Mark Potok said the goal was to destroy these groups completely. The SPLC's own annual report confirms that is exactly what has been happening.

​

THE ADMISSION

The SPLC's senior fellow Mark Potok served as editor-in-chief of its Intelligence Report for two decades. He was the man most responsible for building and maintaining the hate group list. In 2007, speaking to a friendly audience at a conference in Michigan, he said the quiet part out loud.

​

"Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them."

​

Not monitor. Not document. Destroy.

​

The SPLC has never renounced this statement.

​

Read that again in light of what the SPLC's hate map actually contains. The groups the SPLC has labeled as hate groups or extremists include Ben Carson, the Heritage Foundation, Dennis Prager, PragerU, the Federalist Society, Franklin Graham, the Catholic Medical Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, to name a few.

These are the groups Mark Potok wanted to completely destroy.

And this is the organization that media outlets treat as a neutral authority. That Apple donated one million dollars to. That JP Morgan gave another half million. That CNN published under the headline "Here Are All the Hate Groups Active in Your Area."

​

THE CONSEQUENCES

​

This is not an abstract argument about credibility. The SPLC's designations have real consequences in the real world.

​

In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins entered the lobby of the Family Research Council with a 9mm pistol and shot an employee before being wrestled to the ground. When interviewed by the FBI, Corkins admitted he intended to kill the staff and said, "Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online."

​

The SPLC labeled the Family Research Council a hate group. A man used that label as a targeting list. An employee was shot. The SPLC kept the Family Research Council on its hate map.

​

The SPLC also included Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who had devoted his life to opposing violence, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a renowned human rights activist who survived female genital mutilation, in its Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. Nawaz threatened to sue for defamation. The SPLC pulled the guide, publicly apologized, and paid a $3.375 million settlement.

​

The organization that decides who the haters are had to pay $3.375 million for falsely labeling a Muslim reformer an extremist. The settlement did not make the national news the way the original designation did. It never does. That is how the labeling machine works. The accusation travels. The retraction stays home.

​

THE INTERNAL RECORD

Here is where a reader made an observation on Saturday that lands with full force today. "When fake news gets old it becomes history."

​

The SPLC has been telling the same story about Confederate heritage organizations for decades. The story hardens. Media outlets cite the SPLC. Other organizations cite the media. The citation becomes the source. Nobody goes back to the original documents.

​

But the organization manufacturing that story has its own internal record that reads nothing like the civil rights mission it sells to donors.

​

In March 2019, a letter signed by two dozen SPLC employees was sent to management, expressing concern that allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threatened the moral authority of the organization. One former employee wrote that the unchecked power of lavishly compensated white men at the top of the SPLC contributed to a culture which made Black and female employees the targets of harassment.

​

A week after Morris Dees was fired, President Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda Brownstein both announced their resignations amid the internal upheaval.

The organization that built its entire brand on fighting racism against minority employees was itself practicing racism against minority employees. The organization that brands others as haters had to fire its own founder over conduct its own staff described as a systemic culture of discrimination.

Even left-of-center Politico noted the longstanding criticism that the SPLC was becoming more of a partisan progressive hit operation than a civil rights watchdog.

​

HOW THE MACHINE WORKS

You do not have to take my word for any of this. The coordination is documented, on the record, in the same news cycle.

​

In April 2022, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed his Confederate Heritage Month proclamation. Within days, both CAIR and the SPLC issued separate condemnation statements using language so similar it reads like it came from the same briefing document.

​

CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper called the Confederate soldiers honored by the proclamation traitors and white supremacists. The SPLC's Mississippi State Director called the Confederacy a traitorous government and stated that Confederate memorials celebrate the injustices that people of color in the South suffered at the hands of Confederates who viewed Black people as subhuman.

​

Two organizations. Two press releases. One word: traitors.

​

That is not coincidence. That is coordination, or at minimum two actors operating from the same ideological script, amplifying each other, providing each other cover, and together creating the impression of a broad consensus that the governor of Mississippi has done something shameful.

