Southern Poverty Law Center's New Report on Greenwashing

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a new report today on what they call anti-immigrant activists' "cynical campaign to recruit environmentalists to their cause."

Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism and the Hypocrisy of Hate, includes an "The Greening of Hate: An Environmentalist's Essay" by PopDev director Betsy Hartmann: an article about white supremacism being cloaked in 'green' language to gain legitimacy in environmental law and policy discussions.

The report also includes a number of important findings about the funding of targeted political and media strategies aimed at normalizing anti-immigrant rhetoric in conversations about environmental degradation, sometimes by organizations that simultaneously fund strategies to derail efforts to address climate change.

As Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, puts it, "These are hard-line nativists, some of whom have ties to white nationalists, and their primary interest is to radically restrict Latino immigration. Preservation of the environment is hardly their real priority."

The full report is available for free download.