“Freedom” Foundation, Washington Policy Center Share Funder with White Nationalist Hate Group

Recently released tax records reveal that for the second year in a row, DonorsTrust bankrolled the New Century Foundation, a business alias for American Renaissance, which is designated a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Law Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Those same records also list donations of $38,500 to the extremist “Freedom” Foundation and $100,000 to the anti-worker Washington Policy Center, two groups that Accountable Northwest has long exposed for their ties to the white nationalism movement. Both groups belong to the State Policy Network, an extremist network of so-called “think tanks” that secured over $8 million from DonorsTrust the same year.

DonorsTrust has been called the “dark-money ATM of the conservative movement,” because it allows donors to send money to far-right causes anonymously. They’ve distributed over $1 billion to more than 1,000 organizations, many of which are fighting against unions, public schools, and climate science. Some of the wealthiest regressive families in America, like the Kochs, the DeVoses and the Bradleys, have routed money to their causes through DonorsTrust.

According to SPLC, the New Century Foundation is a “self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites.” New Century’s founder, Jared Taylor, is considered the creator of the “black-on-white” crime myth – a false conspiracy theory echoed in Dylann Roof’s ‘manifesto,’ written before his murder of 9 African-American churchgoers in Charleston, SC in 2015.

This is not the first time the “Freedom” Foundation and Washington Policy Center have received money from the same donor pool funding dangerous hate speech. They also received money from the Bellevue-based Rotella Foundation, a key funder of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute. Spencer helped organize the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville which brought together white supremacists from across the country. The rally ended tragically with a deadly hit and run and a white supremacist charged with murder.

White nationalism has plagued our country with violence for hundreds of years. This regressive and destructive movement is being driven by millionaires and billionaires who are sowing the seeds of hatred and division all over the country, including here in the Pacific Northwest. The “Freedom” Foundation and Washington Policy Center have expressed no moral concerns about where they get their money. It’s up to the rest of us to hold them to account for their shameful connection to extremism and bigotry.