Left-Wing Money Paid For Deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Hate Rally”
by Scott Dreyer
On April 21, when many Virginians were focused on the gerrymander election, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) made a bombshell announcement: The innocuously-named Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which for decades has posted a “Hate Map” where they targeted many right-wing individuals and groups, often including those holding pro-life, biblical, and/or conservative views, was charged with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
In sum, the accusation from a grand jury claims the SPLC ran a kind of massive shell game. The SPLC portrayed themselves to the public and their donors as a left-wing group fighting what they branded as “hate,” but in fact they were funneling more than $3 million of their donor’s cash to the very right-wing groups they claimed to fight, so that those right-wing groups would become more visible, which would further frighten and outrage SPLC donors to give more money, so that the SPLC could then give to more right-wing groups, in a never-ending cycle.
One of the most high-visibility cases involves $270,000, which the SPLC allegedly paid to a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 so-called “Unite the Right” hate rally in Charlottesville.
The findings were made public by FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is in that position after the recent departure of former AG Pam Bondi.
Seeking clarification, a reporter asked Blanche: “You’re alleging that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the leaders of the KKK and other groups?”
Acting AG Todd Blanche: “I’m not alleging it. The grand jury returned an indictment that says that.”
Here is an excerpt from Blanche’s statement:
“Good afternoon. Today, a few minutes ago, in the Middle District of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11-count indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
“According to the charges and the indictment, the SPLC is a non-profit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups.
“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.
“The indictment describes this conduct in detail. But one troubling example is that the SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which resulted in the death of one person and injured dozens more.
“This particular person, being paid by the SPLC, allegedly received approximately two hundred and seventy thousand dollars over the course of eight years.”
One can understand this bizarre situation this way: To get the donations and exposure they wanted, the SPLC needed more racism in America than there actually is, so they had to pay to manufacture it. Simply put, the demand for racism in the US exceeded the supply, so more extremism had to be created, even if the SPLC had to commit fraud and law-breaking to do it.
The rally not only worsened racial, political, and cultural divides in the nation and gave Charlottesville a public relations disaster that lingers to this day, but it also proved deadly. James Alex Fields Jr., a right-wing extremist who drove to Charlottesville from his native Ohio, on August 12 deliberately drove his car into a crowd protesting the “Unite the Right” rally, injuring 35 and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe ordered state police to monitor the situation, and one police helicopter crashed, killing two officers.
The deadly rally, coming in the first year of President Trump’s first year in office, put another black eye on his new administration, further hampering the launch of his efforts. Taking snippets of Trump’s comments wildly out of context, his opponents claim he said Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are “very fine people,” which even Snopes debunked.
Once these hoaxes take root in the public mind, they are very hard to dislodge, even after evidence to the contrary surfaces.
Many watching images from the 2017 rally suspected it was a hoax, in that it seemed to lack grass-roots authenticity. The “very fine people” misquote was the second hoax, and now the recent charges against the SPLC led podcaster Kyle Becker to exclaim, “So, this was a HOAX upon a HOAX upon a HOAX. An Unholy Trinity of Hoaxes.”
Also remarkable, Joe Biden, in his April 25, 2019, video on Twitter/X announcing his run for the presidency, said the rally in Charlottesville inspired him to run.
With supreme and tragic irony, a grand jury has charged that the key event launching the Biden presidency, which led to the premature deaths of three innocent people, was itself funded and fueled by some who claimed they opposed it.
Roanoke resident Scott Dreyer leads a team of educators teaching English and ESL to a global audience. This article is republished with permission from The Roanoke Star and Bacon’s Rebellion.
