Key 'Unite the Right' Leaders Say MAGA 'Deluded' About SPLC Role in Charlottesville
“They are so deluded. They have so many opinions that are based on nothing but really conspiracy theories—and people who should know better don’t.”
While white nationalists like Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler are celebrating the hard times that have befallen a longtime nemesis, they are becoming increasingly agitated that the federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center has been used to discredit their own work.
President Donald Trump, his Justice Department, and a host of MAGA influencers have seized upon the indictment of the legendary civil rights group and a reference in one paragraph to an SPLC-paid informant who was involved in the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Because that person is not named, it has resulted in a firestorm of speculation that is, unfortunately, surreal and confirms a lot of my worst feelings about human beings,” Kessler said in a weekend interview with the white-nationalist Political Cesspool radio show and podcast.
“They are so deluded. They have so many opinions that are based on nothing but really conspiracy theories—and people who should know better don’t.”
Listen to Kessler in excerpt below:
Kessler, who called the SPLC “a really corrupt, heinous organization,” was Unite the Right’s lead organizer. He has been a frequent target of the group’s investigations into hate and political extremism.
In announcing the SPLC indictment, Trump’s Justice Department accused the non-profit organization of “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” Wyoming GOP Rep. Harriet Hagemen released a viral video that claimed Unite the Right “was an SPLC operation.”
The indictment, accusing the SPLC of fraud and money laundering in its payments to undercover sources, references an informant who was paid $270,000 over nine years. It says the person was in a “leadership chat group” for Unite the Right and helped coordinate transportation for “several” attendees.
Kessler insisted the MAGA spin about that paragraph is completely wrong.
“It’s portrayed as if the entire $270,000 was going to stage Charlottesville as this hoax and it was used to transport people from all over the country to, you know, defame conservatives or something,” Kessler said.
“And that’s not the case.”
Kessler said that there were many so-called “leadership chats” that had very few real leaders in them. The one that is likely implicated, he said, was on Discord. He compared those organizational efforts to the planning for a college keg party.
“The leadership discussion is not full of all of these big names that people are throwing out,” he insisted.
“Most of these people were anonymous. They weren't leaders. It was just, ‘Hey, who wants to help out with this?’ It was as organized as if you were organizing a keg party at a college fraternity.”
Listen to Kessler in excerpt below:
As I previously reported, another Unite the Right organizer, Richard Spencer, has expressed similar views.
‘The final insult’
Another prominent Charlottesville figure, who now goes by the name Augustus Sol Invictus and was convicted on criminal charges for his role in the violence, agreed. His previous name was Austin Mitchell Gillespie.
“Nothing the government is saying right now is legit,” Invictus said in a separate interview on the same radio show and podcast.
He likened it to someone coming into Birmingham, Alabama, years after Dr. Martin Luther King marched there to claim King’s efforts were all a hoax.
“No one would tolerate that—White or Black. That is a clear injustice. No one would take it, but that’s exactly what happened in Charlottesville,” Invictus said.
“And then, years after everybody’s, you know, dragged through the mud and gone through criminal trials and had their lives ruined, then the Justice Department comes out with the final insult.”
Listen to Invictus in excerpt below:
He accused the DOJ of leading people to believe that “none of it was real, these people were paid actors, paid by the SPLC.” In truth, Invictus said, the Southern Poverty Law Center “was destroying our lives at the time.”
He called it “the ultimate insult after everything we’ve been through.”
‘Doubt has been introduced’
On the same show, Atlanta lawyer Sam Dickson, who has represented the Klan and other hate groups, acknowledged the criticisms of the SPLC indictment.
“I don’t think that there’s any truth to the spin put on … the indictment, which has been picked up on by the moderate, normie conservatives that the SPLC was financing the hate that it pretended to oppose,” Dickson said. Instead, he insisted there was no doubt that “the money was used for the purpose of destroying individuals and organizations and getting information.”
Still, he insisted, “That doesn't change the fact that it's of use to us to have them attacked by the government, and I would like to see it go as far as possible.”
Another white nationalist figure, Lydia Brimelow, also expressed skepticism about the charges. Brimelow, her husband Peter, and their group VDARE were also targets of numerous SPLC investigations.
Referring to the Charlottesville rally, Brimelow agreed, “It was not organized by the SPLC, and it was not an op.”
Still, she celebrated the bloody eye the indictment gives the group that she has long considered an enemy and the fact that "no matter what happens at this point, enough has happened that it is damaged.”
“A headline like ‘The SPLC is Funding the KKK and Organized the Deadly Charlottesville Rally’ is something that normal people are gonna remember,” Brimelow told the program’s host.
“Doubt has been introduced—and I think that’s very valuable regardless of how far down they fall as a result of the indictments.”
Listen to Lydia Brimelow in excerpt below: