Tyler O'Neil

The book is very evidently written by a journalist, and the sources cited are mostly journalistic ones.

It tells a basic story of an organization that once was much more concerned to follow some principles and now just follows the money (and plays pretty dirty, too).

What can we learn from this book? That Tyler O'Neill has made the SPLC his special beat. That in 2016 the SPLC filed a lawsuit to prevent property taxes from being used to fund some charter schools in Mississippi. This seems show more _very_ far from its original mission. That it pushes programs in schools of dubious value, i.e., programs that do not teach useful skills but merely indoctrinate. "Teaching Tolerance" is the name it goes under. That someone called Laird Wilcox was almost certainly a more reliable student of politically creepy groups and that he thought the SPLC was making a lot of stuff up: https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_20_3/tsc_20_3_wilcox_inter... . That the SPLC has had to pay out $4 million to Majid Nawaz for defaming him and record an apology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMAStj8Jtks .

On June 13, 2024 O'Neill posted an article which summarizes his book and brings one up to date with the news: the SPLC laid off a quarter of its staff.

On Oct 3, 2025 the FBI severed its ties with the SPLC (https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/03/breaking-kash-patels-fbi-cuts-all-ties-southern-poverty-law-center) as reported by this very author. show less