HOW YOUR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION WENT TO THE KLAN, NEO-NAZIS AND THE SADISTIC SOULS

National Review

 

How Your Tax-Deductible Donation Went to the Klan, Neo-Nazis, and the ‘Sadistic Souls’

By Jim Geraghty

April 22, 2026 11:41 AM

 

The Southern Poverty Law Center is not a law enforcement agency. It is not an intelligence agency. It is not a traditional journalism institution either, although it’s worth noting that paying sources is an extremely controversial step in traditional journalism.

 

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning that all contributions, grants, and bequests are tax-deductible.

 

So if you’ve donated to the SPLC since the 1980s, some of your money went to members of the very hate groups and extremist organizations that the SPLC supposedly exists to combat and defeat.

 

Why was the SPLC paying enormous sums of money to “informants”? From the Department of Justice’s indictment:

 

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Starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of informants who were either associated with violent extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. These informants were referred to by some individuals within the SPLC as the “field sources” or the “Fs.”

 

Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in SPLC funds to Fs who were associated with various violent extremist groups.

 

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. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00.

 

F-9 was affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance and C. served as an F for the SPLC for more than 20 years. F-9’s activities included fundraising for the National Alliance. Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-9 more than $1,000,000.00. In 2014, F-9 entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group and stole 25 boxes of their documents. F-9 coordinated payment for the copying of the materials with a high-level SPLC employee who had knowledge the documents had been stolen. The original stolen materials were returned to the violent extremist group in a second illegal entry by F-9. Thereafter, the high-level SPLC employee utilized the documents, in part, as the basis for a story published on the SPLC’s Hatewatch website and authored by the employee. Another F, F-39, was blamed for the theft and was paid approximately $6,000.00 by the SPLC to falsely take responsibility for the theft.

 

F-27 was reported as an officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. Between 2014 and 2020, the SPLC secretly paid F-27 more than $300,000.00.

 

F-42 was the former chairman of the National Alliance. The SPLC website contained an “Extremist File” webpage about F-42 from which the SPLC solicited donations. Between 2016 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-42 more than $140,000.00. This overlapped the time period in which F-42 was featured on the SPLC’s “Extremist File” webpage.

 

F-30 led the National Socialist Party of America, was the former director of a faction of the Aryan Nations, and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC website contained an “Extremist File” webpage for F-30 from which the SPLC solicited donations. Between 2014 and 2016, the SPLC secretly paid F30 more than $70,000.00. This overlapped the time period in which F-30 was featured on the SPLC’s “Extremist File” webpage.

 

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. This included the SPLC 5 funneling more than $160,000.00 from a fictitious entity to F-11 who then sent funds to various violent extremist group leaders including the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

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Now, call me crazy, but I think that if you’re a member of the “Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club,” you’re not a good person. I mean, it’s right there in the name. By the way, guess what the logo of the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club is? If you guessed the same SS Totenkopf that was tattooed on the chest of Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, you are correct! (“Are we the baddies?”)

 

I don’t know about you, but I would be extremely wary about ever putting any of my money or my organization’s money into the hands of anyone who was an active member of these groups.

 

As you may have noticed, these are not small sums of money. Whoever F-9 is, he allegedly made more than a million dollars from the SPLC over nine years! While the program reportedly began in the 1980s, the indictment lists wire transfers going up to April 25, 2023.

 

The defense, put forth by the likes of MSNOW contributor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, is that “the use of paid informants was essential to the intelligence the Center was gathering on the groups they were members of, including intelligence that was shared with the FBI.”

 

But how do we know that?  Yes, the bureau did say on its old website that “the FBI has forged partnerships nationally and locally with many civil rights organizations to establish rapport, share information, address concerns, and cooperate in solving problems,” and it listed the SPLC as one of those organizations. But based on all available evidence, FBI didn’t ask, or hire, the SPLC to go around recruiting informants. The FBI has its own undercover agents and its own funds for recruiting informants. The SPLC decided, on its own, that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to these members of hate groups was worth it.

 

In a video response, Brian Fair, the interim president and CEO of the SPLC, said, “We no longer work with paid informants.” Okay, wait, if this was on the up-and-up and such an effective tool, why did the organization stop paying informants? Or is ending the program a belated recognition that taking tax-deductible donations and putting large sums of money into the pockets of leaders and members of hate organizations wasn’t such a swell idea? Later, Fair says, “there is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.” So if it’s a life-saving program, why did SPLC stop it?