Weltschmerz à Gogo<p>I don't mean to keep boosting Bluesky accounts today (I seldom actually use it), but this is kind of important in the world of monitoring far-right activity in the US: the Southern Poverty Law Center has apparently completed the process of gutting the investigative journalism part of its own operation.</p><p>There's been a lot to criticize about the SPLC for a long time. They've sometimes done good, useful work in the world (perhaps most famously by suing the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho out of existence), but at this point their management also has a long history of treating their staff like complete shit, up to and including sexual harassment and racial and gender discrimination, not to mention union busting and a big round of layoffs several months ago. And this is all apart from their sometimes dubious categorization of hate groups, whereby they have historically regarded, for instance, Black nationalist organizations as equivalent to white nationalist organizations, which, if you've ever been to the United States, doesn't actually make a lot of sense on the ground (I believe they've revised some of this over the past few years, but I haven't really kept up all that closely).</p><p>So now they've done away with their longstanding 'Hatewatch' reporting unit, which was one of their more useful outward-facing elements. They also shut down their legal aid program for immigrants last spring, all while sitting on a fund of nearly $1 billion. In the absence of those two rather important projects, it's hard not to wonder just what that money is there for.</p><p>The SPLC has always operated on a liberal NGO model, which is extremely limiting and inevitably prioritizes profit-making over responding directly to people's needs. Until relatively recently, I was under the impression they were at least cleaning house and addressing some old problems after their implosion a few years ago. I seem to have been wrong about that.</p><p><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/michaelehayden.bsky.social/post/3lf67sr4xc224" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">bsky.app/profile/michaelehayde</span><span class="invisible">n.bsky.social/post/3lf67sr4xc224</span></a></p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/SPLC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SPLC</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Hatewatch" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Hatewatch</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Hopewatch" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Hopewatch</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/fascism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>fascism</span></a></p>