In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center slapped a target on ordinary parents’ backs.

That’s when it added Moms for Liberty, Defending Education, and 10 other parents’ rights groups to its list of “anti-government extremists” — feeding them directly into the SPLC’s widely circulated “Hate Map,” alongside neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan.

Those designations deserve another look in light of Tuesday’s bombshell Department of Justice announcement.

An Alabama grand jury has indicted the SPLC for wire fraud, false statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering — based on shocking allegations that the left-wing nonprofit directed over $3 million in donor funds to the KKK, the American Nazi Party,  Aryan Nation and other violent extremists. 

The SPLC was thereby manufacturing the hate it claimed to be fighting — and the alleged payoffs were just one element of its two-part strategy.

Broadening its “extremist” designations to include any idea not in keeping with the far left was the other tool in its toolbox.

Parent groups could fall afoul of the SPLC’s hate label for something as basic as standing up for merit-based admissions policies in specialized education programs.

The SPLC maligned them for opposing critical race theory and racist practices like “affinity groups” that divide students by race in their schools.

They were attacked for objecting to radical gender-affirmation practices and ideologies in the classroom.

Merely asserting that girls’ sports should be exclusively reserved for biological girls is both “pseudoscience” and “demonizing trans people,” according to the SPLC, and therefore evil.

And New York City politicians like Comptroller Mark Levine, then Manhattan borough president, gleefully latched on to the SPLC’s label to defame parents like me for merely associating with any of the named groups.

When Moms for Liberty held a town hall in Manhattan in January 2024, those of us inside talked about curriculum standards and how to improve the city’s woeful education system.

Meanwhile, Levine and a clown car’s worth of elected officials stood outside in the 30-degree cold screaming about racism and transphobia.

Citing the SPLC’s report, Levine betrayed the true principles of liberalism by insisting Moms for Liberty “has no place here or any other part of NYC.”

 “Agree with us or be silenced,”’ echoed every authoritarian everywhere.

And on cue, death threats and vile messages descended on the group. 

“Piece of s–t fascists like you deserve to be dragged against a wall and force-fed hot lead,” one read.

Another writer pledged to “personally eradicate” Moms for Liberty’s leaders.

In 2021, when far-left advocates sued to end NYC’s Specialized High School and Gifted & Talented programs with claims that merit-based admissions are inherently racist, the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Defending Education successfully intervened to block the attempt.

Many pro-merit NYC parents cheered that effort.  

But after the SPLC designated Defending Education as “extremist,” some of my fellow parent education advocates were struck with fear.

They argued that the Hate Map accusation was reason enough for the city’s pro-merit groups to cut any Defending Education ties.

I know from experience that left-wing protesters were emboldened to harass and even physically attack the parents who were associated with the SPLC-smeared groups.  

Its dishonest label was a powerfully effective tool to damage reputations and sow discord. 

The DOJ indictment reveals ugly accounting that the SPLC understandably would not want donors to know — such as the $270,000 paid to a “field informant” who helped lead the infamous 2017 Unite Right Rally in Charlottesville.

That’s the same rally that spurred President Donald Trump’s unequivocal condemnation of white supremacists  — a statement that was spun into the false but widely reported canard that he’d seen “fine people on both sides.”

According to the indictment, the SPLC’s paid informant attended the Charlottesville event “at the direction of the SPLC” and “made racist postings under [its] supervision.”

“At the direction of” and “under the supervision of” are at the heart of the alleged donor fraud.

It’s perfectly reasonable for an organization like the SPLC to pay a member’s fee or to buy an event ticket to access a questionable group’s online material, track its activities or record a speaker.

Directing and supervising the very racism you claim to be combating is not so easy to excuse. 

Of course the allegations against the SPLC are unproven, and the group deserves its day in court. 

But if the indictment’s facts are accurate, the SPLC’s perfidy is clear — and inexcusable.

By both paying old-school racists to stir up enmity and expanding the pool of targets they could sully as “hateful,” the SPLC was engaged in a two-pronged effort to keep hate alive.

And of course to keep their donor pool fearful, engaged and generously giving. 

Whatever the indictment’s legal outcome, we know the strategy is dishonest, immoral — and highly effective.

Maud Maron is a New York attorney and education advocate.