July 16, 2020
Hate Groups Received PPP Loans As Black Businesses Struggle To Stay Afloat
A report listing the companies that have received funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) shows hate groups have received a litany of funds from it.
According to the Center For Media And Democracy, the Small Business Administration released the names of more than 650,000 PPP beneficiaries receiving $150,000 or more in forgivable loans from the agency. The list contained the names of several anti-immigration hate groups including the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and anti-Muslim hate group the Center for Security Policy.
Anti-LGBTQ hate groups also received funds, including the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel, and the Pacific Justice Institute. The six nonprofit hate groups received between $2.3 million and $5.7 million in PPP loans.
The PPP was designed to help small businesses make it through the coronavirus pandemic and help employers retain their workers. In turn, the loans would be forgiven, essentially turning into a grant.
More than 4.8 million small business owners have used the program, taking more than $520 billion from the program. The loans will be fully forgiven if those who take the loans spend the majority of the money paying their employees.
“Many of these groups that traffic in hate are already well-resourced, with a constant injection of funding from far-right mega-donors and dark money foundations,” Imraan Siddiqi, executive director of the Arizona branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Center. “This just highlights more cases of vital funding getting into the hands of those who didn’t need it, while many small businesses in our communities came up empty and are having to fold.”
The American Family Association received the bulk of the PPP funds, getting between $1 million and $2 million in loans from Regions Bank in April to retain 124 workers. A recent post on its website by activist David Lane compares Antifa and Black Lives Matter to an “alliance between the two devils of Nazism and Communism” that hates “good and God.”
Another post by Lane called Antifa and Black Lives Matter more dangerous than ISIS.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter “work together in pillaging and marauding targeted cities of America,” the entry claims. “In their duplicity and subterfuge they come close to or may even top the heinous terror outfit ISIS, which ransacked northern Iraq’s historic Christian and Muslim shrines.”
In April, several large chain restaurants and even the Los Angeles Lakers applied for and received PPP funds before being shamed into returning the funds.