Southern Poverty Law Center

Corporate Information
Name	Southern Poverty Law Center
Abbreviation	SPLC
Founded	1971-08
Founders	Morris Seligman Dees Jr. Joseph J. Levin Jr. Horace Julian Bond
Type	501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Civil rights advocacy organization Public-interest law firm
Focus	Civil rights Hate groups Racism
Status	Active
Focus	Civil rights advocacy organization Public-interest law firm
EIN (Tax ID)	63-0598743
Location	United States
Headquarters	Montgomery, Alabama, U.S.A.
Areas served	United States
CEO	Margaret Huang (2020-02)
President	Margaret Huang (2020-02)
Chair	Bryan Keith Fair
Former president	J. Richard Cohen
Controversies	Accusations: workplace racial, sexual harassment
Products	Educational materials Legal representation
Revenue	2018 FY: $136.3 million
Endowment	2018 FY: $471.0 million
Employees	2011: 254
Website	SPLCenter.org/

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Background

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3)   nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery,   Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. The SPLC was founded by Morris Seligman Dees Jr.,   Joseph J. Levin Jr.  [local copy], and Horace Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama. Julian Bond served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979.

In 1980, the Southern Poverty Law Center began a litigation strategy of filing civil suits for monetary damages on behalf of the victims of violence from the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC also became involved in other civil rights causes, including cases to challenge what it sees as institutional racial segregation and discrimination, inhumane and unconstitutional conditions in prisons and detention centers, discrimination based on sexual orientation, mistreatment of illegal immigrants, and the unconstitutional   mixing of church and state. The SPLC has provided information about hate groups to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement agencies.

Since the 2000s, the Southern Poverty Law Center's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations it has assessed either "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics") and extremists have often been described as authoritative and are widely accepted and cited in academic and media coverage of such groups and related issues. The SPLC's listings have also been the subject of criticism from those who argue that some of the SPLC's listings are overbroad, politically motivated, or unwarranted. There have also been accusations of misuse or unnecessarily extravagant use of funds by the SPLC, leading some employees to call the headquarters "Poverty Palace".

In 2019, founder Morris Dees was fired, which was followed by President Richard Cohen's resignation. An outside consultant, Tina Tchen, was brought in to review workplace practices, particularly relating to accusations of racial harassment and sexual harassment. Margaret Huang  [local copy], who was formerly the Chief Executive at Amnesty International USA, was named as president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center in early February 2020.

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Projects and publishing platforms

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SPLC Hatewatch (blog)

The Hatewatch blog - created circa 2007 - publishes the work of SPLC teams, including investigative journalists who "monitor and expose" activities of the "American radical right". Initially, its precursor - the "Klanwatch project" - which was established in 1981, focused on monitoring Ku Klux Klan (KKK) activities. The Hatewatch blog, along with the "Teaching Tolerance" program and the Intelligence Report, highlights SPLC's work.

An in-depth 2018-06-14 Hatewatch report  [local copy] examined the roots and evolution of Black-on-white crime rhetoric, from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 2010s. According to the report, "misrepresented crime statistics" on "Black-on-white crime" have become a "main propaganda point of America's hate movement". The report described how Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the 2015-06-17, Charleston church shooting had written in his manifesto about his 2012 Google search for "Black-on-white crime", which led him to be convinced that Black men were a "physical threat to white people." One of the first sources was the Council of Conservative Citizens. The report shows that on 2015-11-22, then-Presidential Candidate Donald Trump retweeted a chart that had "originated from a neo-Nazi account" which displayed "bogus crime statistics". The SPLC report cited a 2005-11-23, The Washington Post article that fact checked the figures in the graph. The tweet said that "81 percent of whites are killed by Black people", while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that only 15 percent of white murder victims are killed by a Black perpetrator; the large majority of white murder victims are killed by white perpetrators.

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Additional Reading

A Canadian technology startup - which already provides monetized streaming for a range of white power propagandists, hate group leaders and a wanted fugitive - has now created a custom-made platform for white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes after a payment processor apparently forced him off their main platform. And SPLC Hatewatch can reveal that Chthonic Software, whose principals have recently decamped from Calgary,   Alberta [Canada], to Turkey, has so far been able to run their Entropy social media platform using infrastructure provided by Microsoft's Azure cloud platform  [Microsoft Azure].

