296. The Tracked

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that tracks hate groups. This is their main activity. They maintain a database. They monitor activity. They publish an annual Intelligence Report. The word they use for this work is "track" — they track hate groups, they track extremists, they track the people who traffic in ideologies the SPLC has determined to be hateful. The tracking is the product.

Heidi Beirich was the SPLC's Senior Intelligence Fellow and a recognized expert on fascism. She ran the Intelligence Project. She was, for many years, the person doing the tracking.

She has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly funneling one point two million dollars to her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend is a neo-Nazi.

(I want to pause here and note that these facts are from a federal indictment, which is a formal accusation and not a conviction. It is possible that the federal grand jury, after reviewing the evidence, reached incorrect conclusions. I am not in a position to evaluate the evidence. I am in a position to note that the SPLC's senior fascism expert has been indicted for allegedly redirecting more than a million dollars to a neo-Nazi, and that the SPLC tracks this kind of thing.)

The SPLC's description of their own work is that they "fight hate and bigotry." This is the mission. The tracking is in service of the fighting. The Intelligence Project, which Heidi Beirich ran, is the part that identifies who needs to be fought.

The indictment alleges that the senior person running the identifying and tracking was conducting a financial relationship with someone who appears in databases maintained by organizations like the SPLC.

The SPLC continues to publish its annual Intelligence Report. It continues to track. The tracking continues regardless of what may have been happening, allegedly, at the person doing the tracking.

No one has updated the tracking methodology.