​

He signed a proclamation honoring soldiers who have been in the ground for 160 years. The SPLC called it hate. CAIR called it treason. Media outlets treated both statements as authoritative. The SPLC has separately published a report tracking more than 2,000 Confederate memorials still publicly present in the United States, treating their continued existence as an ongoing threat requiring activist response.

​

Now put the full picture together.

​

The SPLC labels Confederate heritage organizations as neo-Confederate hate groups and places them on a map. CAIR issues annual condemnation press releases using the same vocabulary the SPLC established. Media outlets treat both organizations as authoritative sources and repeat the designations without examination. The progressive left uses the resulting narrative to justify corporate deplatforming, payment processor cancellations, social media suppression, and legislative campaigns to remove monuments, rename schools, and erase public memory. Each actor points to the others as validation.

Nobody in that chain ever reads the documents. Nobody asks whether the 1861 soldiers being memorialized actually held the beliefs being attributed to their 21st century descendants. Nobody asks who gave the SPLC the authority to decide. Nobody asks CAIR what its connection to the American South is. Nobody asks why an organization with $432 million in offshore investments is called the Southern Poverty Law Center.

​

Cornell Law professor William Jacobson told Politico that the SPLC dishonestly uses the hate group label to shut down debate. "Time and again, I see the SPLC using the reputation it gained decades ago fighting the Klan as a tool to bludgeon mainstream politically conservative opponents. For groups that do not threaten violence, the use of SPLC hate group or extremist designations frequently are exploited as an excuse to silence speech and speakers."

​

Confederate heritage organizations are not violent. They are not threatening. They are people preserving the memory of their ancestors. The SPLC designated them anyway, because designation is the product, and the product funds the operation, and the operation serves the alliance.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Red/Green Alliance needs a credentialing mechanism. It needs something that transforms political disagreement into moral disqualification. The SPLC provides that mechanism. Without the SPLC's list, CAIR's annual condemnations are just one organization's opinion. With the SPLC's list, they become confirmation of an established fact.

The fact was never established. It was manufactured, by an organization whose own employees called it a scam, whose founder was fired amid allegations of racism and sexual harassment, whose legal staff quit in protest over its direction, and whose senior fellow admitted in plain language that the goal was never documentation but destruction.

​

That is the group that decides who the haters are in America.

​

THE END GAME

Now the question every honest person eventually asks: why? Why does an Islamist network operating out of a Virginia think tank care about Confederate monuments in Mississippi? Why does the progressive left care? Why does the SPLC dedicate resources to tracking and destroying Confederate heritage organizations year after year?

​

The answer is the same for all three, even though their ultimate visions differ completely.

Both the left and the Islamist movement favor the dismantling of Western civilization, though they differ in what they would replace it with. The left advances its goal through the march through educational, media, and governmental institutions. The Islamists advance their goal through immigration, demographic change, and the cultivation of influence inside American institutions. They do not need to agree on the destination. They only need to agree on what must be demolished first.

​

Their cooperation is deep and anchored in a shared anti-Western, anti-American framework built around the common master frames of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. Under that framework, the American South is not a region with a complex and tragic history. It is a symbol of white Christian Western civilization, and that is precisely what makes it the target.

​

Confederate heritage sits at the intersection of everything both sides want to destroy: Christian identity, European cultural roots, Southern nationalism, the constitutional tradition of states' rights and limited federal power, and the memory of men who took up arms against the consolidation of central authority. Erasing it serves both agendas simultaneously. It demoralizes the people most likely to resist the broader project. It establishes the precedent that American history can be rewritten by outside pressure rather than honest scholarship. And it trains a generation to believe that their own ancestors deserve nothing but contempt.

The progressive movement categorizes every demographic group as either oppressor or oppressed. It erases those it classifies by ignoring the individual, denying people the right to define themselves and their own struggles. Under that framework, the descendants of Confederate soldiers have been assigned permanently to the oppressor column. No evidence changes that assignment. No primary source document, no census record showing a non-slaveholding farmer, no letter home from a homesick nineteen-year-old in a Virginia trench. The assignment is ideological, not historical, and it was made before anyone looked at a single document.

That is what we are fighting. Not a misunderstanding. Not a difference of interpretation. A coordinated, institutionally embedded, generationally patient campaign to strip the American past of its complexity, to reduce it to a usable political narrative, and to silence everyone who knows enough to push back.

