Now read the backgrounder:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no12/vo12no12_splc.htm
SPLC's "Extremist" Cash Cow
by William Norman Grigg
In July 1988, Morris Dees of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was in search of a new foil for his
fund-raising efforts. SPLC's Klanwatch auxiliary had been a potent
fund-raising tool, and the SPLC's high-profile campaign against the Ku
Klux Klan had earned the group tremendous notoriety. However, Dees
lamented to an associate that "the Klan thing is winding down" and that
the SPLC might be left without a raison d'?tre. "Who knows what the
Southern Poverty Law Center will be doing a year from now?" Dees mused
to a reporter. The militia movement coalesced just in time to rescue the
SPLC's financial prospects.