I HAD BEEN ASSURED THIS KIND OF THING WAS NOTHING BUT RIGHT-WING PARANOIA: Treasury traces SPLC to debanking of Christians after group dismissed it as conspiracy.

Federal finance authorities have identified the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” labels as the driving force behind the debanking of conservative individuals and organizations, particularly clients that were giving to Christian causes.

The explosive findings directly discredit a recent proclamation from the SPLC declaring, as part of its “Hatewatch” monitoring project, that anti-Christian debanking was a conspiracy theory spread by the “Christian supremacy movement.”

Though only a regulatory audit, fulfilling an executive order from President Donald Trump to ensure that banks were not discriminating against customers on the basis of their political or religious beliefs, the government’s findings add to the SPLC’s latest woes.

Let this serve as your occasional reminder that “conspiracy theory” these days usually means “slightly ahead of the news cycle.”