The SPLC provides the labels. CAIR and its network provide the condemnations. The progressive left provides the institutional enforcement. And the Red/Green Alliance, with the SPLC as its credentialing arm, provides the illusion that this is all simply the natural progress of a more enlightened society correcting the errors of the past.

​

It is not. It is erasure. It is deliberate. It is coordinated. And it will not stop with us.

​

The only thing that stops it is people who have read the documents and are not afraid to say what they found.

​

WHO ARE THEY?

​

CAIR and the SPLC are only two players. Here is who else is in the room.

​

THE PLAYERS

THE GREEN HALF

CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington D.C., public advocacy and condemnation campaigns targeting American cultural institutions.

ISNA, Islamic Society of North America, named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case alongside CAIR.

MSA, Muslim Student Association, over 250 chapters on American college campuses, documented in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood strategy paper as one of "our organizations."

AMP, American Muslims for Palestine, national sponsor of Students for Justice in Palestine, with documented ties to individuals connected to Hamas financing.

SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus enforcement arm, present at virtually every major American university, conducting Israel Apartheid Week events, anti-Western curriculum campaigns, and monument protest coordination.

MAS, Muslim American Society, founded by senior Muslim Brotherhood figures, over 50 chapters nationally.

IIIT, International Institute of Islamic Thought, the Virginia-based financial and intellectual hub of the entire network, long suspected of serving as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization.

ICNA, Islamic Circle of North America, national organization with a social justice advocacy arm operating in coalition with progressive groups.

THE RED HALF

SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, the labeling and credentialing mechanism that transforms political disagreement into moral disqualification and provides the designations the rest of the alliance uses as ammunition.

Black Lives Matter, national organization that drove the 2020 monument removal wave that took down not only Confederate memorials but statues of Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

The 1619 Project, New York Times initiative that rewrote the founding of America around slavery as its central organizing principle, now embedded in school curricula across the country.

The American Historical Association, the credentialing body for professional historians, whose progressive leadership controls who gets published, who gets hired, and whose interpretation of the past is considered legitimate.

Antifa, the street enforcement arm, present at monument removals, heritage events, and Confederate Memorial Day observances to intimidate participants and provide visual pressure for media coverage.

The Tides Foundation, the major funding conduit that finances much of the progressive activist ecosystem, including organizations that target Confederate heritage directly.

University Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices, embedded in virtually every American institution of higher learning, controlling curriculum, hiring, and the ideological framework through which American history is taught to the next generation.

Don't take my word for it. Read the documents.

By Mindy Esposito / April 20, 2026 / Nashville, Tennessee

Mindy is a historian, writer, and independent researcher with 21 years of primary source research in 19th and 20th century American history. She is a founding member and director of the Southern Independence Association and creator of the H.K. Edgerton Equal Protection Initiative. She publishes at mespo2006.substack.com.

☆☆☆☆☆

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Southern Poverty Law Center

Alliance Defending Freedom. "SPLC: Setting the Record Straight." adflegal.org. Updated March 2026. https://adflegal.org/setting-the-record-straight/

Alliance Defending Freedom. "The Truth About Morris Dees and the SPLC." adflegal.org. May 2023. https://adflegal.org/.../truth-about-morris-dees-and-splc/

Center for Immigration Studies. "Overview of the SPLC's Hate Groups List." cis.org. January 2019. https://cis.org/Overview-SPLCs-Hate-Groups-List/

City Journal. "A Demagogic Bully." city-journal.org. March 2023. https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-demagogic-bully/

CNN. "Famous Civil Rights Group Suffers from Systemic Culture of Racism and Sexism, Staffers Say." March 29, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/us/splc-leadership-crisis/

Jacobson, William. Quoted in Politico. Via Alliance Defending Freedom. adflegal.org.

Reason. "The SPLC Is Overcounting Hate Groups." June 2023. https://reason.com/.../southern-poverty-law-center-moms.../

Silverstein, Ken. "The Church of Morris Dees." Harper's Magazine. November 2000.

