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Hate Group That ‘Informed’ Roof’s Racism Is a Tax-Exempt ‘Social Welfare Organization’
In a Friday, June 19, 2015 file photo, the Confederate flag flies near the South Carolina Statehouse, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt, File)
(Slate) – The group that “informed” Dylann Roof’s deeply racist beliefs, and writings, is the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). Roof even cited the group’s website when talking about his arrival at a white supremacist viewpoint. In the aftermath of the shooting, after some digging found the group’s leader, Earl Holt III, contributed to a handful of GOP Presidential hopefuls, the candidates quickly distanced themselves from the group the Southern Poverty Law Center called a “modern reincarnation” of a network of white supremacist groups that fought against desegregation in the 1950s.
The CCC, which decries “race mixing,” doesn’t even remotely approach acceptable or even mainstream American thought on race. Even so, as the Center for Public Integrity reported on Tuesday, the Council of Conservative Citizens is listed as a “nonprofit organization that promotes social welfare, also known as a 501(c)(4)” and therefore pays no federal taxes—making the hate group essentially subsidized by American taxpayers.
Here’s more from the Center for Public Integrity:
