Name: Fake Perils Make Real Money
Uploaded: 2026-05-01T22:33:00Z
Duration: 5 min 44 s
Description: Unruly Republic: Columnist Barton Swaim explains how the SPLC, climate groups and other outfits profit from nonexistent monsters.

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Ken Burns, the filmmaker behind the documentary miniseries "The American Revolution" and others, spoke to Barron's editor at large Andy Serwer.

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Unruly Republic: Columnist Barton Swaim explains how the SPLC, climate groups and other outfits ​p​rofit from nonexistent monsters. Photo: Steve Helber/AP/Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images/Gina M Randazzo/Zuma Press

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260501/764a7193-ad01-49bb-81a4-3655b14860ee/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Unruly Republic: Columnist Barton Swaim explains how the SPLC, climate groups and other outfits ​p​rofit from nonexistent monsters.

Fake Perils Make Real Money

In 2017 during President Trump's first term, a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia over the planned removal of a Confederate statue was declared a state of emergency when it ran into counter protestors.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has declared an unlawful assembly.

Following the violence, many, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, criticized Donald Trump's response when he said there was blame on both sides.

On many sides, on many sides,

But in the days that followed, he went further.

Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists. To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you'll be held fully accountable.

10 years later, a revelation.

The SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned that Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 that resulted in the death of one person and injured dozens more.

You don't need the filing of a lawsuit to know that the SPLC, in order to stay alive, needs the imagined threats it claims to deplore. but this, even by Antifa standards, was a step too far.

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 federal indictment, which charges the nonprofit with wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering, alleges that the Montgomery, Alabama based group paid hefty sums to informants supposedly operating inside extremist groups, such as the one in Charlottesville.

This particular person being paid by the SPLC allegedly received approximately $270,000 over the course of eight years. In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals at least.

The groups, as the general laid out, include the Ku Klux Klan, the United Clans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, and the National Socialist Party of America, and also the American Front.

You will not replace us.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's lack of compunction amazes, but its intrigues flow from the very nature of the activist nonprofit enterprise. Donors respond to big claims and menacing specters, which is why that Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was the best thing ever to happen to the SPLC? No, they didn't organize the rally, but with the media's help, they profited handsomely by it. Donations to the nonprofit ballooned in the years after.

To carry out this scheme, SPLC created bank accounts in the name of at least five completely fictitious organizations that had no bonafided employees or legitimate business purpose. The money was passed from SPLC to one sham account to a second sham account, and then loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups

The modern liberal outlook, to borrow the political philosopher Kenneth Minogue's metaphor, must have dragons to slay. When the dragons diminish in size or die altogether, the civic-minded liberal wants to invent new ones, if only to have new things to worry about. The District of Columbia teams with nonprofits dedicated to the proposition that one thing or another menaces the Republic.

We are the largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization in the world. 3.6 million members strong.

Human Rights Campaign, to take one example, regularly informs its donors that gay, trans, and gender expansive Americans routinely suffer abuse and bigotry from the hands of their countrymen.

I pray that one day my children will grow up in a world where they feel just as safe surrounded by the American flag as they do when they are surrounded by pride Flags.

In 2025, HRC brought in $46 million in contributions.

I'm not gonna rest while they keep coming for our Queer and trans youth.

Also consider climate alarmism's role in American politics. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency and related government bodies have doled out grants to climate related nonprofits that return the favor by churning out apocalyptic reports about an always imminent climate crisis. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act supersized that effort, but progressives didn't stop there.

Americans can now apply to join the American Climate Corps.

Those who become American Climate Corps members will get paid to fight the impacts of climate change.

Right now, we are recruiting for more than 2000 positions located all across the country.

To its credit, the Trump administration canceled that program, but similar funding streams proliferate across federal and state agencies. A cynical observer might feel inclined to use the word racket. Environmental agencies fund activist groups. They then make apocalyptic claims more credible, which in turn, enables the agencies to demand more funding and regulatory authority from government budget writers. Now, that's what I call sustainability.

WSJ Opinion: Fake Perils Make Real Money

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