Chthonic, which incorporated in Alberta in 2018  [local copy], launched Entropy in 2019 as a video livestreaming service allowing creators to collect payments from their viewers. They have actively promoted the site as a "free speech" alternative to mainstream social media services - repeating the pitch used by other extremist-friendly "alt-tech" platforms including Bitchute,   Gab, and Parler. Like those sites, Chthonic's promise of limited moderation has attracted prominent extremists, some of whom were deplatformed from mainstream sites in the wake of the 2021-01-06 attack on the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.  [2021 United States Capitol attack], or earlier.

In a 2021-12 podcast, Gregory "Greg" Johnson - who runs the white nationalist website and publisher Counter-Currents - said, "Entropystreamis the only way we can take credit card payments." Johnson added, "We have been deplatformed from the global credit card processing industry by angry merchants, unhappy merchants, who don't like our message," using coded antisemitic terms familiar to observers of hite nationalist groupsw. There are some indications that Chthonic has been specifically courting this niche of deplatformed extremists.

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DNS records  [Domain Name System records] for both Entropy and Streampayments reveal that both of their sites are reliant on the infrastructure Microsoft's  Microsoft Azure platform provides. Microsoft Azure supplies hosting, software, platform and infrastructure services to website creators and website administrators via the technology giant's global network of data centers. Notably, Microsoft Azure's ready-made tools make it easier for inexperienced developers to create websites with sophisticated features such as livestreaming that require high storage and bandwidth.

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Nick Fuentes is not the only extremist who utilizes the platforms Chthonic has built on top of Microsoft's foundations. Prominent white nationalists streaming and collecting payments on the site include the following.

• Failed comedian and would-be compound builder Owen Benjamin.

• Longtime white nationalist propagandist Gregory "Greg" Johnson, who has a page under his Counter-Currents brand.

• Patrick Casey, leader of the white nationalist American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa). [All three of those named entities - Patrick Casey  |  American Identity Movement  |  Identity Evropa share the same Wikipedia entry.]

• Robert Ray aka "Azzmador"  [Robert "Azzmador" Ray] a neo-Nazi fugitive wanted for his role in the deadly "Unite the Right rally" in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

• British neo-Nazi and conspiracy theorist   Mark Collett.

• Matt Parrott, co-founder of the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party.

• White nationalist talk show Red Ice  [Red Ice TV].

In addition to these, Hatewatch's analysis revealed at least 30 more monetized extremist accounts on Entropy. According to a long post from Emmanuel Constantinidis  [Twitter:  Emmanuel Constantinidis] on Entropy's  Discord server  [Discord instant messaging / digital distribution platform] on 2021-05-13, Chthonic appears to be deliberately attempting to create a platform that will accommodate white supremacist ideologues. Emmanuel Constantinidis also criticized rival alt-tech services such as Odysee  [LBRY blockchain-based file-sharing and payment network] and DLive  [video live streaming service] for implementing bans on hate speech, saying that it would lead to the "censorship of legitimate dissident opinions." In the post, Emmanuel Constantinidis told users, "We have been working at decoupling Entropy from services we view as at risk from politically motivated targeting," adding that "this means fortifying our payments systems, servers, and mail system from attempts at deplatforming."

According to documents obtained from Alberta's provincial government  [Government of Alberta], Chthonic was incorporated on 2018-01-25  [local copy], by Emmanuel Constantinidis and Rachel Constantinidis, who at that time both resided in Calgary,   Alberta. At some point between that date and Hatewatch's records search on 2021-12-01, David John Bell  [cofounder, Chthonic], also listed as a Calgary resident, was added as a director, with each of the three shown as owning 33.333% of voting shares in the company. While they are still listed as Alberta residents, YouTube videos reviewed by Hatewatch indicate that the trio, along with Bell's wife, have moved to Antalya,  Turkey.

With voting rights under attack across the Deep South, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announced today that it will invest $100 million from its endowment over the next decade to support voter outreach and civic engagement organizations in Alabama,   Florida,   Georgia,   Louisiana and Mississippi.

The commitment represents a historic pledge of resources to multiracial democracy initiatives in the Deep South and marks a more-than-threefold increase over the SPLC's initial commitment of $30 million, pledged in 2020.

Through its Vote Your Voice initiative, the SPLC will partner with dozens of organizations to help sustain their crucial work during and in between major election cycles and support their long-term strategic planning for years to come.

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