Southern Poverty Law Center. "Decline of the Neo-Confederates: 2024 Year in Hate and Extremism." splcenter.org. 2025. https://www.splcenter.org/.../decline-neo-confederates/

Southern Poverty Law Center. "Neo-Confederate." Extremist Files. splcenter.org. https://www.splcenter.org/.../extremist.../neo-confederate/

Southern Poverty Law Center. "On Confederate Memorial Day, the SPLC Celebrates the Ongoing Removal of Symbols of Hate Nationwide." splcenter.org. April 25, 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/.../confederate-memorial-day.../

Southern Poverty Law Center. "SPLC Condemns Mississippi Governor's Proclamation of Confederate Heritage Month." splcenter.org. April 15, 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/.../splc-condemns-mississippi.../

Washington Examiner. "The Southern Poverty Law Center Isn't Authoritative, It's Garbage." June 2018. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../the-southern.../

Wikipedia. "Southern Poverty Law Center." Updated April 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center/

Wikipedia. "List of Organizations Designated by the SPLC as Hate Groups." Updated 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_organizations.../

CAIR and the Mississippi Proclamation

CAIR. "CAIR Reiterates Condemnation of Mississippi Gov's Confederate Heritage Month, Memorial Day Proclamation." cair.com. April 22, 2025. https://www.cair.com/.../cair-reiterates-condemnation-of.../

CAIR. "CAIR Condemns Mississippi's Racist and White Supremacist Confederate Memorial Day." cair.com. April 22, 2025. https://www.cair.com/.../cair-condemns-mississippis.../

CAIR. "CAIR Again Condemns South Carolina's Celebration of Confederate Memorial Day." cair.com. May 8, 2025. https://www.cair.com/.../cair-again-condemns-south.../

Mississippi Free Press. "Mississippi Governor Declares April Confederate Heritage Month." April 21, 2025. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/mississippi.../

CAIR's Federal Record

United States Congress. H.R. 4097, 119th Congress. "Designate CAIR as a Terrorist Organization Act." 2025. https://www.congress.gov/.../119th.../house-bill/4097/text/

Wikipedia. "Council on American-Islamic Relations." Updated April 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Council_on_American%E2%80.../

Hudson Institute. "The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network." hudson.org. https://www.hudson.org/.../the-muslim-brotherhood-s-u-s.../

The Red/Green Alliance

Karagiannis, Emmanuel and Clark McCauley. "The Emerging Red-Green Alliance: Where Political Islam Meets the Radical Left." Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 25, No. 2. 2013. https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../09546553.2012.755815/

Middle East Forum. "The Red-Green Coalition: United in Hate." meforum.org. February 2025. https://www.meforum.org/.../the-red-green-coalition.../

Providence Magazine. "The New Progressive-Islamist Alliance." providencemag.com. November 2023. https://providencemag.com/.../the-new-red-green-alliance-1/

Reut Group. "The Red-Green Alliance Is Coming to America." reutgroup.org. 2022. https://www.reutgroup.org/.../the-red-green-alliance-is.../

Shayshon, Eran. "Islamists and Progressives Form a Red-Green Alliance Against the Individual." Jewish News Syndicate. September 7, 2022. https://www.jns.org/islamists-and-progressives-form-a.../

University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism. "The Emerging Red-Green Alliance." start.umd.edu. https://www.start.umd.edu/.../emerging-red-green.../

The Muslim Brotherhood Network in America

Global Muslim Brotherhood Research. Merley, Steven. "The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States." globalmbresearch.com. https://www.globalmbresearch.com/.../20090411_merley.../

Hudson Institute. "The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network." hudson.org. https://www.hudson.org/.../the-muslim-brotherhood-s-u-s.../

Investigative Project on Terrorism. "Woke Army Exposes Red-Green Alliance's Pernicious Goal to Silence Radical Islam Critics." investigativeproject.org. https://www.investigativeproject.org/.../woke-army.../

Vidino, Lorenzo. "The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Brief History." George Washington University Program on Extremism. July 2025. https://extremism.gwu.edu/.../The%20Muslim%20Brotherhood.../

*All sources accessed April 2026.*