SPLC allegedly spent over $1 million infiltrating hate group it publicly claimed was ‘almost irrelevant’

By 2009, the National Alliance had become “almost irrelevant,” in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Material released by the SPLC in subsequent years detailed further decline at the West Virginia-based white nationalist organization, fueled by infighting and financial woes. As of 2016, the National Alliance had just a few dozen members, down from its 2002 peak of 1,400, the SPLC reported.

Despite publicly portraying the National Alliance as a barely functional, and therefore barely dangerous, organization, the SPLC paid more than $1.1 million to informants within it from 2014 onward, according to an indictment brought against it this week by the Justice Department. This was long after the SPLC had publicly stated that the neo-Nazi organization was in its death throes.

Central to the DOJ’s case against the SPLC is the contention that the civil rights organization misled its donors as to how its contributions were being used. Enriching