WorldNetDaily has long hated the Southern Poverty Law Center, dating from the days when it falsely attacked the SPLC for accurately designating its fellow right-wing gay-bashers as driven by hate. With a friendly Trump administration, it’s trying to turbocharge that hate. Last October, an article by Bob Unruh touted a petition to get the Justice Department to dump “the agenda, influence and ideology of the Southern Poverty Law Center, that leftist organization that made a reputation for fighting the KKK back in the day, but now has turned into nothing more than a “partisan smear machine.” A few days later, another article by Unruh hyped calls for an investigation into the tax-exempt status of “the far-left extremists at the Southern Poverty Law Center,” citing purported “partisan political activity.”
When Trump’s Justice Department did indict the SPLC, Unruh was overjoyed, writing in an April 21 article:
A federal grand jury in Alabama has delivered an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, the now-scandal ridden activist group that came to fame by suing Ku Klux Klan organizations into bankruptcy.
Its next agenda was to incorrectly describe those with beliefs it disliked, Christians with pro-life and traditional marriage views, as “hate” organizations,
[…]The DOJ said the group was paying members of extremist groups as part of its efforts “to investigate them, ” and failed to disclose the payments to donors or banks.
The SPLC claimed it didn’t do anything wrong.
Unruh went on to huff: “It’s been accused of being anti-Christian and, in fact, has targeted groups like Family Research Council on the flimsiest of opinions, such as condemning groups simply because they don’t endorse the LGBT lifestyle.” Unruh didn’t explain how an opinion could be “flimsy.”
An anonymously written article the following day tried to give WND credit for spreading the “Charlottesville lie” lie:
A new Department of Justice indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center includes the stunning notation that the leftist organization allegedly was funding extremists organizationally and financially – groups that have disrupted American life, rioted, even killed, while falsely being categorized as being on “the right.”
Including, for instance, a riot at the so-called “Unite the Right” events in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., an event that turned tragic when a vehicle was used to ram a crowd and one attendee was killed, a case that sent the criminal to prison for life.
It was portrayed at the time, and even today at legacy and leftist “news” locations, as a “white supremacist” event held over the proposed removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. This came at a time when leftists in America were in a frenzy to eliminate any reference to anything related to the South or the Confederacy from the Civil War era.
Immediately after the Charlottesville event, WorldNetDaily started reporting, analyzing and revealing the outrageous lies of the “official” media narrative about the rally. From author Jack Cashill to commentator-filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, WND exposed the “Charlottesville lie” for what it was immediately.
But perhaps the most complete breakdown of what the infamous event – and particularly that the events and violence were coming from leftists just as the DOJ now is charging, was written for WorldNetDaily in 2023, by columnist Steve Baldwin. See Part 1 and Part 2.
In fact, Baldwin’s columns were filled with falsehoods, as well as incorrectly renaming the Democratic Party. The article continued:
WND readers, however, were warned about the corruption in those events years ago, when Baldwin documented that those events were essentially “created by the left.”
“The left’s narrative is that this fight was started by the right, but actually the left created the conditions for this event. Virginia state law prohibits cities from removing statues, and yet Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, both radical leftists, repeatedly attacked the Robert E. Lee statue. Incidentally, Bellamy was forced to step down from the Virginia Board of Education for some racist tweets. Moreover, the city had initially proposed to change the name of the park in question – Lee Park – even though a poll showed the majority of Charlottesville residents were in support of keeping the name Lee Park. Then, contrary to state law, the city then voted 3-2 to remove the statue altogether. It is clear that the City of Charlotteville instigated this fight.”
WND the group that organized the rally, American Warrior Revolution, considers itself a militia and later effectively blaming counterprotester Heather Heyer for her own death in getting mowed down by a car driven by white supremacist James Fields Jr. The report continued further:
The report by WND’s David Kupelian explained, “As WND recently documented comprehensively, Biden, Democrats, leftwing activists and most of the national news media have continually, since 2016, likened Donald Trump, his policies, beliefs and ideology to Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party and the Third Reich.”
As WND’s election-season analysis noted, “Biden even claimed – falsely, of course – that ‘Charlottesville’ was his very reason for running for president. He repeated this lie, which has been continually debunked by both right and left for the last seven years, in his inauguration speech. In fact, he has probably repeated this particular lie – that Donald Trump loves Nazis – more often than any other single accusation against the 45th president.”
The article was silent on the fact that WND spent years likening President Obama to Hitler and the Nazis, let alone explain why that comparison is perfectly fine while treating Trump the same way is not.